Used alongside the students' text, Higher National Computing 2nd edition, this pack offers a complete suite of lecturer resource material and photocopiable handouts for the compulsory core units of the new BTEC Higher Nationals in Computing and IT, including the four core units for HNC, the two additional core units required at HND, and the Core Specialist Unit 'Quality Systems', common to both certificate and diploma level.
The authors provide all the resources needed by a busy lecturer, as well as a bank of student-centred practical work and revision material, which will enable students to gain the skills, knowledge and understanding they require.
Also available as a web download for adopters, this pack will save a course team many hours' work preparing handouts and assignments, and is freely photocopiable within the purchasing institution. The pack includes:
* Exercises to support and develop work in the accompanying student text
* Planned projects which will enable students to display a wide range of skills and use their own initiative
* Assessment materials
* Reference material for use as hand-outs
* Background on running the new HNC / HND courses
* Tutor's notes supporting activities in the students' book and resource pack
* All the essential material for running a course in the 2003 Higher National Computing qualification from Edexcel
* Full coverage of the compulsory core units for both the HNC and HND
* Freely photocopiable within the purchasing institution with electronic files available to download from the web, this pack will save a course team many hours' work preparing handouts and assignments

DESCRIPTION Distributed systems are unpredictable, and it can be an enormous challenge to manage around potentially-crippling obstacles like hardware failures, unanticipated changes in load, and network issues. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a platform for hosting distributed applications in a secure, flexible cloud environment. AWS provides a suite of services designed to keep the focus on what an application does instead of the infrastructure required to run it. Whether serving up blog pages, analyzing fast data in real-time, building software as a service, or implementing a massive e-commerce site, AWS provides both a stable platform and services that will scale with every application. Amazon Web Services in Action introduces readers to computing, storing, and networking in the AWS cloud. It starts with a broad overview of AWS, and shows how to spin up servers manually and from the command line. Then, it explores infrastructure automation with the AWS CloudFormation service, where readers can describe a blueprint of their infrastructure as code. Readers will learn how to isolate systems using private networks to increase security, how to use the most valuable AWS managed services available on AWS, and about the benefits of stateless servers. In the end, they'll look to the AWS model for high availability, scaling, decoupling with queues and load balancers, and fault tolerance. KEY SELLING POINTS Explains the key concepts of AWS Gives an overview of the most important services Allows readers to take full advantage of the AWS platform AUDIENCE Written for developers and DevOps engineers who are moving traditionally-deployed distributed applications to the AWS platform. No experience with AWS is required. ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY Amazon Web Services is a platform of services in the Cloud to provide everything needed to run applications-from hosting a private blog, to running one of the biggest websites on earth, analyzing data for cancer research, or providing business applications.

Hybrid systems describe the interaction of software, described by finite models such as finite-state machines, with the physical world, described by infinite models such as differential equations. This book addresses problems of verification and controller synthesis for hybrid systems. Although these problems are very difficult to solve for general hybrid systems, several authors have identified classes of hybrid systems that admit symbolic or finite models. The novelty of the book lies on the systematic presentation of these classes of hybrid systems along with the relationships between the hybrid systems and the corresponding symbolic models. To show how the existence of symbolic models can be used for verification and controller synthesis, the book also outlines several key results for the verification and controller design of finite systems. Several examples illustrate the different methods and techniques discussed in the book.

The title of this book contains the words ALGORITHMIC LANGUAGE, in the singular. This is meant to convey the idea that it deals not so much with the diversity of program ming languages, but rather with their commonalities. The task of formal program develop It allows classifying ment proved to be the ideal frame for demonstrating this unity. concepts and distinguishing fundamental notions from notational features; and it leads immediately to a systematic disposition. This approach is supported by didactic, practical, and theoretical considerations. The clarity of the structure of a programming language de signed according to the principles of program transformation is remarkable. Of course there are various notations for such a language. The notation used in this book is mainly oriented towards ALGOL 68, but is also strongly influenced by PASCAL - it could equally well have been the other way round. In the appendices there are occa sional references to the styles used in ALGOL, PASCAL, LISP, and elsewhere."

Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) have grown into a mature field of research in optimization, and have proven to be effective and robust problem solvers for a broad range of static real-world optimization problems. Yet, since they are based on the principles of natural evolution, and since natural evolution is a dynamic process in a changing environment, EAs are also well suited to dynamic optimization problems. Evolutionary Optimization in Dynamic Environments is the first comprehensive work on the application of EAs to dynamic optimization problems. It provides an extensive survey on research in the area and shows how EAs can be successfully used to continuously and efficiently adapt a solution to a changing environment, find a good trade-off between solution quality and adaptation cost, find robust solutions whose quality is insensitive to changes in the environment, find flexible solutions which are not only good but that can be easily adapted when necessary. All four aspects are treated in this book, providing a holistic view on the challenges and opportunities when applying EAs to dynamic optimization problems. The comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of the subject, together with details of latest original research, makes Evolutionary Optimization in Dynamic Environments an invaluable resource for researchers and professionals who are dealing with dynamic and stochastic optimization problems, and who are interested in applying local search heuristics, such as evolutionary algorithms.

This volume contains, in part, a selection of papers presented at the sixth Australian Optimization Day Miniconference (Ballarat, 16 July 1999), and the Special Sessions on Nonlinear Dynamics and Optimization and Operations Re search - Methods and Applications, which were held in Melbourne, July 11-15 1999 as a part of the Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and Australian Mathematical Society. The editors have strived to present both con tributed papers and survey style papers as a more interesting mix for readers. Some participants from the meetings mentioned above have responded to this approach by preparing survey and 'semi-survey' papers, based on presented lectures. Contributed paper, which contain new and interesting results, are also included. The fields of the presented papers are very large as demonstrated by the following selection of key words from selected papers in this volume: * optimal control, stochastic optimal control, MATLAB, economic models, implicit constraints, Bellman principle, Markov process, decision-making under uncertainty, risk aversion, dynamic programming, optimal value function. * emergent computation, complexity, traveling salesman problem, signal estimation, neural networks, time congestion, teletraffic. * gap functions, nonsmooth variational inequalities, derivative-free algo rithm, Newton's method. * auxiliary function, generalized penalty function, modified Lagrange func tion. * convexity, quasiconvexity, abstract convexity.

This book is designed to teach introductory computer programming using Maple. It aims to infuse more mathematically oriented programming exercises and problems than those found in traditional programming courses while reinforcing and applying concepts and techniques of calculus. All the important, basic elements of computer programming can be easily learned within the interactive and user friendly environment of a Computer Algebra System (CAS) such as Maple. Most chapters feature case studies that provide greater depth on some topics and also serve to illustrate the methodology of analysis and design of code for more complex problems. This book is directed at undergraduates in the fields of math, science, or secondary education. The CD-ROM that accompanies the book contains the electronic versions of all the examples in the text with additional discussion, related material, and optional exercises.

Anticipatory Learning Classifier Systems describes the state of the art of anticipatory learning classifier systems-adaptive rule learning systems that autonomously build anticipatory environmental models. An anticipatory model specifies all possible action-effects in an environment with respect to given situations. It can be used to simulate anticipatory adaptive behavior.

Anticipatory Learning Classifier Systems highlights how anticipations influence cognitive systems and illustrates the use of anticipations for (1) faster reactivity, (2) adaptive behavior beyond reinforcement learning, (3) attentional mechanisms, (4) simulation of other agents and (5) the implementation of a motivational module. The book focuses on a particular evolutionary model learning mechanism, a combination of a directed specializing mechanism and a genetic generalizing mechanism. Experiments show that anticipatory adaptive behavior can be simulated by exploiting the evolving anticipatory model for even faster model learning, planning applications, and adaptive behavior beyond reinforcement learning.

Anticipatory Learning Classifier Systems gives a detailed algorithmic description as well as a program documentation of a C++ implementation of the system. It is an excellent reference for researchers interested in adaptive behavior and machine learning from a cognitive science perspective as well as those who are interested in combining evolutionary learning mechanisms for learning and optimization tasks.

Although the monograph Progress in Optimization I: Contributions from Aus tralasia grew from the idea of publishing a proceedings of the Fourth Optimiza tion Day, held in July 1997 at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the focus soon changed to a refereed volume in optimization. The intention is to publish a similar book annually, following each Optimization Day. The idea of having an annual Optimization Day was conceived by Barney Glover; the first of these Optimization Days was held in 1994 at the University of Ballarat. Barney hoped that such a yearly event would bring together the many, but widely dispersed, researchers in Australia who were publishing in optimization and related areas such as control. The first Optimization Day event was followed by similar conferences at The University of New South Wales (1995), The University of Melbourne (1996), the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1997), and The University of Western Australia (1998). The 1999 conference will return to Ballarat University, being organized by Barney's long-time collaborator Alex Rubinov. In recent years the Optimization Day has been held in conjunction with other locally-held national or international conferences. This has widened the scope of the monograph with contributions not only coming from researchers in Australia and neighboring regions but also from their collaborators in Europe and North America."

New Algorithms, Architectures and Applications for Reconfigurable Computing consists of a collection of contributions from the authors of some of the best papers from the Field Programmable Logic conference (FPLa (TM)03) and the Design and Test Europe conference (DATEa (TM)03). In all, seventy-nine authors, from research teams from all over the world, were invited to present their latest research in the extended format permitted by this special volume. The result is a valuable book that is a unique record of the state of the art in research into field programmable logic and reconfigurable computing.

The contributions are organized into twenty-four chapters and are grouped into three main categories: architectures, tools and applications. Within these three broad areas the most strongly represented themes are coarse-grained architectures; dynamically reconfigurable and multi-context architectures; tools for coarse-grained and reconfigurable architectures; networking, security and encryption applications.

Field programmable logic and reconfigurable computing are exciting research disciplines that span the traditional boundaries of electronic engineering and computer science. When the skills of both research communities are combined to address the challenges of a single research discipline they serve as a catalyst for innovative research. The work reported in the chapters of this book captures that spirit of that innovation.

We are rarely asked to. make decisions based on only one criterion; most often, decisions are based on several usually confticting, criteria. In nature, if the design of a system evolves to some final, optimal state, then it must include a balance for the interaction of the system with its surroundings certainly a design based on a variety of criteria. Furthermore, the diversity of nature's designs suggests an infinity of such optimal states. In another sense, decisions simultaneously optimize a finite number of criteria, while there is usually an infinity of optimal solutions. Multicriteria optimization provides the mathematical framework to accommodate these demands. Multicriteria optimization has its roots in mathematical economics, in particular, in consumer economics as considered by Edgeworth and Pareto. The critical question in an exchange economy concerns the "equilibrium point" at which each of N consumers has achieved the best possible deal for hirnself or herself. Ultimately, this is a collective decision in which any further gain by one consumer can occur only at the expense of at least one other consumer. Such an equilibrium concept was first introduced by Edgeworth in 1881 in his book on mathematical psychics. Today, such an optimum is variously called "Pareto optimum" (after the Italian-French welfare economist who continued and expanded Edgeworth's work), "effi. cient," "nondominated," and so on."

This book looks closely at the endings of narrative digital games, examining their ways of concluding the processes of both storytelling and play in order to gain insight into what endings are and how we identify them in different media. While narrative digital games share many representational strategies for signalling their upcoming end with more traditional narrative media - such as novels or movies - they also show many forms of endings that often radically differ from our conventional understanding of conclusion and closure. From vast game worlds that remain open for play after a story's finale, to multiple endings that are often hailed as a means for players to create their own stories, to the potentially tragic endings of failure and "game over", digital games question the traditional singularity and finality of endings. Using a broad range of examples, this book delves deeply into these and other forms and their functions, both to reveal the closural specificities of the ludonarrative hybrid that digital games are, as well as to find the core elements that characterise endings in any medium. It examines how endings make themselves known to players and raises the question of how well-established closural conventions blend with play and a player's effort to achieve a goal. As an interdisciplinary study that draws on game studies as much as on transmedial narratology, Forms and Functions of Endings in Narrative Digital Games is suited for scholars and students of digital games as well as for narratologists yet to become familiar with this medium.

The fourteenth volume of the Second Edition covers central topics in philosophical logic that have been studied for thousands of years, since Aristotle: Inconsistency, Causality, Conditionals, and Quantifiers. These topics are central in many applications of logic in central disciplines and this book is indispensable to any advanced student or researcher using logic in these areas. The chapters are comprehensive and written by major figures in the field.

Is the Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) knowledge management's killer app? Leading expert Joseph M. Firestone, the first author to formulate the idea of the Enterprise Knowledge Portal, breaks new ground and looks to the future with a practical, but comprehensive approach to enterprise portals and their relationship to knowledge management. Providing a clear and novel overview, Firestone tackles a wide range of topics ranging from functional EIP applications, estimating costs and benefits of EIPs, variations in EIP technical architecture, the role of intelligent agents, the nature of knowledge management, portal product/solution segmentation, portal product case studies, to the future of the EIP space.
'Enterprise Information Portals and Knowledge Management' is the book on portals you've been waiting for. It is the only book that thoroughly considers, explores, and analyzes:
* The EIP orientation, outlook and evolution
* A new methodology for estimating EIP benefits and costs
* EIP and Enterprise Knowledge Portals (EKP) architecture
* The approaching role of software agents in EIPs and EKPs
* The current and future contribution of EIP and EKP solutions to Knowledge Management
* The role of XML in portal architecture
* A comprehensive, multi-dimensional, and forward-looking segmentation of EIP products accompanied by portal product case studies
* Where EIP sector companies are headed and the pathways they will follow to get there
* Comprehensive approach to enterprise portals and their relationship to knowledge management
* Groundbreaking author, Firestone was the first to formulate the idea of the Enterprise Knowledge Portal
* Tackles a widerange of topics from functional EIP applications, estimating costs and benefits of EIPs, variations in EIP technical architecture, the role of intelligent agents, the nature of knowledge management, portal product/solution segmentation, portal product case studies, to the future of the EIP space

In depth investigation into a famous series of video games In just three episodes, the Bioshock series managed to score some big points amongst players' hearts. Spiritual successor of System Shock 2, the first Bioshock was an Irrational Games' game, lead by Ken Levine. Set in the 50's ambiance, with Art Deco levels, progression in Bioshock is possible through open and smart game mechanics, inciting the player to be creative and to use its environment. The saga is also filled with many profound and philosophical themes, while involving the player in every one of its aspects, many things granting the triptych of an iconic saga.

The only beginning book of its kind, this book will teach you SAP/ABAP developers the skills you need for Java 5 programming. The book emphasizes the fundamentals of core Java SE 5 and Java EE 5, to get you up to speed with these technologies. You'll learn about the most important enterprise Java API found in the new Java EE 5 platform, which you can immediately use and integrate. Furthermore, the book elaborates on connecting to a database, SAP Java Connector, servlets, Java Server Pages, Enterprise JavaBeans, and Java Messaging.

Constraint databases provide extra expressive power over relational databases in a largely hidden way at the data-storage or physical level. Constraints, such as linear or polynomial equations, are used to represent large sets in a compact manner. They keep the view of the database for a user or application programmer almost as simple as in relational databases. "Introduction to Constraint Databases" comprehensively covers both constraint-database theory and several sample systems. The book reveals how constraint databases bring together techniques from a variety of fields, such as logic and model theory, algebraic and computational geometry, and symbolic computation, to the design and analysis of data models and query languages. Constraint databases are shown to be powerful and simple tools for data modeling and querying in application areas¿such as environmental modeling, bioinformatics, and computer vision--that are not suitable for relational databases. Specific applications are examined in geographic information systems, spatiotemporal data management, linear programming, genome databases, model checking of automata, and other areas. Topics and features: *Offers a database perspective and a focus on simplicity at the user level *Utilizes simple tools for determining whether queries are safe or not *Incorporates scientist-supplied descriptions of applications *Explains constraint databases from a developer's viewpoint *Provides extensive exercise sets, and sample software systems, that facilitate rapid learning of the topic within a real-world software context This volume presents a comprehensive introduction to the theory and applications of constraint database systems, which provide new methods for the design of data models and query languages. It is an essential resource for advanced students, practitioners, and professionals in computer science, database systems, and information systems.

It demonstrates how features such as animation and audio can be employed to ensure web sites are used to their full potential and therefore helps to create professional products that will secure a positive image of the company or product they are promoting. It is accessible and simplifies the authoring experience so that even those with little or no previous knowledge of creating web pages can develop and innovate stimulating and interactive features to enhance their content.

Encompassing all the major topics students will encounter in courses on the subject, the authors teach both the underlying mathematical foundations and how these ideas are implemented in practice. They illustrate all the concepts with both worked examples and plenty of exercises, and, in addition, provide software so that students can try out numerical methods and so hone their skills in interpreting the results. As a result, this will make an ideal textbook for all those coming to the subject for the first time. Authors' note: A problem recently found with the software is due to a bug in Formula One, the third party commercial software package that was used for the development of the interface. It occurs when the date, currency, etc. format is set to a non-United States version. Please try setting your computer date/currency option to the United States option . The new version of Formula One, when ready, will be posted on WWW.

This is a book on Linear-Fractional Programming (here and in what follows we will refer to it as "LFP"). The field of LFP, largely developed by Hungarian mathematician B. Martos and his associates in the 1960's, is concerned with problems of op timization. LFP problems deal with determining the best possible allo cation of available resources to meet certain specifications. In particular, they may deal with situations where a number of resources, such as people, materials, machines, and land, are available and are to be combined to yield several products. In linear-fractional programming, the goal is to determine a per missible allocation of resources that will maximize or minimize some specific showing, such as profit gained per unit of cost, or cost of unit of product produced, etc. Strictly speaking, linear-fractional programming is a special case of the broader field of Mathematical Programming. LFP deals with that class of mathematical programming problems in which the relations among the variables are linear: the con straint relations (i.e. the restrictions) must be in linear form and the function to be optimized (i.e. the objective function) must be a ratio of two linear functions."

This volume contains the proceedings of the conference Logical Foundations of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics-Kurt Godel's Legacy, held in Brno, Czech Republic on the 90th anniversary of his birth. The wide and continuing importance of Godel s work in the logical foundations of mathematics, computer science, and physics is confirmed by the broad range of speakers who participated in making this gathering a scientific event.

Far from being the passive containers for semiconductor devices of the past, the packages in today's high performance computers pose numerous challenges in interconnecting, powering, cooling and protecting devices. While semiconductor circuit performance measured in picoseconds continues to improve, computer performance is expected to be in nanoseconds for the rest of this century -a factor of 1000 difference between on-chip and off-chip performance which is attributable to losses associated with the package. Thus the package, which interconnects all the chips to form a particular function such as a central processor, is likely to set the limits on how far computers can evolve. Multichip packaging, which can relax these limits and also improve the reliability and cost at the systems level, is expected to be the basis of all advanced computers in the future. In addition, since this technology allows chips to be spaced more closely, in less space and with less weight, it has the added advantage of being useful in portable consumer electronics as well as in medical, aerospace, automotive and telecommunications products. The multichip technologies with which these applications can be addressed are many. They range from ceramics to polymer-metal thin films to printed wiring boards for interconnections; flip chip, TAB or wire bond for chip-to-substrate connections; and air or water cooling for the removal of heat.

This book describes the rapidly developing field of interior point methods (IPMs). An extensive analysis is given of path-following methods for linear programming, quadratic programming and convex programming. These methods, which form a subclass of interior point methods, follow the central path, which is an analytic curve defined by the problem. Relatively simple and elegant proofs for polynomiality are given. The theory is illustrated using several explicit examples. Moreover, an overview of other classes of IPMs is given. It is shown that all these methods rely on the same notion as the path-following methods: all these methods use the central path implicitly or explicitly as a reference path to go to the optimum. For specialists in IPMs as well as those seeking an introduction to IPMs. The book is accessible to any mathematician with basic mathematical programming knowledge.

This book presents 13 peer-reviewed papers as written results from the 2005 workshop "Topology-Based Methods in Visualization" that was initiated to enable additional stimulation in this field. It contains a survey of the state-of-the-art, as well original work by leading experts that has not been published before, spanning both theory and applications. It captures key concepts and novel ideas and serves as an overview of current trends in its subject.