The primary purpose of this book is to present the state-of-the-art of mobile cloud computing and applications with an emphasis on energy-efficiency. The future research directions are also highlighted in this book to enrich the global market-place of mobile cloud computing services facilitating the scientific, industrial, business, and consumer applications. We expect that the book will serve as a reference to a large number of readers including researchers, system architects, practitioners, and graduate-level students. This book focuses on an emerging area that has considerable research interest, momentum, and interest of commercial developers. The target reader of this book are professional developers, under-graduate and post-graduate students, and researchers. As mobile cloud computing, as well as green computing, will have a major impact on the quality of science and society over the next few years, its knowledge will enrich our readers to be at the forefront of the field. This book reports the latest research advances in the area of green mobile cloud computing. The book covers the architecture, services, methods, applications, and future research directions of green mobile cloud computing.

This book explores how gamification techniques are used to leverage users' natural desires for achievement, competition, collaboration, learning and more. Compared to other books on this topic, it gives more than just an introduction and develops the readers understanding through frameworks and models, based on research to make it easier to develop gamified systems. The concept of gamification achieved increased popularity in 2010 when a number of softwares and services started explaining their products as a 'gamification' design. Gamification Mindset explains how game elements and mechanics are important, how video games are learning systems and examines how video game aesthetics are vital in the development of gamification. The book will challenge some common beliefs when it comes to gamifications' abilities to immerse and change the user's intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Gamification Mindset aims to develop new models in gamification to enable easier gamification scenarios. It is a comprehensive analysis and discussion about gamification and serves as a useful tool, since it acquaints readers with gamification and how to use it, through illustrated practical theoretical models. Academic researchers, students, educators and professional game and gamification designers will find this book invaluable.

This book presents the proceedings of the 12th International Parallel Tools Workshop, held in Stuttgart, Germany, during September 17-18, 2018, and of the 13th International Parallel Tools Workshop, held in Dresden, Germany, during September 2-3, 2019. The workshops are a forum to discuss the latest advances in parallel tools for high-performance computing. High-performance computing plays an increasingly important role for numerical simulation and modeling in academic and industrial research. At the same time, using large-scale parallel systems efficiently is becoming more difficult. A number of tools addressing parallel program development and analysis has emerged from the high-performance computing community over the last decade, and what may have started as a collection of a small helper scripts has now matured into production-grade frameworks. Powerful user interfaces and an extensive body of documentation together create a user-friendly environment for parallel tools.

The present book is the outcome of efforts to introduce topological connectedness as one of the basic tools for the study of necessary conditions for an extremum. Apparently this monograph is the first book in the theory of maxima and minima where topological connectedness is used so widely for this purpose. Its application permits us to obtain new results in this sphere and to consider the classical results from a nonstandard point of view. Regarding the style of the present book it should be remarked that it is comparatively elementary. The author has made constant efforts to make the book as self-contained as possible. Certainly, familiarity with the basic facts of topology, functional analysis, and the theory of optimization is assumed. The book is written for applied mathematicians and graduate students interested in the theory of optimization and its applications. We present the synthesis of the well known Dybovitskii'-Milyutin ap proach for the study of necessary conditions for an extremum, based on functional analysis, and topological methods. This synthesis allows us to show that in some cases we have the following important result: if the Euler equation has no non trivial solution at a point of an extremum, then some inclusion is valid for the functionals belonging to the dual space. This general result is obtained for an optimization problem considered in a lin ear topological space. We also show an application of our result to some problems of nonlinear programming and optimal control."

This book explores how virtual place-based learning and research has been interpreted and incorporated into learning environments both within and across disciplinary perspectives. Contributing authors highlight the ways in which they have employed a variety of methodologies to engage students in the virtual exploration of place. In the process, they focus on the approaches they have used to bring the real world closer through virtual exploration. Chapters examine how the resources of the urban environment have been tapped to design student research projects within the context of an interdisciplinary course. In this way, authors highlight how virtual place-based learning has employed the tools of mapping and data visualization, information literacy, game design, digital storytelling, and the creation of non-fiction VR documentaries. This book makes a valuable contribution to the literature, offering a model of how the study of place can be employed in creative ways to enhance interdisciplinary learning.

This volume contains refereed papers based on the lectures presented at the XIV International Conference on Mathematical Programming held at Matrahaza, Hungary, between 27-31 March 1999. This conference was organized by the Laboratory of Operations Research and Deci sion Systems at the Computer and Automation Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The editors hope this volume will contribute to the theory and applications of mathematical programming. As a tradition of these events, the main purpose of the confer ence was to review and discuss recent advances and promising research trends concerning theory, algorithms and applications in different fields of Optimization Theory and related areas such as Convex Analysis, Complementarity Systems and Variational Inequalities. The conference is traditionally held in the Matra Mountains, and housed by the resort house of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This was the 14th event of the long lasting series of conferences started in 1973. The organizers wish to express their thanks to the authors for their contributions in this volume, and the anonymous referees for their valu able comments. Special thanks are directed to our sponsors, the Hun garian Academy of Sciences, the National Committee for Technological Development, the Hungarian National Science Foundation, and last but not least, the Hungarian Operational Research Society. We would like to thank John Martindale from Kluwer Academic Publishers for helping us produce this volume, Eva Nora Nagy for cor rections and proof-readings, and Peter Dombi for his excellent work on typesetting and editing the manuscript."

"Foundations of AOP for J2EE Development" covers a relatively new programming paradigm: aspect-oriented programming, or AOP. Presented are the core concepts of AOP: AspectJ 5, JBoss AOP, Spring AOP, and JAC. Specific features of these tools are compared. The book also explores the potential uses of AOP in everyday programming life, such as design patterns implementation, program testing, and application management.

In the latter part of the book, the authors show how AOP can ease the task of J2EE application development. (J2EE is known for being a rich and somewhat complicated framework.)

The second generation of cloud computing systems, known as domain-specific clouds, are emerging based on application-specific processors and serverless computing paradigm. As multimedia streaming services are increasingly growing in popularity and diversity, this book is authored to introduce "multimedia clouds" as a domain-specific cloud that operates in the intersection of cloud computing technologies and digital media streaming. The book concentrates on the architectural aspects of multimedia clouds and describes development of high-level abstractions that will mitigate the burden of programmers, cloud architects, and system administrators. Multimedia clouds not only democratize multimedia streaming and add flexibility to the streaming services, they also help stream providers to offer robust and reliable streaming services in a cost- and energy-efficient manner.

An unacknowledged, global phenomenon in the sphere of computer applications, digital sport, plays an enormous part in training and performance enhancement. Digital Sport for Performance Enhancement and Competitive Evolution: Intelligent Gaming Technologies is the first book to provide an overview of the increasing level of digitization in sport including areas of gaming and athlete training. A cutting-edge reference source within its field, this book discusses sport consumers and the playing of computer games drawing from academicians and practitioners from varied disciplines and approaches.

Transportation problems belong to the domains mathematical program ming and operations research. Transportation models are widely applied in various fields. Numerous concrete problems (for example, assignment and distribution problems, maximum-flow problem, etc. ) are formulated as trans portation problems. Some efficient methods have been developed for solving transportation problems of various types. This monograph is devoted to transportation problems with minimax cri teria. The classical (linear) transportation problem was posed several decades ago. In this problem, supply and demand points are given, and it is required to minimize the transportation cost. This statement paved the way for numerous extensions and generalizations. In contrast to the original statement of the problem, we consider a min imax rather than a minimum criterion. In particular, a matrix with the minimal largest element is sought in the class of nonnegative matrices with given sums of row and column elements. In this case, the idea behind the minimax criterion can be interpreted as follows. Suppose that the shipment time from a supply point to a demand point is proportional to the amount to be shipped. Then, the minimax is the minimal time required to transport the total amount. It is a common situation that the decision maker does not know the tariff coefficients. In other situations, they do not have any meaning at all, and neither do nonlinear tariff objective functions. In such cases, the minimax interpretation leads to an effective solution."

This hands-on textbook/reference presents an introduction to the fundamental aspects of modelling and simulation, both for those wishing to learn about this methodology and also for those who have a need to apply it in their work. The text is supported by illustrative examples, drawn from projects formulated within the domains of discrete-event dynamic systems (DEDS) and continuous-time dynamic systems (CTDS). This updated new edition has been enhanced with new illustrative case studies, and additional examples demonstrating some new features and the effectiveness of the ABCmod conceptual modelling framework. Changes that facilitate the development of simulation models with ABSmod/J are illustrated. New material includes a presentation of the experimentation strategy called "design of experiments" and three new chapters that explore the optimization-simulation interface. Topics and features: presents a goal-based and project-oriented perspective of modelling and simulation; describes the ABCmod framework, an activity-based conceptual modelling framework for DEDS; examines the simulation-optimization interface in both the CTDS and DEDS domains; provides numerous illustrative examples, case studies and useful algorithms, as well as exercises and projects at the end of most chapters; includes appendices on probability and statistics, the GPSS programming environment, and relevant MATLAB features; provides supplementary software and teaching support material at an associated website, including lecture slides and a methodology for organizing student projects. Serving as an essential guide to the foundations of modelling and simulation, this practical primer is ideal for senior undergraduate and junior graduate-level students. Also suitable for self-study, the book will be of great benefit to professionals seeking insight into the vast potential of this rapidly evolving problem-solving paradigm.

Constraint Programming is a problem-solving paradigm that establishes a clear distinction between two pivotal aspects of a problem: (1) a precise definition of the constraints that define the problem to be solved and (2) the algorithms and heuristics enabling the selection of decisions to solve the problem. It is because of these capabilities that Constraint Programming is increasingly being employed as a problem-solving tool to solve scheduling problems. Hence the development of Constraint-Based Scheduling as a field of study. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the most widely used Constraint-Based Scheduling techniques. Following the principles of Constraint Programming, the book consists of three distinct parts: The first chapter introduces the basic principles of Constraint Programming and provides a model of the constraints that are the most often encountered in scheduling problems. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 are focused on the propagation of resource constraints, which usually are responsible for the "hardness" of the scheduling problem. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are dedicated to the resolution of several scheduling problems. These examples illustrate the use and the practical efficiency of the constraint propagation methods of the previous chapters. They also show that besides constraint propagation, the exploration of the search space must be carefully designed, taking into account specific properties of the considered problem (e.g., dominance relations, symmetries, possible use of decomposition rules). Chapter 9 mentions various extensions of the model and presents promising research directions.

This new edition of the book covers Tailwind 3.0, which changes the way Tailwind generates its CSS. Tailwind 3.0 has a large number of new features powered by the new system, including the ability to use arbitrary values with most Tailwind class patterns, and a new syntax for combining color and opacity in a single class. This book also covers the new standalone command-line tools for Tailwind. With CSS, you can do amazing things to the basic text and images on your website, and with just a little bit of client-side code to add and remove CSS classes, you can do exponentially more. In the latest edition of this book, you'll learn how to use Tailwind 3.0 and the new way it generates CSS. You'll code your way through Tailwind's newest features, including the ability to use arbitrary values with most Tailwind class patterns and a new syntax for combining color and opacity in a single class. You'll even dive into the new standalone command-line tools for Tailwind. The Tailwind setup is extremely explicit and makes it possible to understand the display just by looking at the HTML markup. Start by designing the typographic details of the individual elements, then placing and manipulating those elements in "the box" using a flexbox or grid design. Finally, move those elements around the page with helpful small animations and transitions. With Tailwind, it's easy to prototype, iterate, and customize your display, use prefixes to specify behavior, change defaults, add new behavior, and integrate with legacy CSS. Use Tailwind to make extraordinary web designs without extraordinary effort. What You Need: This book is about Tailwind 3.0. You should have a basic knowledge of CSS and HTML.

Optimization methods have been considered in many articles, monographs, and handbooks. However, experts continue to experience difficulties in correctly stating optimization problems in engineering. These troubles typically emerge when trying to define the set of feasible solutions, i.e. the constraints imposed on the design variables, functional relationships, and criteria. The Parameter Space Investigation (PSI) method was developed specifically for the correct statement and solution of engineering optimization problems. It is implemented in the MOVI 1.0 software package, a tutorial version of which is included in this book. The PSI method and MOVI 1.0 software package have a wide range of applications. The PSI method can be successfully used for the statement and solution of the following multicriteria problems: design, identification, design with control, the optional development of prototypes, finite element models, and the decomposition and aggregation of large-scale systems.

Audience: The PSI method will be of interest to researchers, graduate students, and engineers who work in engineering, mathematical modelling and industrial mathematics, and in computer and information science.

Many auditors are now encountering Agile management methodologies for the first time. In some cases, this can cause problems for the audit process because the methodology is very different from traditional approaches. Aside from the difficulties faced by the auditor, an ineffective audit can have a negative effect on an Agile project by giving a false impression of its progress. It might even harm the final project outcome. Written for auditors and Agile managers, Agile Governance and Audit bridges the gap between traditional auditing approaches and the requirements of Agile methodologies. It provides an overview of Agile for auditors and other risk professionals who have not encountered the approach before. The book also tells Agile teams what auditors and risk professionals need, and the sort of questions they are likely to ask. Each chapter includes hints and tips for auditors, and a selection of case studies is included to illustrate the practical issues involved in auditing Agile projects. This makes it an ideal book for any auditor encountering the Agile methodology, and any Agile teams preparing for a management audit. This book will enable you to understand how to get the most out of Agile audits, whatever your role.

This volume contains the edited texts of the lectures presented at the Workshop on Nonlinear Optimization held in Erice, Sicily, at the "G. Stampacchia" School of Mathematics of the "E. Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture, June 23 -July 2, 1998. In the tradition of these meetings, the main purpose was to review and discuss recent advances and promising research trends concerning theory, algorithms and innovative applications in the field of Nonlinear Optimization, and of related topics such as Convex Optimization, Nonsmooth Optimization, Variational Inequalities and Complementarity Problems. The meeting was attended by 83 people from 21 countries. Besides the lectures, several formal and informal discussions took place. The result was a wide and deep knowledge of the present research tendencies in the field. We wish to express our appreciation for the active contribution of all the par ticipants in the meeting. Our gratitude is due to the Ettore Majorana Centre in Erice, which offered its facilities and rewarding environment: its staff was certainly instrumental for the success of the meeting. Our gratitude is also due to Francisco Facchinei and Massimo Roma for the effort and time devoted as members of the Organising Committee. We are indebted to the Italian National Research Council, and in particular to the Group on Functional Analysis and its Applications and to the Committees on Engineering Sciences and on Information Sciences and Technolo gies for their financial support. Finally, we address our thanks to Kluwer Academic Publishers for having offered to publish this volume."

Nature-Inspired Optimization Algorithms, a comprehensive work on the most popular optimization algorithms based on nature, starts with an overview of optimization going from the classical to the latest swarm intelligence algorithm. Nature has a rich abundance of flora and fauna that inspired the development of optimization techniques, providing us with simple solutions to complex problems in an effective and adaptive manner. The study of the intelligent survival strategies of animals, birds, and insects in a hostile and ever-changing environment has led to the development of techniques emulating their behavior. This book is a lucid description of fifteen important existing optimization algorithms based on swarm intelligence and superior in performance. It is a valuable resource for engineers, researchers, faculty, and students who are devising optimum solutions to any type of problem ranging from computer science to economics and covering diverse areas that require maximizing output and minimizing resources. This is the crux of all optimization algorithms. Features: Detailed description of the algorithms along with pseudocode and flowchart Easy translation to program code that is also readily available in Mathworks website for some of the algorithms Simple examples demonstrating the optimization strategies are provided to enhance understanding Standard applications and benchmark datasets for testing and validating the algorithms are included This book is a reference for undergraduate and post-graduate students. It will be useful to faculty members teaching optimization. It is also a comprehensive guide for researchers who are looking for optimizing resources in attaining the best solution to a problem. The nature-inspired optimization algorithms are unconventional, and this makes them more efficient than their traditional counterparts.

In this book, veteran game developers, academics, journalists, and others provide their processes and experiences with level design. Each provides a unique perspective representing multiple steps of the process for interacting with and creating game levels - experiencing levels, designing levels, constructing levels, and testing levels. These diverse perspectives offer readers a window into the thought processes that result in memorable open game worlds, chilling horror environments, computer-generated levels, evocative soundscapes, and many other types of gamespaces. This collection invites readers into the minds of professional designers as they work and provides evergreen topics on level design and game criticism to inspire both new and veteran designers. Key Features: Learn about the processes of experienced developers and level designers in their own words Discover best-practices for creating levels for persuasive play and designing collaboratively Offers analysis methods for better understanding game worlds and how they function in response to gameplay Find your own preferred method of level design by learning the processes of multiple industry veterans

Whether you are just starting out in web development or you would like to update your existing skills, this book gets you off to a fast start! In fact, in just the first 6 chapters, you will learn more about web development than you can from most full books. By the end of this crash course, you will be developing web pages the professional way, with HTML or XHTML for the content and CSS for the formatting and page layout. That includes sophisticated page layouts that require the use of the box model, floating, and positioning. In section 2, you will learn all the other skills that you need for developing web pages. Those skills include how to develop forms that are submitted to web servers, how to add audio or video to a page, how to use a style sheet for printing, how to develop pages for mobile devices ...everything you need for modern web pages. You will also learn how to take your web pages to the next level by using tested JavaScript code for effects like image rollovers and slide shows. In the last section, now that you know how to develop web pages, you will learn how to design an entire web site using today's best practices. You will also learn how to deploy your web site, and how to get it into the major search engines and directories. When you are done, you will have all the perspective and skills you need to develop professional web pages.

Optimization is a field important in its own right but is also integral to numerous applied sciences, including operations research, management science, economics, finance and all branches of mathematics-oriented engineering. Constrained optimization models are one of the most widely used mathematical models in operations research and management science.

This book gives a modern and well-balanced presentation of the subject, focusing on theory but also including algorithims and examples from various real-world applications. The text is easy to read and accessible to anyone with a knowledge of multi-dimensional calculus, linear algebra and basic numerical methods. Detailed examples and counter-examples are provided--as are exercises, solutions and helpful hints, and Matlab/Maple supplements.

The intended readership is advanced undergraduates, graduates, and professionals in any of the applied fields.

This 2 volume-set of IFIP AICT 583 and 584 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th IFIP WG 12.5 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations, AIAI 2020, held in Neos Marmaras, Greece, in June 2020.* The 70 full papers and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 149 submissions. They cover a broad range of topics related to technical, legal, and ethical aspects of artificial intelligence systems and their applications and are organized in the following sections: Part I: classification; clustering - unsupervised learning -analytics; image processing; learning algorithms; neural network modeling; object tracking - object detection systems; ontologies - AI; and sentiment analysis - recommender systems. Part II: AI ethics - law; AI constraints; deep learning - LSTM; fuzzy algebra - fuzzy systems; machine learning; medical - health systems; and natural language. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This textbook grew out of notes for the ECE143 Programming for Data Analysis class that the author has been teaching at University of California, San Diego, which is a requirement for both graduate and undergraduate degrees in Machine Learning and Data Science. This book is ideal for readers with some Python programming experience. The book covers key language concepts that must be understood to program effectively, especially for data analysis applications. Certain low-level language features are discussed in detail, especially Python memory management and data structures. Using Python effectively means taking advantage of its vast ecosystem. The book discusses Python package management and how to use third-party modules as well as how to structure your own Python modules. The section on object-oriented programming explains features of the language that facilitate common programming patterns. After developing the key Python language features, the book moves on to third-party modules that are foundational for effective data analysis, starting with Numpy. The book develops key Numpy concepts and discusses internal Numpy array data structures and memory usage. Then, the author moves onto Pandas and details its many features for data processing and alignment. Because strong visualizations are important for communicating data analysis, key modules such as Matplotlib are developed in detail, along with web-based options such as Bokeh, Holoviews, Altair, and Plotly. The text is sprinkled with many tricks-of-the-trade that help avoid common pitfalls. The author explains the internal logic embodied in the Python language so that readers can get into the Python mindset and make better design choices in their codes, which is especially helpful for newcomers to both Python and data analysis. To get the most out of this book, open a Python interpreter and type along with the many code samples.

The Crash Bandicoot(TM) series has remained a beloved staple of platform gaming ever since the first game's release in 1996. The Art of Crash Bandicoot(TM)4: It's About Time(TM)is a rich repository overflowing with interviews, quotes, observations and anecdotes, accompanied by a treasure trove of concept art detailing the characters and environments of the game. Gamers of every type will cherish this all-encompassing look into the zany, wild and unpredictable world of Crash Bandicoot(TM) .

The Elixir programming language has become a go-to tool for creating reliable, fault-tolerant, and robust server-side applications. Thanks to Nerves, those same exact benefits can be realized in embedded applications. This book will teach you how to structure, build, and deploy production grade Nerves applications to network-enabled devices. The weather station sensor hub project that you will be embarking upon will show you how to create a full stack IoT solution in record time. You will build everything from the embedded Nerves device to the Phoenix backend and even the Grafana time-series data visualizations. Elixir as a programming language has found its way into many different software domains, largely in part to the rock-solid foundation of the Erlang virtual machine. Thanks to the Nerves framework, Elixir has also found success in the world of embedded systems and IoT. Having access to all of the Elixir and OTP constructs such as concurrency, supervision, and immutability makes for a powerful IoT recipe. Find out how to create fault-tolerant, reliable, and robust embedded applications using the Nerves framework. Build and deploy a production-grade weather station sensor hub using Elixir and Nerves, all while leveraging the best practices established by the Nerves community for structuring and organizing Nerves applications. Capture all of your weather station sensor data using Phoenix and Ecto in a lightweight server-side application. Efficiently store and retrieve the time-series weather data collected by your device using TimescaleDB (the Postgres extension for time-series data). Finally, complete the full stack IoT solution by using Grafana to visualize all of your time-series weather station data. Discover how to create software solutions where the underlying technologies and techniques are applicable to all layers of the project. Take your project from idea to production ready in record time with Elixir and Nerves.