The purpose of this book is to disseminate the research results and best practice from researchers and practitioners interested in and working on modeling methods and methodologies. Though the need for such studies is well recognized, there is a paucity of such research in the literature. What specifically distinguishes this book is that it looks at various research domains and areas such as enterprise, process, goal, object-orientation, data, requirements, ontology, and component modeling, to provide an overview of existing approaches and best practices in these conceptually closely-related fields.*Note: This book is part of a series entitled "Advanced Topics in Database Research."

The book presents a comprehensive view on Flow-Aware Networking. It starts with a brief overview of the known QoS architectures based on the concept of a flow. Then, the original FAN concept is presented, along with its variations proposed by the authors. The next chapter covers a very valuable feature of the FAN architecture, namely its ability to assure net neutrality. The chapters that follow will discuss, in detail, a variety of issues making the FAN concept implementable, including congestion control, fairness, resilience to failures, service differentiation and degradation. The final chapter presents the test implementation of the FAN router, including the environment used and performance tests. Chapters are supplemented with problems to solve, along with their solutions. The pedagogical character of the book is supported by a number of illustrative examples contained in most of the chapters. At the end of the book, a glossary of the key terms is included, along with a comprehensive bibliography. Flow-based traffic management is currently becoming a mainstream. There is plenty of Quality of Service (QoS) techniques based on flows. Software-Defined Networking with its dominant protocol OpenFlow also follows this trend. Flow-Aware Networking (FAN) is a promising QoS architecture. Information on FAN can be found in various research papers. It is, therefore highly scattered. This book gathers practically all relevant information regarding FAN and puts it together. Quality of Service assurance is one of the key challenges of today's Internet. The existing approaches to provide QoS do not meet expectations of network operators, managers and users although numerous efforts in this area have been reported. One of the most promising concepts is the Flow-Aware Network (FAN). FAN can play a key role in assuring the net neutrality, smoothly combining interests of all the involved parties. The authors of the proposal have been involved in FAN research practically since its inception at the start of the 21st century. The book reports the wide experiences the authors accumulated in the subject area during the work on common FAN-related projects conducted with the team of James Roberts that proposed the original FAN concept as well as other leading research groups in Europe and the USA. One of the aims of the book is to accompany courses taught by the authors.

The process of producing components to final net-shapes is fast becoming a desirable goal for metal working industries. This is due to a combination of factors such as the development of new materials and escalating energy costs. Computer Applications in Near Net-Shape Operations addresses the design, analysis and simulation of near net-shape operations using some of the most advanced computer techniques and tools available. Topics covered include: Sheet metal forming operations: progressive stamping, fine blanking, nesting, flat pattering, bending and nibbling; Die design, construction and NC programming of wire EDM; Bulk metal forming processes such as cold upsetting and close-die forging; Injection mould design, analysis and simulation; Computer-aided design of CNC machines for near net-shape operations; Intelligent progressive die design system IPD. This collection of the latest developments from leading experts in the field will be of interest to practising engineers, graduate students and researchers of metal forming, stamping, mould and die design.

Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation, Second Edition is a core reference text for graduate students and CAD professionals. Based on the very successful First Edition, it provides a comprehensive treatment of the principles and algorithms of VLSI physical design, presenting the concepts and algorithms in an intuitive manner. Each chapter contains 3-4 algorithms that are discussed in detail. Additional algorithms are presented in a somewhat shorter format. References to advanced algorithms are presented at the end of each chapter. Algorithms for VLSI Physical Design Automation covers all aspects of physical design. In 1992, when the First Edition was published, the largest available microprocessor had one million transistors and was fabricated using three metal layers. Now we process with six metal layers, fabricating 15 million transistors on a chip. Designs are moving to the 500-700 MHz frequency goal. These stunning developments have significantly altered the VLSI field: over-the-cell routing and early floorplanning have come to occupy a central place in the physical design flow. This Second Edition introduces a realistic picture to the reader, exposing the concerns facing the VLSI industry, while maintaining the theoretical flavor of the First Edition. New material has been added to all chapters, new sections have been added to most chapters, and a few chapters have been completely rewritten. The textual material is supplemented and clarified by many helpful figures. Audience: An invaluable reference for professionals in layout, design automation and physical design.

Nature has long provided the inspiration for a variety of scientific discoveries in engineering, biomedicine, and computing, though only recently have these elements of nature been used directly in computational systems. Natural Computing for Simulation and Knowledge Discovery investigates the latest developments in nature-influenced technologies. Within its pages, readers will find an in-depth analysis of such advances as cryptographic solutions based on cell division, the creation and manipulation of biological computers, and particle swarm optimisation techniques. Scientists, practitioners, and students in fields such as computing, mathematics, and molecular science will make use of this essential reference to explore current trends in natural computation and advance nature-inspired technologies to the next generation.

With the advent of the World Wide Web, electronic commerce has revolutionized traditional commerce, boosting sales and facilitating exchanges of merchandise and information. The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application and research area: mobile commerce. Handheld Computing for Mobile Commerce: Applications, Concepts and Technologies offers 22 outstanding chapters from 71 world-renowned scholars and IT professionals covering themes such as handheld computing for mobile commerce, handheld computing research and technologies, wireless networks and handheld/mobile security, and handheld images and video. It includes research and development results of lasting significance in the theory, design, implementation, analysis, and application of handheld computing. This book is essential for IT students, researchers, and professionals seeking to better understand handheld devices and concepts, thereby producing more useful and effective handheld applications and products.

This book presents a peer reviewed selection of extended versions of ten original papers that were presented at the 15th International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE 2013) held in Viseu, Portugal. The book provide a representative view of current Information and Communications Technology (ICT) educational research approaches in the Ibero-American context as well as internationally. It includes studies that range from elementary to higher education, from traditional to distance learning settings. It considers special needs and other inclusive issues, across a range of disciplines, using multiple and diverse perspectives and technologies to furnish detailed information on the latest trends in ICT and education globally. Design, development and evaluation of educational software; ICT use and evaluation methodologies; social web and collaborative systems; and learning communities are some of the topics covered.

Technology has impacted how many teachers develop methods of instruction in their classroom settings. The Continuous Practice Improvement (CPI) professional development program introduces teachers to infusing computers into the curriculum and classroom activities seamlessly. ""Infusing Technology into the Classroom: Continuous Practice Improvement"" retells compelling stories of a successful computer-related professional development program that was implemented into Kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms of a Philadelphia school. Through an analysis of the study, a theoretical model to guide technology infused professional development for teachers is discovered.

An exciting aspect of contemporary legal scholarship is a concern for law from a global perspective across all legal fields. The book draws upon examples from North America, Western Europe, Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. It refers to the basic private law fields of torts, property, contracts, and family law. It also refers to the basic public law fields of constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, and international law. It analyzes diverse legal policy problems from a perspective that is designed to produce solutions whereby conservatives, liberals, and other major viewpoints can all come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously. Such solutions can be considered an important part of an innovative concept of justice that emphasizes being effective, efficient, and equitable simultaneously, rather than compromising on any of those justice components.

Another exciting aspect of contemporary legal scholarship is a concern for the use of modern technology in the form of microcomputer software that can be helpful in law teaching, practice, and research. Computer-aided instruction can supplement the case method by using what-if analysis to make changes in the goals to be achieved, alternative decisions available for achieving them, the factual relations, and other inputs to see how the decisions might change with changes in those inputs. Computer-aided law practice can be helpful in counseling, negotiation, mediation, case analysis, legal policy evaluation, and advocacy. Computer-aided research can be helpful in testing deductive or statistical models to determine how well they can explain variance across the judicial process or other legal processes.

Telemedicine has the potential to significantly alter structures, procedures, and eventually outcomes in healthcare structures worldwide. Today the field of telemedicine is still dominated by very committed efforts of research and development. However, there is a growing number of concepts and applications which have been implemented in clinical routine or are ready to be implemented. Health care providers, patients, third party payers, and not at least policy makers should be informed about these rapidly emerging applications, which could have a considerable impact on the delivery of health care. This book offers a comprehensive source of information not only for experts but also for the target groups mentioned above. It provides background information on legal aspects, issues concerning further development, and evaluation of telemedicine applications. The work also presents numerous projects covering the clinical fields of emergency medicine, surgery, oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, pathology, psychiatry and other clinical specialties. Recognizing the Internet as a major source of information on issues related to telemedicine and information technology in general, a 'Webliography' provides links to a selection of the most relevant Web sites on the Internet.

When researchers in computer-mediated communications discuss digital textuality, they rarely venture beyond the now commonplace notion that computer textuality embodies contemporary post-structuralist theories. Written for students and faculty of contemporary literature and composition theories, this book is the first to move from general to specific considerations. Advancing from general considerations of how computers are changing literacy, Digital Fictions moves on to a specific consideration of how computers are altering one particular set of literature practices: reading and writing fiction. Suffused through the sensibility of a creative writer, this book includes an historical overview of writing stories on computers. In addition, Sloane conducts interviews with the makers of hypertext fictions (including Stuart Moulthrop, Michael Joyce, and Carolyn Guyer) and offers close reading of digital fictions. Making careful analyses of the meaning-making activities of both readers and writers of this emerging genre, this work is embedded in a perspective both feminist and semiotic. Digital Fictions explores and distinguishes among four distinct iterations of text-based digital fictions; text adventures, Carnegie Mellon University Oz Project, hypertext fictions, and MUDs. Ultimately, Sloane revises the rhetorical triangle and proposes a new rhetorical theory, one that attends to the materials, processes, and locations of stories told on-line.

A new class of provably capacity achieving error-correction codes, polar codes are suitable for many problems, such as lossless and lossy source coding, problems with side information, multiple access channel, etc. The first comprehensive book on the implementation of decoders for polar codes, the authors take a tutorial approach to explain the practical decoder implementation challenges and trade-offs in either software or hardware. They also demonstrate new trade-offs in latency, throughput, and complexity in software implementations for high-performance computing and GPGPUs, and hardware implementations using custom processing elements, full-custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and field-programmable-gate arrays (FPGAs). Presenting a good overview of this research area and future directions, High-Speed Decoders for Polar Codes is perfect for any researcher or SDR practitioner looking into implementing efficient decoders for polar codes, as well as students and professors in a modern error correction class. As polar codes have been accepted to protect the control channel in the next-generation mobile communication standard (5G) developed by the 3GPP, the audience includes engineers who will have to implement decoders for such codes and hardware engineers designing the backbone of communication networks.

Set your students on track to achieve the best grade possible with My Revision Notes: AQA A-level Computer Science. Our clear and concise approach to revision will help students learn, practise and apply their skills and understanding. Coverage of key content is combined with practical study tips and effective revision strategies to create a guide that can be relied on to build both knowledge and confidence. With My Revision Notes: AQA A-level Computer Science, students can: > Consolidate knowledge with clear, focused and relevant content coverage, based on what examiners are looking for > Develop understanding with self-testing - our regular 'Now test yourself,' tasks and answers will help commit knowledge to memory > Improve technique through exam-style practice questions, expert tips and examples of typical mistakes to avoid > Identify key connections between topics and subjects with our 'Learning links' focus > Plan and manage a successful revision programme with our topic-by-topic planner, new exam breakdown feature, user-friendly definitions throughout and questions and answers online

The concept of innovation management and learning organizations concepts strongly emphasize the high role of human/intellectual capital in the company and the crucial function of knowledge in modern society. However, there is often a paradox between managerial language and actual practice in many organizations: on one hand, knowledge-workers are perceived as the most valued members of organizations while, on the other, they are being manipulated and "engineered"-commonly driven to burn-out, and deprived of family life. All this leads to the emergence of new organizational phenomena that, up to now, have been insufficiently analyzed and described. Management Practices in High-Tech Environments studies this issue thoroughly from an international, comparative, cross-cultural perspective, presenting cutting-edge research on management practices in American, European, Asian and Middle-Eastern high-tech companies, with particular focus on fieldwork-driven, but reflective, contributions.

In information technology, unlike many other fields, the need to support the unique perspective of technologically advanced students and deliver technology-rich content presents unique challenges. Today's IT students need the ability to interact with their instructor in near-real time, interact with their peers and project team members, and access and manipulate technology tools in the pursuit of their educational objectives.""Handbook of Distance Learning for Real-Time and Asynchronous Information Technology Education"" delves deep into the construct of real-time, asynchronous education through information technology, pooling experiences from seasoned researchers and educators to detail their past successes and failures, discussing their techniques, hardships, and triumphs in the search for innovative and effective distance learning education for IT programs. This Premier Reference Source answers the increasing demand for a fundamental, decisive source on this cutting-edge issue facing all institutions, covering topics such as asynchronous communication, real-time instruction, multimedia content, content delivery, and distance education technologies.

Handbook of Research on Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments: Trends and Perspectives covers the cutting-edge aspects of AMI applications, specifically those involving the effective design, realization, and implementation of a comprehensive AmI application. This pertinent publication targets researchers and practitioners in Ambient Intelligence, as well as those in ubiquitous and pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, sensor networks, knowledge representation, automated reasoning and learning, system and software engineering, and man-machine interfaces.

This book systematically summarizes the fundamentals and various technologies in both terrestrial radio wireless networks and underwater acoustic networks (UWANs). It addresses the basic issues frequently investigated in terrestrial radio wireless networks and the key technologies suitable for the newly developing research area of UWANs. Starting with a review of our current understanding of wireless networks, it then introduces the principles of the main technologies, including error control, medium access control (MAC) protocols, routing protocols, end-to-end transmission control and mobility issues as well as network security for terrestrial radio wireless networks, and offers detailed surveys of these technologies for UWANs. Providing readers with the basic knowledge of terrestrial radio wireless networking technologies and raising readers' awareness of the developing topic of UWANs in ocean , it is a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in terrestrial radio wireless networks and UWANs.

The book provides suggestions on how to start using bionic optimization methods, including pseudo-code examples of each of the important approaches and outlines of how to improve them. The most efficient methods for accelerating the studies are discussed. These include the selection of size and generations of a study's parameters, modification of these driving parameters, switching to gradient methods when approaching local maxima, and the use of parallel working hardware. Bionic Optimization means finding the best solution to a problem using methods found in nature. As Evolutionary Strategies and Particle Swarm Optimization seem to be the most important methods for structural optimization, we primarily focus on them. Other methods such as neural nets or ant colonies are more suited to control or process studies, so their basic ideas are outlined in order to motivate readers to start using them. A set of sample applications shows how Bionic Optimization works in practice. From academic studies on simple frames made of rods to earthquake-resistant buildings, readers follow the lessons learned, difficulties encountered and effective strategies for overcoming them. For the problem of tuned mass dampers, which play an important role in dynamic control, changing the goal and restrictions paves the way for Multi-Objective-Optimization. As most structural designers today use commercial software such as FE-Codes or CAE systems with integrated simulation modules, ways of integrating Bionic Optimization into these software packages are outlined and examples of typical systems and typical optimization approaches are presented. The closing section focuses on an overview and outlook on reliable and robust as well as on Multi-Objective-Optimization, including discussions of current and upcoming research topics in the field concerning a unified theory for handling stochastic design processes.

This book is an introduction into methodology and practice of analysis, design and implementation of distributed health information systems. Special attention is dedicated to security and interoperability of such systems as well as to advanced electronic health record approaches. In the book, both available architectures and implementations but also current and future innovations are considered. Therefore, the component paradigm, UML, XML, eHealth are discussed in a concise way. Many practical solutions specified and implemented first in the author's environment are presented in greater detail. The book addresses information scientists, administrators, health professionals, managers and other users of health information systems.

The world of corporate management benefits when organizations realize the profitability, reliability, and flexibility obtained through IT standardization. Toward Corporate IT Standardization Management: Frameworks and Solutions details the IT standards conceptual model through insightful case studies that illustrate the factors affecting the performance of business processes. By offering organizations the opportunity to enhance process performance through IT standardization, this reference work demonstrates the effectiveness of IT standards, and the applicable techniques for implementation and management of such practices. This book features information useful to educators and students in the fields of Information Systems, IT-Management, Business Studies, and Economics, as well as IT practitioners and IS Managers.

"Soar: A Cognitive Architecture in Perspective" represents a European perspective on Soar with the exception of the special contribution from Allen Newell arguing for Unified Theories of Cognition. The various papers derive from the work of the Soar Research Group that has been active at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, since 1987. The work reported here has been inspired in particular by two topics that precipitated the group's interest in Soar in the first place: - road user behaviour and the temporal organization of behaviour, more specifically planning. At the same time, the various contributions go beyond the simple use of Soar as a convenient medium for modelling human cognitive activity. In every paper one or more fundamental issues are raised that touch upon the very nature and consistency of Soar as an intelligent architecture. As a result the reader will learn about the operator implementation problem, chunking, multitasking, the need to constrain the depth of the goal stack, and induction etc. Soar is still at a relatively early stage of development. It does, nevertheless, constitute an important breakthrough in the area of computer architectures for general intelligence. Soar shows one important direction that future efforts to build intelligent systems should take if they aim for a comprehensive, and psychologically meaningful, theory of cognition. This is argued by Newell in his contribution to this volume. For this reason, the Soar system will probably play an important integrative role within cognitive science in bringing together important subdomains of psychology, computer science, linguistics, and the neurosciences. Although Soar is not the only "architecture for intelligence", it is one of the most advanced and theoretically best motivated architectures presently available. This work should be of special interest to researchers in the domains of cognitive science, computer science and artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of mind.

Ontologies and formal representations of knowledge are extremely powerful tools for modeling and managing large applications in several domains ranging from knowledge engineering, to data mining, to the semantic web. Ontology Theory, Management and Design: Advanced Tools and Models, explores the wide range of applications for ontologies, while providing a complete view of the both the theory behind the design and the problems posed by the practical development and use of ontologies. This reference presents an in-depth and forward looking analysis of current research, illustrating the importance of this field and pointing toward to the future of knowledge engineering, management and information technology.

This volume presents a selection of reports from scientific projects requiring high end computing resources on the Hitachi SR8000-F1 supercomputer operated by Leibniz Computing Center in Munich. All reports were presented at the joint HLRB and KONWHIR workshop at the Technical University of Munich in October 2002. The following areas of scientific research are covered: Applied Mathematics, Biosciences, Chemistry, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Cosmology, Geosciences, High-Energy Physics, Informatics, Nuclear Physics, Solid-State Physics. Moreover, projects from interdisciplinary research within the KONWIHR framework (Competence Network for Scientific High Performance Computing in Bavaria) are also included. Each report summarizes its scientific background and discusses the results with special consideration of the quantity and quality of Hitachi SR8000 resources needed to complete the research.