The author introduces the reader to the creation and implementation of space-related models by applying a learning-by-doing and problem-oriented approach. The required procedural skills are rarely taught at universities and many scientists and engineers struggle to transfer a model into a computer program. The purpose of this book is to fill this gap. It moves from simple to more complex applications, covering various important topics in the sequence: dynamic matrix processing, 2D and 3D graphics, databases, Java applets and parallel computing. A file (SMOP.zip) with all examples can be downloaded free of charge from the Internet at http: //de.geocities.com/bsttc2/book.

This book is for a general scientific and engineering audience as a guide to current ideas, methods, and models for stochastic modeling of microstructures. It is a reference for professionals in material modeling, mechanical engineering, materials science, chemical, civil, environmental engineering and applied mathematics.

Modeling of photovoltaic sources and their emulation by means of power electronic converters are challenging issues. The former is tied to the knowledge of the electrical behavior of the PV generator; the latter consists in its realization by a suitable power amplifier. This extensive introduction to the modeling of PV generators and their emulation by means of power electronic converters will aid in understanding and improving design and set up of new PV plants. The main benefit of reading Photovoltaic Sources is the ability to face the emulation of photovoltaic generators obtained by the design of a suitable equipment in which voltage and current are the same as in a real source. This is achieved according to the following steps: the source electrical behavior modeling, the power converter design, including its control, for the laboratory emulator. This approach allows the reader to cope with the creation of an indoor virtual photovoltaic plant, in which the environmental conditions can be imposed by the user, for testing real operation including maximum power point tracking, partial shading, control for the grid or load interfacing, etc. Photovoltaic Sources is intended to meet the demands of postgraduate level students, and should prove useful to professional engineers and researchers dealing with the problems associated with modeling and emulation of photovoltaic sources.

From the reviews: "This is a well written book offering a clear and detailed insight into physical processes and numerical procedures essential to the single-electron dynamics in electro-conducting media." Zentralblatt fur Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete "

The five volume set LNCS 7663, LNCS 7664, LNCS 7665, LNCS 7666 and LNCS 7667 constitutes the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2012, held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2012. The 423 regular session papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. These papers cover all major topics of theoretical research, empirical study and applications of neural information processing research. The 5 volumes represent 5 topical sections containing articles on theoretical analysis, neural modeling, algorithms, applications, as well as simulation and synthesis.

The five volume set LNCS 7663, LNCS 7664, LNCS 7665, LNCS 7666 and LNCS 7667 constitutes the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2012, held in Doha, Qatar, in November 2012. The 423 regular session papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. These papers cover all major topics of theoretical research, empirical study and applications of neural information processing research. The 5 volumes represent 5 topical sections containing articles on theoretical analysis, neural modeling, algorithms, applications, as well as simulation and synthesis.

Imaging Heat and Mass Transfer Processes: Visualization and Analysis applies Schlieren and shadowgraph techniques to complex heat and mass transfer processes. Several applications are considered where thermal and concentration fields play a central role. These include vortex shedding and suppression from stationary and oscillating bluff bodies such as cylinders, convection around crystals growing from solution, and buoyant jets. Many of these processes are unsteady and three dimensional. The interpretation and analysis of images recorded are discussed in the text.

Our book introduces a method to evaluate the accuracy of trend estimation algorithms under conditions similar to those encountered in real time series processing. This method is based on Monte Carlo experiments with artificial time series numerically generated by an original algorithm. The second part of the book contains several automatic algorithms for trend estimation and time series partitioning. The source codes of the computer programs implementing these original automatic algorithms are given in the appendix and will be freely available on the web. The book contains clear statement of the conditions and the approximations under which the algorithms work, as well as the proper interpretation of their results. We illustrate the functioning of the analyzed algorithms by processing time series from astrophysics, finance, biophysics, and paleoclimatology. The numerical experiment method extensively used in our book is already in common use in computational and statistical physics.

Historians have different views on the core identity of analogue computing. Some portray the technology solely as a precursor to digital computing, whereas others stress that analogue applications existed well after 1940. Even within contemporary sources, there is a spectrum of understanding around what constitutes analogue computing. To understand the relationship between analogue and digital computing, and what this means for users today, the history must consider how the technology is used. Technology for Modelling investigates the technologies, the concepts, and the applications of analogue computing. The text asserts that analogue computing must be thought of as not just a computing technology, but also as a modelling technology, demonstrating how the history of analogue computing can be understood in terms of the parallel themes of calculation and modelling. The book also includes a number of detailed case studies of the technology's use and application. Topics and features: discusses the meaning of analogue computing and its significance in history, and describes the main differences between analogue and digital computing; provides a chronology of analogue computing, based upon the two major strands of calculation and modeling; examines the wider relationship between computing and modelling, and discusses how the theme of modelling fits within the history of analogue computing; describes how the history of analogue computing evolved through a number of stages of use; presents illustrative case studies on analogue modelling in academic research, oil reservoir modelling, aeronautical design, and meteorology. General readers and researchers in the field of history of computing - as well as history of science more generally - will find this book a fascinating insight into the historical use and evolution of technology. The volume provides a long-needed historical framework and context for these core computing technologies. Dr. Charles Care is a senior software engineer at BT and an Associate Fellow at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Warwick, UK.

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are becoming increasingly attractive for researchers from various disciplines, such as operations research, computer science, industrial engineering, electrical engineering, social science, economics, etc. This book presents an insightful, comprehensive, and up-to-date treatment of EAs, such as genetic algorithms, differential evolution, evolution strategy, constraint optimization, multimodal optimization, multiobjective optimization, combinatorial optimization, evolvable hardware, estimation of distribution algorithms, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, artificial immune systems, artificial life, genetic programming, etc.

It emphasises the initiative ideas of the algorithm, contains discussions in the contexts, and suggests further readings and possible research projects. All the methods form a pedagogical way to make EAs easy and interesting.

This textbook also introduces the applications of EAs as many as possible. At least one real-life application is introduced by the end of almost every chapter. The authors focus on the kernel part of applications, such as how to model real-life problems, how to encode and decode the individuals, how to design effective search operators according to the chromosome structures, etc.

This textbook adopts pedagogical ways of making EAs easy and interesting. Its methods include an introduction at the beginning of each chapter, emphasising the initiative, discussions in the contexts, summaries at the end of every chapter, suggested further reading, exercises, and possible research projects.

Introduction to Evolutionary Algorithms will enable students to:

establish a strong background on evolutionary algorithms;

appreciate the cutting edge of EAs;

perform their own research projects by simulating the application introduced in the book; and

apply their intuitive ideas to academic search.

This book is aimed at senior undergraduate students or first-year graduate students as a textbook or self-study material."

Soft computing, as an engineering science, and statistics, as a classical branch of mathematics, emphasize different aspects of data analysis.
Soft computing focuses on obtaining working solutions quickly, accepting approximations and unconventional approaches. Its strength lies in its flexibility to create models that suit the needs arising in applications. In addition, it emphasizes the need for intuitive and interpretable models, which are tolerant to imprecision and uncertainty.
Statistics is more rigorous and focuses on establishing objective conclusions based on experimental data by analyzing the possible situations and their (relative) likelihood. It emphasizes the need for mathematical methods and tools to assess solutions and guarantee performance.
Combining the two fields enhances the robustness and generalizability of data analysis methods, while preserving the flexibility to solve real-world problems efficiently and intuitively.

This book is a collection of writings by active researchers in the field of Artificial General Intelligence, on topics of central importance in the field. Each chapter focuses on one theoretical problem, proposes a novel solution, and is written in sufficiently non-technical language to be understandable by advanced undergraduates or scientists in allied fields. This book is the very first collection in the field of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) focusing on theoretical, conceptual, and philosophical issues in the creation of thinking machines. All the authors are researchers actively developing AGI projects, thus distinguishing the book from much of the theoretical cognitive science and AI literature, which is generally quite divorced from practical AGI system building issues. And the discussions are presented in a way that makes the problems and proposed solutions understandable to a wide readership of non-specialists, providing a distinction from the journal and conference-proceedings literature. The book will benefit AGI researchers and students by giving them a solid orientation in the conceptual foundations of the field (which is not currently available anywhere); and it would benefit researchers in allied fields by giving them a high-level view of the current state of thinking in the AGI field. Furthermore, by addressing key topics in the field in a coherent way, the collection as a whole may play an important role in guiding future research in both theoretical and practical AGI, and in linking AGI research with work in allied disciplines

Building upon the fundamental principles of decision theory, Decision-Based Design: Integrating Consumer Preferences into Engineering Design presents an analytical approach to enterprise-driven Decision-Based Design (DBD) as a rigorous framework for decision making in engineering design. Once the related fundamentals of decision theory, economic analysis, and econometrics modelling are established, the remaining chapters describe the entire process, the associated analytical techniques, and the design case studies for integrating consumer preference modeling into the enterprise-driven DBD framework. Methods for identifying key attributes, optimal design of human appraisal experiments, data collection, data analysis, and demand model estimation are presented and illustrated using engineering design case studies. The scope of the chapters also provides: A rigorous framework of integrating the interests from both producer and consumers in engineering design, Analytical techniques of consumer choice modelling to forecast the impact of engineering decisions, Methods for synthesizing business and engineering models in multidisciplinary design environments, and Examples of effective application of Decision-Based Design supported by case studies. No matter whether you are an engineer facing decisions in consumer related product design, an instructor or student of engineering design, or a researcher exploring the role of decision making and consumer choice modelling in design, Decision-Based Design: Integrating Consumer Preferences into Engineering Design provides a reliable reference over a range of key topics.

This book is thematically positioned at the intersections of Urban Design, Architecture, Civil Engineering and Computer Science, and it has the goal to provide specialists coming from respective fields a multi-angle overview of state-of-the-art work currently being carried out. It addresses both newcomers who wish to obtain more knowledge about this growing area of interest, as well as established researchers and practitioners who want to keep up to date. In terms of organization, the volume starts out with chapters looking at the domain at a wide-angle and then moves focus towards technical viewpoints and approaches.

This work presents lines of investigation and scientific achievements of the Ukrainian school of optimization theory and adjacent disciplines. These include the development of approaches to mathematical theories, methodologies, methods, and application systems for the solution of applied problems in economy, finances, energy saving, agriculture, biology, genetics, environmental protection, hardware and software engineering, information protection, decision making, pattern recognition, self-adapting control of complicated objects, personnel training, etc. The methods developed include sequential analysis of variants, nondifferential optimization, stochastic optimization, discrete optimization, mathematical modeling, econometric modeling, solution of extremum problems on graphs, construction of discrete images and combinatorial recognition, etc. Some of these methods became well known in the world's mathematical community and are now known as classic methods.

Fuzzy classi ers are important tools in exploratory data analysis, which is a vital set of methods used in various engineering, scienti c and business applications. Fuzzy classi ers use fuzzy rules and do not require assumptions common to statistical classi cation. Rough set theory is useful when data sets are incomplete. It de nes a formal approximation of crisp sets by providing the lower and the upper approximation of the original set. Systems based on rough sets have natural ability to work on such data and incomplete vectors do not have to be preprocessed before classi cation. To achieve better performance than existing machine learning systems, fuzzy classifiers and rough sets can be combined in ensembles. Such ensembles consist of a nite set of learning models, usually weak learners.

The present book discusses the three aforementioned elds - fuzzy systems, rough sets and ensemble techniques. As the trained ensemble should represent a single hypothesis, a lot of attention is placed on the possibility to combine fuzzy rules from fuzzy systems being members of classi cation ensemble. Furthermore, an emphasis is placed on ensembles that can work on incomplete data, thanks to rough set theory. ."

The four-volume set LNCS 7333-7336 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2012, held in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, in June 2012. The four volumes contain papers presented in the following workshops: 7333 - advances in high performance algorithms and applications (AHPAA); bioinspired computing and applications (BIOCA); computational geometry and applicatons (CGA); chemistry and materials sciences and technologies (CMST); cities, technologies and planning (CTP); 7334 - econometrics and multidimensional evaluation in the urban environment (EMEUE); geographical analysis, urban modeling, spatial statistics (Geo-An-Mod); 7335 - optimization techniques and applications (OTA); mobile communications (MC); mobile-computing, sensind and actuation for cyber physical systems (MSA4CPS); remote sensing (RS); 7336 - software engineering processes and applications (SEPA); software quality (SQ); security and privacy in computational sciences (SPCS); soft computing and data engineering (SCDE). The topics of the fully refereed papers are structured according to the four major conference themes: 7333 - computational methods, algorithms and scientific application; 7334 - geometric modelling, graphics and visualization; 7335 - information systems and technologies; 7336 - high performance computing and networks.

The four-volume set LNCS 7333-7336 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2012, held in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, in June 2012. The four volumes contain papers presented in the following workshops: 7333 - advances in high performance algorithms and applications (AHPAA); bioinspired computing and applications (BIOCA); computational geometry and applicatons (CGA); chemistry and materials sciences and technologies (CMST); cities, technologies and planning (CTP); 7334 - econometrics and multidimensional evaluation in the urban environment (EMEUE); geographical analysis, urban modeling, spatial statistics (Geo-An-Mod); 7335 - optimization techniques and applications (OTA); mobile communications (MC); mobile-computing, sensind and actuation for cyber physical systems (MSA4CPS); remote sensing (RS); 7336 - software engineering processes and applications (SEPA); software quality (SQ); security and privacy in computational sciences (SPCS); soft computing and data engineering (SCDE). The topics of the fully refereed papers are structured according to the four major conference themes: 7333 - computational methods, algorithms and scientific application; 7334 - geometric modelling, graphics and visualization; 7335 - information systems and technologies; 7336 - high performance computing and networks.

The four-volume set LNCS 7333-7336 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2012, held in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, in June 2012. The four volumes contain papers presented in the following workshops: 7333 - advances in high performance algorithms and applications (AHPAA); bioinspired computing and applications (BIOCA); computational geometry and applicatons (CGA); chemistry and materials sciences and technologies (CMST); cities, technologies and planning (CTP); 7334 - econometrics and multidimensional evaluation in the urban environment (EMEUE); geographical analysis, urban modeling, spatial statistics (Geo-An-Mod); 7335 - optimization techniques and applications (OTA); mobile communications (MC); mobile-computing, sensind and actuation for cyber physical systems (MSA4CPS); remote sensing (RS); 7336 - software engineering processes and applications (SEPA); software quality (SQ); security and privacy in computational sciences (SPCS); soft computing and data engineering (SCDE). The topics of the fully refereed papers are structured according to the four major conference themes: 7333 - computational methods, algorithms and scientific application; 7334 - geometric modelling, graphics and visualization; 7335 - information systems and technologies; 7336 - high performance computing and networks.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, Pervasive 2012, held in Newcastle, UK, in June 2012. The 28 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 138 submissions. The contributions are grouped into the following topical sections: activity capturing; urban mobility and computing; home and energy; HCI; development tools and devices; indoor location and positioning; social computing and games; privacy; public displays and services.

This book presents a broad review of state-of-the-art 3D video production technologies and applications. The text opens with a concise introduction to the field, before examining the design and calibration methods for multi-view camera systems, including practical implementation technologies. A range of algorithms are then described for producing 3D video from video data. A selection of 3D video applications are also demonstrated. Features: describes real-time synchronized multi-view video capture, and object tracking with a group of active cameras; discusses geometric and photometric camera calibration, and 3D video studio design with active cameras; examines 3D shape and motion reconstruction, texture mapping and image rendering, and lighting environment estimation; demonstrates attractive 3D visualization, visual contents analysis and editing, 3D body action analysis, and data compression; highlights the remaining challenges and the exciting avenues for future research in 3D video technology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Test and Proofs, TAP 2012, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in May/June 2012, as part of the TOOLS 2012 Federated Conferences. The 9 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited papers, 4 short papers and one tutorial were carefully reviewed and selected from 29 submissions. The papers are devoted to the convergence of tests and proofs for developing novel techniques and application that support engineers in building secure, safe, and reliable systems. Among the topics covered are model-based testing; scenario-based testing; complex data structure generation; and the validation of protocols and libraries.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Computational Topology in Image Context, CTIC 2012, held in Bertinoro, Italy, in May 2012. The 16 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. They focus on the topology and computation in image context. The workshop is devoted to computational methods using topology for the analysis and comparison of images. The involved research fields comprise computational topology and geometry, discrete topology and geometry, geometrical modeling, algebraic topology for image applications, and any other field involving a geometric-topological approach to image processing.

The human capacity to abstract complex systems and phenomena into simplified models has played a critical role in the rapid evolution of our modern industrial processes and scienti c research. As a science and an art, Modelling and Simulation have been one of the core enablers of this remarkable human trace, and have become a topic of great importance for researchers and practitioners.

This book was created to compile some of the most recent concepts, advances, challenges and ideas associated with Intelligent Modelling and Simulation frameworks, tools and applications. The rst chapter discusses the important aspects of a human interaction and the correct interpretation of results during simulations. The second chapter gets to the heart of the analysis of entrepreneurship by means of agent-based modelling and simulations.

The following three chapters bring together the central theme of simulation frameworks, rst describing an agent-based simulation framework, then a simulator for electrical machines, and nally an airborne network emulation environment. The two subsequent chapters discuss power distribution networks from different points of view-anticipation and optimization of multi-echelon inventory policy. After that, the book includes also a group of chapters discussing the mathematical modelling supported by veri cation simulations, and a set of chapters with models synthesised by means of arti cial intelligence tools and complex automata framework. Lastly, the book includes a chapter introducing the use of graph-grammar model for generation of threedimensional computational meshes and a chapter focused on the experimental and computational results regarding simulation of aero engine vortexes. Authors believe, that this book is a valuable reference to researchers and practitioners in the eld, as well as an inspiration to those interested in the area of Intelligent Modelling and Simulation.

Over the last decades Discrete Event Simulation has conquered many different application areas. This trend is, on the one hand, driven by an ever wider use of this technology in different fields of science and on the other hand by an incredibly creative use of available software programs through dedicated experts. This book contains articles from scientists and experts from 10 countries. They illuminate the width of application of this technology and the quality of problems solved using Discrete Event Simulation. Practical applications of simulation dominate in the present book. The book is aimed to researchers and students who deal in their work with Discrete Event Simulation and which want to inform them about current applications. By focusing on discrete event simulation, this book can also serve as an inspiration source for practitioners for solving specific problems during their work. Decision makers who deal with the question of the introduction of discrete event simulation for planning support and optimization this book provides a contribution to the orientation, what specific problems could be solved with the help of Discrete Event Simulation within the organization.