This book provides a collection of recent research works addressing theoretical issues on improving the learning process and the generalization of GANs as well as state-of-the-art applications of GANs to various domains of real life. Adversarial learning fascinates the attention of machine learning communities across the world in recent years. Generative adversarial networks (GANs), as the main method of adversarial learning, achieve great success and popularity by exploiting a minimax learning concept, in which two networks compete with each other during the learning process. Their key capability is to generate new data and replicate available data distributions, which are needed in many practical applications, particularly in computer vision and signal processing. The book is intended for academics, practitioners, and research students in artificial intelligence looking to stay up to date with the latest advancements on GANs' theoretical developments and their applications.

Safety-Critical Real-Time Systems brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast moving area. Safety-Critical Real-Time Systems serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging research issues in the field.

Most of the papers in this volume were first presented at the Workshop on Cross-Linguistic Information Retrieval that was held August 22, 1996 dur ing the SIGIR'96 Conference. Alan Smeaton of Dublin University and Paraic Sheridan of the ETH, Zurich, were the two other members of the Scientific Committee for this workshop. SIGIR is the Association for Computing Ma chinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval, and they have held conferences yearly since 1977. Three additional papers have been added: Chapter 4 Distributed Cross-Lingual Information retrieval describes the EMIR retrieval system, one of the first general cross-language systems to be implemented and evaluated; Chapter 6 Mapping Vocabularies Using Latent Semantic Indexing, which originally appeared as a technical report in the Lab oratory for Computational Linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University in 1991, is included here because it was one of the earliest, though hard-to-find, publi cations showing the application of Latent Semantic Indexing to the problem of cross-language retrieval; and Chapter 10 A Weighted Boolean Model for Cross Language Text Retrieval describes a recent approach to solving the translation term weighting problem, specific to Cross-Language Information Retrieval. Gregory Grefenstette CONTRIBUTORS Lisa Ballesteros David Hull W, Bruce Croft Gregory Grefenstette Center for Intelligent Xerox Research Centre Europe Information Retrieval Grenoble Laboratory Computer Science Department University of Massachusetts Thomas K. Landauer Department of Psychology Mark W. Davis and Institute of Cognitive Science Computing Research Lab University of Colorado, Boulder New Mexico State University Michael L. Littman Bonnie J."

This book paves the road for researchers from various areas of engineering working in the realm of smart cities to discuss the intersections in these areas when it comes to infrastructure and its flexibility. The authors lay out models, algorithms and frameworks related to the 'smartness' in the future smart cities. In particular, manufacturing firms, electric generation, transmission and distribution utilities, hardware and software computer companies, automation and control manufacturing firms, and other industries will be able to use this book to enhance their energy operations, improve their comfort and privacy, as well as to increase the benefit from the electrical system. The book pertains to researchers, professionals, and R&D in an array of industries.

This book provides a written record of the synergy that already exists among the research communities and represents a solid framework in the advancement of big data and cloud computing disciplines from which new interaction will result in the future. This book is a compendium of the International Conference on Big Data and Cloud Computing (ICBDCC 2021). It includes recent advances in big data analytics, cloud computing, the Internet of nano things, cloud security, data analytics in the cloud, smart cities and grids, etc. This book primarily focuses on the application of knowledge that promotes ideas for solving the problems of society through cutting-edge technologies. The articles featured in this book provide novel ideas that contribute to the growth of world-class research and development. The contents of this book are of interest to researchers and professionals alike.

This book is about methodological aspects of uncertainty propagation in data processing. Uncertainty propagation is an important problem: while computer algorithms efficiently process data related to many aspects of their lives, most of these algorithms implicitly assume that the numbers they process are exact. In reality, these numbers come from measurements, and measurements are never 100% exact. Because of this, it makes no sense to translate 61 kg into pounds and get the result-as computers do-with 13 digit accuracy. In many cases-e.g., in celestial mechanics-the state of a system can be described by a few numbers: the values of the corresponding physical quantities. In such cases, for each of these quantities, we know (at least) the upper bound on the measurement error. This bound is either provided by the manufacturer of the measuring instrument-or is estimated by the user who calibrates this instrument. However, in many other cases, the description of the system is more complex than a few numbers: we need a function to describe a physical field (e.g., electromagnetic field); we need a vector in Hilbert space to describe a quantum state; we need a pseudo-Riemannian space to describe the physical space-time, etc. To describe and process uncertainty in all such cases, this book proposes a general methodology-a methodology that includes intervals as a particular case. The book is recommended to students and researchers interested in challenging aspects of uncertainty analysis and to practitioners who need to handle uncertainty in such unusual situations.

This book discusses the advances of artificial intelligence and data sciences in climate change and provides the power of the climate data that is used as inputs to artificial intelligence systems. It is a good resource for researchers and professionals who work in the field of data sciences, artificial intelligence, and climate change applications.

Recent advances in computing, communication, and data storage have led to an increasing number of large digital libraries publicly available on the Internet. In addition to alphanumeric data, other modalities, including video play an important role in these libraries. Ordinary techniques will not retrieve required information from the enormous mass of data stored in digital video libraries. Instead of words, a video retrieval system deals with collections of video records. Therefore, the system is confronted with the problem of video understanding. The system gathers key information from a video in order to allow users to query semantics instead of raw video data or video features. Users expect tools that automatically understand and manipulate the video content in the same structured way as a traditional database manages numeric and textual data. Consequently, content-based search and retrieval of video data becomes a challenging and important problem.
This book focuses particularly on content-based video retrieval. After addressing basic concepts and techniques in the field, Content-Based Video Retrieval: A Database Perspective concentrates on the semantic gap problem, i.e., the problem of inferring semantics from raw video data, as the main problem of content-based video retrieval. This book identifies and proposes the integrated use of three different techniques to bridge the semantic gap, namely, spatio-temporal formalization methods, hidden Markov models, and dynamic Bayesian networks. As the problem is approached from a database perspective, the emphasis evolves from a database management system into a video database management system. This system allows a user to retrievethe desired video sequence among voluminous amounts of video data in an efficient and semantically meaningful way. This book also presents a modeling framework and a prototype of a content-based video management system that integrates the three methods and provides efficient, flexible, and scalable content-based video retrieval. The proposed approach is validated in the domain of sport videos for which some experimental results are presented.
Content-Based Video Retrieval: A Database Perspective is designed for a professional audience, composed of researchers and practitioners in industry. This book is also suitable as a secondary text for graduate-level students in computer science and electrical engineering.

This open access book presents how cutting-edge digital technologies like Big Data, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain are set to disrupt the financial sector. The book illustrates how recent advances in these technologies facilitate banks, FinTech, and financial institutions to collect, process, analyze, and fully leverage the very large amounts of data that are nowadays produced and exchanged in the sector. To this end, the book also describes some more the most popular Big Data, AI and Blockchain applications in the sector, including novel applications in the areas of Know Your Customer (KYC), Personalized Wealth Management and Asset Management, Portfolio Risk Assessment, as well as variety of novel Usage-based Insurance applications based on Internet-of-Things data. Most of the presented applications have been developed, deployed and validated in real-life digital finance settings in the context of the European Commission funded INFINITECH project, which is a flagship innovation initiative for Big Data and AI in digital finance. This book is ideal for researchers and practitioners in Big Data, AI, banking and digital finance.

This book highlights the latest advances on the implementation and adaptation of blockchain technologies in real-world scientific, biomedical, and data applications. It presents rapid advancements in life sciences research and development by applying the unique capabilities inherent in distributed ledger technologies. The book unveils the current uses of blockchain in drug discovery, drug and device tracking, real-world data collection, and increased patient engagement used to unlock opportunities to advance life sciences research. This paradigm shift is explored from the perspectives of pharmaceutical professionals, biotechnology start-ups, regulatory agencies, ethical review boards, and blockchain developers. This book enlightens readers about the opportunities to empower and enable data in life sciences.

Modern AI techniques -- especially deep learning -- provide, in many cases, very good recommendations: where a self-driving car should go, whether to give a company a loan, etc. The problem is that not all these recommendations are good -- and since deep learning provides no explanations, we cannot tell which recommendations are good. It is therefore desirable to provide natural-language explanation of the numerical AI recommendations. The need to connect natural language rules and numerical decisions is known since 1960s, when the need emerged to incorporate expert knowledge -- described by imprecise words like "small" -- into control and decision making. For this incorporation, a special "fuzzy" technique was invented, that led to many successful applications. This book described how this technique can help to make AI more explainable.The book can be recommended for students, researchers, and practitioners interested in explainable AI.

The massive volume of data generated in modern applications can overwhelm our ability to conveniently transmit, store, and index it. For many scenarios, building a compact summary of a dataset that is vastly smaller enables flexibility and efficiency in a range of queries over the data, in exchange for some approximation. This comprehensive introduction to data summarization, aimed at practitioners and students, showcases the algorithms, their behavior, and the mathematical underpinnings of their operation. The coverage starts with simple sums and approximate counts, building to more advanced probabilistic structures such as the Bloom Filter, distinct value summaries, sketches, and quantile summaries. Summaries are described for specific types of data, such as geometric data, graphs, and vectors and matrices. The authors offer detailed descriptions of and pseudocode for key algorithms that have been incorporated in systems from companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Twitter.

Focused on the mathematical foundations of social media analysis, Graph-Based Social Media Analysis provides a comprehensive introduction to the use of graph analysis in the study of social and digital media. It addresses an important scientific and technological challenge, namely the confluence of graph analysis and network theory with linear algebra, digital media, machine learning, big data analysis, and signal processing. Supplying an overview of graph-based social media analysis, the book provides readers with a clear understanding of social media structure. It uses graph theory, particularly the algebraic description and analysis of graphs, in social media studies. The book emphasizes the big data aspects of social and digital media. It presents various approaches to storing vast amounts of data online and retrieving that data in real-time. It demystifies complex social media phenomena, such as information diffusion, marketing and recommendation systems in social media, and evolving systems. It also covers emerging trends, such as big data analysis and social media evolution. Describing how to conduct proper analysis of the social and digital media markets, the book provides insights into processing, storing, and visualizing big social media data and social graphs. It includes coverage of graphs in social and digital media, graph and hyper-graph fundamentals, mathematical foundations coming from linear algebra, algebraic graph analysis, graph clustering, community detection, graph matching, web search based on ranking, label propagation and diffusion in social media, graph-based pattern recognition and machine learning, graph-based pattern classification and dimensionality reduction, and much more. This book is an ideal reference for scientists and engineers working in social media and digital media production and distribution. It is also suitable for use as a textbook in undergraduate or graduate courses on digital media, social media, or social networks.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the IFIP TC 3 Open Conference on Computers in Education, OCCE 2021, held in Tampere, Finland, in August 2021. The 22 full papers and 2 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 44 submissions. The papers discuss key emerging topics and evolving practices in the area of educational computing research. They are organized in the following topical sections: Digital education across educational institutions; National policies and plans for digital competence; Learning with digital technologies; and Management issues.

The benefits of distributed computing are evidenced by the increased functionality, retrieval capability, and reliability it provides for a number of networked applications. The growth of the Internet into a critical part of daily life has encouraged further study on how data can better be transferred, managed, and evaluated in an ever-changing online environment. Advancements in Distributed Computing and Internet Technologies: Trends and Issues compiles recent research trends and practical issues in the fields of distributed computing and Internet technologies. The book provides advancements on emerging technologies that aim to support the effective design and implementation of service-oriented networks, future Internet environments, and building management frameworks. Research on Internet-based systems design, wireless sensor networks and their application, and next generation distributed systems will inform graduate students, researchers, academics, and industry practitioners of new trends and vital research in this evolving discipline.

This edited book presents the scientific outcomes of the 4th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Big Data, Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering (BCD 2019) which was held on May 29-31, 2019 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users and students to discuss the numerous fields of computer science and to share their experiences and exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. Presenting 15 of the conference's most promising papers, the book discusses all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science, the practical challenges encountered along the way, and the solutions adopted to solve them.

This book highlights various evolutionary algorithm techniques for various medical conditions and introduces medical applications of evolutionary computation for real-time diagnosis. Evolutionary Intelligence for Healthcare Applications presents how evolutionary intelligence can be used in smart healthcare systems involving big data analytics, mobile health, personalized medicine, and clinical trial data management. It focuses on emerging concepts and approaches and highlights various evolutionary algorithm techniques used for early disease diagnosis, prediction, and prognosis for medical conditions. The book also presents ethical issues and challenges that can occur within the healthcare system. Researchers, healthcare professionals, data scientists, systems engineers, students, programmers, clinicians, and policymakers will find this book of interest.

This book focuses on the multi-omics big-data integration, the data-mining techniques and the cutting-edge omics researches in principles and applications for a deep understanding of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and diseases from the following aspects: (1) Basics about multi-omics data and analytical methods for TCM and diseases. (2) The needs of omics studies in TCM researches, and the basic background of omics research in TCM and disease. (3) Better understanding of the multi-omics big-data integration techniques. (4) Better understanding of the multi-omics big-data mining techniques, as well as with different applications, for most insights from these omics data for TCM and disease researches. (5) TCM preparation quality control for checking both prescribed and unexpected ingredients including biological and chemical ingredients. (6) TCM preparation source tracking. (7) TCM preparation network pharmacology analysis. (8) TCM analysis data resources, web services, and visualizations. (9) TCM geoherbalism examination and authentic TCM identification. Traditional Chinese Medicine has been in existence for several thousands of years, and only in recent tens of years have we realized that the researches on TCM could be profoundly boosted by the omics technologies. Devised as a book on TCM and disease researches in the omics age, this book has put the focus on data integration and data mining methods for multi-omics researches, which will be explained in detail and with supportive examples the "What", "Why" and "How" of omics on TCM related researches. It is an attempt to bridge the gap between TCM related multi-omics big data, and the data-mining techniques, for best practice of contemporary bioinformatics and in-depth insights on the TCM related questions.

More data has been produced in the 21st century than all of human history combined. Yet, are we making better decisions today than in the past? How many poor decisions result from the absence of data? The existence of an overwhelming amount of data has affected how we make decisions, but it has not necessarily improved how we make decisions. To make better decisions, people need good judgment based on data literacy-the ability to extract meaning from data. Including data in the decision-making process can bring considerable clarity in answering our questions. Nevertheless, human beings can become distracted, overwhelmed, and even confused in the presence of too much data. The book presents cautionary tales of what can happen when too much attention is spent on acquiring more data instead of understanding how to best use the data we already have. Data is not produced in a vacuum, and individuals who possess data literacy will understand the environment and incentives in the data-generating process. Readers of this book will learn what questions to ask, what data to pay attention to, and what pitfalls to avoid in order to make better decisions. They will also be less vulnerable to those who manipulate data for misleading purposes.

"A First Course in Machine Learning by Simon Rogers and Mark Girolami is the best introductory book for ML currently available. It combines rigor and precision with accessibility, starts from a detailed explanation of the basic foundations of Bayesian analysis in the simplest of settings, and goes all the way to the frontiers of the subject such as infinite mixture models, GPs, and MCMC." -Devdatt Dubhashi, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University, Sweden "This textbook manages to be easier to read than other comparable books in the subject while retaining all the rigorous treatment needed. The new chapters put it at the forefront of the field by covering topics that have become mainstream in machine learning over the last decade." -Daniel Barbara, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA "The new edition of A First Course in Machine Learning by Rogers and Girolami is an excellent introduction to the use of statistical methods in machine learning. The book introduces concepts such as mathematical modeling, inference, and prediction, providing 'just in time' the essential background on linear algebra, calculus, and probability theory that the reader needs to understand these concepts." -Daniel Ortiz-Arroyo, Associate Professor, Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark "I was impressed by how closely the material aligns with the needs of an introductory course on machine learning, which is its greatest strength...Overall, this is a pragmatic and helpful book, which is well-aligned to the needs of an introductory course and one that I will be looking at for my own students in coming months." -David Clifton, University of Oxford, UK "The first edition of this book was already an excellent introductory text on machine learning for an advanced undergraduate or taught masters level course, or indeed for anybody who wants to learn about an interesting and important field of computer science. The additional chapters of advanced material on Gaussian process, MCMC and mixture modeling provide an ideal basis for practical projects, without disturbing the very clear and readable exposition of the basics contained in the first part of the book." -Gavin Cawley, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK "This book could be used for junior/senior undergraduate students or first-year graduate students, as well as individuals who want to explore the field of machine learning...The book introduces not only the concepts but the underlying ideas on algorithm implementation from a critical thinking perspective." -Guangzhi Qu, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, or peer computing, is a paradigm that is viewed as a potential technology for redesigning distributed architectures and, consequently, distributed processing. Yet the scale and dynamism that characterize P2P systems demand that we reexamine traditional distributed technologies. A paradigm shift that includes self-reorganization, adaptation and resilience is called for. On the other hand, the increased computational power of such networks opens up completely new applications, such as in digital content sharing, scientific computation, gaming, or collaborative work environments.

In this book, Vu, Lupu and Ooi present the technical challenges offered by P2P systems, and the means that have been proposed to address them. They provide a thorough and comprehensive review of recent advances on routing and discovery methods; load balancing and replication techniques; security, accountability and anonymity, as well as trust and reputation schemes; programming models and P2P systems and projects. Besides surveying existing methods and systems, they also compare and evaluate some of the more promising schemes.

The need for such a book is evident. It provides a single source for practitioners, researchers and students on the state of the art. For practitioners, this book explains best practice, guiding selection of appropriate techniques for each application. For researchers, this book provides a foundation for the development of new and more effective methods. For students, it is an overview of the wide range of advanced techniques for realizing effective P2P systems, and it can easily be used as a text for an advanced course on Peer-to-Peer Computing and Technologies, or as a companion text for courses on various subjects, such as distributed systems, and grid and cluster computing.

First of all, I would like to congratulate Gabriella Pasi and Gloria Bordogna for the work they accomplished in preparing this new book in the series "Study in Fuzziness and Soft Computing." "Recent Issues on the Management of Fuzziness in Databases" is undoubtedly a token of their long-lasting and active involvement in the area of Fuzzy Information Retrieval and Fuzzy Database Systems. This book is really welcome in the area of fuzzy databases where they are not numerous although the first works at the crossroads of fuzzy sets and databases were initiated about twenty years ago by L. Zadeh. Only five books have been published since 1995, when the first volume dedicated to fuzzy databases published in the series "Study in Fuzziness and Soft Computing" edited by J. Kacprzyk and myself appeared. Going beyond books strictly speaking, let us also mention the existence of review papers that are part of a couple of handbooks related to fuzzy sets published since 1998. The area known as fuzzy databases covers a bunch of topics among which: -flexible queries addressed to regular databases, -the extension of the notion of a functional dependency, -data mining and fuzzy summarization, -querying databases containing imperfect attribute values represented thanks to possibility distributions.

This open access book provides a comprehensive view on data ecosystems and platform economics from methodical and technological foundations up to reports from practical implementations and applications in various industries. To this end, the book is structured in four parts: Part I "Foundations and Contexts" provides a general overview about building, running, and governing data spaces and an introduction to the IDS and GAIA-X projects. Part II "Data Space Technologies" subsequently details various implementation aspects of IDS and GAIA-X, including eg data usage control, the usage of blockchain technologies, or semantic data integration and interoperability. Next, Part III describes various "Use Cases and Data Ecosystems" from various application areas such as agriculture, healthcare, industry, energy, and mobility. Part IV eventually offers an overview of several "Solutions and Applications", eg including products and experiences from companies like Google, SAP, Huawei, T-Systems, Innopay and many more. Overall, the book provides professionals in industry with an encompassing overview of the technological and economic aspects of data spaces, based on the International Data Spaces and Gaia-X initiatives. It presents implementations and business cases and gives an outlook to future developments. In doing so, it aims at proliferating the vision of a social data market economy based on data spaces which embrace trust and data sovereignty.

This book focuses on how businesses manage organizational innovation processes. It explores the innovative policies and practices that organizations need to develop to allow them to be successful in this digital age. These policies will be based on key resources such as research and development and human resources and need to enable companies to respond to challenges they may face due to the digital economy. It explains how organizational innovation can be used to improve business's development, performance, conduct and outcomes. Contributing to stimulate the growth and development of each individual in a dynamic, competitive and global economy, the present book can be used by a diverse range of readers, including academics, researchers, managers and engineers interested in matters related with Organizational Innovation in the Digital Age.

This book presents the latest cutting-edge research, theoretical methods, and novel applications in the field of computational intelligence techniques and methods for combating fake news. Fake news is everywhere. Despite the efforts of major social network players such as Facebook and Twitter to fight disinformation, miracle cures and conspiracy theories continue to rain down on the net. Artificial intelligence can be a bulwark against the diversity of fake news on the Internet and social networks. This book discusses new models, practical solutions, and technological advances related to detecting and analyzing fake news based on computational intelligence models and techniques, to help decision-makers, managers, professionals, and researchers design new paradigms considering the unique opportunities associated with computational intelligence techniques. Further, the book helps readers understand computational intelligence techniques combating fake news in a systematic and straightforward way.