The present work provides a platform for leading Data designers whose vision and creativity help us to anticipate major changes occurring in the Data Design field, and pre-empt the future. Each of them strives to provide new answers to the question, “What challenges await Data Design?� To avoid falling into too narrow a mind-set, each works hard to elucidate the breadth of Data Design today and to demonstrate its widespread application across a variety of business sectors. With end users in mind, designer-contributors bring to light the myriad of purposes for which the field was originally intended, forging the bond even further between Data Design and the aims and intentions of those who contribute to it. The first seven parts of the book outline the scope of Data Design, and presents a line-up of “viewpoints� that highlight this discipline’s main topics, and offers an in-depth look into practices boasting both foresight and imagination. The eighth and final part features a series of interviews with Data designers and artists whose methods embody originality and marked singularity.   As a result, a number of enlightening concepts and bright ideas unfold within the confines of this book to help dispel the thick fog around this new and still relatively unknown discipline. A plethora of equally eye-opening and edifying new terms, words, and key expressions also unfurl. Informing, influencing, and inspiring are just a few of the buzz words belonging to an initiative that is, first and foremost, a creative one, not to mention the possibility to discern the ever-changing and naturally complex nature of today’s datasphere.   Providing an invaluable and cutting-edge resource for design researchers, this work is also intended for students, professionals and practitioners involved in Data Design, Interaction Design, Digital & Media Design, Data & Information Visualization, Computer Science and Engineering.

This book presents recent advances in Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) with a focus on the areas of market basket database, time-stamped databases and multiple related databases. Various interesting and intelligent algorithms are reported on data mining tasks. A large number of association measures are presented, which play significant roles in decision support applications. This book presents, discusses and contrasts new developments in mining time-stamped data, time-based data analyses, the identification of temporal patterns, the mining of multiple related databases, as well as local patterns analysis.  

The book gives a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art research and engineering in theory and application of Lattice Automata in design and control of autonomous Robots. Automata and robots share the same notional meaning. Automata (originated from the latinization of the Greek word “αυτόματον�) as self-operating autonomous machines invented from ancient years can be easily considered the first steps of robotic-like efforts. Automata are mathematical models of Robots and also they are integral parts of robotic control systems. A Lattice Automaton is a regular array or a collective of finite state machines, or automata. The Automata update their states by the same rules depending on states of their immediate neighbours. In the context of this book, Lattice Automata are used in developing modular reconfigurable robotic systems, path planning and map exploration for robots, as robot controllers, synchronisation of robot collectives, robot vision, parallel robotic actuators. All chapters are written in an accessible manner and lavishly illustrated. The book will help computer and robotic scientists and engineers to understand mechanisms of decentralised functioning of robotic collectives and to design future and emergent reconfigurable, parallel and distributed robotic systems.  

This book is on the iterative learning control (ILC) with focus on the design and implementation. We approach the ILC design based on the frequency domain analysis and address the ILC implementation based on the sampled data methods. This is the first book of ILC from frequency domain and sampled data methodologies. The frequency domain design methods offer ILC users insights to the convergence performance which is of practical benefits. This book presents a comprehensive framework with various methodologies to ensure the learnable bandwidth in the ILC system to be set with a balance between learning performance and learning stability. The sampled data implementation ensures effective execution of ILC in practical dynamic systems. The presented sampled data ILC methods also ensure the balance of performance and stability of learning process. Furthermore, the presented theories and methodologies are tested with an ILC controlled robotic system. The experimental results show that the machines can work in much higher accuracy than a feedback control alone can offer. With the proposed ILC algorithms, it is possible that machines can work to their hardware design limits set by sensors and actuators. The target audience for this book includes scientists, engineers and practitioners involved in any systems with repetitive operations.

The current work provides CIOs, software architects, project managers, developers, and cloud strategy initiatives with a set of architectural patterns that offer nuggets of advice on how to achieve common cloud computing-related goals. The cloud computing patterns capture knowledge and experience in an abstract format that is independent of concrete vendor products. Readers are provided with a toolbox to structure cloud computing strategies and design cloud application architectures. By using this book cloud-native applications can be implemented and best suited cloud vendors and tooling for individual usage scenarios can be selected. The cloud computing patterns offer a unique blend of academic knowledge and practical experience due to the mix of authors. Academic knowledge is brought in by Christoph Fehling and Professor Dr. Frank Leymann who work on cloud research at the University of Stuttgart. Practical experience in building cloud applications, selecting cloud vendors, and designing enterprise architecture as a cloud customer is brought in by Dr. Ralph Retter who works as an IT architect at T‑Systems, Walter Schupeck, who works as a Technology Manager in the field of Enterprise Architecture at Daimler AG,and Peter Arbitter, the former head of T Systems’ cloud architecture and IT portfolio team and now working for Microsoft.  Voices on Cloud Computing Patterns  Cloud computing is especially beneficial for large companies such as Daimler AG. Prerequisite is a thorough analysis of its impact on the existing applications and the IT architectures. During our collaborative research with the University of Stuttgart, we identified a vendor-neutral and structured approach to describe properties of cloud offerings and requirements on cloud environments. The resulting Cloud Computing Patterns have profoundly impacted our corporate IT strategy regarding the adoption of cloud computing. They help our architects, project managers and developers in the refinement of architectural guidelines and communicate requirements to our integration partners and software suppliers. Dr. Michael Gorriz – CIO Daimler AG  Ever since 2005 T-Systems has provided a flexible and reliable cloud platform with its “Dynamic Services�. Today these cloud services cover a huge variety of corporate applications, especially enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, video, voice communication, collaboration, messaging and mobility services. The book was written by senior cloud pioneers sharing their technology foresight combining essential information and practical experiences. This valuable compilation helps both practitioners and clients to really understand which new types of services are readily available, how they really work and importantly how to benefit from the cloud.  Dr. Marcus Hacke – Senior Vice President, T-Systems International GmbH This book provides a conceptual framework and very timely guidance for people and organizations building applications for the cloud. Patterns are a proven approach to building robust and sustainable applications and systems. The authors adapt and extend it to cloud computing, drawing on their own experience and deep contributions to the field. Each pattern includes an extensive discussion of the state of the art, with implementation considerations and practical examples that the reader can apply to their own projects. By capturing our collective knowledge about building good cloud applications and by providing a format to integrate new insights, this book provides an important tool not just for individual practitioners and teams, but for the cloud computing community at large.  Kristof Kloeckner – General Manager,Rational Software, IBMSoftware Group  

This volume is dedicated to Leo Esakia's contributions to the theory of modal and intuitionistic systems. Consisting of 10 chapters, written by leading experts, this volume discusses Esakia’s original contributions and consequent developments that have helped to shape duality theory for modal and intuitionistic logics and to utilize it to obtain some major results in the area. Beginning with a chapter which explores Esakia duality for S4-algebras, the volume goes on to explore Esakia duality for Heyting algebras and its generalizations to weak Heyting algebras and implicative semilattices. The book also dives into the Blok-Esakia theorem and provides an outline of the intuitionistic modal logic KM which is closely related to the Gödel-Löb provability logic GL. One chapter scrutinizes Esakia’s work interpreting modal diamond as the derivative of a topological space within the setting of point-free topology. The final chapter in the volume is dedicated to the derivational semantics of modal logic and other related issues.

The book reports on the author’s original work to address the use of today’s state-of-the-art smartphones for human physical activity recognition. By exploiting the sensing, computing and communication capabilities currently available in these devices, the author developed a novel smartphone-based activity-recognition system, which takes into consideration all aspects of online human activity recognition, from experimental data collection, to machine learning algorithms and hardware implementation. The book also discusses and describes solutions to some of the challenges that arose during the development of this approach, such as real-time operation, high accuracy, low battery consumption and unobtrusiveness. It clearly shows that it is possible to perform real-time recognition of activities with high accuracy using current smartphone technologies. As well as a detailed description of the methods, this book also provides readers with a comprehensive review of the fundamental concepts in human activity recognition. It also gives an accurate analysis of the most influential works in the field and discusses them in detail. This thesis was supervised by both the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (primary institution) and University of Genoa (secondary institution) as part of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate in Interactive and Cognitive Environments.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of both theoretical and pragmatic aspects of resource-allocation and scheduling in multiprocessor and multicore hard-real-time systems.  The authors derive new, abstract models of real-time tasks that capture accurately the salient features of real application systems that are to be implemented on multiprocessor platforms, and identify rules for mapping application systems onto the most appropriate models.  New run-time multiprocessor scheduling algorithms are presented, which are demonstrably better than those currently used, both in terms of run-time efficiency and tractability of off-line analysis.  Readers will benefit from a new design and analysis framework for multiprocessor real-time systems, which will translate into a significantly enhanced ability to provide formally verified, safety-critical real-time systems at a significantly lower cost.

This book presents the proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Management Science and Engineering Management (ICMSEM2013) held from November 7 to 9, 2013 at Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA and organized by the International Society of Management Science and Engineering Management, Sichuan University (Chengdu, China) and Drexel University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA). The goals of the Conference are to foster international research collaborations in Management Science and Engineering Management as well as to provide a forum to present current research findings. The selected papers cover various areas in management science and engineering management, such as Decision Support Systems, Multi-Objective Decisions, Uncertain Decisions, Computational Mathematics, Information Systems, Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Relationship Management, Scheduling and Control, Data Warehousing and Data Mining, Electronic Commerce, Neural Networks, Stochastic Models and Simulation, Fuzzy Programming, Heuristics Algorithms, Risk Control, Organizational Behavior, Green Supply Chains, and Carbon Credits. The proceedings introduce readers to novel ideas on and different problem-solving methods in Management Science and Engineering Management. We selected excellent papers from all over the world, integrating their expertise and ideas in order to improve research on Management Science and Engineering Management.

Is it possible to guide the process of self-organisation towards specific patterns and outcomes? Wouldn’t this be self-contradictory? After all, a self-organising process assumes a transition into a more organised form, or towards a more structured functionality, in the absence of centralised control. Then how can we place the guiding elements so that they do not override rich choices potentially discoverable by an uncontrolled process? This book presents different approaches to resolving this paradox. In doing so, the presented studies address a broad range of phenomena, ranging from autopoietic systems to morphological computation, and from small-world networks to information cascades in swarms. A large variety of methods is employed, from spontaneous symmetry breaking to information dynamics to evolutionary algorithms, creating a rich spectrum reflecting this emerging field. Demonstrating several foundational theories and frameworks, as well as innovative practical implementations, Guided Self-Organisation: Inception, will be an invaluable tool for advanced students and researchers in a multiplicity of fields across computer science, physics and biology, including information theory, robotics, dynamical systems, graph theory, artificial life, multi-agent systems, theory of computation and machine learning.

This book promotes the experimental mathematics approach in the context of secondary mathematics curriculum by exploring mathematical models depending on parameters that were typically considered advanced in the pre-digital education era. This approach, by drawing on the power of computers to perform numerical computations and graphical constructions, stimulates formal learning of mathematics through making sense of a computational experiment. It allows one (in the spirit of Freudenthal) to bridge serious mathematical content and contemporary teaching practice. In other words, the notion of teaching experiment can be extended to include a true mathematical experiment. When used appropriately, the approach creates conditions for collateral learning (in the spirit of Dewey) to occur including the development of skills important for engineering applications of mathematics. In the context of a mathematics teacher education program, the book addresses a call for the preparation of teachers capable of utilizing modern technology tools for the modeling-based teaching of mathematics with a focus on methods conducive to the improvement of the whole STEM education at the secondary level. By the same token, using the book’s pedagogy and its mathematical content in a pre-college classroom can assist teachers in introducing students to the ideas that develop the foundation of engineering profession.

This book is the first publication to give a comprehensive, structured treatment to the important topic of situational awareness in cyber defense. It presents the subject in a logical, consistent, continuous discourse, covering key topics such as formation of cyber situational awareness, visualization and human factors, automated learning and inference, use of ontologies and metrics, predicting and assessing impact of cyber attacks, and achieving resilience of cyber and physical mission. Chapters include case studies, recent research results and practical insights described specifically for this book. Situational awareness is exceptionally prominent in the field of cyber defense. It involves science, technology and practice of perception, comprehension and projection of events and entities in cyber space. Chapters discuss the difficulties of achieving cyber situational awareness – along with approaches to overcoming the difficulties - in the relatively young field of cyber defense where key phenomena are so unlike the more conventional physical world. Cyber Defense and Situational Awareness is designed as a reference for practitioners of cyber security and developers of technology solutions for cyber defenders. Advanced-level students and researchers focused on security of computer networks will also find this book a valuable resource.

This book presents (1) an exhaustive and empirically validated taxonomy of quality aspects of multimodal interaction as well as respective measurement methods, (2) a validated questionnaire specifically tailored to the evaluation of multimodal systems and covering most of the taxonomy‘s quality aspects, (3) insights on how the quality perceptions of multimodal systems relate to the quality perceptions of its individual components, (4) a set of empirically tested factors which influence modality choice, and (5) models regarding the relationship of the perceived quality of a modality and the actual usage of a modality.

Neuro-robotics is one of the most multidisciplinary fields of the last decades, fusing information and knowledge from neuroscience, engineering and computer science. This book focuses on the results from the strategic alliance between Neuroscience and Robotics that help the scientific community to better understand the brain as well as design robotic devices and algorithms for interfacing humans and robots. The first part of the book introduces the idea of neuro-robotics, by presenting state-of-the-art bio-inspired devices. The second part of the book focuses on human-machine interfaces for performance augmentation, which can seen as augmentation of abilities of healthy subjects or assistance in case of the mobility impaired. The third part of the book focuses on the inverse problem, i.e. how we can use robotic devices that physically interact with the human body, in order (a) to understand human motor control and (b) to provide therapy to neurologically impaired people or people with disabilities.

This book brings together numerous contributions to the field of magnetoelectric (ME) composites that have been reported so far. Theoretical models of ME coupling in composites relate to the wide frequency range: from low-frequency to microwave ones and are based on simultaneous solving the elastostatic/elastodynamic and electrodynamics equations. Suggested models enable one to optimize magnetoelectric parameters of a composite. The authors hope to provide some assimilation of facts into establish knowledge for readers new to the field, so that the potential of the field can be made transparent to new generations of talent to advance the subject matter.

The book reports on the latest theories on artificial neural networks, with a special emphasis on bio-neuroinformatics methods. It includes twenty-three papers selected from among the best contributions on bio-neuroinformatics-related issues, which were presented at the International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, held in Sofia, Bulgaria, on September 10-13, 2013 (ICANN 2013). The book covers a broad range of topics concerning the theory and applications of artificial neural networks, including recurrent neural networks, super-Turing computation and reservoir computing, double-layer vector perceptrons, nonnegative matrix factorization, bio-inspired models of cell communities, Gestalt laws, embodied theory of language understanding, saccadic gaze shifts and memory formation, and new training algorithms for Deep Boltzmann Machines, as well as dynamic neural networks and kernel machines. It also reports on new approaches to reinforcement learning, optimal control of discrete time-delay systems, new algorithms for prototype selection, and group structure discovering. Moreover, the book discusses one-class support vector machines for pattern recognition, handwritten digit recognition, time series forecasting and classification, and anomaly identification in data analytics and automated data analysis. By presenting the state-of-the-art and discussing the current challenges in the fields of artificial neural networks, bioinformatics and neuroinformatics, the book is intended to promote the implementation of new methods and improvement of existing ones, and to support advanced students, researchers and professionals in their daily efforts to identify, understand and solve a number of open questions in these fields.

This book presents different methods for analyzing the body language (movement, position, use of personal space, silences, pauses and tone, the eyes, pupil dilation or constriction, smiles, body temperature and the like) for better understanding people’s needs and actions, including biometric data gathering and reading. Different studies described in this book indicate that sufficiently much data, information and knowledge can be gained by utilizing biometric technologies. This is the first, wide-ranging book that is devoted completely to the area of intelligent decision support systems, biometrics technologies and their integrations. This book is designated for scholars, practitioners and doctoral and master’s degree students in various areas and those who are interested in the latest biometric and intelligent decision making support problems and means for their resolutions, biometric and intelligent decision making support systems and the theory and practice of their integration and the opportunities for the practical use of biometric and intelligent decision making support.

The papers collected in this volume are selected as a sample of the progress in Natural Language Processing (NLP) performed within the Italian NLP community and especially attested by the PARLI project. PARLI (Portale per l’Accesso alle Risorse in Lingua Italiana) is a project partially funded by the Ministero Italiano per l’Università e la Ricerca (PRIN 2008) from 2008 to 2012 for monitoring and fostering the harmonic growth and coordination of the activities of Italian NLP. It was proposed by various teams of researchers working in Italian universities and research institutions. According to the spirit of the PARLI project, most of the resources and tools created within the project and here described are freely distributed and they did not terminate their life at the end of the project itself, hoping they could be a key factor in future development of computational linguistics.

This research book provides the reader with a selection of high-quality texts dedicated to current progress, new developments and research trends in feature selection for data and pattern recognition. Even though it has been the subject of interest for some time, feature selection remains one of actively pursued avenues of investigations due to its importance and bearing upon other problems and tasks. This volume points to a number of advances topically subdivided into four parts: estimation of importance of characteristic features, their relevance, dependencies, weighting and ranking; rough set approach to attribute reduction with focus on relative reducts; construction of rules and their evaluation; and data- and domain-oriented methodologies.

This book presents the selected results of the XI Scientific Conference Selected Issues of Electrical Engineering and Electronics (WZEE) which was held in Rzeszów and Czarna, Poland on September 27-30, 2013. The main aim of the Conference was to provide academia and industry to discuss and present the latest technological advantages and research results and to integrate the new interdisciplinary scientific circle in the field of electrical engineering, electronics and mechatronics. The Conference was organized by the Rzeszów Division of Polish Association of Theoretical and Applied Electrical Engineering (PTETiS) in cooperation with Rzeszów University of Technology, the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Rzeszów University, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

The book focuses on an image processing technique known as binarization. It provides a comprehensive survey over existing binarization techniques for both document and graphic images. A number of evaluation techniques have been presented for quantitative comparison of different binarization methods. The book provides results obtained comparing a number of standard and widely used binarization algorithms using some standard evaluation metrics. The comparative results presented in tables and charts facilitates understanding the process. In addition to this, the book presents techniques for preparing a reference image which is very much important for quantitative evaluation of the binarization techniques. The results are produced taking image samples from standard image databases.

This book contains 24 technical papers presented at the fourth edition of the Advances in Architectural Geometry conference, AAG 2014, held in London, England, September 2014. It offers engineers, mathematicians, designers, and contractors insight into the efficient design, analysis, and manufacture of complex shapes, which will help open up new horizons for architecture. The book examines geometric aspects involved in architectural design, ranging from initial conception to final fabrication. It focuses on four key topics: applied geometry, architecture, computational design, and also practice in the form of case studies. In addition, the book also features algorithms, proposed implementation, experimental results, and illustrations. Overall, the book presents both theoretical and practical work linked to new geometrical developments in architecture. It gathers the diverse components of the contemporary architectural tendencies that push the building envelope towards free form in order to respond to multiple current design challenges. With its introduction of novel computational algorithms and tools, this book will prove an ideal resource to both newcomers to the field as well as advanced practitioners.

S-BPM stands for “subject-oriented business process management� and focuses on subjects that represent the entities (people, programs etc.) that are actively engaged in processes. S-BPM has become one of the most widely discussed approaches for process professionals. Its potential particularly lies in the integration of advanced information technology with organizational and managerial methods to foster and leverage business innovation, operational excellence and intra- and inter-organizational collaboration. Thus S-BPM can also be understood as a stakeholder-oriented and social business process management methodology. In this book, the authors show how S-BPM and its tools can be used in order to solve communication and synchronization problems involving humans and/or machines in an organization. All the activities needed in order to implement a business process are shown step by step; it starts by analyzing the problem, continues with modeling and validating the corresponding process, and finishes off by embedding the process into the organization. The final result is a workflow that executes the process without the need for any programming. To this end, in the first step a very simple process is implemented, which is subsequently extended and improved in “adaption projects,� because additional problems have to be solved. This approach reflects the organizational reality, in which processes must always be changed and adapted to new requirements. This is a hands-on book, written by professionals for professionals, with a clear and concise style, a wealth of illustrations (as the title suggests), and focusing on an ongoing example with a real industrial background. Readers who want to execute all the steps by themselves can simply download the S-BPM tool suite from the www.i2pm.net website.

At the crossroads of various disciplines, this collective work examines the possibility of a new end-user “engagement� in ongoing digital/technological products and services development. It provides an overview of recent research specifically focused on the user’s democratic participation and empowerment. It also enables readers to better identify the main opportunities of participatory design, a concept which encourages the blurring of the role between user and designer. This allows people to escape their status as “end-user� and to elevate themselves to the level of creator. This book explores new avenues for rethinking the processes and practices of corporate innovation in order to cope with current socio-economic and technological changes. In so doing, it aims to help companies renew industrial models that allow them to design and produce new ranges of technological products and services by giving the user an active role in the development process, far beyond the basic role of consumer. Intended for designers, design researchers and scientists interested in innovation and technology management, this book also provides a valuable resource for professionals involved in technology-based innovation processes.

The standard approach of most introductory books for practical statistics is that readers first learn the minimum mathematical basics of statistics and rudimentary concepts of statistical methodology. They then are given examples of analyses of data obtained from natural and social phenomena so that they can grasp practical definitions of statistical methods. Finally they go on to acquaint themselves with statistical software for the PC and analyze similar data to expand and deepen their understanding of statistical methods. This book, however, takes a slightly different approach, using simulation data instead of actual data to illustrate the functions of statistical methods. Also, R programs listed in the book help readers realize clearly how these methods work to bring intrinsic values of data to the surface. R is free software enabling users to handle vectors, matrices, data frames, and so on. For example, when a statistical theory indicates that an event happens with a 5 % probability, readers can confirm the fact using R programs that this event actually occurs with roughly that probability, by handling data generated by pseudo-random numbers. Simulation gives readers populations with known backgrounds and the nature of the population can be adjusted easily. This feature of the simulation data helps provide a clear picture of statistical methods painlessly. Most readers of introductory books of statistics for practical purposes do not like complex mathematical formulae, but they do not mind using a PC to produce various numbers and graphs by handling a huge variety of numbers. If they know the characteristics of these numbers beforehand, they treat them with ease. Struggling with actual data should come later. Conventional books on this topic frighten readers by presenting unidentified data to them indiscriminately. This book provides a new path to statistical concepts and practical skills in a readily accessible manner.