An emerging trend in the automobile industry is its convergence with information technology (IT). Indeed, it has been estimated that almost 90% of new automobile technologies involve IT in some form. Smart driving technologies that improve safety as well as green fuel technologies are quite representative of the convergence between IT and automobiles. The smart driving technologies include three key elements: sensing of driving environments, detection of objects and potential hazards and the generation of driving control signals including warning signals. Although radar-based systems are primarily used for sensing the driving environments, the camera has gained importance in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). This book covers system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs—including both algorithms and hardware—related with image sensing and object detection by using the camera for smart driving systems. It introduces a variety of algorithms such as lens correction, super resolution, image enhancement and object detections from the images captured by low-cost vehicle camera. This is followed by implementation issues such as SoC architecture, hardware accelerator, software development environment and reliability techniques for automobile vision systems. This book is aimed for the new and practicing engineers in automotive and chip-design industries to provide some overall guidelines for the development of automotive vision systems. It will also help graduate students understand and get started for the research work in this field.

This book describes how evolutionary algorithms (EA), including genetic algorithms (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) can be utilized for solving multi-objective optimization problems in the area of embedded and VLSI system design. Many complex engineering optimization problems can be modelled as multi-objective formulations. This book provides an introduction to multi-objective optimization using meta-heuristic algorithms, GA and PSO and how they can be applied to problems like hardware/software partitioning in embedded systems, circuit partitioning in VLSI, design of operational amplifiers in analog VLSI, design space exploration in high-level synthesis, delay fault testing in VLSI testing and scheduling in heterogeneous distributed systems. It is shown how, in each case, the various aspects of the EA, namely its representation and operators like crossover, mutation, etc, can be separately formulated to solve these problems. This book is intended for design engineers and researchers in the field of VLSI and embedded system design. The book introduces the multi-objective GA and PSO in a simple and easily understandable way that will appeal to introductory readers.

This book analyzes the philosophical foundations of sensorimotor theory and discusses the most recent applications of sensorimotor theory to human computer interaction, child’s play, virtual reality, robotics, and linguistics. Why does a circle look curved and not angular? Why does red not sound like a bell? Why, as I interact with the world, is there something it is like to be me? An analytic philosopher might suggest: ``if we ponder the concept of circle we find that it is the essence of a circle to be round’’. However, where does this definition come from? Was it set in stone by the Gods, in other words by divine arbiters of circleness, redness and consciousness? Particularly, with regard to visual consciousness, a first attempt to explain why our conscious experience of the world appears as it does has been attributed to Kevin O’Regan and Alva Noe, who published their sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness in 2001. Starting with a chapter by Kevin O’Regan, Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory continues by presenting fifteen additional essays on as many developments achieved in recent years in this field. It provides readers with a critical review of the sensorimotor theory and in so doing introduces them to a radically new enactive approach in cognitive science.

Nowadays embedded and real-time systems contain complex software. The complexity of embedded systems is increasing, and the amount and variety of software in the embedded products are growing. This creates a big challenge for embedded and real-time software development processes and there is a need to develop separate metrics and benchmarks. “Embedded and Real Time System Development: A Software Engineering Perspective: Concepts, Methods and Principles� presents practical as well as conceptual knowledge of the latest tools, techniques and methodologies of embedded software engineering and real-time systems. Each chapter includes an in-depth investigation regarding the actual or potential role of software engineering tools in the context of the embedded system and real-time system. The book presents state-of-the art and future perspectives with industry experts, researchers, and academicians sharing ideas and experiences including surrounding frontier technologies, breakthroughs, innovative solutions and applications. The book is organized into four parts “Embedded Software Development Process�, “Design Patterns and Development Methodology�, “Modelling Framework� and “Performance Analysis, Power Management and Deployment� with altogether 12 chapters. The book is aiming at (i) undergraduate students and postgraduate students conducting research in the areas of embedded software engineering and real-time systems; (ii) researchers at universities and other institutions working in these fields; and (iii) practitioners in the R&D departments of embedded system. It can be used as an advanced reference for a course taught at the postgraduate level in embedded software engineering and real-time systems.

The proceedings from the  eighth KMO conference represent the findings of this international meeting which brought together researchers and developers from industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances on knowledge management in organizations. This conference provided an international forum for authors to present and discuss research focused on the role of knowledge management for innovative services in industries, to shed light on recent advances in social and big data computing for KM as well as to identify future directions for researching the role of knowledge management in service innovation and how cloud computing can be used to address many of the issues currently facing KM in academia and industrial sectors.

You've seen the movie, now PLAY the movie! Long before gaming came to the big screen, cinema arrived in the homes of millions in the form of licensed video games; playable merchandise that tied in to some of the major tentpoles of cinematic history. Many of these games followed the storylines of the movies on which they were based, as well as providing supplementary adventures to major franchises. Collected in this book are some of the biggest games to come from Hollywood adventures during the '80s and '90s. In this comprehensive book, you'll find over 300 games across 18 chapters, with sections dedicated to major movie franchises such as Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Top Gun, Pixar, Aliens and Indiana Jones, along with nearly 200 full-colour screenshots of major releases. Showcasing the highs and lows of early computer gaming through the 16-bit era and onto the advent of 3D console gaming, A Guide to Movie Based Video Games: 1982 - 2000 covers two decades of video games with trivia, analysis and recommendations. Grab your controller, step into the silver screen and get ready to play!

This book reviews nonparametric Bayesian methods and models that have proven useful in the context of data analysis. Rather than providing an encyclopedic review of probability models, the book’s structure follows a data analysis perspective. As such, the chapters are organized by traditional data analysis problems. In selecting specific nonparametric models, simpler and more traditional models are favored over specialized ones. The discussed methods are illustrated with a wealth of examples, including applications ranging from stylized examples to case studies from recent literature. The book also includes an extensive discussion of computational methods and details on their implementation. R code for many examples is included in online software pages.

This book is about running modern industrial enterprises with the help of information systems. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the core of business informa­tion processing. An ERP system is the backbone of most companies' information systems landscape. All major business pro­cesses are han­dled with the help of this system. Supply chain management (SCM) looks beyond the individual company, taking into account that enterprises are increasingly concen­trating on their core com­petencies, leaving other activities to suppliers. With the growing dependency on the partners, effective supply chains have become as important for a com­pany's suc­cess as efficient in-house processes. This book covers typical business processes and shows how these processes are implemented. Examples are presented using the leading systems on the market – SAP ERP and SAP SCM. In this way, the reader can understand how business processes are actually carried out "in the real world".

This book describes recent theoretical findings relevant to bilevel programming in general, and in mixed-integer bilevel programming in particular. It describes recent applications in energy problems, such as the stochastic bilevel optimization approaches used in the natural gas industry. New algorithms for solving linear and mixed-integer bilevel programming problems are presented and explained.

This book addresses topics of mobile multi-agent systems, pattern formation, biological modelling, artificial life, unconventional computation, and robotics. The behaviour of a simple organism which is capable of remarkable biological and computational feats that seem to transcend its simple component parts is examined and modelled. In this book the following question is asked: How can something as simple as Physarum polycephalum - a giant amoeboid single-celled organism which does not possess any neural tissue, fixed skeleton or organised musculature - can approximate complex computational behaviour during its foraging, growth and adaptation of its amorphous body plan, and with such limited resources? To answer this question the same apparent limitations as faced by the organism are applied: using only simple components with local interactions. A synthesis approach is adopted and a mobile multi-agent system with very simple individual behaviours is employed. It is shown their interactions yield emergent behaviour showing complex self-organised pattern formation with material-like evolution. The presented model reproduces the biological behaviour of Physarum; the formation, growth and minimisation of transport networks. In its conclusion the book moves beyond Physarum and provides results of scoping experiments approximating other complex systems using the multi-agent approach. The results of this book demonstrate the power and range of harnessing emergent phenomena arising in simple multi-agent systems for biological modelling, computation and soft-robotics applications. It methodically describes the necessary components and their interactions, showing how deceptively simple components can create powerful mechanisms, aided by abundant illustrations, supplementary recordings and interactive models. It will be of interest to those in biological sciences, physics, computer science and robotics who wish to understand how simple components can result in complex and useful behaviours and who wish explore the potential of guided pattern formation themselves.

This textbook provides an introduction to the concept of sustainability in the context of transportation planning, management, and decision-making. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, indicators and frameworks for measuring sustainable development in the transportation sector are developed. In the second, the authors analyze actual planning and decision-making in transportation agencies in a variety of governance settings. This analysis of real-world case studies demonstrates the benefits and limitations of current approaches to sustainable development in transportation. The book concludes with a discussion on how to make sustainability count in transportation decision-making and practice.

How long does it take for your website to load? Web performance is just as critical for small and medium-sized websites as it is for massive websites that receive tons of hits. Before you pour money and time into rewriting your code or replacing your infrastructure, first consider a reverse-caching proxy server like Varnish. With this practical book, you'll learn how Varnish can give your website or API an immediate performance boost. Varnish mimicks the behavior of your webserver, caches its output in memory, and serves the result directly to clients without having to access your webserver. If you're a web developer familiar with HTTP, this book helps you master Varnish basics, so you can get up and running in no time. You'll learn how to use the Varnish Configuration Language and HTTP best practices to achieve faster performance and a higher hit rate.Understand how Varnish helps you gain optimum web performance Use HTTP to improve the cache-ability of your websites, web applications, and APIs Properly invalidate your cache when the origin data changes Optimize access to your backend servers Avoid common mistakes when using Varnish in the wild Use logging and debugging tools to examine the behavior of Varnish

This textbook teaches crucial statistical methods to answer research questions using a unique range of statistical software programs, including MINITAB and R. This textbook is developed for undergraduate students in agriculture, nursing, biology and biomedical research. Graduate students will also find it to be a useful way to refresh their statistics skills and to reference software options. The unique combination of examples is approached using MINITAB and R for their individual strengths. Subjects covered include among others data description, probability distributions, experimental design, regression analysis, randomized design and biological assay. Unlike other biostatistics textbooks, this text also includes outliers, influential observations in regression and an introduction to survival analysis. Material is taken from the author's extensive teaching and research in Africa, USA and the UK. Sample problems, references and electronic supplementary material accompany each chapter.

This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first section looks at the topic as it applies to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times. The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relation between mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed. The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters. The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed.

This book brings together research on numerical methods adapted for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). It explains recent efforts to adapt classic numerical methods, including solution of linear equations and FFT, for massively parallel GPU architectures. This volume consolidates recent research and adaptations, covering widely used methods that are at the core of many scientific and engineering computations. Each chapter is written by authors working on a specific group of methods; these leading experts provide mathematical background, parallel algorithms and implementation details leading to reusable, adaptable and scalable code fragments. This book also serves as a GPU implementation manual for many numerical algorithms, sharing tips on GPUs that can increase application efficiency. The valuable insights into parallelization strategies for GPUs are supplemented by ready-to-use code fragments. Numerical Computations with GPUs targets professionals and researchers working in high performance computing and GPU programming. Advanced-level students focused on computer science and mathematics will also find this book useful as secondary text book or reference.

From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo along with Sony-pocalypse and DARPA's $2 million Cyber Grand Challenge, this book examines counterterrorism and cyber security history, strategies and technologies from a thought-provoking approach that encompasses personal experiences, investigative journalism, historical and current events, ideas from thought leaders and the make-believe of Hollywood such as 24, Homeland and The Americans. President Barack Obama also said in his 2015 State of the Union address, "We are making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyber threats, just as we have done to combat terrorism. In this new edition, there are seven completely new chapters, including three new contributed chapters by healthcare chief information security officer Ray Balut and Jean C. Stanford, DEF CON speaker Philip Polstra and security engineer and Black Hat speaker Darren Manners, as well as new commentaries by communications expert Andy Marken and DEF CON speaker Emily Peed. The book offers practical advice for businesses, governments and individuals to better secure the world and protect cyberspace.

This book is intended as an introduction to fuzzy algebraic hyperstructures. As the first in its genre, it includes a number of topics, most of which reflect the authors’ past research and thus provides a starting point for future research directions. The book is organized in five chapters. The first chapter introduces readers to the basic notions of algebraic structures and hyperstructures. The second covers fuzzy sets, fuzzy groups and fuzzy polygroups. The following two chapters are concerned with the theory of fuzzy Hv-structures: while the third chapter presents the concept of fuzzy Hv-subgroup of Hv-groups, the fourth covers the theory of fuzzy Hv-ideals of Hv-rings. The final chapter discusses several connections between hypergroups and fuzzy sets, and includes a study on the association between hypergroupoids and fuzzy sets endowed with two membership functions. In addition to providing a reference guide to researchers, the book is also intended as textbook for undergraduate and graduate students.

Data Preprocessing for Data Mining addresses one of the most important issues within the well-known Knowledge Discovery from Data process. Data directly taken from the source will likely have inconsistencies, errors or most importantly, it is not ready to be considered for a data mining process. Furthermore, the increasing amount of data in recent science, industry and business applications, calls to the requirement of more complex tools to analyze it. Thanks to data preprocessing, it is possible to convert the impossible into possible, adapting the data to fulfill the input demands of each data mining algorithm. Data preprocessing includes the data reduction techniques, which aim at reducing the complexity of the data, detecting or removing irrelevant and noisy elements from the data. This book is intended to review the tasks that fill the gap between the data acquisition from the source and the data mining process. A comprehensive look from a practical point of view, including basic concepts and surveying the techniques proposed in the specialized literature, is given.Each chapter is a stand-alone guide to a particular data preprocessing topic, from basic concepts and detailed descriptions of classical algorithms, to an incursion of an exhaustive catalog of recent developments. The in-depth technical descriptions make this book suitable for technical professionals, researchers, senior undergraduate and graduate students in data science, computer science and engineering.

This book presents perspectives for and by teachers, school and university administrators and educational researchers regarding the great impact pen and tablet technology can have on classrooms and education. presents three distinctly valuable threads of research: Emerging technologies and cutting-edge software invented by researchers and evaluated through real classroom deployments. First-hand perspectives of instructors and administrators who actively implement pen or tablet technologies in their classrooms. Up-and-coming systems that provide insight into the future of pen, touch, and sketch recognition technologies in the classrooms and the curriculums of tomorrow. The Impact of Pen and Touch Technology on Education is an essential read for educators who wish get to grips with ink-based computing and bring their teaching methods into the twenty-first century, as well as for researchers in the areas of education, human-computer interaction and intelligent systems for pedagogical advancement.

This volume provides updated, in-depth material on the application of intelligent optimization in biology and medicine. The aim of the book is to present solutions to the challenges and problems facing biology and medicine applications. This Volume comprises of 13 chapters, including an overview chapter, providing an up-to-date and state-of-the research on the application of intelligent optimization for bioinformatics applications, DNA based Steganography, a modified Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Solving Capacitated Maximal Covering Location Problem in Healthcare Systems, Optimization Methods for Medical Image Super Resolution Reconstruction and breast cancer classification. Moreover, some chapters that describe several bio-inspired approaches in MEDLINE Text Mining, DNA-Binding Proteins and Classes, Optimized Tumor Breast Cancer Classification using Combining Random Subspace and Static Classifiers Selection Paradigms, and Dental Image Registration. The book will be a useful compendium for a broad range of readers—from students of undergraduate to postgraduate levels and also for researchers, professionals, etc.—who wish to enrich their knowledge on Intelligent Optimization in Biology and Medicine and applications with one single book.  

This monograph presents the latest developments and applications of computational tools related to the biosciences and medical engineering. Computational tools such as the finite element methods, computer-aided design and optimization as well as visualization techniques such as computed axial tomography open completely new research fields with a closer joining of the engineering and bio/medical area. Nevertheless, there are still hurdles since both directions are based on quite different ways of education. Often even the “language� is sometimes different from discipline to discipline. This monograph reports the results of different multi-disciplinary research projects, for example, from the areas of scaffolds and synthetic bones, implants and medical devices and medical materials. It is also shown that the application of computational methods often necessitates mathematical and experimental methods.

This book offers a new perspective on human decision-making by comparing the established methods in decision science with innovative modelling at the level of neurons and neural interactions. The book presents a new generation of computer models, which can predict with astonishing accuracy individual economic choices when people make them by quick intuition rather than by effort. A vision for a new kind of social science is outlined, whereby neural models of emotion and cognition capture the dynamics of socioeconomic systems and virtual social networks. The exposition is approachable by experts as well as by advanced students. The author is an Associate Professor of Decision Science with a doctorate in Computational Neuroscience, and a former software consultant to banks in the City of London.  

This monograph presents the challenges, vision and context to design smart learning objects (SLOs) through Computer Science (CS) education modelling and feature model transformations. It presents the latest research on the meta-programming-based generative learning objects (the latter with advanced features are treated as SLOs) and the use of educational robots in teaching CS topics. The introduced methodology includes the overall processes to develop SLO and smart educational environment (SEE) and integrates both into the real education setting to provide teaching in CS using constructivist and project-based approaches along with evaluation of pedagogic outcomes. Smart Learning Objects for Smart Education in Computer Science will appeal to researchers in CS education particularly those interested in using robots in teaching, course designers and educational software and tools developers. With research and exercise questions at the end of each chapter students studying CS related courses will find this work informative and valuable too.

This volume contains original submissions on the development and application of molecular imaging computing. The editors invited authors to submit high-quality contributions on a wide range of topics including, but not limited to: • Image Synthesis & Reconstruction of Emission Tomography (PET, SPECT) and other Molecular Imaging Modalities • Molecular Imaging Enhancement • Data Analysis of Clinical & Pre-clinical Molecular Imaging • Multi-Modal Image Processing (PET/CT, PET/MR, SPECT/CT, etc.) • Machine Learning and Data Mining in Molecular Imaging. Molecular imaging is an evolving clinical and research discipline enabling the visualization, characterization and quantification of biological processes taking place at the cellular and subcellular levels within intact living subjects. Computational methods play an important role in the development of molecular imaging, from image synthesis to data analysis and from clinical diagnosis to therapy individualization. This work will bring readers from academia and industry up to date on the most recent developments in this field.

This book is for researchers, engineers, and students who are willing to understand how humanoid robots move and be controlled. The book starts with an overview of the humanoid robotics research history and state of the art. Then it explains the required mathematics and physics such as kinematics of multi-body system, Zero-Moment Point (ZMP) and its relationship with body motion. Biped walking control is discussed in depth, since it is one of the main interests of humanoid robotics. Various topics of the whole body motion generation are also discussed. Finally multi-body dynamics is presented to simulate the complete dynamic behavior of a humanoid robot. Throughout the book, Matlab codes are shown to test the algorithms and to help the reader´s understanding.