This is the first full-length study about the British artist Roy Ascott, one of the first cybernetic artists, with a career spanning seven decades to date. The book focuses on his early career, exploring the evolution of his early interests in communication in the context of the rich overlaps between art, science and engineering in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. The first part of the book looks at Ascott's training and early work. The second park looks solely at Groundcourse, Ascott's extraordinary pedagogical model for visual arts and cybernetics which used an integrative and systems-based model, drawing in behaviourism, analogue machines, performance and games. Using hitherto unpublished photographs and documents, this book will establish a more prominent place for cybernetics in post-war British art.

Psychological research into human cognition and judgment reveals a wide range of biases and shortcomings. Whether we form impressions of other people, recall episodes from memory, report our attitudes in an opinion poll, or make important decisions, we often get it wrong. The errors made are not trivial and often seem to violate common sense and basic logic. A closer look at the underlying processes, however, suggests that many of the well known fallacies do not necessarily reflect inherent shortcomings of human judgment. Rather, they partially reflect that research participants bring the tacit assumptions that govern the conduct of conversation in daily life to the research situation. According to these assumptions, communicated information comes with a guarantee of relevance and listeners are entitled to assume that the speaker tries to be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear. Moreover, listeners interpret the speakers' utterances on the assumption that they are trying to live up to these ideals. This book introduces social science researchers to the "logic of conversation" developed by Paul Grice, a philosopher of language, who proposed the cooperative principle and a set of maxims on which conversationalists implicitly rely. The author applies this framework to a wide range of topics, including research on person perception, decision making, and the emergence of context effects in attitude measurement and public opinion research. Experimental studies reveal that the biases generally seen in such research are, in part, a function of violations of Gricean conversational norms. The author discusses implications for the design of experiments and questionnaires and addresses the socially contextualized nature of human judgment.

This book focuses on bifurcation and stability in nonlinear discrete systems, including monotonic and oscillatory stability. It presents the local monotonic and oscillatory stability and bifurcation of period-1 fixed-points on a specific eigenvector direction, and discusses the corresponding higher-order singularity of fixed-points. Further, it explores the global analysis of monotonic and oscillatory stability of fixed-points in 1-dimensional discrete systems through 1-dimensional polynomial discrete systems. Based on the Yin-Yang theory of nonlinear discrete systems, the book also addresses the dynamics of forward and backward nonlinear discrete systems, and the existence conditions of fixed-points in said systems. Lastly, in the context of local analysis, it describes the normal forms of nonlinear discrete systems and infinite-fixed-point discrete systems. Examining nonlinear discrete systems from various perspectives, the book helps readers gain a better understanding of the nonlinear dynamics of such systems.

Systems Thinking, Critical Realism and Philosophy: A Confluence of Ideas seeks to re-address the whole question of philosophy and systems thinking for the twenty first century and provide a new work that would be of value to both systems and philosophy. This is a highly opportune time when different fields - critical realism, philosophy of science and systems thinking - are all developing around the same set of concepts and yet not realizing it. This book will be of interest to the academic systems community worldwide and due to it's interdisciplinary coverage, it will also be of relevance to a wide range of scholars in other disciplines, particularly philosophy but also operational research, information systems, and sociology.

This book presents the latest research on applications of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things in renewable energy systems. Advanced renewable energy systems must necessarily involve the latest technology like artificial intelligence and Internet of Things to develop low cost, smart and efficient solutions. Intelligence allows the system to optimize the power, thereby making it a power efficient system; whereas, Internet of Things makes the system independent of wire and flexibility in operation. As a result, intelligent and IOT paradigms are finding increasing applications in the study of renewable energy systems. This book presents advanced applications of artificial intelligence and the internet of things in renewable energy systems development. It covers such topics as solar energy systems, electric vehicles etc. In all these areas applications of artificial intelligence methods such as artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and a combination of the above, called hybrid systems, are included. The book is intended for a wide audience ranging from the undergraduate level up to the research academic and industrial communities engaged in the study and performance prediction of renewable energy systems.

This book is about morphogenesis as the genesis of forms. It is not restricted to plants growing from seed or animals developing from an embryo (although these do supply the most abundant examples) but also addresses kindred processes, from inorganic to social to biomorphic technology. It is about our morphogenetic universe: unplanned, unfair and frustratingly complicated but benevolent in allowing us to emerge, survive, and inquire into its laws.

The chapters in this book originate from the research work and contributions presented at the Sixth International Symposium on Recurrence Plots held in Grenoble, France in June 2015. Scientists from numerous disciplines gathered to exchange knowledge on recent applications and developments in recurrence plots and recurrence quantification analysis. This meeting was remarkable because of the obvious expansion of recurrence strategies (theory) and applications (practice) into ever-broadening fields of science. It discusses real-world systems from various fields, including mathematics, strange attractors, applied physics, physiology, medicine, environmental and earth sciences, as well as psychology and linguistics. Even readers not actively researching any of these particular systems will benefit from discovering how other scientists are finding practical non-linear solutions to specific problems.The book is of interest to an interdisciplinary audience of recurrence plot users and researchers interested in time series analysis in particular, and in complex systems in general.

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.

We are often told that we are "living in an information society" or that we are "information workers." But what exactly do these claims mean, and how might they be verified? In this important methodological study, Alistair S. Duff cuts through the rhetoric to get to the bottom of the "information society thesis." Wide-ranging in coverage, this study will be of interest to scholars in information science, communication and media studies and social theory. It is a key text for the newly-unified specialism of information society studies, and an indispensable guide to the future of this discipline.

This contributed volume offers a collection of papers presented at the 2018 Network Games, Control, and Optimization conference (NETGCOOP), held at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering in New York City, November 14-16, 2018. These papers highlight the increasing importance of network control and optimization in many networking application domains, such as mobile and fixed access networks, computer networks, social networks, transportation networks, and, more recently, electricity grids and biological networks. Covering a wide variety of both theoretical and applied topics in the areas listed above, the authors explore several conceptual and algorithmic tools that are needed for efficient and robust control operation, performance optimization, and better understanding the relationships between entities that may be acting cooperatively or selfishly in uncertain and possibly adversarial environments. As such, this volume will be of interest to applied mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, and researchers in other related fields.

In this monograph the authors present Newton-type, Newton-like and other numerical methods, which involve fractional derivatives and fractional integral operators, for the first time studied in the literature. All for the purpose to solve numerically equations whose associated functions can be also non-differentiable in the ordinary sense. That is among others extending the classical Newton method theory which requires usual differentiability of function. Chapters are self-contained and can be read independently and several advanced courses can be taught out of this book. An extensive list of references is given per chapter. The book's results are expected to find applications in many areas of applied mathematics, stochastics, computer science and engineering. As such this monograph is suitable for researchers, graduate students, and seminars of the above subjects, also to be in all science and engineering libraries.

Big Data and Information Theory are a binding force between various areas of knowledge that allow for societal advancement. Rapid development of data analytic and information theory allows companies to store vast amounts of information about production, inventory, service, and consumer activities. More powerful CPUs and cloud computing make it possible to do complex optimization instead of using heuristic algorithms, as well as instant rather than offline decision-making. The era of "big data" challenges includes analysis, capture, curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and privacy violations. Big data calls for better integration of optimization, statistics, and data mining. In response to these challenges this book brings together leading researchers and engineers to exchange and share their experiences and research results about big data and information theory applications in various areas. This book covers a broad range of topics including statistics, data mining, data warehouse implementation, engineering management in large-scale infrastructure systems, data-driven sustainable supply chain network, information technology service offshoring project issues, online rumors governance, preliminary cost estimation, and information system project selection. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management.

This book introduces and studies a number of stochastic models of subsistence, communication, social evolution and political transition that will allow the reader to grasp the role of uncertainty as a fundamental property of our irreversible world. At the same time, it aims to bring about a more interdisciplinary and quantitative approach across very diverse fields of research in the humanities and social sciences. Through the examples treated in this work - including anthropology, demography, migration, geopolitics, management, and bioecology, among other things - evidence is gathered to show that volatile environments may change the rules of the evolutionary selection and dynamics of any social system, creating a situation of adaptive uncertainty, in particular, whenever the rate of change of the environment exceeds the rate of adaptation. Last but not least, it is hoped that this book will contribute to the understanding that inherent randomness can also be a great opportunity - for social systems and individuals alike - to help face the challenge of "survival under uncertainty".

This volume chronicles the 16th Annual Conference on System Engineering Research (CSER) held on May 8-9, 2018 at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. The CSER offers researchers in academia, industry, and government a common forum to present, discuss, and influence systems engineering research. It provides access to forward-looking research from across the globe, by renowned academicians as well as perspectives from senior industry and government representatives. Co-founded by the University of Southern California and Stevens Institute of Technology in 2003, CSER has become the preeminent event for researchers in systems engineering across the globe. Topics include though are not limited to the following: Systems in context: * Formative methods: requirements * Integration, deployment, assurance * Human Factors * Safety and Security Decisions/ Control & Design; Systems Modeling: * Optimization, Multiple Objectives, Synthesis * Risk and resiliency * Collaborative autonomy * Coordination and distributed decision-making Prediction: * Prescriptive modeling; state estimation * Stochastic approximation, stochastic optimization and control Integrative Data engineering: * Sensor Management * Design of Experiments

This is a book about creating information systems within firms that will truly give managers the information they need to make informed business decisions. The author contends that information is part of an ecological system in which it undergoes a process of evolution and adaptation to the requirements of the local users. The book explains ecological planning tools that guide managers to develop information systems to meet their changing needs.

This work addresses the notion of compression ratios greater than what has been known for random sequential strings in binary and larger radix-based systems as applied to those traditionally found in Kolmogorov complexity. A culmination of the author's decade-long research that began with his discovery of a compressible random sequential string, the book maintains a theoretical-statistical level of introduction suitable for mathematical physicists. It discusses the application of ternary-, quaternary-, and quinary-based systems in statistical communication theory, computing, and physics.

This monograph is an up-to-date presentation of the analysis and design of singular Markovian jump systems (SMJSs) in which the transition rate matrix of the underlying systems is generally uncertain, partially unknown and designed. The problems addressed include stability, stabilization, H control and filtering, observer design, and adaptive control. applications of Markov process are investigated by using Lyapunov theory, linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), S-procedure and the stochastic Barbalat's Lemma, among other techniques. Features of the book include: * study of the stability problem for SMJSs with general transition rate matrices (TRMs); * stabilization for SMJSs by TRM design, noise control, proportional-derivative and partially mode-dependent control, in terms of LMIs with and without equation constraints; * mode-dependent and mode-independent H control solutions with development of a type of disordered controller; * observer-based controllers of SMJSs in which both the designed observer and controller are either mode-dependent or mode-independent; * consideration of robust H filtering in terms of uncertain TRM or filter parameters leading to a method for totally mode-independent filtering * development of LMI-based conditions for a class of adaptive state feedback controllers with almost-certainly-bounded estimated error and almost-certainly-asymptotically-stable corres ponding closed-loop system states * applications of Markov process on singular systems with norm bounded uncertainties and time-varying delays Analysis and Design of Singular Markovian Jump Systems contains valuable reference material for academic researchers wishing to explore the area. The contents are also suitable for a one-semester graduate course.

This book presents few novel Discrete-time Sliding Mode (DSM) protocols for leader-following consensus of Discrete Multi-Agent Systems (DMASs). The protocols intend to achieve the consensus in finite time steps and also tackle the corresponding uncertainties. Based on the communication graph topology of multi-agent systems, the protocols are divided into two groups, namely (i) Fixed graph topology and (ii) Switching graph topology. The coverage begins with the design of Discrete-time Sliding Mode (DSM) protocols using Gao's reaching law and power rate reaching law for the synchronization of linear DMASs by using the exchange of information between the agents and the leader to achieve a common goal. Then, in a subsequent chapter, analysis for no. of fixed-time steps required for the leader-following consensus is presented. The book also includes chapters on the design of Discrete-time Higher-order Sliding Mode (DHSM) protocols, Event-triggered DSM protocols for the leader-following consensus of DMASs. A chapter is also included on the design of DHSM protocols for leader-following consensus of heterogeneous DMASs. Special emphasis is given to the practical implementation of each proposed DSM protocol for achieving leader-following consensus of helicopter systems, flexible joint robotic arms, and rigid joint robotic arms. This book offers a ready reference guide for graduate students and researchers working in the areas of control, automation, and communication engineering, and in particular the cooperative control of multi-agent systems. It will also benefit professional engineers working to design and implement robust controllers for power systems, autonomous vehicles, military surveillance, smartgrids/microgrids, vehicle traffic management, robotic teams, and aerial robots.

In this monograph the authors develop a theory for the robust control of discrete-time stochastic systems, subjected to both independent random perturbations and to Markov chains. Such systems are widely used to provide mathematical models for real processes in fields such as aerospace engineering, communications, manufacturing, finance and economy. The theory is a continuation of the authors work presented in their previous book entitled "Mathematical Methods in Robust Control of Linear Stochastic Systems" published by Springer in 2006.

Key features:

- Provides a common unifying framework for discrete-time stochastic systems corrupted with both independent random perturbations and with Markovian jumps which are usually treated separately in the control literature;

- Covers preliminary material on probability theory, independent random variables, conditional expectation and Markov chains;

- Proposes new numerical algorithms to solve coupled matrix algebraic Riccati equations;

- Leads the reader in a natural way to the original results through a systematic presentation;

- Presents new theoretical results with detailed numerical examples.

The monograph is geared to researchers and graduate students in advanced control engineering, applied mathematics, mathematical systems theory and finance. It is also accessible to undergraduate students with a fundamental knowledge in the theory of stochastic systems."

The concept of dynamics and control implies the combination of dynamic analysis and control synthesis. It is essential to gain insight into the dynamics of a nonlinear system with uncertainty if any new control strategy is designed to utilize nonlinearity. However, the new control strategy to be proposed must be robust enough so that any unexpected small disturbances will not alter the desired target of control. Such a concept is calling more attention to the modelling and simplification of dynamic systems subject to uncertain environment, the fine analysis and robust design of controlled dynamic systems resulting in new control strategies due to understanding of nonlinear phenomena and artificial intelligence, the combination of passive control, active control and semi-active control, as well as the interaction among sensors, controllers and actuators.

This book explores the latest research trends in intelligent systems and smart applications. It presents high-quality empirical and review studies focusing on various topics, including information systems and software engineering, knowledge management, technology in education, emerging technologies, and social networks. It provides insights into the theoretical and practical aspects of intelligent systems and smart applications.

Information services are economic and organizational activities for informing people. Because informing is changing rapidly under the influence of internet-technologies, this book presents in Chapter 1 fundamental notions of information and knowledge, based on philosopher C.W. Churchman's inquiring systems. This results in the identification of three product-oriented design theory aspects: content, use value and revenue. Chapter 2 describes how one can cope with these aspects by presenting process-oriented design theory. Both design theory insights are applied in chapters on information services challenges, their business concepts and processes, their architectures and exploitation. The final chapter discusses three case studies that integrate the insights from previous chapters, and it discusses some ideas for future research. This book gives students a coherent start to the topic of information services from a design science perspective, with a balance between technical and managerial aspects. Therefore, this book is useful for modern curricula of management, communication science and information systems. Because of its design science approach, it also explains design science principles. The book also serves professionals and academics in search of a foundational understanding of informing as a science and management practice.

Today it appears that we understand more about the universe than about our interconnected socio-economic world. In order to uncover organizational structures and novel features in these systems, we present the first comprehensive complex systems analysis of real-world ownership networks. This effort lies at the interface between the realms of economics and the emerging field loosely referred to as complexity science. The structure of global economic power is reflected in the network of ownership ties of companies and the analysis of such ownership networks has possible implications for market competition and financial stability. Thus this work presents powerful new tools for the study of economic and corporate networks that are only just beginning to attract the attention of scholars.

This book describes a complete revolution in software engineering based on complexity science through the establishment of NSE - Nonlinear Software Engineering paradigm which complies with the essential principles of complexity science, including the Nonlinearity principle, the Holism principle, the Complexity Arises From Simple Rules principle, the Initial Condition Sensitivity principle, the Sensitivity to Change principle, the Dynamics principle, the Openness principle, the Self-organization principle, and the Self-adaptation principle. The aims of this book are to offer revolutionary solutions to solve the critical problems existing with the old-established software engineering paradigm based on linear thinking and simplistic science complied with the superposition principle, and make it possible tohelp software development organizations double their productivity, halve their cost, and remove 99% to 99.99% of the defects in their software products, and efficiently handle software complexity, conformity, visibility, and changeability. It covers almost all areas in software engineering.

The tools NSE_CLICK- an automatic acceptance testing platform for outsourcing (or internally developed) C/C++ products, and NSE_CLICK_J - an automatic acceptance testing platform for outsourcing (or internally developed) Java products are particularly designed for non-technical readers to view/review how the acceptance testing of a software product developed with NSE can be performed automatically, and how the product developed with NSE is truly maintainable at the customer site. "

The early 21st century has seen a renewed interest in research in the widely-adopted proportional-integral-differential (PID) form of control. PID Control in the Third Millennium provides an overview of the advances made as a result. Featuring: new approaches for controller tuning; control structures and configurations for more efficient control; practical issues in PID implementation; and non-standard approaches to PID including fractional-order, event-based, nonlinear, data-driven and predictive control; the nearly twenty chapters provide a state-of-the-art resume of PID controller theory, design and realization. Each chapter has specialist authorship and ideas clearly characterized from both academic and industrial viewpoints. PID Control in the Third Millennium is of interest to academics requiring a reference for the current state of PID-related research and a stimulus for further inquiry. Industrial practitioners and manufacturers of control systems with application problems relating to PID will find this to be a practical source of appropriate and advanced solutions.