Dynamic Programming for Impulse Feedback and Fast Controls offers a description of feedback control in the class of impulsive inputs. This book deals with the problem of closed-loop impulse control based on generalization of dynamic programming techniques in the form of variational inequalities of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman type. It provides exercises and examples in relation to software, such as techniques for regularization of ill-posed problems. It also gives an introduction to applications such as hybrid dynamics, control in arbitrary small time, and discontinuous trajectories.This book walks the readers through: the design and description of feedback solutions for impulse controls; the explanation of impulses of higher order that are derivatives of delta functions; the description of their physically realizable approximations - the fast controls and their approximations; the treatment of uncertainty in impulse control and the applications of impulse feedback. Of interest to both academics and graduate students in the field of control theory and applications, the book also protects users from common errors , such as inappropriate solution attempts, by indicating Hamiltonian techniques for hybrid systems with resets.

This book reports on the development and assessment of a novel framework for studying neural interactions (the connectome) and their dynamics (the chronnectome). Using EEG recordings taken during an auditory oddball task performed by 48 patients with schizophrenia and 87 healthy controls, and applying local and network measures, changes in brain activation from pre-stimulus to cognitive response were assessed, and significant differences were observed between the patients and controls. This book investigates the source of the network abnormalities and presents new evidence for the disconnection hypothesis and the aberrant salience hypothesis with regard to schizophrenia. Moreover, it puts forward a novel approach to combining local regularity measures and graph measures in order to characterize schizophrenia brain dynamics, and presents interesting findings on the regularity of brain patterns in healthy control subjects versus patients with schizophrenia. Besides providing new evidence for the disconnection hypothesis, it offers a source of inspiration for future research directions in the field.

Learn to solve the unprecedented challenges facing Online Learning and Adaptive Signal Processing in this concise, intuitive text. The ever-increasing amount of data generated every day requires new strategies to tackle issues such as: combining data from a large number of sensors; improving spectral usage, utilizing multiple-antennas with adaptive capabilities; or learning from signals placed on graphs, generating unstructured data. Solutions to all of these and more are described in a condensed and unified way, enabling you to expose valuable information from data and signals in a fast and economical way. The up-to-date techniques explained here can be implemented in simple electronic hardware, or as part of multi-purpose systems. Also featuring alternative explanations for online learning, including newly developed methods and data selection, and several easily implemented algorithms, this one-of-a-kind book is an ideal resource for graduate students, researchers, and professionals in online learning and adaptive filtering.

Discover the foundations of quantum mechanics, and explore how these principles are powering a new generation of advances in quantum engineering, in this ground-breaking undergraduate textbook. It explains physical and mathematical principles using cutting-edge electronic, optoelectronic and photonic devices, linking underlying theory with real-world applications; focuses on current technologies and avoids historic approaches, getting students quickly up-to-speed to tackle contemporary engineering challenges; provides an introduction to the foundations of quantum information, and a wealth of real-world quantum examples, including quantum well infrared photodetectors, solar cells, quantum teleportation, quantum computing, band gap engineering, quantum cascade lasers, low-dimensional materials, and van der Waals heterostructures; and includes pedagogical features such as objectives and end-of-chapter homework problems to consolidate student understanding, and solutions for instructors. Designed to inspire the development of future quantum devices and systems, this is the perfect introduction to quantum mechanics for undergraduate electrical engineers and materials scientists.

This compact course is written for the mathematically literate reader who wants to learn to analyze data in a principled fashion. The language of mathematics enables clear exposition that can go quite deep, quite quickly, and naturally supports an axiomatic and inductive approach to data analysis. Starting with a good grounding in probability, the reader moves to statistical inference via topics of great practical importance - simulation and sampling, as well as experimental design and data collection - that are typically displaced from introductory accounts. The core of the book then covers both standard methods and such advanced topics as multiple testing, meta-analysis, and causal inference.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, education about and through the media has become a worldwide phenomenon, and is playing an increasingly important role in educational reform. The theory and practice of media education have profited greatly from recent and intensive development and application of new information and telecommunications technologies. Consequently, the importance of media and information literacy is taking on an even greater urgency. With this in mind, the contributors to this volume survey what has taken place over the last decade in different parts of the world, examine the current state of theoretical, conceptual, and research development, and consider where media education is going and where it ought to go.

With two-thirds of its 22 contributions coming from outside the United States, "Media Literacy in the Information Age" is a genuine international effort, with many leading media and information educators in the world taking part. The work converts the notion of globalism from a slogan into a working hypothesis. The concerns in this volume are with literacy not just in computer technology, but as a broad concern of the educational process.

Compound renewal processes (CRPs) are among the most ubiquitous models arising in applications of probability. At the same time, they are a natural generalization of random walks, the most well-studied classical objects in probability theory. This monograph, written for researchers and graduate students, presents the general asymptotic theory and generalizes many well-known results concerning random walks. The book contains the key limit theorems for CRPs, functional limit theorems, integro-local limit theorems, large and moderately large deviation principles for CRPs in the state space and in the space of trajectories, including large deviation principles in boundary crossing problems for CRPs, with an explicit form of the rate functionals, and an extension of the invariance principle for CRPs to the domain of moderately large and small deviations. Applications establish the key limit laws for Markov additive processes, including limit theorems in the domains of normal and large deviations.

"SSM offers an elegantly simple approach that is both powerful, yet non-threatening and one that forces organisations to confront questions essential to their very survival such as, "Are we doing the right thing?"
From the Foreword by Mike Duffy, Operations Director, The Smith Group

Since its inception more than thirty years ago, the benefits of using Soft Systems Methodology for problem solving has gained worldwide recognition. Yet, despite recognising the importance of SSM, students and practitioners still experience considerable difficulty with the intellectual process involved.

Based on a lifetime experience as an academic and consultant, Brian Wilson provides guidance on how to develop a range of conceptual models across a variety of business problems. Building on his earlier work in Systems: Concepts, Methodologies and Applications he takes a practical approach to the topic based on the premise that all organisations are unique. He develops concepts to articulate ways of thinking about complexity. These are an alternative to mathematically-based concepts, and they offer rigorous, and defensible ways of answering the question 'What do we take the organisation to be?' A model of the most appropriate and relevant concept for your own organisation can then be successfully developed and applied.

Of relevance to organisations of any type, or any size, this book shows how model building within SSM can be used to cope with real-life problems. It will be an invaluable resource for students and practitioners in both the public and private sectors.

This is the first full-length book on the major theme of symmetry in graphs. Forming part of algebraic graph theory, this fast-growing field is concerned with the study of highly symmetric graphs, particularly vertex-transitive graphs, and other combinatorial structures, primarily by group-theoretic techniques. In practice the street goes both ways and these investigations shed new light on permutation groups and related algebraic structures. The book assumes a first course in graph theory and group theory but no specialized knowledge of the theory of permutation groups or vertex-transitive graphs. It begins with the basic material before introducing the field's major problems and most active research themes in order to motivate the detailed discussion of individual topics that follows. Featuring many examples and over 450 exercises, it is an essential introduction to the field for graduate students and a valuable addition to any algebraic graph theorist's bookshelf.

Searching for Trust explores the intersection of trust, disinformation, and blockchain technology in an age of heightened institutional and epistemic mistrust. It adopts a unique archival theoretic lens to delve into how computational information processing has gradually supplanted traditional record keeping, putting at risk a centuries-old tradition of the 'moral defense of the record' and replacing it with a dominant ethos of information-processing efficiency. The author argues that focusing on information-processing efficiency over the defense of records against manipulation and corruption (the ancient task of the recordkeeper) has contributed to a diminution of the trustworthiness of information and a rise of disinformation, with attendant destabilization of the epistemic trust fabric of societies. Readers are asked to consider the potential and limitations of blockchains as the technological embodiment of the moral defense of the record and as means to restoring societal trust in an age of disinformation.

Searching for Trust explores the intersection of trust, disinformation, and blockchain technology in an age of heightened institutional and epistemic mistrust. It adopts a unique archival theoretic lens to delve into how computational information processing has gradually supplanted traditional record keeping, putting at risk a centuries-old tradition of the 'moral defense of the record' and replacing it with a dominant ethos of information-processing efficiency. The author argues that focusing on information-processing efficiency over the defense of records against manipulation and corruption (the ancient task of the recordkeeper) has contributed to a diminution of the trustworthiness of information and a rise of disinformation, with attendant destabilization of the epistemic trust fabric of societies. Readers are asked to consider the potential and limitations of blockchains as the technological embodiment of the moral defense of the record and as means to restoring societal trust in an age of disinformation.

The definitive guide to control system design

Modern Control System Theory and Design, Second Edition offers the most comprehensive treatment of control systems available today. Its unique text/software combination integrates classical and modern control system theories, while promoting an interactive, computer-based approach to design solutions. The sheer volume of practical examples, as well as the hundreds of illustrations of control systems from all engineering fields, make this volume accessible to students and indispensable for professional engineers.

This fully updated Second Edition features a new chapter on modern control system design, including state-space design techniques, Ackermann's formula for pole placement, estimation, robust control, and the H method for control system design. Other notable additions to this edition are:

• Free MATLAB software containing problem solutions, which can be retrieved from The Mathworks, Inc., anonymous FTP server at ftp://ftp.mathworks.com/pub/books/shinners
• Programs and tutorials on the use of MATLAB incorporated directly into the text
• A complete set of working digital computer programs
• Reviews of commercial software packages for control system analysis
• An extensive set of new, worked-out, illustrative solutions added in dedicated sections at the end of chapters
• Expanded end-of-chapter problems—one-third with answers to facilitate self-study
• An updated solutions manual containing solutions to the remaining two-thirds of the problems

Superbly organized and easy-to-use, Modern Control System Theory and Design, Second Edition is an ideal textbook for introductory courses in control systems and an excellent professional reference. Its interdisciplinary approach makes it invaluable for practicing engineers in electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, chemical, and nuclear engineering and related areas.

The extraordinary growth of the Internet and other information age developments in communications, particularly marketing communications, are transforming the international and national business environments. This work is designed to help people, whether with large corporations or the smallest of enterprises, to venture with confidence into cyberspace. Written in non-technical language by a businessman for other business people, the information seizes on the many opportunities emerging for enterprises and personal career development. The socio-economic impact is covered from important perspectives, such as the impact on the Third World. The book heralds an age in which information becomes an internationally marketable commodity, and gives individual entrepreneurs on miniscule budgets the tools to compete against the big corporate guns on a level playing field. The appendices include useful electronic mailing lists, a product protection and order delivery system on the Web, and details on getting connected in the UK.

This book is based on a number of systems concepts, of which the following are emphasized here: oThe interacting systems of society and the environment are dynamic and evolution ary oEvolution of these systems carries them through stages of differential stability and instability, continuity and discontinuity oAssociated with evolution and instability is structural change that is essentially irre versible oThe present is a stage of world transformation that may not have been equaled for decades or even centuries oPolicies and decisions must match the times, in the present case the stage of world transformation The time 11:59:59 PM, approximately, on December 31, 2000 has an impor tant symbolic meaning. It marks the end of a minute, the end of an hour, the end of a day, the end of a year, the end of a decade, the end of a century, and the end of a millennium. The time and date provide a convenient yardstick against which we can evaluate the evolution of our thinking and the adequacy of our assumptions, mental models, paradigms, and policies. Will the beginning tum out to be appropriately dif ferent from the end? We hope that this book is helpful in such evaluation. This is a new-paradigm book, which both presents and advances the new way of thinking about the systems of science, technology, society, economics, politics, and the environment, and actively calls for the replacement of the worn out cognitive/sociotechnical paradigm."

Strongly regular graphs lie at the intersection of statistical design, group theory, finite geometry, information and coding theory, and extremal combinatorics. This monograph collects all the major known results together for the first time in book form, creating an invaluable text that researchers in algebraic combinatorics and related areas will refer to for years to come. The book covers the theory of strongly regular graphs, polar graphs, rank 3 graphs associated to buildings and Fischer groups, cyclotomic graphs, two-weight codes and graphs related to combinatorial configurations such as Latin squares, quasi-symmetric designs and spherical designs. It gives the complete classification of rank 3 graphs, including some new constructions. More than 100 graphs are treated individually. Some unified and streamlined proofs are featured, along with original material including a new approach to the (affine) half spin graphs of rank 5 hyperbolic polar spaces.

There is a need for general theoretical principles describing/explaining effective design -- those which demonstrate "unity" and enhance comprehension and usability. Theories of cohesion from linguistics and of comprehension in psychology are likely sources of such general principles. Unfortunately, linguistic approaches to discourse unity have focused exclusively on semantic elements such as synonymy or anaphora, and have ignored other linguistic elements such as syntactic parallelism and phonological alliteration. They have also overlooked the non-linguistic elements -- visual factors such as typography or color, and auditory components such as pitch or duration. In addition, linguistic approaches have met with criticism because they have failed to explain the relationship between semantic cohesive elements and coherence. On the other hand, psychological approaches to discourse comprehension have considered the impact of a wider range of discourse elements -- typographical cuing of key terms to enhance comprehension -- but have failed to provide general theoretical explanations for such observations.
This volume uses Gestalt theory to provide general principles for predicting one aspect of coherence -- that of continuity -- across the entire range of discourse elements, and also to outline the relationship between cohesion and coherence. The theoretical core of this book argues that the cognitive principles that explain why humans "sense" unity in a succession of sounds (a whole musical piece) or in a configuration of visual shapes (a complete object) are the basis of principles which explain why we "sense" unity in oral, written, and electronically produced documents.

For 80 years, mathematics has driven fundamental innovation in computing and communications. This timely book provides a panorama of some recent ideas in mathematics and how they will drive continued innovation in computing, communications and AI in the coming years. It provides a unique insight into how the new techniques that are being developed can be used to provide theoretical foundations for technological progress, just as mathematics was used in earlier times by Turing, von Neumann, Shannon and others. Edited by leading researchers in the field, chapters cover the application of new mathematics in computer architecture, software verification, quantum computing, compressed sensing, networking, Bayesian inference, machine learning, reinforcement learning and many other areas.

This lucid, accessible introduction to supervised machine learning presents core concepts in a focused and logical way that is easy for beginners to follow. The author assumes basic calculus, linear algebra, probability and statistics but no prior exposure to machine learning. Coverage includes widely used traditional methods such as SVMs, boosted trees, HMMs, and LDAs, plus popular deep learning methods such as convolution neural nets, attention, transformers, and GANs. Organized in a coherent presentation framework that emphasizes the big picture, the text introduces each method clearly and concisely "from scratch" based on the fundamentals. All methods and algorithms are described by a clean and consistent style, with a minimum of unnecessary detail. Numerous case studies and concrete examples demonstrate how the methods can be applied in a variety of contexts.

This book develops a mathematical framework for modeling and optimizing interference-coupled multiuser systems. At the core of this framework is the concept of general interference functions, which provides a simple means of characterizing interdependencies between users. The entire analysis builds on the two core axioms scale-invariance and monotonicity.
The proposed network calculus has its roots in power control theory and wireless communications. It adds theoretical tools for analyzing the typical behavior of interference-coupled networks. In this way it complements existing game-theoretic approaches.
The framework should also be viewed in conjunction with optimization theory. There is a fruitful interplay between the theory of interference functions and convex optimization theory. By jointly exploiting the properties of interference functions, it is possible to design algorithms that outperform general-purpose techniques that only exploit convexity.
The title "network calculus" refers to the fact that the theory of interference functions constitutes a generic theoretical framework for the analysis of interference coupled systems. Certain operations within the framework are "closed," that is, combinations of interference functions are interference functions again. Also, certain properties are preserved under such operations. This, provides a methodology for analyzing different multiuser performance measures that can be expressed as interference functions or combinations of interference functions.

If the carriers of information are governed by quantum mechanics, new principles for information processing apply. This graduate textbook introduces the underlying mathematical theory for quantum communication, computation, and cryptography. A focus lies on the concept of quantum channels, understanding fi gures of merit, e.g. fidelities and entropies in the quantum world, and understanding the interrelationship of various quantum information processing protocols.

This book provides a comprehensive explanation of forward error correction, which is a vital part of communication systems. The book is written in such a way to make the subject easy and understandable for the reader. The book starts with a review of linear algebra to provide a basis for the text. The author then goes on to cover linear block codes, syndrome error correction, cyclic codes, Galois fields, BCH codes, Reed Solomon codes, and convolutional codes. Examples are provided throughout the text.

Kommunikation uber kulturelle Grenzen hinweg stellt die Beteiligten vor die Herausforderung, eine gemeinsame Sprache oder zumindest ein gemeinsames "Sprachregime" zu finden. Die Verwendung einer Lingua franca ist dabei nur eine - und nicht immer die optimale - Strategie zur Bewaltigung dieser Herausforderung. Die hier versammelten Beitrage von Sprachpraktiker/inne/n, aber auch von Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaftler/inne/n reflektieren die Problematik aus ihrer jeweils spezifischen Perspektive. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit gilt dabei der tschechisch-deutschen Grenzregion. Der Blick wird aber auch auf andere Konstellation einander benachbarter Sprachgemeinschaften sowie auf nicht-geographische Sprachgrenzen innerhalb spezifischer gesellschaftlicher Diskurse gerichtet.

Over the past 25 years, there has been an explosion of interest in the area of random tilings. The first book devoted to the topic, this timely text describes the mathematical theory of tilings. It starts from the most basic questions (which planar domains are tileable?), before discussing advanced topics about the local structure of very large random tessellations. The author explains each feature of random tilings of large domains, discussing several different points of view and leading on to open problems in the field. The book is based on upper-division courses taught to a variety of students but it also serves as a self-contained introduction to the subject. Test your understanding with the exercises provided and discover connections to a wide variety of research areas in mathematics, theoretical physics, and computer science, such as conformal invariance, determinantal point processes, Gibbs measures, high-dimensional random sampling, symmetric functions, and variational problems.

The global biodiversity crisis is one of humanity's most urgent problems, but even quantifying biological diversity is a difficult mathematical and conceptual challenge. This book brings new mathematical rigour to the ongoing debate. It was born of research in category theory, is given strength by information theory, and is fed by the ancient field of functional equations. It applies the power of the axiomatic method to a biological problem of pressing concern, but it also presents new theorems that stand up as mathematics in their own right, independently of any application. The question 'what is diversity?' has surprising mathematical depth, and this book covers a wide breadth of mathematics, from functional equations to geometric measure theory, from probability theory to number theory. Despite this range, the mathematical prerequisites are few: the main narrative thread of this book requires no more than an undergraduate course in analysis.

The book is a concise, self-contained and fully updated introduction to automata theory - a fundamental topic of computer sciences and engineering. The material is presented in a rigorous yet convincing way and is supplied with a wealth of examples, exercises and down-to-the earth convincing explanatory notes. An ideal text to a spectrum of one-term courses in computer sciences, both at the senior undergraduate and graduate students.