In this book for the first time two scientific fields - consensus formation and synchronization of communications - are presented together and examined through their interrelational aspects, of rapidly growing importance. Both fields have indeed attracted enormous research interest especially in relation to complex networks.
In networks of dynamic systems (or agents), consensus means to reach an agreement regarding a certain quantity of interest that depends on the state of all dynamical systems (agents). Consensus problems have a long history in control theory and computer sciences, and form the foundation of the field of distributed computing. Synchronization, which defines correlated-in-time behavior between different processes and roots going back to Huygens to the least, is now a highly popular, exciting and rapidly developing topic, with applications ranging from biological networks to mathematical epidemiology, and from processing information in the brain to engineering of communications devices.
The book reviews recent finding in both fields and describes novel approaches to consensus formation, where consensus is realized as an instance of the nonlinear dynamics paradigm of chaos synchronization. The chapters are written by world-known experts in both fields and cover topics ranging from fundaments to various applications of consensus and synchronization."

A review of the dissemination of spatial data. Topics addressed include: spatial information infrastructure and innovation; designing information policy research; and evaluating information use, access and dissemination. The work also contains comparative case studies of information dissemination.

"AutomaticControl of Atmospheric and Space Flight Vehicles" is perhaps the firstbook on the market to present a unified and straightforwardstudyof the design and analysis of automatic control systems for both atmospheric and space flight vehicles.Covering basic control theory and design concepts, it is meantas a textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate students in moderncourses on flight control systems.

In addition to the basics of flight control, this book covers a number ofupper-level topicsand will therefore be of interest not only to advanced students, but also toresearchers and practitioners in aeronautical engineering, applied mathematics, and systems/control theory."

This work addresses the topic of philosophical complexity, which shares certain assumptions with scientific complexity, cybernetics, and General Systems Theory, but which is also developing as a subject field in its own right. Specifically, the post-structural reading of philosophical complexity that was pioneered by Paul Cilliers is further developed in this study. To this end, the ideas of a number of contemporary French post-structural theorists and their predecessors - including Derrida, Nancy, Bataille, Levinas, Foucault, Saussure, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hegel - are introduced. The implications that their various insights hold for our understanding of complex human systems are teased out at the hand of the themes of economy, (social) ontology, subjectivity, epistemology, and ethics. The analyses are also illuminated at the hand of the problematic of the foreigner and the related challenges of showing hospitality to foreigners. The study presents a sophisticated account of both philosophical complexity and philosophies of difference. By relating these subject fields, the study also extends our understanding of philosophical complexity, and offers an original characterisation of the aforementioned philosophers as complex thinkers.

This monograph is devoted to construction of novel theoretical approaches of m- eling non-homogeneous structural members as well as to development of new and economically ef?cient (simultaneously keeping the required high engineering ac- racy)computationalalgorithmsofnonlineardynamics(statics)ofstronglynonlinear behavior of either purely continuous mechanical objects (beams, plates, shells) or hybrid continuous/lumped interacting mechanical systems. In general, the results presented in this monograph cannot be found in the - isting literature even with the published papers of the authors and their coauthors. We take a challenging and originally developed approach based on the integrated mathematical-numerical treatment of various continuous and lumped/continuous mechanical structural members, putting emphasis on mathematical and physical modeling as well as on the carefully prepared and applied novel numerical - gorithms used to solve the derived nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) mainly via Bubnov-Galerkin type approaches. The presented material draws on the ?elds of bifurcation, chaos, control, and s- bility of the objects governed by strongly nonlinear PDEs and ordinary differential equations (ODEs),and may have a positive impact on interdisciplinary ? elds of n- linear mechanics, physics, and applied mathematics. We show, for the ?rst time in a book, the complexity and fascinating nonlinear behavior of continual mechanical objects, which cannot be found in widely reported bifurcational and chaotic dyn- ics of lumped mechanical systems, i. e. , those governed by nonlinear ODEs.

In the mid-nineteenth century, American and British governments marched with great fanfare into the marketplace of knowledge and publishing. British royal commissions of inquiry, inspectorates, and parliamentary committees conducted famous social inquiries into child labor, poverty, housing, and factories. The American federal government studied Indian tribes, explored the West, and investigated the condition of the South during and after the Civil War.

Performing, printing, and then circulating these studies, government established an economy of exchange with its diverse constituencies. In this medium, which Frankel terms "print statism," not only tangible objects such as reports and books but knowledge itself changed hands. As participants, citizens assumed the standing of informants and readers.

Even as policy investigations and official reportage became a distinctive feature of the modern governing process, buttressing the claim of the state to represent its populace, government discovered an unintended consequence: it could exercise only limited control over the process of inquiry, the behavior of its emissaries as investigators or authors, and the fate of official reports once issued and widely circulated.

This study contributes to current debates over knowledge, print culture, and the growth of the state as well as the nature and history of the "public sphere." It interweaves innovative, theoretical discussions into meticulous, historical analysis.

In May 2002 a number of about 20 scientists from various disciplines were invited by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities to participate in an interdisciplinary workshop on structures and structure generating processes. The site was the beautiful little castle of Blankensee, south of Berlin. The disciplines represented ranged from mathematics and information theory, over various ?elds of engineering, biochemistry and biology, to the economic and social sciences. All participants presented talks explaining the nature of structures considered in their ?elds and the associated procedures of analysis. It soon became evident that the study of structures is indeed a common c- cern of virtually all disciplines. The motivation as well as the methods of analysis, however, differ considerably. In engineering, the generation of artifacts, such as infrastructures or technological processes, are of primary interest. Frequently, the analysis aims there at de?ning a simpli?ed mathematical model for the optimization of the structures and the structure generating processes. Mathematical or heuristic methods are applied, the latter preferably of the type of biology based evolutionary algorithms. On the other hand, setting up complex technical structures is not pos- ble by such simpli?ed model calculations but requires a different and less model but rather knowledge-based type of approach, using empirical rules rather than formal equations. In biochemistry, interest is frequently focussed on the structures of molecules, such as proteins or ribonucleic acids. Again, optimal structures can usually be de?ned.

Information Systems (IS) are a nearly omnipresent aspect of the modern world, playing crucial roles in the fields of science and engineering, business and law, art and culture, politics and government, and many others. As such, identity theft and unauthorized access to these systems are serious concerns. Theory and Practice of Cryptography Solutions for Secure Information Systems explores current trends in IS security technologies, techniques, and concerns, primarily through the use of cryptographic tools to safeguard valuable information resources. This reference book serves the needs of professionals, academics, and students requiring dedicated information systems free from outside interference, as well as developers of secure IS applications. This book is part of the Advances in Information Security, Privacy, and Ethics series collection.

Information retrieval (IR) aims at defining systems able to provide a fast and effective content-based access to a large amount of stored information. The aim of an IR system is to estimate the relevance of documents to users' information needs, expressed by means of a query. This is a very difficult and complex task, since it is pervaded with imprecision and uncertainty. Most of the existing IR systems offer a very simple model of IR, which privileges efficiency at the expense of effectiveness. A promising direction to increase the effectiveness of IR is to model the concept of "partially intrinsic" in the IR process and to make the systems adaptive, i.e. able to "learn" the user's concept of relevance. To this aim, the application of soft computing techniques can be of help to obtain greater flexibility in IR systems.

This book is based on the outcome of the "2012 Interdisciplinary Symposium on Complex Systems" held at the island of Kos. The book consists of 12 selected papers of the symposium starting with a comprehensive overview and classification of complexity problems, continuing by chapters about complexity, its observation, modeling and its applications to solving various problems including real-life applications. More exactly, readers will have an encounter with the structural complexity of vortex flows, the use of chaotic dynamics within evolutionary algorithms, complexity in synthetic biology, types of complexity hidden inside evolutionary dynamics and possible controlling methods, complexity of rugged landscapes, and more. All selected papers represent innovative ideas, philosophical overviews and state-of-the-art discussions on aspects of complexity. The book will be useful as instructional material for senior undergraduate and entry-level graduate students in computer science, physics, applied mathematics and engineering-type work in the area of complexity. The book will also be valuable as a resource of knowledge for practitioners who want to apply complexity to solve real-life problems in their own challenging applications. The authors and editors hope that readers will be inspired to do their own experiments and simulations, based on information reported in this book, thereby moving beyond the scope of the book.

Discrete Event Systems: Analysis and Control is the proceedings of WODES2000 (the 5th Workshop on Discrete Event Systems, held in Ghent, Belgium, on August 21-23, 2000). This book provides a survey of the current state of the art in the field of modeling, analysis and control synthesis of discrete event systems, lecture notes for a mini course on sensitivity analysis for performance evaluation of timed discrete event systems, and 48 carefully selected papers covering all areas of discrete event theory and the most important applications domains. Topics include automata theory and supervisory control (12); Petri net based models for discrete event systems, and their control synthesis (11); (max, +) and timed automata models (9); applications papers related to scheduling, failure detection, and implementation of supervisory controllers (7); formal description of PLCs (6); and finally, stochastic models of discrete event systems (3).

Phase transitions in disordered systems and related dynamical phenomena are a topic of intrinsically high interest in theoretical and experimental physics. This book presents a unified view, adopting concepts from each of the disjoint fields of disordered systems and nonlinear dynamics. Special attention is paid to the glass transition, from both experimental and theoretical viewpoints, to modern concepts of pattern formation, and to the application of the concepts of dynamical systems for understanding equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties of fluids and solids. The content is accessible to graduate students, but will also be of benefit to specialists, since the presentation extends as far as the topics of ongoing research work.

Cybernetical physics borrows methods from both theoretical physics and control engineering. It deals with the control of complex systems is one of the most important aspects in dealing with systems exhibiting nonlinear behavior or similar features that defy traditional control techniques. This book fully details this new discipline.

Arguing that widespread changes in human attitude and behaviour patterns are central to ensuring a more secure and sustainable future on earth, this book focuses on communication processes in development. The authors show how communication can be used to mobilize societies, to facilitate democratic and participatory decision-making, and to help people acquire new knowledge and skills. Among the issues explored are: social mobilization worldwide for child immunization; communication as a means of facilitating rapid advances in family planning; and the use of video to enable peasant farmers to participate in their own development. The book should be of interest to those working in development, both as practitioners and theorists, and to those concerned with politics and society in the developing world.

Here, the authors present modern methods of analysis for nonlinear systems which may occur in fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, or economics. They concentrate on the following topics, specific for such systems: (a) constructive existence results and regularity theorems for all weak solutions; (b) convergence results for solutions and their approximations; (c) uniform global behavior of solutions in time; and (d) pointwise behavior of solutions for autonomous problems with possible gaps by the phase variables. The general methodology for the investigation of dissipative dynamical systems with several applications including nonlinear parabolic equations of divergent form, nonlinear stochastic equations of parabolic type, unilateral problems, nonlinear PDEs on Riemannian manifolds with or without boundary, contact problems as well as particular examples is established. As such, the book is addressed to a wide circle of mathematical, mechanical and engineering readers.

This book collects the works presented at the 8th International Conference on Complex Networks (CompleNet) 2017 in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on March 21-24, 2017. CompleNet aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners working in areas related to complex networks. The past two decades has witnessed an exponential increase in the number of publications within this field. From biological systems to computer science, from economic to social systems, complex networks are becoming pervasive in many fields of science. It is this interdisciplinary nature of complex networks that CompleNet aims at addressing. The last decades have seen the emergence of complex networks as the language with which a wide range of complex phenomena in fields as diverse as physics, computer science, and medicine (to name a few) can be properly described and understood. This book provides a view of the state-of-the-art in this dynamic field and covers topics such as network controllability, social structure, online behavior, recommendation systems, and network structure.

The world in which classical positivistic science and technology obtained great success has vanished. However, the way of thinking promoted by that epoch still lingers in our social consciousness, sometimes as a burden. To conquer the short-comings of classical analytical science in the modern, ever more complex world, systems theory and its applications within systems science present an alternative to old paradigms.

Systems theorists see common principles in the structure and operation of systems of all kinds and sizes. They promote an interdisciplinary science adapted for a universal application with a common language and area of concepts. This approach is seen as a means of not only overcoming the fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation of the specialist, but also finding new solutions to problems created by the earlier "solution of problems".

This book introduces the systemic alternative. It is divided into two parts. The first is devoted to the historical background of the systems movement, and presents pioneering thoughts and theories of the area. Basic concepts of general systems theory with well-known laws and principles are discussed, as well as related topics like cybernetics and information theory.

The second part deals with some of the common applications of systems theory within systems science, such as artificial intelligence, management information systems and informatics. An attempt is made to predict the future of systems theory in a world apparently becoming fragmented and integrated at the same time.

To engage oneself in systems theory and its striving towards an applied universal science is a highly cross-scientific occupation. The reader will come intocontact with many different academic disciplines, and consequently the possibility of an all-round education -- something particularly needed in our over-specialized world.

This book provides an introduction for students, engineers and scientists to modern methods for computer simulation of systems involving continuous variables. Professor Murray-Smith draws on his many years of experience in teaching and applying continuous system simulation in engineering and biomedical applications to show his readers both the theory and practice of these techniques. His approach is practical throughout, placing particular emphasis on the use of simulation languages and other software tools widely used in the field. A simple simulation language is provided in disc with the book and used with examples and case studies from control, aeronautical and biomedical engineering to give readers hands-on experience. Commercially available software is also described and applied, and model validation and real time simulation techniques and applications are covered in detail. This book should be of interest to engineers and scientists in most processing and manufacturing industry, and most areas of engineering and physical science.

A transfinite graph or electrical network of the first rank is obtained conceptually by connecting conventionally infinite graphs and networks together at their infinite extremities. This process can be repeated to obtain a hierarchy of transfiniteness whose ranks increase through the countable ordinals. This idea, which is of recent origin, has enriched the theories of graphs and networks with radically new constructs and research problems. The book provides a more accessible introduction to the subject that, though sacrificing some generality, captures the essential ideas of transfiniteness for graphs and networks. Thus, for example, some results concerning discrete potentials and random walks on transfinite networks can now be presented more concisely. Conversely, the simplifications enable the development of many new results that were previously unavailable. Topics and features: *A simplified exposition provides an introduction to transfiniteness for graphs and networks.*Various results for conventional graphs are extended transfinitely. *Minty's powerful analysis of monotone electrical networks is also extended transfinitely.*Maximum principles for node voltages in linear transfinite networks are established. *A concise treatment of random walks on transfinite networks is developed. *Conventional theory is expanded with radically new constructs. Mathematicians, operations researchers and electrical engineers, in particular, graph theorists, electrical circuit theorists, and probabalists will find an accessible exposition of an advanced subject.

This book considers the design and development of nanoelectronic computing circuits, systems and architectures focusing particularly on memristors, which represent one of today's latest technology breakthroughs in nanoelectronics. The book studies, explores, and addresses the related challenges and proposes solutions for the smooth transition from conventional circuit technologies to emerging computing memristive nanotechnologies. Its content spans from fundamental device modeling to emerging storage system architectures and novel circuit design methodologies, targeting advanced non-conventional analog/digital massively parallel computational structures. Several new results on memristor modeling, memristive interconnections, logic circuit design, memory circuit architectures, computer arithmetic systems, simulation software tools, and applications of memristors in computing are presented. High-density memristive data storage combined with memristive circuit-design paradigms and computational tools applied to solve NP-hard artificial intelligence problems, as well as memristive arithmetic-logic units, certainly pave the way for a very promising memristive era in future electronic systems. Furthermore, these graph-based NP-hard problems are solved on memristive networks, and coupled with Cellular Automata (CA)-inspired computational schemes that enable computation within memory. All chapters are written in an accessible manner and are lavishly illustrated. The book constitutes an informative cornerstone for young scientists and a comprehensive reference to the experienced reader, hoping to stimulate further research on memristive devices, circuits, and systems.

This book provides an introduction to discrete dynamical systems - a framework of analysis that is commonly used in the ?elds of biology, demography, ecology, economics, engineering, ?nance, and physics. The book characterizes the fundamental factors that govern the quantitative and qualitative trajectories of a variety of deterministic, discrete dynamical systems, providing solution methods for systems that can be solved analytically and methods of qualitative analysis for those systems that do not permit or necessitate an explicit solution. The analysis focuses initially on the characterization of the factors that govern the evolution of state variables in the elementary context of one-dimensional, ?rst-order, linear, autonomous systems. The f- damental insights about the forces that a?ect the evolution of these - ementary systems are subsequently generalized, and the determinants of the trajectories of multi-dimensional, nonlinear, higher-order, non- 1 autonomous dynamical systems are established. Chapter 1 focuses on the analysis of the evolution of state variables in one-dimensional, ?rst-order, autonomous systems. It introduces a method of solution for these systems, and it characterizes the traj- tory of a state variable, in relation to a steady-state equilibrium of the system, examining the local and global (asymptotic) stability of this steady-state equilibrium. The ?rst part of the chapter characterizes the factors that determine the existence, uniqueness and stability of a steady-state equilibrium in the elementary context of one-dimensional, ?rst-order, linear autonomous systems.

The aim of the book is to present the state of the art of the theory of symmetric (Hermitian) matrix Riccati equations and to contribute to the development of the theory of non-symmetric Riccati equations as well as to certain classes of coupled and generalized Riccati equations occurring in differential games and stochastic control. The volume offers a complete treatment of generalized and coupled Riccati equations. It deals with differential, discrete-time, algebraic or periodic symmetric and non-symmetric equations, with special emphasis on those equations appearing in control and systems theory. Extensions to Riccati theory allow to tackle robust control problems in a unified approach.

The book is intended to make available classical and recent results to engineers and mathematicians alike. It is accessible to graduate students in mathematics, applied mathematics, control engineering, physics or economics. Researchers working in any of the fields where Riccati equations are used can find the main results with the proper mathematical background.

Over the past 20 years, informal dispute resolution has played an increasingly important role in the way people handle their conflicts. Mediators are said to act as neutral third parties who empower disputants to negotiate their own mutually acceptable agreement. Shailor proposes a definition of empowerment in which communication is the primary social process, the ongoing symbolic interaction which not only reflects reality, but constitutes it. Using this definition, he analyzes the process of empowerment by examining the verbal and nonverbal interactions in three mediation cases, identifying the patterns of communication through which empowerment does or does not occur. Shailor concludes that mediators need to develop a more sophisticated understanding of their interactions with disputants, including an understanding of the ways that mediators can become enmeshed in the disputants' ongoing struggles.

Fault Diagnosis of Dynamic Systems provides readers with a glimpse into the fundamental issues and techniques of fault diagnosis used by Automatic Control (FDI) and Artificial Intelligence (DX) research communities. The book reviews the standard techniques and approaches widely used in both communities. It also contains benchmark examples and case studies that demonstrate how the same problem can be solved using the presented approaches. The book also introduces advanced fault diagnosis approaches that are currently still being researched, including methods for non-linear, hybrid, discrete-event and software/business systems, as well as, an introduction to prognosis. Fault Diagnosis of Dynamic Systems is valuable source of information for researchers and engineers starting to work on fault diagnosis and willing to have a reference guide on the main concepts and standard approaches on fault diagnosis. Readers with experience on one of the two main communities will also find it useful to learn the fundamental concepts of the other community and the synergies between them. The book is also open to researchers or academics who are already familiar with the standard approaches, since they will find a collection of advanced approaches with more specific and advanced topics or with application to different domains. Finally, engineers and researchers looking for transferable fault diagnosis methods will also find useful insights in the book.