"Control of Complex Systems: Structural Constraints and Uncertainty" focuses on control design under information structure constraints, with a particular emphasis on large-scale systems. The complexity of such systems poses serious computational challenges and severely restricts the types of feedback laws that can be used in practice. This book systematically addresses the main issues, and provides a number of applications that illustrate potential design methods, most which use Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs), which have become a popular design tool over the past two decades. Authors Aleksandar I. Zecevic and Dragoslav D. Siljak use their years of experience in the control field to also:

• Address the issues of large-scale systems as they relate to robust control and linear matrix inequalities
• Discuss a new approach to applying standard LMI techniques to large-scale systems, combining graphic-theoretic decomposition techniques with appropriate low-rank numerical approximations and dramatically reducing the computational effort
• Providing numerous examples and a wide variety of applications, ranging from electric power systems and nonlinear circuits to mechanical problems and dynamic Boolean networks

"Control of Complex Systems: Structural Constraints and Uncertainty" will appeal to practicing engineers, researchers and students working in control design and other related areas.

This book covers the work of Erik W. Aslaksen who continues to develop the view of society and its evolution published in earlier work - The Social Bond (Springer 2018), The Stability of Society (Springer 2020), and Measures of Social Evolution (Springer 2021), bringing together core material of that work with the results of recent investigations in order to present the evolution of society as an integrated and continuous story leading right up to the present time. A story of human action driven by our beliefs, desires, and an ideology arising out of our ability to transform and exploit our environment through the development and application of technology. The distinguishing feature of the work is the treatment of society as an information-processing system and applying the system methodology for handling complexity, as it is applied, e.g., in engineering. This focus on information is particularly pertinent in the current circumstances, where the world has arrived at a critical point in its history through the conjunction of a number of issues that appear to be spiralling out of control: Global warming and the associated climate change, the destruction of our environment through such processes as land clearing and industrialisation with associated loss of biodiversity, the rapidly increasing visibility of the inequality in the quality of life with associated tensions, and above all, the determination of the US-led Western alliance to cling to its hegemonial role, apparently at all cost. With the sophistication and proliferation of nuclear weapons, the latter has the potential to bring on the end of civilisation as we know it. The resolution of any of these issues depends on the information available to all parties involved, and hence, the availability and quality of information is seen as the crucial and overarching issue of the present time. A number of aspects of this issue, including the role of education, economic inequality, and the control of the media, are treated in some detail, and proposals for some small steps in the right direction are put forward.

This book, dedicated to Professor Georgi M. Dimirovski on his anniversary, contains new research directions, challenges, and many relevant applications related to many aspects within the broadly perceived areas of systems and control, including signal analysis and intelligent systems. The project comprises two volumes with papers written by well known and very active researchers and practitioners. The first volume is focused on more foundational aspects related to general issues in systems science and mathematical systems, various problems in control and automation, and the use of computational and artificial intelligence in the context of systems modeling and control. The second volume is concerned with a presentation of relevant applications, notably in robotics, computer networks, telecommunication, fault detection/diagnosis, as well as in biology and medicine, and economic, financial, and social systems too.

Knowledge-Based Intelligent System Advancements: Systemic and Cybernetic Approaches presents selected new AI-based ideas and methods for analysis and decision making in intelligent information systems derived using systemic and cybernetic approaches. This book is useful for researchers, practitioners and students interested intelligent information retrieval and processing, machine learning and adaptation, knowledge discovery, applications of fuzzy based methods and neural networks.

This book uses rigorous mathematical analysis to advance opinion dynamics models for social networks in three major directions. First, a novel model is proposed to capture how a discrepancy between an individual's private and expressed opinions can develop due to social pressures that arise in group situations or through extremists deliberately shaping public opinion. Detailed theoretical analysis of the final opinion distribution is followed by use of the model to study Asch's seminal experiments on conformity, and the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance. Second, the DeGroot-Friedkin model for evolution of an individual's social power (self-confidence) is developed in a number of directions. The key result establishes that an individual's initial social power is forgotten exponentially fast, even when the network changes over time; eventually, an individual's social power depends only on the (changing) network structure. Last, a model for the simultaneous discussion of multiple logically interdependent topics is proposed. To ensure that a consensus across the opinions of all individuals is achieved, it turns out that the interpersonal interactions must be weaker than an individual's introspective cognitive process for establishing logical consistency among the topics. Otherwise, the individual may experience cognitive overload and the opinion system becomes unstable. Conclusions of interest to control engineers, social scientists, and researchers from other relevant disciplines are discussed throughout the thesis with support from both social science and control literature.

This book describes a comprehensive approach to applying systems science formally to the deep analysis of a wide variety of complex systems. Detailed 'how-to' examples of the three phases (analysis-modeling-design) of systems science are applied to systems of various types (machines, organic (e.g. ecosystem), and supra-organic (e.g. business organizations and government). The complexity of the global system has reached proportions that seriously challenge our abilities to understand the consequences of our use of technology, modification of natural ecosystems, or even how to govern ourselves. For this reason, complex mathematics is eschewed when simpler structures will suffice, allowing the widest possible audience to apply and benefit from the available tools and concepts of systems science in their own work. The book shows, in detail, how to functionally and structurally deconstruct complex systems using a fundamental language of systems. It shows how to capture the discovered details in a structured knowledge base from which abstract models can be derived for simulation. The knowledge base is also shown to be a basis for generating system design specifications for human-built artifacts, or policy recommendations/policy mechanisms for socio-economic-ecological systems management. The book builds on principles and methods found in the authors' textbook Principles of Systems Science (co-authored with Michael Kalton), but without prerequisites. It will appeal to a broad audience that deals with complex systems every day, from design engineers to economic and ecological systems managers and policymakers.

The Universal Service Desk (USD) - Implementing, controlling and improving service delivery defines what a USD is, why it is valuable to an organisation and how to build and implement one. It also discusses the evolution of the USD as part of integrated workplace management. Understand the essentials of any USD - buy this book today!

With the latest advances in shielding technology come questions about techniques, approaches and economic benefits. This single-source volume has the answers professionals need. This complete, up-to-date reference guide covers the fundamentals of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and cable shielding.

This book contains all refereed papers that were accepted to the fourth edition of the - Complex Systems Design & Management - (CSD&M 2013) international conference which took place in Paris (France) from December 4-6, 2013.

These proceedings cover the most recent trends in the emerging field of complex systems sciences & practices from an industrial and academic perspective, including the main industrial domains (transport, defense & security, electronics, energy & environment, e-services), scientific & technical topics (systems fundamentals, systems architecture & engineering, systems metrics & quality, systemic tools) and system types (transportation systems, embedded systems, software & information systems, systems of systems, artificial ecosystems).

The CSD&M 2013 conference is organized under the guidance of the CESAMES non-profit organization. "

Given the pervasive nature of information technology and information systems in the modern world, the design and development of IS and IT are critical issues of concern. New research topics continuously emerge in tandem with the latest developments in technology-E-Business, Knowledge Management, Business Process Reengineering, for example. However, when the initial flurry of research abates and the "gloss" of these areas has diminished somewhat, as it inevitably does, the enduring core issue remains as to how to develop systems to fully exploit these new areas. Both information systems and information technology are interpreted fairly broadly in this book. Of particular interest to the editors were research studies that facilitate an understanding of the role and impact of information technology on society, organizations, and individuals, and which strive to improve the design and use of information systems in that context. The contributions to the book are categorized into four broad themes. First is the core issue of developing information systems in the current environment. In this section several fundamental challenges to current assumptions and conventional wisdom in information systems development are posed. The second section considers the management of information systems. Again, the conventional wisdom is challenged. The penultimate section focuses on researching information systems. Here, various issues to do with research methods are surfaced, and the use of leading-edge research methods in information systems development is pioneered and discussed. Finally, a section is devoted to understanding information systems. This section addresses the perennial challenge in the IS field in relation to the conceptual foundations of the field. This volume comprises the proceedings of the Working Conference on Realigning Research and Practice in Information Systems Development: The Social and Organizational Perspective, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Boise, Idaho, USA in July 2001. Given the central importance of information systems development in the current age, this eclectic book, which considers the topic from a rich and varied set of perspectives, will be essential reading for researchers and practitioners working in all areas of IS and IT.

This book covers the two broad areas of the electronics and electrical aspects of control applications, highlighting the many different types of control systems of relevance to real-life control system design. The control techniques presented are state-of-the-art. In the electronics section, readers will find essential information on microprocessor, microcontroller, mechatronics and electronics control. The low-level assembly programming language performs basic input/output control techniques as well as controlling the stepper motor and PWM dc motor. In the electrical section, the book addresses the complete elevator PLC system design, neural network plant control, load flow analysis, and process control, as well as machine vision topics. Illustrative diagrams, circuits and programming examples and algorithms help to explain the details of the system function design. Readers will find a wealth of computer control and industrial automation practices and applications for modern industries, as well as the educational sector.

This monograph introduces methods for handling filtering and control problems in nonlinear stochastic systems arising from network-induced phenomena consequent on limited communication capacity. Such phenomena include communication delay, packet dropout, signal quantization or saturation, randomly occurring nonlinearities and randomly occurring uncertainties. The text is self-contained, beginning with an introduction to nonlinear stochastic systems, network-induced phenomena and filtering and control, moving through a collection of the latest research results which focuses on the three aspects of: * the state-of-the-art of nonlinear filtering and control; * recent advances in recursive filtering and sliding mode control; and * their potential for application in networked control systems, and concluding with some ideas for future research work. New concepts such as the randomly occurring uncertainty and the probability-constrained performance index are proposed to make the network models as realistic as possible. The power of combinations of such recent tools as the completing-the-square and sums-of-squares techniques, Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs matrix inequalities, difference linear matrix inequalities and parameter-dependent matrix inequalities is exploited in treating the mathematical and computational challenges arising from nonlinearity and stochasticity. Nonlinear Stochastic Systems with Network-Induced Phenomena establishes a unified framework of control and filtering which will be of value to academic researchers in bringing structure to problems associated with an important class of networked system and offering new means of solving them. The significance of the new concepts, models and methods presented for practical control engineering and signal processing will also make it a valuable reference for engineers dealing with nonlinear control and filtering problems.

Selected Areas in Cryptography brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast moving area. Selected Areas in Cryptography serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging research issues in the field.

This book presents new systems and circuits for implantable biomedical applications, using a non-conventional way to transmit energy and data via ultrasound. The authors discuses the main constrains (e.g. implant size, battery recharge time, data rate, accuracy of the acoustic models) from the definition of the ultrasound system specification to the in-vitro validation.The system described meets the safety requirements for ultrasound exposure limits in diagnostic ultrasound applications, according to FDA regulations. Readers will see how the novel design of power management architecture will meet the constraints set by FDA regulations for maximum energy exposure in the human body. Coverage also includes the choice of the acoustic transducer, driven by optimum positioning and size of the implanted medical device. Throughout the book, links between physics, electronics and medical aspects are covered to give a complete view of the ultrasound system described. Provides a complete, system-level perspective on the use of ultrasound as energy source for medical implants; Discusses system design concerns regarding wireless power transmission and wireless data communication, particularly for a system in which both are performed on the same channel/frequency; Describes an experimental study on implantable battery powered biomedical systems; Presents a fully-integrated, implantable system and hermetically sealed packaging.

I believe it was the message of the day one Sunday, when he preached about hell. I left church scared for the first time, in fear because of how he described hell. This then started my lifelong quest to understand why. Why is there a hell, and how could this be fair? I did not ask for this. I thought, Who would want to take such a chance to live life and not get these rules right and suffer eternity in hell? This book begins by describing the events of the war in heaven as described in Revelation 12:7-11, as a foundation establishing that life did exist before the earth was created, the proof also being found in Genesis itself. That is where we find Satan as a serpent. This is what could be considered as "Exhibit A"-Satan in the Garden of Eden, proof of his existence on earth after he was cast down from heaven into the earth. This book presents many more important questions that serve as a key to unlocking the mysteries of creation. One example is, how, why, and when our spirits were created. My research and years of study of the Bible reveal to me that our spirits were created before we were born and will still exist after we die.

In the present book, the starting line is defined by a morphogenetic perspective on human communication and culture. The focus is on visual communication, music, religion (myth), and language, i.e., on the "symbolic forms" at the heart of human cultures (Ernst Cassirer). The term "morphogenesis" has more precisely the meaning given by Rene Thom (1923-2002) in his book "Morphogenesis and Structural Stability" (1972) and the notions of "self-organization" and cooperation of subsystems in the "Synergetics" of Hermann Haken (1927- ). The naturalization of communication and cultural phenomena is the favored strategy, but the major results of the involved disciplines (art history, music theory, religious science, and linguistics) are respected. Visual art from the Paleolithic to modernity stands for visual communication. The present book focuses on studies of classical painting and sculpture (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci, William Turner, and Henry Moore) and modern art (e.g., Jackson Pollock and Joseph Beuys). Musical morphogenesis embraces classical music (from J. S. Bach to Arnold Schoenberg) and political songwriting (Bob Dylan, Leonhard Cohen). The myths of pre-literary societies show the effects of self-organization in the re-assembly (bricolage) of traditions. Classical polytheistic and monotheistic religions demonstrate the unfolding of basic germs (religious attractors) and their reduction in periods of crisis, the self-organization of complex religious networks, and rationalized macro-structures (in theologies). Significant tendencies are analyzed in the case of Buddhism and Christianism. Eventually, a holistic view of symbolic communication and human culture emerges based on state- of- the- art in evolutionary biology, cognitive science, linguistics, and semiotics (philosophy of symbolic forms).

This original and timely monograph describes a unique self-contained excursion that reveals to the readers the roles of two basic cognitive abilities, i.e. intention recognition and arranging commitments, in the evolution of cooperative behavior. This book analyses intention recognition, an important ability that helps agents predict others behavior, in its artificial intelligence and evolutionary computational modeling aspects, and proposes a novel intention recognition method. Furthermore, the book presents a new framework for intention-based decision making and illustrates several ways in which an ability to recognize intentions of others can enhance a decision making process. By employing the new intention recognition method and the tools of evolutionary game theory, this book introduces computational models demonstrating that intention recognition promotes the emergence of cooperation within populations of self-regarding agents. Finally, the book describes how commitment provides a pathway to the evolution of cooperative behavior, and how it further empowers intention recognition, thereby leading to a combined improved strategy. "

This book addresses the COVID-19 pandemic from a quantitative perspective based on mathematical models and methods largely used in nonlinear physics. It aims to study COVID-19 epidemics in countries and SARS-CoV-2 infections in individuals from the nonlinear physics perspective and to model explicitly COVID-19 data observed in countries and virus load data observed in COVID-19 patients. The first part of this book provides a short technical introduction into amplitude spaces given by eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and amplitudes.In the second part of the book, mathematical models of epidemiology are introduced such as the SIR and SEIR models and applied to describe COVID-19 epidemics in various countries around the world. In the third part of the book, virus dynamics models are considered and applied to infections in COVID-19 patients. This book is written for researchers, modellers, and graduate students in physics and medicine, epidemiology and virology, biology, applied mathematics, and computer sciences. This book identifies the relevant mechanisms behind past COVID-19 outbreaks and in doing so can help efforts to stop future COVID-19 outbreaks and other epidemic outbreaks. Likewise, this book points out the physics underlying SARS-CoV-2 infections in patients and in doing so supports a physics perspective to address human immune reactions to SARS-CoV-2 infections and similar virus infections.

The essence of this book can be found in a line written by the ancient Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca: "Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid". This sentence summarizes the features of the phenomenon that we call "collapse," which is typically sudden and often unexpected, like the proverbial "house of cards." But why are such collapses so common, and what generates them? Several books have been published on the subject, including the well known "Collapse" by Jared Diamond (2005), "The collapse of complex societies" by Joseph Tainter (1998) and "The Tipping Point," by Malcom Gladwell (2000). Why The Seneca Effect? This book is an ambitious attempt to pull these various strands together by describing collapse from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint. The reader will discover how collapse is a collective phenomenon that occurs in what we call today "complex systems," with a special emphasis on system dynamics and the concept of "feedback." From this foundation, Bardi applies the theory to real-world systems, from the mechanics of fracture and the collapse of large structures to financial collapses, famines and population collapses, the fall of entire civilzations, and the most dreadful collapse we can imagine: that of the planetary ecosystem generated by overexploitation and climate change. The final objective of the book is to describe a conclusion that the ancient stoic philosophers had already discovered long ago, but that modern system science has rediscovered today. If you want to avoid collapse you need to embrace change, not fight it. Neither a book about doom and gloom nor a cornucopianist's dream, The Seneca Effect goes to the heart of the challenges that we are facing today, helping us to manage our future rather than be managed by it.

Recently, the subject of nonlinear control systems analysis has grown rapidly and this book provides a simple and self-contained presentation of their stability and feedback stabilization which enables the reader to learn and understand major techniques used in mathematical control theory. In particular: the important techniques of proving global stability properties are presented closely linked with corresponding methods of nonlinear feedback stabilization; a general framework of methods for proving stability is given, thus allowing the study of a wide class of nonlinear systems, including finite-dimensional systems described by ordinary differential equations, discrete-time systems, systems with delays and sampled-data systems; approaches to the proof of classical global stability properties are extended to non-classical global stability properties such as non-uniform-in-time stability and input-to-output stability; and new tools for stability analysis and control design of a wide class of nonlinear systems are introduced. The presentational emphasis of Stability and Stabilization of Nonlinear Systems is theoretical but the theory s importance for concrete control problems is highlighted with a chapter specifically dedicated to applications and with numerous illustrative examples. Researchers working on nonlinear control theory will find this monograph of interest while graduate students of systems and control can also gain much insight and assistance from the methods and proofs detailed in this book."

This book systematically presents the most recent progress in stability and control of impulsive systems with delays. Impulsive systems have recently attracted continued high research interests because they provide a natural framework for mathematical modeling of many real-world processes. It focuses not only on impulsive delayed systems, but also impulsive systems with delayed impulses and impulsive systems with event-triggered mechanism, including their Lyapunov stability, finite-time stability and input-to-state stability synthesis. Special attention is paid to the bilateral effects of the delayed impulses, where comprehensive stability properties are discussed in the framework of time-dependent and state-dependent delays. New original work with event-triggered impulsive control and its applications in multi-agent systems and collective dynamics are also provided. This book will be of use to specialists who are interested in the theory of impulsive differential equations and impulsive control theory, as well as high technology specialists who work in the fields of complex networks and applied mathematics. Also, instructors teaching graduate courses and graduate students will find this book a valuable source of nonlinear system theory.

Complex System Reliability presents a state-of-the-art treatment of complex multi-channel system reliability assessment and provides the requisite tools, techniques and algorithms required for designing, evaluating and optimizing ultra-reliable redundant systems. Critical topics that make Complex System Reliability a unique and definitive resource include: * redundant system analysis for k-out-of-n systems (including complex systems with embedded k-out-of-n structures) involving both perfect and imperfect fault coverage; * imperfect fault coverage analysis techniques, including algorithms for assessing the reliability of redundant systems in which each element is subject to a given coverage value (element level coverage) or in which the system uses voting to avoid the effects of a failed element (fault level coverage); and * state-of-the-art binary decision diagram analysis techniques, including the latest and most efficient algorithms for the reliability assessment of large, complex redundant systems. This practical presentation includes numerous fully worked examples that provide detailed explanations of both the underlying design principles and the techniques (such as combinatorial, recursive and binary decision diagram algorithms) used to obtain quantitative results. Many of the worked examples are based on the design of modern digital fly-by-wire control system technology. Complex System Reliability provides in-depth coverage of systems subject to either perfect or imperfect fault coverage and also the most recent techniques for correctly assessing the reliability of redundant systems that use mid-value-select voting as their primary means of redundancy management. It is a valuable resource for those involved in the design and reliability assessment of highly reliable systems, particularly in the aerospace and automotive sectors.

Discontinuity in Nonlinear Physical Systems explores recent developments in experimental research in this broad field, organized in four distinct sections. Part I introduces the reader to the fractional dynamics and Lie group analysis for nonlinear partial differential equations. Part II covers chaos and complexity in nonlinear Hamiltonian systems, important to understand the resonance interactions in nonlinear dynamical systems, such as Tsunami waves and wildfire propagations; as well as Lev flights in chaotic trajectories, dynamical system synchronization and DNA information complexity analysis. Part III examines chaos and periodic motions in discontinuous dynamical systems, extensively present in a range of systems, including piecewise linear systems, vibro-impact systems and drilling systems in engineering. And in Part IV, engineering and financial nonlinearity are discussed. The mechanism of shock wave with saddle-node bifurcation and rotating disk stability will be presented, and the financial nonlinear models will be discussed.