Global networks, which are the primary pillars of the modern manufacturing industry and supply chains, can only cope with the new challenges, requirements and demands when supported by new computing and Internet-based technologies. Cloud Manufacturing: Distributed Computing Technologies for Global and Sustainable Manufacturing introduces a new paradigm for scalable service-oriented sustainable and globally distributed manufacturing systems. The eleven chapters in this book provide an updated overview of the latest technological development and applications in relevant research areas. Following an introduction to the essential features of Cloud Computing, chapters cover a range of methods and applications such as the factors that actually affect adoption of the Cloud Computing technology in manufacturing companies and new geometrical simplification method to stream 3-Dimensional design and manufacturing data via the Internet. This is further supported case studies and real life data for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) remanufacturing. This compilation of up to date research and literature can be used as a textbook or reference for mechanical, manufacturing, and computer engineering graduate students and researchers for efficient utilization, deployment and development of distributed and Cloud manufacturing systems, services and applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12 European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks, EWSN 2015, held in Porto, Portugal, in February 2015. The 14 full papers and 9 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 85 submissions. They cover a wide range of topics grouped into five sessions: services and applications, mobility and delay-tolerance, routing and data dissemination, and human-centric sensing.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems focuses on data management, knowledge discovery and knowledge processing, which are core and hot topics in computer science. Since the 1990s, the Internet has become the main driving force behind application development in all domains. An increase in the demand for resource sharing across different sites connected through networks has led to an evolution of data- and knowledge-management systems from centralized systems to decentralized systems enabling large-scale distributed applications providing high scalability. Current decentralized systems still focus on data and knowledge as their main resource. Feasibility of these systems relies basically on P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques and the support of agent systems with scaling and decentralized control. Synergy between grids, P2P systems and agent technologies is the key to data- and knowledge-centered systems in large-scale environments. This, the 17th issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, contains extended and revised versions of five papers, selected from the 24 full and 8 short papers presented at the 15th International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery, DaWaK 2013, held in Prague, The Czech Republic, in August 2013. Of the five papers, two cover data warehousing aspects related to query processing optimization in advanced platforms, specifically Map Reduce and parallel databases, and three cover knowledge discovery, specifically the causal network inference problem, dimensionality reduction, and the quality-of-pattern-mining task.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Computer Music Modeling and Retrieval, CMMR 2013, held in Marseille, France, in October 2013. The 38 conference papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 94 submissions. The chapters reflect the interdisciplinary nature of this conference with following topics: augmented musical instruments and gesture recognition, music and emotions: representation, recognition, and audience/performers studies, the art of sonification, when auditory cues shape human sensorimotor performance, music and sound data mining, interactive sound synthesis, non-stationarity, dynamics and mathematical modeling, image-sound interaction, auditory perception and cognitive inspiration, and modeling of sound and music computational musicology.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the First International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems, PhyCS 2014, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in January 2014. The 10 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: methodologies and methods; devices; applications; and human factors.

Embedded systems have been almost invisibly pervading our daily lives for several decades. They facilitate smooth operations in avionics, automotive electronics, or telecommunication. New problems arise by the increasing employment, interconnection, and communication of embedded systems in heterogeneous environments: How secure are these embedded systems against attacks or breakdowns? Therefore, how can embedded systems be designed to be more secure? How can embedded systems autonomically react to threats? Facing these questions, Sorin A. Huss is significantly involved in the exploration of design methodologies for secure embedded systems. This Festschrift is dedicated to him and his research on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

This two volume set LNAI 8917 and 8918 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2014, held in Guangzhou, China, in December 2014. The 109 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 159 submissions. The papers aim at enhancing the sharing of individual experiences and expertise in intelligent robotics with particular emphasis on technical challenges associated with varied applications such as biomedical applications, industrial automations, surveillance, and sustainable mobility.

Information Processing and Security Systems is a collection of forty papers that were originally presented at an international multi-conference on Advanced Computer Systems (ACS) and Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management Applications (CISIM) held in Elk, Poland. This volume describes the latest developments in advanced computer systems and their applications within artificial intelligence, biometrics and information technology security. The volume also includes contributions on computational methods, algorithms and applications, computational science, education and industrial management applications.

I want to express my sincere thanks to all authors who submitted research papers to support the Third IFIP International Conference on Computer and Computing Te- nologies in Agriculture and the Third Symposium on Development of Rural Infor- tion (CCTA 2009) held in China, during October 14-17, 2009. This conference was hosted by the CICTA (EU-China Centre for Information & Communication Technologies, China Agricultural University), China National En- neering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture, Asian Conf- ence on Precision Agriculture, International Federation for Information Processing, Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering, Beijing Society for Information Te- nology in Agriculture, and the Chinese Society for Agricultural Machinery. The pla- num sponsor includes the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Ministry of Agriculture of China, Ministry of Education of China, among others. The CICTA (EU-China Centre for Information & Communication Technologies, China Agricultural University) focuses on research and development of advanced and practical technologies applied in agriculture and on promoting international communi- tion and cooperation. It has successfully held three International Conferences on C- puter and Computing Technologies in Agriculture, namely CCTA 2007, CCTA 2008 and CCTA 2009. Sustainable agriculture is the focus of the whole world currently, and therefore the application of information technology in agriculture is becoming more and more - portant. 'Informatized agriculture' has been sought by many countries recently in order to scientifically manage agriculture to achieve low costs and high incomes.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Knowledge Management and Acquisition for Intelligent Systems, PKAW 2014, held in Gold Cost, Qld, Australia, in December 2014. The 18 full papers and 4 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 initial submissions. They deal with knowledge acquisition, expert systems, intelligent agents, ontology engineering, foundations of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, Web mining, information systems, Web and other applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Knowledge Representation for Health Care, KR4HC 2014, held as part of the Vienna Summer of Logic, VSL 2014, in Vienna, Austria, in July 2014. The workshop aimed at attracting the interest of novel research and advances contributing in the definition, representation and exploitation of health care knowledge in medical informatics. The 12 revised full research papers and 4 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions.

The two-volume set LNCS 8618 and 8619 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference EuroHaptics 2014, held in Versailles, France, in June 2014. The 118 papers (36 oral presentations and 82 poster presentations) presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 183 submissions. Furthermore, 27 demos were exhibited, each of them resulting in a short paper included in the volumes. These proceedings reflect the multidisciplinary nature of EuroHaptics and cover topics such as human-computer interaction, human-robot interactions, neuroscience, perception and psychophysics, biomechanics and motor control, modelling and simulation; and a broad range of applications in medicine, rehabilitation, art, and design.

It is widely acknowledged that the cost of validation and testing comprises a s- nificant percentage of the overall development costs for electronic systems today, and is expected to escalate sharply in the future. Many studies have shown that up to 70% of the design development time and resources are spent on functional verification. Functional errors manifest themselves very early in the design flow, and unless they are detected up front, they can result in severe consequence- both financially and from a safety viewpoint. Indeed, several recent instances of high-profile functional errors (e. g. , the Pentium FDIV bug) have resulted in - creased attention paid to verifying the functional correctness of designs. Recent efforts have proposed augmenting the traditional RTL simulation-based validation methodology with formal techniques in an attempt to uncover hard-to-find c- ner cases, with the goal of trying to reach RTL functional verification closure. However, what is often not highlighted is the fact that in spite of the tremendous time and effort put into such efforts at the RTL and lower levels of abstraction, the complexity of contemporary embedded systems makes it difficult to guarantee functional correctness at the system level under all possible operational scenarios. The problem is exacerbated in current System-on-Chip (SOC) design meth- ologies that employ Intellectual Property (IP) blocks composed of processor cores, coprocessors, and memory subsystems. Functional verification becomes one of the major bottlenecks in the design of such systems.

Multi-Agent Systems are a promising technology to develop the next generation open distributed complex software systems. The main focus of the research community has been on the development of concepts (concerning both mental and social attitudes), architectures, techniques, and general approaches to the analysis and specification of multi-agent systems. This contribution has been fragmented, without any clear way of "putting it all together", rendering it inaccessible to students and young researchers, non-experts, and practitioners. Successful multi-agent systems development is guaranteed only if we can bridge the gap from analysis and design to effective implementation. Multi-Agent Programming: Languages, Tools and Applications presents a number of mature and influential multi-agent programming languages, platforms, development tools and methodologies, and realistic applications, summarizing the state of the art in an accessible manner for professionals and computer science students at all levels.

In Security Trends for FPGA's the authors present an analysis of current threats against embedded systems and especially FPGAs. They discuss about requirements according to the FIPS standard in order to build a secure system. This point is of paramount importance as it guarantees the level of security of a system. Also highlighted are current vulnerabilities of FPGAs at all the levels of the security pyramid. It is essential from a design point of view to be aware of all the levels in order to provide a comprehensive solution. The strength of a system is defined by its weakest point; there is no reason to enhance other protection means, if the weakest point remains untreated. Many severe attacks have considered this weakness in order not to face brute force attack complexity. Several solutions are proposed in Security Trends for FPGA's especially at the logical, architecture and system levels in order to provide a global solution.

Analog Circuit Design contains the contribution of 18 tutorials of the 20th workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. Each part discusses a specific to-date topic on new and valuable design ideas in the area of analog circuit design. Each part is presented by six experts in that field and state of the art information is shared and overviewed. This book is number 20 in this successful series of Analog Circuit Design, providing valuable information and excellent overviews of: Topic 1 : Low Voltage Low Power, chairman: Andrea Baschirotto Topic 2 : Short Range Wireless Front-Ends, chairman: Arthur van Roermund Topic 3 : Power Management and DC-DC, chairman : Michiel Steyaert. Analog Circuit Design is an essential reference source for analog circuit designers and researchers wishing to keep abreast with the latest development in the field. The tutorial coverage also makes it suitable for use in an advanced design course.

This book is a collection of contributions defining the state of current knowledge and new trends in hybrid systems - systems involving both continuous dynamics and discrete events - as described by the work of several well-known groups of researchers. Hybrid Dynamical Systems presents theoretical advances in such areas as diagnosability, observability and stabilization for various classes of system. Continuous and discrete state estimation and self-triggering control of nonlinear systems are advanced. The text employs various methods, among them, high-order sliding modes, Takagi-Sugeno representation and sampled-data switching to achieve its ends. The many applications of hybrid systems from power converters to computer science are not forgotten; studies of flexible-joint robotic arms and - as representative biological systems - the behaviour of the human heart and vasculature, demonstrate the wide-ranging practical significance of control in hybrid systems. The cross-disciplinary origins of study in hybrid systems are evident. Academic researchers and graduate students interested in hybrid and switched systems need look no further than Hybrid Dynamical Systems for a single source which will bring them up to date with work in this area from around the world.

"Models of Computation for Heterogeneous Embedded Systems" presents a model of computation for heterogeneous embedded systems called DFCharts. It targets heterogeneous systems by combining finite state machines (FSM) with synchronous dataflow graphs (SDFG). FSMs are connected in the same way as in Argos (a Statecharts variant with purely synchronous semantics) using three operators: synchronous parallel, refinement and hiding. The fourth operator, called asynchronous parallel, is introduced in DFCharts to connect FSMs with SDFGs. In the formal semantics of DFCharts, the operation of an SDFG is represented as an FSM. Using this representation, SDFGs are merged with FSMs so that the behaviour of a complete DFCharts specification can be expressed as a single, flat FSM. This allows system properties to be verified globally. The practical application of DFCharts has been demonstrated by linking it to widely used system-level languages Java, Esterel and SystemC.

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Data Analysis, which was held in October/November 2014 in Leuven, Belgium. The 33 revised full papers together with 3 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions handling all kinds of modeling and analysis methods, irrespective of discipline. The papers cover all aspects of intelligent data analysis, including papers on intelligent support for modeling and analyzing data from complex, dynamical systems.

Covers the transmission of real-time video and audio for internet experimentation. Provides detailed descriptions of how the various hardware and software systems can be seamlessly integrated for a complete internet remote experimentation system. Contains examples of real working experiments that are currently running.

Solving modern biological problems requires advanced computational methods. Bioinformatics evolved from the active interaction of two fast-developing disciplines, biology and information technology. The central issue of this emerging field is the transformation of often distributed and unstructured biological data into meaningful information. This book describes the application of well-established concepts and techniques from areas like data mining, machine learning, database technologies, and visualization techniques to problems like protein data analysis, genome analysis and sequence databases. Chen has collected contributions from leading researchers in each area. The chapters can be read independently, as each offers a complete overview of its specific area, or, combined, this monograph is a comprehensive treatment that will appeal to students, researchers, and R&D professionals in industry who need a state-of-the-art introduction into this challenging and exciting young field.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, CHES 2014, held in Busan, South Korea, in September 2014. The 33 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 127 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: side-channel attacks; new attacks and constructions; countermeasures; algorithm specific SCA; ECC implementations; implementations; hardware implementations of symmetric cryptosystems; PUFs; and RNGs and SCA issues in hardware.

Platform Based Design at the Electronic System Level presents a multi-faceted view of the challenges facing the electronic industry in the development and integration of complex heterogeneous systems, including both hardware and software components. It analyses and proposes solutions related to the provision of integration platforms by System on Chip and Integrated Platform providers in light of the needs and requirements expressed by the system companies: they are the users of such platforms, which they apply to develop their next-generation products. This is the first book to examine ESL from perspectives of system developer, platform provider and Electronic Design Automation.

The Halden Man-Machine Laboratory (HAMMLAB) has been at the heart of human factors research at the OECD Halden Reactor Project (HRP). The HRP is sponsored by a group of national organizations, representing nuclear power plant regulators, utilities, and research institutions. The HRP is hosted by the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) in Halden, Norway. HAMMLAB comprises three full-scale nuclear power plant control room research simulators. The simulator studies performed in HAMMLAB have traditionally been experimental in nature. In a simulator it is possible to study events as they unfold in real time, in a highly realistic operational environment under partially controlled conditions. This means that a wide range of human factors issues, which would be impossible or highly impracticable to study in real-life settings, can thus be addressed in HAMMLAB. Simulator-based Human Factors Studies Across 25 Years celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of HAMMLAB by reviewing the human factors studies performed in HAMMLAB across this time-span. A range of human factors issues have been addressed, including: * human-system interfaces; * alarm systems; * computerized procedures; * human-automation interaction; * staffing, teamwork and human reliability. The aim of HAMMLAB studies has always been the same: to generate knowledge for solving current and future challenges in nuclear power plant operation to contribute to safety. The outcomes of HAMMLAB studies have been used to support design and assessment of nuclear power plant control rooms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th Conference on Knowledge Engineering and the Semantic Web, KESW 2014, held in Kazan, Russia, in September/October 2014. The 18 revised full papers presented together with 4 short system descriptions were carefully reviewed and selected from 44 submissions. The papers address research issues related to semantic web, linked data, ontologies, natural language processing, knowledge representation.