In April 2007, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) approved the Priority Program 1324 "Mathematical Methods for Extracting Quantifiable Information from Complex Systems." This volume presents a comprehensive overview of the most important results obtained over the course of the program. Mathematical models of complex systems provide the foundation for further technological developments in science, engineering and computational finance. Motivated by the trend toward steadily increasing computer power, ever more realistic models have been developed in recent years. These models have also become increasingly complex, and their numerical treatment poses serious challenges. Recent developments in mathematics suggest that, in the long run, much more powerful numerical solution strategies could be derived if the interconnections between the different fields of research were systematically exploited at a conceptual level. Accordingly, a deeper understanding of the mathematical foundations as well as the development of new and efficient numerical algorithms were among the main goals of this Priority Program. The treatment of high-dimensional systems is clearly one of the most challenging tasks in applied mathematics today. Since the problem of high-dimensionality appears in many fields of application, the above-mentioned synergy and cross-fertilization effects were expected to make a great impact. To be truly successful, the following issues had to be kept in mind: theoretical research and practical applications had to be developed hand in hand; moreover, it has proven necessary to combine different fields of mathematics, such as numerical analysis and computational stochastics. To keep the whole program sufficiently focused, we concentrated on specific but related fields of application that share common characteristics and as such, they allowed us to use closely related approaches.

Calculus has been used in solving many scientific and engineering problems. For optimization problems, however, the differential calculus technique sometimes has a drawback when the objective function is step-wise, discontinuous, or multi-modal, or when decision variables are discrete rather than continuous. Thus, researchers have recently turned their interests into metaheuristic algorithms that have been inspired by natural phenomena such as evolution, animal behavior, or metallic annealing.

This book especially focuses on a music-inspired metaheuristic algorithm, harmony search. Interestingly, there exists an analogy between music and optimization: each musical instrument corresponds to each decision variable; musical note corresponds to variable value; and harmony corresponds to solution vector. Just like musicians in Jazz improvisation play notes randomly or based on experiences in order to find fantastic harmony, variables in the harmony search algorithm have random values or previously-memorized good values in order to find optimal solution.

This first book on greedy approximation gives a systematic presentation of the fundamental results. It also contains an introduction to two hot topics in numerical mathematics: learning theory and compressed sensing. Nonlinear approximation is becoming increasingly important, especially since two types are frequently employed in applications: adaptive methods are used in PDE solvers, while m-term approximation is used in image/signal/data processing, as well as in the design of neural networks. The fundamental question of nonlinear approximation is how to devise good constructive methods (algorithms) and recent results have established that greedy type algorithms may be the solution. The author has drawn on his own teaching experience to write a book ideally suited to graduate courses. The reader does not require a broad background to understand the material. Important open problems are included to give students and professionals alike ideas for further research.

Computational Methods in Elasticity and Plasticity: Solids and Porous Media presents the latest developments in the area of elastic and elasto-plastic finite element modeling of solids, porous media and pressure-dependent materials and structures. The book covers the following topics in depth: the mathematical foundations of solid mechanics, the finite element method for solids and porous media, the theory of plasticity and the finite element implementation of elasto-plastic constitutive models. The book also includes: -A detailed coverage of elasticity for isotropic and anisotropic solids. -A detailed treatment of nonlinear iterative methods that could be used for nonlinear elastic and elasto-plastic analyses. -A detailed treatment of a kinematic hardening von Mises model that could be used to simulate cyclic behavior of solids. -Discussion of recent advances in the analysis of porous media and pressure-dependent materials in more detail than other books currently available. Computational Methods in Elasticity and Plasticity: Solids and Porous Media also contains problem sets, worked examples and a solutions manual for instructors.

This book is devoted to the study of scalar and asymptotic scalar derivatives and their applications to some problems in nonlinear analysis, Riemannian geometry and applied mathematics. The theoretical results are developed in particular with respect to the study of complementarity problems, monotonicity of nonlinear mappings and the non-gradient type monotonicity on Riemannian manifolds. Scalar and Asymptotic Derivatives: Theory and Applications also presents the material in relation to Euclidean spaces, Hilbert spaces, Banach spaces, Riemannian manifolds, and Hadamard manifolds. This book is intended for researchers and graduate students working in the fields of nonlinear analysis, Riemannian geometry and applied mathematics. It fills a gap in the literature as the first book to appear on the subject.

Mathematical algorithms are a fundamental component of Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems. This book provides a bridge between algebraic geometry and geometric modelling algorithms, formulated within a computer science framework. Apart from the algebraic geometry topics covered, the entire book is based on the unifying concept of using algebraic techniques - properly specialized to solve geometric problems - to seriously improve accuracy, robustness and efficiency of CAD-systems. It provides new approaches as well as industrial applications to deform surfaces when animating virtual characters, to automatically compare images of handwritten signatures and to improve control of NC machines. This book further introduces a noteworthy representation based on 2D contours, which is essential to model the metal sheet in industrial processes. It additionally reviews applications of numerical algebraic geometry to differential equations systems with multiple solutions and bifurcations. Future Vision and Trends on Shapes, Geometry and Algebra is aimed specialists in the area of mathematics and computer science on the one hand and on the other hand at those who want to become familiar with the practical application of algebraic geometry and geometric modelling such as students, researchers and doctorates.

This volume contains a collection of papers dedicated to Professor Eckhard Platen to celebrate his 60th birthday, which occurred in 2009. The contributions have been written by a number of his colleagues and co-authors. All papers have been - viewed and presented as keynote talks at the international conference "Quantitative Methods in Finance" (QMF) in Sydney in December 2009. The QMF Conference Series was initiated by Eckhard Platen in 1993 when he was at the Australian - tional University (ANU) in Canberra. Since joining UTS in 1997 the conference came to be organised on a much larger scale and has grown to become a signi?cant international event in quantitative ?nance. Professor Platen has held the Chair of Quantitative Finance at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) jointly in the Faculties of Business and Science since 1997. Prior to this appointment, he was the Founding Head of the Centre for Fin- cial Mathematics at the Institute of Advanced Studies at ANU, a position to which he was appointed in 1994. Eckhard completed a PhD in Mathematics at the Technical University in Dresden in 1975 and in 1985 obtained his Doctor of Science degree (Habilitation degree in the German system) from the Academy of Sciences in Berlin where he headed the Stochastics group at the Weierstrass Institute.

This book is an introduction to the theory, practice, and implementation of the Lattice Boltzmann (LB) method, a powerful computational fluid dynamics method that is steadily gaining attention due to its simplicity, scalability, extensibility, and simple handling of complex geometries. The book contains chapters on the method's background, fundamental theory, advanced extensions, and implementation. To aid beginners, the most essential paragraphs in each chapter are highlighted, and the introductory chapters on various LB topics are front-loaded with special "in a nutshell" sections that condense the chapter's most important practical results. Together, these sections can be used to quickly get up and running with the method. Exercises are integrated throughout the text, and frequently asked questions about the method are dealt with in a special section at the beginning. In the book itself and through its web page, readers can find example codes showing how the LB method can be implemented efficiently on a variety of hardware platforms, including multi-core processors, clusters, and graphics processing units. Students and scientists learning and using the LB method will appreciate the wealth of clearly presented and structured information in this volume.

"Artificial Boundary Method" systematically introduces the artificial boundary method for the numerical solutions of partial differential equations in unbounded domains. Detailed discussions treat different types of problems, including Laplace, Helmholtz, heat, Schrodinger, and Navier and Stokes equations. Both numerical methods and error analysis are discussed. The book is intended for researchers working in the fields of computational mathematics and mechanical engineering.
Prof. Houde Han works at Tsinghua University, China; Prof. Xiaonan Wu works at Hong Kong Baptist University, China."

This book focuses on the nonlinear behaviour of thin-wall shells (single- and multilayered with delamination areas) under various uniform and non-uniform loadings.
The dependence of critical (buckling) load upon load variability is revealed to be highly non-monotonous, showing minima when load variability is close to the eigenmode variabilities of solution branching points of the respective nonlinear boundary problem.
A novel numerical approach is employed to analyze branching points and to build primary, secondary, and tertiary bifurcation paths of the nonlinear boundary problem for the case of uniform loading. The load levels of singular points belonging to the paths are considered to be critical load estimates for the case of non-uniform loadings.

This book collects up-to-date papers from world experts in a broad variety of relevant applications of approximation theory, including dynamical systems, multiscale modelling of fluid flow, metrology, and geometric modelling to mention a few. The 14 papers in this volume document modern trends in approximation through recent theoretical developments, important computational aspects and multidisciplinary applications. The book is arranged in seven invited surveys, followed by seven contributed research papers. The surveys of the first seven chapters are addressing the following relevant topics: emergent behaviour in large electrical networks, algorithms for multivariate piecewise constant approximation, anisotropic triangulation methods in adaptive image approximation, form assessment in coordinate metrology, discontinuous Galerkin methods for linear problems, a numerical analyst's view of the lattice Boltzmann method, approximation of probability measures on manifolds. Moreover, the diverse contributed papers of the remaining seven chapters reflect recent developments in approximation theory, approximation practice and their applications. Graduate students who wish to discover the state of the art in a number of important directions of approximation algorithms will find this a valuable volume. Established researchers from statisticians through to fluid modellers will find interesting new approaches to solving familiar but challenging problems. This book grew out of the sixth in the conference series on "Algorithms for Approximation", which took place from 31st August to September 4th 2009 in Ambleside in the Lake District of the United Kingdom.

This book presents a comprehensive and detailed study on iterative learning control (ILC) for systems with iteration-varying trial lengths. Instead of traditional ILC, which requires systems to repeat on a fixed time interval, this book focuses on a more practical case where the trial length might randomly vary from iteration to iteration. The iteration-varying trial lengths may be different from the desired trial length, which can cause redundancy or dropouts of control information in ILC, making ILC design a challenging problem. The book focuses on the synthesis and analysis of ILC for both linear and nonlinear systems with iteration-varying trial lengths, and proposes various novel techniques to deal with the precise tracking problem under non-repeatable trial lengths, such as moving window, switching system, and searching-based moving average operator. It not only discusses recent advances in ILC for systems with iteration-varying trial lengths, but also includes numerous intuitive figures to allow readers to develop an in-depth understanding of the intrinsic relationship between the incomplete information environment and the essential tracking performance. This book is intended for academic scholars and engineers who are interested in learning about control, data-driven control, networked control systems, and related fields. It is also a useful resource for graduate students in the above field.

These proceedings were prepared in connection with the international conference Approximation Theory XIII, which was held March 7-10, 2010 in San Antonio, Texas. The conference was the thirteenth in a series of meetings in Approximation Theory held at various locations in the United States, and was attended by 144 participants. Previous conferences in the series were held in Austin, Texas (1973, 1976, 1980, 1992), College Station, Texas (1983, 1986, 1989, 1995), Nashville, Tennessee (1998), St. Louis, Missouri (2001), Gatlinburg, Tennessee (2004), and San Antonio, Texas (2007). Along with the many plenary speakers, the contributors to this proceedings provided inspiring talks and set a high standard of exposition in their descriptions of new directions for research. Many relevant topics in approximation theory are included in this book, such as abstract approximation, approximation with constraints, interpolation and smoothing, wavelets and frames, shearlets, orthogonal polynomials, univariate and multivariate splines, and complex approximation.

Optimization is a field important in its own right but is also integral to numerous applied sciences, including operations research, management science, economics, finance and all branches of mathematics-oriented engineering. Constrained optimization models are one of the most widely used mathematical models in operations research and management science.

This book gives a modern and well-balanced presentation of the subject, focusing on theory but also including algorithims and examples from various real-world applications. The text is easy to read and accessible to anyone with a knowledge of multi-dimensional calculus, linear algebra and basic numerical methods. Detailed examples and counter-examples are provided--as are exercises, solutions and helpful hints, and Matlab/Maple supplements.

The intended readership is advanced undergraduates, graduates, and professionals in any of the applied fields.

The book provides complete coverage of the classical methods of statistical analysis. It is designed to give students an understanding of the purpose of statistical analyses, to allow the student to determine, at least to some degree, the correct type of statistical analyses to be performed in a given situation, and have some appreciation of what constitutes good experimental design.
* Examples and exercises contain real data and
graphical illustration for ease of interpretation
* Outputs from SAS 7, SPSS 7, Excel, and Minitab are
used for illustration, but any major statistical
software package will work equally well.
* Data sets are furnished on CD included in the text

This volume contains eight state of the art contributions on mathematical aspects and applications of fast boundary element methods in engineering and industry. This covers the analysis and numerics of boundary integral equations by using differential forms, preconditioning of hp boundary element methods, the application of fast boundary element methods for solving challenging problems in magnetostatics, the simulation of micro electro mechanical systems, and for contact problems in solid mechanics. Other contributions are on recent results on boundary element methods for the solution of transient problems. This book is addressed to researchers, graduate students and practitioners working on and using boundary element methods. All contributions also show the great achievements of interdisciplinary research between mathematicians and engineers, with direct applications in engineering and industry.

This book is devoted to the mathematical foundation of boundary integral equations. The combination of ?nite element analysis on the boundary with these equations has led to very e?cient computational tools, the boundary element methods (see e.g., the authors [139] and Schanz and Steinbach (eds.) [267]). Although we do not deal with the boundary element discretizations in this book, the material presented here gives the mathematical foundation of these methods. In order to avoid over generalization we have con?ned ourselves to the treatment of elliptic boundary value problems. The central idea of eliminating the ?eld equations in the domain and - ducing boundary value problems to equivalent equations only on the bou- ary requires the knowledge of corresponding fundamental solutions, and this idea has a long history dating back to the work of Green [107] and Gauss [95, 96]. Today the resulting boundary integral equations still serve as a major tool for the analysis and construction of solutions to boundary value problems.

This book represents the results of cross-fertilization between OR/MS and CS/AI. It is this interface of OR/CS that makes possible advances that could not have been achieved in isolation. Taken collectively, these articles are indicative of the state-of-the-art in the interface between OR/MS and CS/AI and of the high caliber of research being conducted by members of the INFORMS Computing Society.

In various scientific and industrial fields, stochastic simulations are taking on a new importance. This is due to the increasing power of computers and practitioners aim to simulate more and more complex systems, and thus use random parameters as well as random noises to model the parametric uncertainties and the lack of knowledge on the physics of these systems. The error analysis of these computations is a highly complex mathematical undertaking. Approaching these issues, the authors present stochastic numerical methods and prove accurate convergence rate estimates in terms of their numerical parameters (number of simulations, time discretization steps). As a result, the book is a self-contained and rigorous study of the numerical methods within a theoretical framework. After briefly reviewing the basics, the authors first introduce fundamental notions in stochastic calculus and continuous-time martingale theory, then develop the analysis of pure-jump Markov processes, Poisson processes, and stochastic differential equations. In particular, they review the essential properties of Ito integrals and prove fundamental results on the probabilistic analysis of parabolic partial differential equations. These results in turn provide the basis for developing stochastic numerical methods, both from an algorithmic and theoretical point of view.
The book combines advanced mathematical tools, theoretical analysis of stochastic numerical methods, and practical issues at a high level, so as to provide optimal results on the accuracy of Monte Carlo simulations of stochastic processes. It is intended for master and Ph.D. students in the field of stochastic processes and their numerical applications, as well as for physicists, biologists, economists and other professionals working with stochastic simulations, who will benefit from the ability to reliably estimate and control the accuracy of their simulations."

This book presents an original combination of three well-known methodological approaches for nonlinear data analysis: recurrence, networks, and fuzzy logic. After basic concepts of these three approaches are introduced, this book presents recently developed methods known as fuzzy recurrence plots and fuzzy recurrence networks. Computer programs written in MATLAB, which implement the basic algorithms, are included to facilitate the understanding of the developed ideas. Several applications of these techniques to biomedical problems, ranging from cancer and neurodegenerative disease to depression, are illustrated to show the potential of fuzzy recurrence methods. This book opens a new door to theorists in complex systems science as well as specialists in medicine, biology, engineering, physics, computer science, geosciences, and social economics to address issues in experimental nonlinear signal and data processing.

This volume contains the contributions of participants of the conference "Optimal Control of Partial Differential Equations" held at the Wasserschloss Klaffenbach near Chemnitz (Saxony, Germany) from April 20 to 25, 1998. The conference was organized by the editors of this volume. Along with the dramatic increase in computer power, the application of PDE-based control theory and the corresponding numerical algorithms to industrial problems has become more and more important in recent years. This development is reflected by the fact that researchers focus their interest on challenging problems such as the study of controlled fluid-structure interactions, flexible structures, noise reduction, smart materials, the optimal design of shapes and material properties and specific industrial processes. All of these applications involve the analytical and numerical treatment of nonlinear partial differential equations with nonhomogeneous boundary or transmission conditions along with some cost criteria to be minimized. The mathematical framework contains modelling and analysis of such systems as well as the numerical analysis and implemention of algorithms in order to solve concrete problems. This volume offers a wide spectrum of aspects of the discipline and is of interest to mathematicians as well as to scientists working in the fields of applications.

This volume presents the latest developments in the highly active and rapidly growing field of diffusion MRI. The reader will find numerous contributions covering a broad range of topics, from the mathematical foundations of the diffusion process and signal generation, to new computational methods and estimation techniques for the in-vivo recovery of microstructural and connectivity features, as well as frontline applications in neuroscience research and clinical practice. These proceedings contain the papers presented at the 2017 MICCAI Workshop on Computational Diffusion MRI (CDMRI'17) held in Quebec, Canada on September 10, 2017, sharing new perspectives on the most recent research challenges for those currently working in the field, but also offering a valuable starting point for anyone interested in learning computational techniques in diffusion MRI. This book includes rigorous mathematical derivations, a large number of rich, full-colour visualisations and clinically relevant results. As such, it will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of computer science, MRI physics and applied mathematics.

This book is comprehensive in its classical mathematical physics presentation, providing the reader with detailed instructions for obtaining Green's functions from scratch. Green's functions is an instrument easily accessible to practitioners who are engaged in design and exploitation of machines and structures in modern engineering practice. To date, there are no books available on the market that are devoted to the Green's function formalism for equations covered in this volume. The reader, with an undergraduate background in applied mathematics, can become an active user of the Green's function approach. For the first time, Green's functions are discussed for a specific class of problems dealing with potential fields induced in thin-wall structures and therefore, the reader will have first-hand access to a novel issue. This Work is accessible to researchers in applied mathematics, mechanics, and relevant disciplines such as engineering, as well as to upper level undergraduates and graduate students.

This book gathers selected contributions on emerging research work presented at the International Conference eXtended Discretization MethodS (X-DMS), held in Ferrara in September 2015. It highlights the most relevant advances made at the international level in the context of expanding classical discretization methods, like finite elements, to the numerical analysis of a variety of physical problems. The improvements are intended to achieve higher computational efficiency and to account for special features of the solution directly in the approximation space and/or in the discretization procedure. The methods described include, among others, partition of unity methods (meshfree, XFEM, GFEM), virtual element methods, fictitious domain methods, and special techniques for static and evolving interfaces. The uniting feature of all contributions is the direct link between computational methodologies and their application to different engineering areas.