This book reports on the latest advances in adaptive critic control with robust stabilization for uncertain nonlinear systems. Covering the core theory, novel methods, and a number of typical industrial applications related to the robust adaptive critic control field, it develops a comprehensive framework of robust adaptive strategies, including theoretical analysis, algorithm design, simulation verification, and experimental results. As such, it is of interest to university researchers, graduate students, and engineers in the fields of automation, computer science, and electrical engineering wishing to learn about the fundamental principles, methods, algorithms, and applications in the field of robust adaptive critic control. In addition, it promotes the development of robust adaptive critic control approaches, and the construction of higher-level intelligent systems.

This book includes a thorough theoretical and computational analysis of unconstrained and constrained optimization algorithms and combines and integrates the most recent techniques and advanced computational linear algebra methods. Nonlinear optimization methods and techniques have reached their maturity and an abundance of optimization algorithms are available for which both the convergence properties and the numerical performances are known. This clear, friendly, and rigorous exposition discusses the theory behind the nonlinear optimization algorithms for understanding their properties and their convergence, enabling the reader to prove the convergence of his/her own algorithms. It covers cases and computational performances of the most known modern nonlinear optimization algorithms that solve collections of unconstrained and constrained optimization test problems with different structures, complexities, as well as those with large-scale real applications. The book is addressed to all those interested in developing and using new advanced techniques for solving large-scale unconstrained or constrained complex optimization problems. Mathematical programming researchers, theoreticians and practitioners in operations research, practitioners in engineering and industry researchers, as well as graduate students in mathematics, Ph.D. and master in mathematical programming will find plenty of recent information and practical approaches for solving real large-scale optimization problems and applications.

Game theory involves multi-person decision making and differential dynamic game theory has been widely applied to n-person decision making problems, which are stimulated by a vast number of applications. This book addresses the gap to discuss general stochastic n-person noncooperative and cooperative game theory with wide applications to control systems, signal processing systems, communication systems, managements, financial systems, and biological systems. H8 game strategy, n-person cooperative and noncooperative game strategy are discussed for linear and nonlinear stochastic systems along with some computational algorithms developed to efficiently solve these game strategies.

A presentation of general results for discussing local optimality and computation of the expansion of value function and approximate solution of optimization problems, followed by their application to various fields, from physics to economics. The book is thus an opportunity for popularizing these techniques among researchers involved in other sciences, including users of optimization in a wide sense, in mechanics, physics, statistics, finance and economics. Of use to research professionals, including graduate students at an advanced level.

Combinational optimization (CO) is a topic in applied mathematics, decision science and computer science that consists of finding the best solution from a non-exhaustive search. CO is related to disciplines such as computational complexity theory and algorithm theory, and has important applications in fields such as operations research/management science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and software engineering.Advances in Combinatorial Optimization presents a generalized framework for formulating hard combinatorial optimization problems (COPs) as polynomial sized linear programs. Though developed based on the 'traveling salesman problem' (TSP), the framework allows for the formulating of many of the well-known NP-Complete COPs directly (without the need to reduce them to other COPs) as linear programs, and demonstrates the same for three other problems (e.g. the 'vertex coloring problem' (VCP)). This work also represents a proof of the equality of the complexity classes 'P' (polynomial time) and 'NP' (nondeterministic polynomial time), and makes a contribution to the theory and application of 'extended formulations' (EFs).On a whole, Advances in Combinatorial Optimization offers new modeling and solution perspectives which will be useful to professionals, graduate students and researchers who are either involved in routing, scheduling and sequencing decision-making in particular, or in dealing with the theory of computing in general.

Optimization plays an invaluable role in the exciting and rapidly developing field of computer vision, yet this importance is often overlooked in the literature.

This practical and authoritative text/reference presents a broad introduction to the optimization methods used specifically in computer vision. In order to facilitate understanding, the presentation of the methods is supplemented by simple flow charts, followed by pseudocode implementations that reveal deeper insights into their mode of operation. These discussions are further supported by examples taken from important applications in computer vision.

Topics and features: provides a comprehensive overview of computer vision-related optimization; covers a range of techniques from classical iterative multidimensional optimization to cutting-edge topics of graph cuts and GPU-suited total variation-based optimization; describes in detail the optimization methods employed in computer vision applications; illuminates key concepts with clearly written and step-by-step explanations; presents detailed information on implementation, including pseudocode for most methods.

This easy-to-follow and applications-focused book is an essential resource for researchers and practitioners seeking guidance on implementing specific methods in computer vision.

This book presents a smooth and unified transitional framework from generalised fractional programming, with a finite number of variables and a finite number of constraints, to semi-infinite fractional programming, where a number of variables are finite but with infinite constraints. It focuses on empowering graduate students, faculty and other research enthusiasts to pursue more accelerated research advances with significant interdisciplinary applications without borders. In terms of developing general frameworks for theoretical foundations and real-world applications, it discusses a number of new classes of generalised second-order invex functions and second-order univex functions, new sets of second-order necessary optimality conditions, second-order sufficient optimality conditions, and second-order duality models for establishing numerous duality theorems for discrete minmax (or maxmin) semi-infinite fractional programming problems. In the current interdisciplinary supercomputer-oriented research environment, semi-infinite fractional programming is among the most rapidly expanding research areas in terms of its multi-facet applications empowerment for real-world problems, which may stem from many control problems in robotics, outer approximation in geometry, and portfolio problems in economics, that can be transformed into semi-infinite problems as well as handled by transforming them into semi-infinite fractional programming problems. As a matter of fact, in mathematical optimisation programs, a fractional programming (or program) is a generalisation to linear fractional programming. These problems lay the theoretical foundation that enables us to fully investigate the second-order optimality and duality aspects of our principal fractional programming problem as well as its semi-infinite counterpart.

This book, published in honor of Professor Laurent Praly on the occasion of his 65th birthday, explores the responses of some leading international authorities to new challenges in nonlinear and adaptive control. The mitigation of the effects of uncertainty and nonlinearity - ubiquitous features of real-world engineering and natural systems - on closed-loop stability and robustness being of crucial importance, the contributions report the latest research into overcoming these difficulties in: autonomous systems; reset control systems; multiple-input-multiple-output nonlinear systems; input delays; partial differential equations; population games; and data-driven control. Trends in Nonlinear and Adaptive Control presents research inspired by and related to Professor Praly's lifetime of contributions to control theory and is a valuable addition to the literature of advanced control.

This book offers the first systematic analysis of economic thought concerning war. It retraces debates on war from the formation of European states, the rise of Mercantilism, to Colonialism, Imperialism, the World Wars and the Cold War. Allio shows different economic perspectives from which it is possible to study war as a tool to achieve economic ends: causes, consequences, costs, funding methods, and effects on the economic status of the state and on the well-being of citizens. Examining interpretations from Smith, Hobson, Keynes, Kalecki, Stiglitz and many more, this important volume addresses the economic implications of war from the perspectives of many who bore the costs of wars in reality.

This book describes the modelling and optimisation of vibration reduction systems in an integrated fashion using nonlinear equations of motion. It proposes an effective optimisation method for determining the basic characteristics of the non-linear visco-elastic elements used in passive vibration reduction systems. In the case of semi-active and active vibration isolators, a design process of the advanced control systems is proposed that makes possible to optimise the controller settings relatively to the selected vibro-isolation criteria. The approach developed here is subsequently tested by means of experimental investigations conducted on various sample vibration reduction systems: passive, semi-active and active. The book presents a biomechanical modelling approach that allows users to select the properties of vibro-isolation systems for different types of oscillation and different optimisation criteria - and can significantly reduce the harmful vibrations that can affect the human body in the process. Further, the book equips readers to evaluate the viscoelastic characteristics of passive systems and design control systems for semi-active and active systems. Modelling and Control Design of Vibration Reduction Systems offers a valuable guide for researchers and practitioners alike. It also provides students and academics with systematic information on the procedures to be followed in the design process for semi-active or active vibration reduction systems.

The Moment-SOS hierarchy is a powerful methodology that is used to solve the Generalized Moment Problem (GMP) where the list of applications in various areas of Science and Engineering is almost endless. Initially designed for solving polynomial optimization problems (the simplest example of the GMP), it applies to solving any instance of the GMP whose description only involves semi-algebraic functions and sets. It consists of solving a sequence (a hierarchy) of convex relaxations of the initial problem, and each convex relaxation is a semidefinite program whose size increases in the hierarchy.The goal of this book is to describe in a unified and detailed manner how this methodology applies to solving various problems in different areas ranging from Optimization, Probability, Statistics, Signal Processing, Computational Geometry, Control, Optimal Control and Analysis of a certain class of nonlinear PDEs. For each application, this unconventional methodology differs from traditional approaches and provides an unusual viewpoint. Each chapter is devoted to a particular application, where the methodology is thoroughly described and illustrated on some appropriate examples.The exposition is kept at an appropriate level of detail to aid the different levels of readers not necessarily familiar with these tools, to better know and understand this methodology.

This is a book on optimal control problems (OCPs) for partial differential equations (PDEs) that evolved from a series of courses taught by the authors in the last few years at Politecnico di Milano, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The book covers the whole range spanning from the setup and the rigorous theoretical analysis of OCPs, the derivation of the system of optimality conditions, the proposition of suitable numerical methods, their formulation, their analysis, including their application to a broad set of problems of practical relevance. The first introductory chapter addresses a handful of representative OCPs and presents an overview of the associated mathematical issues. The rest of the book is organized into three parts: part I provides preliminary concepts of OCPs for algebraic and dynamical systems; part II addresses OCPs involving linear PDEs (mostly elliptic and parabolic type) and quadratic cost functions; part III deals with more general classes of OCPs that stand behind the advanced applications mentioned above. Starting from simple problems that allow a "hands-on" treatment, the reader is progressively led to a general framework suitable to face a broader class of problems. Moreover, the inclusion of many pseudocodes allows the reader to easily implement the algorithms illustrated throughout the text. The three parts of the book are suitable to readers with variable mathematical backgrounds, from advanced undergraduate to Ph.D. levels and beyond. We believe that applied mathematicians, computational scientists, and engineers may find this book useful for a constructive approach toward the solution of OCPs in the context of complex applications.

The starting point for this monograph is the previously unknown connection between the Continuum Hypothesis and the saturation of the non-stationary ideal on 1; and the principle result of this monograph is the identification of a canonical model in which the Continuum Hypothesis is false. This is the first example of such a model and moreover the model can be characterized in terms of maximality principles concerning the universal-existential theory of all sets of countable ordinals. This model is arguably the long sought goal of the study of forcing axioms and iterated forcing but is obtained by completely different methods, for example no theory of iterated forcing whatsoever is required. The construction of the model reveals a powerful technique for obtaining independence results regarding the combinatorics of the continuum, yielding a number of results which have yet to be obtained by any other method. This monograph is directed to researchers and advanced graduate students in Set Theory. The second edition is updated to take into account some of the developments in the decade since the first edition appeared, this includes a revised discussion of -logic and related matters.

Adopting a variational approach, this self-contained textbook presents the basic principles of optimal control governed by ODEs. Inside, readers will encounter the fundamental issues of existence of optimal solutions, optimality conditions, and numerical approximation from a variational perspective, academic and real-world examples testing the book's variational approach, and a unified treatment that requires no prior expertise in variational problems or numerical approximation. A Variational Approach to Optimal Control of ODEs is for applied analysts, applied mathematicians, and control engineers. It can be used in courses on Advanced Numerical Analysis, Special Topics on Numerical Analysis, Topics on Data Science, Topics on Numerical Optimization, and Topics on Approximation Theory.

This important three volume set is a collection of key writings on game theory published before 1963. It makes many frequently-cited and historically important articles conveniently available to a wider audience. The collection includes comprehensive coverage of the game theoretical writings of von Neumann, Nash and Wald. The editors have written a succinct introduction to accompany the articles.

Handbook of the Shapley Value contains 24 chapters and a foreword written by Alvin E. Roth, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Lloyd Shapley in 2012. The purpose of the book is to highlight a range of relevant insights into the Shapley value. Every chapter has been written to honor Lloyd Shapley, who introduced this fascinating value in 1953. The first chapter, by William Thomson, places the Shapley value in the broader context of the theory of cooperative games, and briefly introduces each of the individual contributions to the volume. This is followed by a further contribution from the editors of the volume, which serves to introduce the more significant features of the Shapley value. The rest of the chapters in the book deal with different theoretical or applied aspects inspired by this interesting value and have been contributed specifically for this volume by leading experts in the area of Game Theory. Chapters 3 through to 10 are more focused on theoretical aspects of the Shapley value, Chapters 11 to 15 are related to both theoretical and applied areas. Finally, from Chapter 16 to Chapter 24, more attention is paid to applications of the Shapley value to different problems encountered across a diverse range of fields. As expressed by William Thomson in the Introduction to the book, "The chapters contribute to the subject in several dimensions: Mathematical foundations; axiomatic foundations; computations; applications to special classes of games; power indices; applications to enriched classes of games; applications to concretely specified allocation problems: an ever-widening range, mapping allocation problems into games or implementation." Nowadays, the Shapley value continues to be as appealing as when it was first introduced in 1953, or perhaps even more so now that its potential is supported by the quantity and quality of the available results. This volume collects a large amount of work that definitively demonstrates that the Shapley value provides answers and solutions to a wide variety of problems.

This book will cover heuristic optimization techniques and applications in engineering problems. The book will be divided into three sections that will provide coverage of the techniques, which can be employed by engineers, researchers, and manufacturing industries, to improve their productivity with the sole motive of socio-economic development. This will be the first book in the category of heuristic techniques with relevance to engineering problems and achieving optimal solutions. Features Explains the concept of optimization and the relevance of using heuristic techniques for optimal solutions in engineering problems Illustrates the various heuristics techniques Describes evolutionary heuristic techniques like genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization Contains natural based techniques like ant colony optimization, bee algorithm, firefly optimization, and cuckoo search Offers sample problems and their optimization, using various heuristic techniques

In today's world, with an increase in the breadth and scope of real-world engineering optimization problems as well as with the advent of big data, improving the performance and efficiency of algorithms for solving such problems has become an indispensable need for specialists and researchers. In contrast to conventional books in the field that employ traditional single-stage computational, single-dimensional, and single-homogeneous optimization algorithms, this book addresses multiple newfound architectures for meta-heuristic music-inspired optimization algorithms. These proposed algorithms, with multi-stage computational, multi-dimensional, and multi-inhomogeneous structures, bring about a new direction in the architecture of meta-heuristic algorithms for solving complicated, real-world, large-scale, non-convex, non-smooth engineering optimization problems having a non-linear, mixed-integer nature with big data. The architectures of these new algorithms may also be appropriate for finding an optimal solution or a Pareto-optimal solution set with higher accuracy and speed in comparison to other optimization algorithms, when feasible regions of the solution space and/or dimensions of the optimization problem increase. This book, unlike conventional books on power systems problems that only consider simple and impractical models, deals with complicated, techno-economic, real-world, large-scale models of power systems operation and planning. Innovative applicable ideas in these models make this book a precious resource for specialists and researchers with a background in power systems operation and planning. Provides an understanding of the optimization problems and algorithms, particularly meta-heuristic optimization algorithms, found in fields such as engineering, economics, management, and operations research; Enhances existing architectures and develops innovative architectures for meta-heuristic music-inspired optimization algorithms in order to deal with complicated, real-world, large-scale, non-convex, non-smooth engineering optimization problems having a non-linear, mixed-integer nature with big data; Addresses innovative multi-level, techno-economic, real-world, large-scale, computational-logical frameworks for power systems operation and planning, and illustrates practical training on implementation of the frameworks using the meta-heuristic music-inspired optimization algorithms.

Introduction to the Theory of Optimization in Euclidean Space is intended to provide students with a robust introduction to optimization in Euclidean space, demonstrating the theoretical aspects of the subject whilst also providing clear proofs and applications. Students are taken progressively through the development of the proofs, where they have the occasion to practice tools of differentiation (Chain rule, Taylor formula) for functions of several variables in abstract situations. Throughout this book, students will learn the necessity of referring to important results established in advanced Algebra and Analysis courses. Features Rigorous and practical, offering proofs and applications of theorems Suitable as a textbook for advanced undergraduate students on mathematics or economics courses, or as reference for graduate-level readers Introduces complex principles in a clear, illustrative fashion

Optimization of Pharmaceutical Processes presents contributions from leading authorities in the fields of optimization and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Formulated within structured frameworks, practical examples and applications are given as guidance to apply optimization techniques to most aspects of pharmaceutical processes from design, to lab and pilot scale, and finally to manufacturing. The increasing demand for better quality, higher yield, more efficient-optimized and green pharmaceutical processes, indicates that optimal conditions for production must be applied to achieve simplicity, lower costs and superior yield. The application of such methods in the pharmaceutical industry is not trivial. Quality of the final product is of major importance to human health and the need for deep knowledge of the process parameters and the optimization of the processes are imperative. The volume, which includes new methods as well as review contributions will benefit a wide readership including engineers in pharmaceuticals, chemical, biological, to name just a few.

The book provides a collection of recent applications of nature inspired optimization in industrial fields. Different optimization techniques have been deployed, and different problems have been effectively analyzed. The valuable contributions from researchers focus on three ultimate goals (i) improving the accuracy of these techniques, (ii) achieving higher speed and lower computational complexity, and (iii) working on their proposed applications. The book is helpful for active researchers and practitioners in the field.

This book provides a systematic and accessible approach to stochastic differential equations, backward stochastic differential equations, and their connection with partial differential equations, as well as the recent development of the fully nonlinear theory, including nonlinear expectation, second order backward stochastic differential equations, and path dependent partial differential equations. Their main applications and numerical algorithms, as well as many exercises, are included. The book focuses on ideas and clarity, with most results having been solved from scratch and most theories being motivated from applications. It can be considered a starting point for junior researchers in the field, and can serve as a textbook for a two-semester graduate course in probability theory and stochastic analysis. It is also accessible for graduate students majoring in financial engineering.

the handbook is a valuable reference to researchers from industry and academia, as well as Masters and PhD students around the globe working in the metaheuristics and applications domain includes contributions from a variety of academics/researchers in the field of metaheuristics

Written by experts from all over the world, the book comprises the latest applications of mathematical and models in food engineering and fermentation. It provides the fundamentals on statistical methods to solve standard problems associated with food engineering and fermentation technology. Combining theory with a practical, hands-on approach, this book covers key aspects of food engineering. Presenting cuttingedge information, the book is an essential reference on the fundamental concepts associated with food engineering.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP or 3Ps) allow the public sector to seek alternative funding and expertise from the private sector during procurement processes. Such partnerships, if executed with due diligence, often benefit the public immensely. Unfortunately, Public-Private Partnerships can be vulnerable to corruption. This book looks at what measures we can put in place to check corruption during procurement and what good governance strategies the public sector can adopt to improve the performance of 3Ps. The book applies mathematical models to analyze 3Ps. It uses game theory to study the interaction and dynamics between the stakeholders and suggests strategies to reduce corruption risks in various 3Ps stages. The authors explain through game theory-based simulation how governments can adopt a evaluating process at the start of each procurement to weed out undesirable private partners and why the government should take a more proactive approach. Using a methodological framework rooted in mathematical models to illustrate how we can combat institutional corruption, this book is a helpful reference for anyone interested in public policymaking and public infrastructure management.