The integration of logic and probability combines the capability of the first to represent complex relations among entities with the capability of the latter to model uncertainty over attributes and relations. Logic programming provides a Turing complete language based on logic and thus represent an excellent candidate for the integration. Since its birth, the field of Probabilistic Logic Programming has seen a steady increase of activity, with many proposals for languages and algorithms for inference and learning. One of most successful approaches to Probabilistic Logic Programming is the Distribution Semantics, where a probabilistic logic program defines a probability distribution over normal logic programs and the probability of a ground query is then obtained from the joint distribution of the query and the programs. Foundations of Probabilistic Logic Programming aims at providing an overview of the field of Probabilistic Logic Programming, with a special emphasis on languages under the Distribution Semantics. The book presents the main ideas for semantics, inference and learning and highlights connections between the methods. Many examples of the book include a link to a page of the web application http://cplint.eu where the code can be run online.

As advances in technology continue to generate the collective knowledge of an organization and its operations, strategic models for information systems are developed in order to arrange business processes and business data. Frameworks for Developing Efficient Information Systems: Models, Theory, and Practice presents research and practices on the advancements in systems analysis and design. These theoretical frameworks and practical solutions are useful for researchers, practitioners, and academicians as this book aims to bridge the communication gap between business managers and system designers.

A unique guide to the design and implementation of simulation software

This book offers a concise introduction to the art of building simulation software, collecting the most important concepts and algorithms in one place. Written for both individuals new to the field of modeling and simulation as well as experienced practitioners, this guide explains the design and implementation of simulation software used in the engineering of large systems while presenting the relevant mathematical elements, concept discussions, and code development.

The book approaches the topic from the perspective of Zeigler's theory of modeling and simulation, introducing the theory's fundamental concepts and showing how to apply them to engineering problems. Readers will learn five necessary skills for building simulations of complicated systems: Working with fundamental abstractions for simulating dynamic systemsDeveloping basic simulation algorithms for continuous and discrete event modelsCombining continuous and discrete event simulations into a coherent wholeApplying strategies for testing a simulationUnderstanding the theoretical foundations of the modeling constructs and simulation algorithms

The central chapters of the book introduce, explain, and demonstrate the elements of the theory that are most important for building simulation tools. They are bracketed by applications to robotics, control and communications, and electric power systems; these comprehensive examples clearly illustrate how the concepts and algorithms are put to use. Readers will explore the design of object-oriented simulation programs, simulation using multi-core processors, and the integration of simulators into larger software systems.

The focus on software makes this book particularly useful for computer science and computer engineering courses in simulation that focus on building simulators. It is indispensable reading for undergraduate and graduate students studying modeling and simulation, as well as for practicing scientists and engineers involved in the development of simulation tools.

Human-computer interaction studies the users and their interaction with an interactive software system (ISS). However, these studies are designed for people without any type of disability, causing there to be few existing techniques or tools that focus on the characteristics of a specific user, thus causing accessibility and utility issues for neglected segments of the population. This reference source intends to remedy this lack of research by supporting an ISS focused on people with visual impairment. User-Centered Software Development for the Blind and Visually Impaired: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a collection of innovative research on techniques, applications, and methods for carrying out software projects in which the main users are people with visual impairments. While highlighting topics including mobile technology, assistive technologies, and human-computer interaction, this book is ideally designed for software developers, computer engineers, designers, academics, researchers, professionals, and educators interested in current research on usable and accessible technologies.

A Deep Dive into NoSQL Databases: The Use Cases and Applications, Volume 109, the latest release in the Advances in Computers series first published in 1960, presents detailed coverage of innovations in computer hardware, software, theory, design and applications. In addition, it provides contributors with a medium in which they can explore their subjects in greater depth and breadth. This update includes sections on NoSQL and NewSQL databases for big data analytics and distributed computing, NewSQL databases and scalable in-memory analytics, NoSQL web crawler application, NoSQL Security, a Comparative Study of different In-Memory (No/New)SQL Databases, NoSQL Hands On-4 NoSQLs, the Hadoop Ecosystem, and more.

With complex systems and complex requirements being a challenge that designers must face to reach quality results, multi-formalism modeling offers tools and methods that allow modelers to exploit the benefits of different techniques in a general framework intended to address these challenges. Theory and Application of Multi-Formalism Modeling boldly explores the importance of this topic by gathering experiences, theories, applications, and solutions from diverse perspectives of those involved with multi-formalism modeling. Professionals, researchers, academics, and students in this field will be able to critically evaluate the latest developments and future directions of multi-formalism research.

The work presented here is generally intended for engineers, educators at all levels, industrialists, managers, researchers and political representatives. Offering a snapshot of various types of research conducted within the field of TRIZ in France, it represents a unique resource. It has been two decades since the TRIZ theory originating in Russia spread across the world. Every continent adopted it in a different manner - sometimes by glorifying its potential and its perspectives (the American way); sometimes by viewing it with mistrust and suspicion (the European way); and sometimes by adopting it as-is, without questioning it further (the Asian way). However, none of these models of adoption truly succeeded. Today, an assessment of TRIZ practices in education, industry and research is necessary. TRIZ has expanded to many different scientific disciplines and has allowed young researchers to reexamine the state of research in their field. To this end, a call was sent out to all known francophone research laboratories producing regular research about TRIZ. Eleven of them agreed to send one or more of their postdoctoral researchers to present their work during a seminar, regardless of the maturity or completeness of their efforts. It was followed by this book project, presenting one chapter for every current thesis in order to reveal the breadth, the richness and the perspectives that research about the TRIZ theory could offer our society. The topics dealt with e.g. the development of new methods inspired by TRIZ, educational practices, and measuring team impact.

This classroom-tested textbook describes the design and implementation of software for distributed real-time systems, using a bottom-up approach. The text addresses common challenges faced in software projects involving real-time systems, and presents a novel method for simply and effectively performing all of the software engineering steps. Each chapter opens with a discussion of the core concepts, together with a review of the relevant methods and available software. This is then followed with a description of the implementation of the concepts in a sample kernel, complete with executable code. Topics and features: introduces the fundamentals of real-time systems, including real-time architecture and distributed real-time systems; presents a focus on the real-time operating system, covering the concepts of task, memory, and input/output management; provides a detailed step-by-step construction of a real-time operating system kernel, which is then used to test various higher level implementations; describes periodic and aperiodic scheduling, resource management, and distributed scheduling; reviews the process of application design from high-level design methods to low-level details of design and implementation; surveys real-time programming languages and fault tolerance techniques; includes end-of-chapter review questions, extensive C code, numerous examples, and a case study implementing the methods in real-world applications; supplies additional material at an associated website. Requiring only a basic background in computer architecture and operating systems, this practically-oriented work is an invaluable study aid for senior undergraduate and graduate-level students of electrical and computer engineering, and computer science. The text will also serve as a useful general reference for researchers interested in real-time systems.

Presenting the state of the art in component-based software testing, this cutting-edge resource offers you an in-depth understanding of the current issues, challenges, needs and solutions in this critical area. The book discusses the very latest advances in component-based testing and quality assurance in an accessible tutorial format, making the material easy to comprehend and benefit from no matter what your professional level. The book clearly explains what component-based software testing is, why it is important, and how it differs from traditional software testing. From an introduction to software components, testing component-based software and validation methods for software components, to performance testing and measurement, standards and certification and verification of quality for component-based systems, you get a revealing snapshot of the key developments in this area, including important research findings. This volume also serves as a textbook for related courses at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level.

Enterprise resource planning plays a strategic role in designing, and managing e-government resources. Governments all over the world face challenges in designing robust enterprise resource planning applications and methodologies to align themselves with the expectations of citizens and stakeholders. The existing standard enterprise resource planning solutions are proprietary, inflexible, and expensive to implement in government enterprises. Strategic Enterprise Resource Planning Models for E-Government: Applications and Methodologies is a collection of research from professionals and researchers working in the field of e-government including policymakers, ICT vendors, consultants, and implementing agencies. This book will aim to suggest enterprise resource planning frameworks for government enterprises along with their applications and methodologies to improve effectiveness of processes and enhance citizen-centric services. The research initiatives presented in this book will ease the process of implementing customized enterprise resource planning solutions in e-government.

This book provides a pioneering approach to modeling the human diabetic patient using a software agent. It is based on two MASc (Master of Applied Science) theses: one looking at the evolution of the patient agent in time, and another looking the interaction of the patient agent with the healthcare system. It shows that the software agent evolves in a manner analogous to the human patient and exhibits typical attributes of the illness such as reacting to food consumption, medications, and activity. This agent model can be used in a number of different ways, including as a prototype for a specific human patient with the purpose of helping to identify when that patient's condition deviates from normal variations. The software agent can also be used to study the interaction between the human patient and the health care system. This book is of interest to anyone involved in the management of diabetic patients or in societal research into the management of diabetes. The diabetic patient agent was developed using the Ackerman model for diabetes, but this model can be easily adapted for any other model subject with the necessary physiological data to support that model.

This book summarizes the new research results presented at the 12th Joint Conference on Knowledge-Based Software Engineering (JCKBSE 2018), which took place on August 27-30, 2018 on the island of Corfu, Greece. The JCKBSE is a well-established international biennial conference that focuses on the applications of Artificial Intelligence in Software Engineering. The JCKBSE 2018 was organized by the Department of Informatics of the University of Piraeus, the Department of Computer and Information Engineering of Nippon Institute of Technology, and the Department of Informatics of Ionian University. The book will benefit not only experts and researchers in the field of (Knowledge-Based) Software Engineering, but also general readers in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Computational Intelligence and Computer Science who wish to learn more about the field of (Knowledge-Based) Software Engineering and its applications. An extensive list of bibliographic references at the end of each paper encourages readers to probe further into the application areas that interest them most.

This book provides readers with an in-depth discussion of circuit simulation, combining basic electrical engineering circuit theory with Python programming. It fills an information gap by describing the development of Python Power Electronics, an open-source software for simulating circuits, and demonstrating its use in a sample circuit. Unlike typical books on circuit theory that describe how circuits can be solved mathematically, followed by examples of simulating circuits using specific, commercial software, this book has a different approach and focus. The author begins by describing every aspect of the open-source software, in the context of non-linear power electronic circuits, as a foundation for aspiring or practicing engineers to embark on further development of open source software for different purposes. By demonstrating explicitly the operation of the software through algorithms, this book brings together the fields of electrical engineering and software technology.

This book presents the outcomes of the 16th International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence Research, Management and Applications (SERA 2018), which was held in Kunming, China on June 13-15, 2018. The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users, and students to discuss the various fields of computer science, to share their experiences, and to exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. The book includes findings on all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science, and discusses related practical challenges and the solutions adopted to solve them. The conference organizers selected the best papers from those accepted for presentation. The papers were chosen based on review scores submitted by members of the program committee and underwent a further rigorous round of review. From this second round, 13 of the conference's most promising papers were then published in this Springer (SCI) book and not the conference proceedings. We eagerly await the important contributions that we know these authors will make to the field of computer and information science.

This book takes a foundational approach to the semantics of probabilistic programming. It elaborates a rigorous Markov chain semantics for the probabilistic typed lambda calculus, which is the typed lambda calculus with recursion plus probabilistic choice. The book starts with a recapitulation of the basic mathematical tools needed throughout the book, in particular Markov chains, graph theory and domain theory, and also explores the topic of inductive definitions. It then defines the syntax and establishes the Markov chain semantics of the probabilistic lambda calculus and, furthermore, both a graph and a tree semantics. Based on that, it investigates the termination behavior of probabilistic programs. It introduces the notions of termination degree, bounded termination and path stoppability and investigates their mutual relationships. Lastly, it defines a denotational semantics of the probabilistic lambda calculus, based on continuous functions over probability distributions as domains. The work mostly appeals to researchers in theoretical computer science focusing on probabilistic programming, randomized algorithms, or programming language theory.

This book focuses on innovative strategies to manage and build software systems for generating new knowledge from large archaeological data sets The book also reports on two case studies carried out in real-world scenarios within the Cultural Heritage setting. The book presents an original conceptual framework for developing software solutions to assist the knowledge generation process in connection with large archaeological data sets and related cultural heritage information- a context in which the inputs are mainly textual sources written in freestyle, i.e. without a predetermined, standard structure. Following an in-depth exploration of recent works on the knowledge generation process in the above-mentioned context and IT-based options for facilitating it, the book proposes specific new techniques capable of capturing the structure and semantics implicit in such textual sources, and argues for using this information in the knowledge generation process. The main result is the development of a conceptual framework that can accommodate textual sources and integrate the information included in them into a software engineering framework. The said framework is meant to assist cultural heritage professionals in general, and archaeologists in particular, in both knowledge extraction and the subsequent decision-making process.

Despite pressures of economic slowdown and the e-commerce bubble burst, moving towards e-services is a compelling necessity for today's organizations. Companies that are reluctant to adopt a service-oriented architecture in their IT systems will be missing out on unprecedented opportunities to create business value with relatively small IT investments. ""Engineering Service Oriented Systems: A Model-Driven Approach"" combines concepts from systems theory, model driven software engineering, and ontologies for software engineering into a systematic method for engineering service oriented systems while integrating both business and software perspectives.

This book provides an in-depth insight into the emerging paradigm of End-User Development (EUD), discussing the diversity and potential for creating effective environments for end users. Containing a unique set of contributions from a number of international researchers and institutes, many relevant issues are discussed and solutions proposed, making important aspects of end-user development research available to a broader audience. Most people are familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers. However, developing new or modified applications that can effectively support users' goals still requires considerable programming expertise that cannot be expected of everyone. One of the fundamental challenges that lie ahead is the development of environments that enable users with little or no programming experience to develop and modify their own applications. The ultimate goal is to empower people to flexibly employ and personalise advanced inform ation and communication technologies.

* Deals with powerful concepts in a simple way * Highlights important characteristics of Operating systems and other abstract entities in a new way * Explores the tenets of the UNIX operating system philosophy
Unlike so many books that focus on how to use UNIX, The UNIX Philosophy concentrates on answering the questions: Why use UNIX in the first place?'. Readers will discover the rationale and reasons for such concepts as file system organization, user interface and other system characteristics. In an informative, non-technical fashion, The UNIX Philosophy explores the general principles for applying the UNIX philosophy to software development. This book describes complex software design principles and addresses the importance of small programs, code and data portability, early prototyping, and open user interfaces. The UNIX Philosophy is a book to be read before tackling the highly technical texts on UNIX internals and programming. Written for both the computer layperson and the experienced programmer, this book explores the tenets of the UNIX operating system in detail, dealing with powerful concepts in a comprehensive, straightforward manner.

This book gathers 12 of the most promising papers presented at the 15th International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence Research, Management and Applications (SERA 2017) held on June 7-9, 2017 at the University of Greenwich, London, UK. The aim of this conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users, and students to discuss the numerous fields of computer science, to share their experiences and to exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. The book also presents research findings regarding all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science, and discusses the practical challenges encountered along the way and the solutions adopted to solve them.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th IFIP WG 2.13 International Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2018, held in Athens, Greece, in June 2018. The 14 revised full papers and 2 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics in the field of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) and are organized in the following thematic sections: organizational aspects of OSS projects, OSS projects validity, mining OSS data, OSS in public administration, OSS governance, and OSS reusability.