Welcome to The Worlds of Cixin Liu, a series of graphic novels created by 35 artists - including writers, illustrators and colourists - from 13 countries, to salute the unique imagination of China's science fiction grandmaster. Members of the Earth Protection Force circle the planet's atmosphere, neutralising threats before they come close enough to cause harm. Most days the threats come in the form of asteroids or meteorites, inanimate bodies set on a trajectory thousands of years ago - but not today. Instead, a great crystal sent by a faraway alien intelligence has been intercepted. It carries a simple message: The Devourer approaches. The Devourer consumes planets, gorging itself on their inhabitants and plundering the land, only stopping once nothing living remains. Soon, the first Devourer ship enters the solar system and Earth's fate is sealed. Sealed, that is, unless humanity can fight - and win...

As the number of Internet of Things (IoT) elements grows exponentially, their interactions can generate a massive amount of raw and multi-structured data. The challenge with this data explosion is to transform any raw data into information and knowledge, which can be used by people and systems to make intelligent decisions. Industrial IoT Application Architectures and Use Cases explores how artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and IoT technology combine to promote intelligent decision-making and automation in a range of industries. With faster, more stable AI algorithms and approaches, knowledge discovery and dissemination from IoT-device data can be simplified and streamlined. An era of powerful cognitive technology is beginning due to cloud-based cognitive systems that are forming the foundation of game-changing intelligent applications. This book presents next-generation use cases of IoT and IoT data analytics for a variety of industrial verticals as given below: An Intelligent IoT framework for smart water management An IoT-enabled smart traffic control system for congestion control and smart traffic management An intelligent airport system for airport management and security surveillance An IoT framework for healthcare to integrate and report patient information Fuzzy scheduling with IoT for tracking and monitoring hotel assets An IoT system for designing drainage systems and monitoring drainage pipes Predictive maintenance of plant equipment to decide the actual mean time to malfunction Integrated neural networks and IoT systems for predictive equipment maintenance IoT integration in blockchain for smart waste management This book also includes a chapter on the IoT paradigm and an overview of uses cases for personal, social, and industrial applications.

As the number of Internet of Things (IoT) elements grows exponentially, their interactions can generate a massive amount of raw and multi-structured data. The challenge with this data explosion is to transform any raw data into information and knowledge, which can be used by people and systems to make intelligent decisions. Industrial IoT Application Architectures and Use Cases explores how artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and IoT technology combine to promote intelligent decision-making and automation in a range of industries. With faster, more stable AI algorithms and approaches, knowledge discovery and dissemination from IoT-device data can be simplified and streamlined. An era of powerful cognitive technology is beginning due to cloud-based cognitive systems that are forming the foundation of game-changing intelligent applications. This book presents next-generation use cases of IoT and IoT data analytics for a variety of industrial verticals as given below: An Intelligent IoT framework for smart water management An IoT-enabled smart traffic control system for congestion control and smart traffic management An intelligent airport system for airport management and security surveillance An IoT framework for healthcare to integrate and report patient information Fuzzy scheduling with IoT for tracking and monitoring hotel assets An IoT system for designing drainage systems and monitoring drainage pipes Predictive maintenance of plant equipment to decide the actual mean time to malfunction Integrated neural networks and IoT systems for predictive equipment maintenance IoT integration in blockchain for smart waste management This book also includes a chapter on the IoT paradigm and an overview of uses cases for personal, social, and industrial applications.

This new volume discusses the applications and challenges of deep learning and the internet of things for applications in healthcare. It describes deep learning techniques in conjunction with IoT used by practitioners and researchers worldwide. The authors explore the convergence of IoT and deep learning to enable things to communicate, share information, and coordinate decisions. The book includes deep feedforward networks, regularization, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, sequence modeling, and practical methodology. Chapters look at assistive devices in healthcare, alerting and detection devices, energy efficiency in using IoT, data mining for gathering health information for individuals with autism, IoT for mobile applications, and more. The text also offers mathematical and conceptual background that presents the latest technology as well as a selection of case studies.

This book provides an introduction to the field of periodic pattern mining, reviews state-of-the-art techniques, discusses recent advances, and reviews open-source software. Periodic pattern mining is a popular and emerging research area in the field of data mining. It involves discovering all regularly occurring patterns in temporal databases. One of the major applications of periodic pattern mining is the analysis of customer transaction databases to discover sets of items that have been regularly purchased by customers. Discovering such patterns has several implications for understanding the behavior of customers. Since the first work on periodic pattern mining, numerous studies have been published and great advances have been made in this field. The book consists of three main parts: introduction, algorithms, and applications. The first chapter is an introduction to pattern mining and periodic pattern mining. The concepts of periodicity, periodic support, search space exploration techniques, and pruning strategies are discussed. The main types of algorithms are also presented such as periodic-frequent pattern growth, partial periodic pattern-growth, and periodic high-utility itemset mining algorithm. Challenges and research opportunities are reviewed. The chapters that follow present state-of-the-art techniques for discovering periodic patterns in (1) transactional databases, (2) temporal databases, (3) quantitative temporal databases, and (4) big data. Then, the theory on concise representations of periodic patterns is presented, as well as hiding sensitive information using privacy-preserving data mining techniques. The book concludes with several applications of periodic pattern mining, including applications in air pollution data analytics, accident data analytics, and traffic congestion analytics.

This book provides information on data-driven infrastructure design, analytical approaches, and technological solutions with case studies for smart cities. This book aims to attract works on multidisciplinary research spanning across the computer science and engineering, environmental studies, services, urban planning and development, social sciences and industrial engineering on technologies, case studies, novel approaches, and visionary ideas related to data-driven innovative solutions and big data-powered applications to cope with the real world challenges for building smart cities.

This book gathers papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing (ICGEC 2019), which was held in Qingdao, China, from 1st to 3rd, November 2019. Since it was established, in 2006, the ICGEC conference series has been devoted to new approaches with a focus on evolutionary computing. Today, it is a forum for the researchers and professionals in all areas of computational intelligence including evolutionary computing, machine learning, soft computing, data mining, multimedia and signal processing, swarm intelligence and security. The book appeals to policymakers, academics, educators, researchers in pedagogy and learning theory, school teachers, and other professionals in the learning industry, and further and continuing education.

This book offers a new approach to the long-standing problem of high-Tc copper-oxide superconductors. It has been demonstrated that starting from a strongly correlated Hamiltonian, even within the mean-field regime, the "competing orders" revealed by experiments can be achieved using numerical calculations. In the introduction, readers will find a brief review of the high-Tc problem and the unique challenges it poses, as well as a comparatively simple numerical approach, the renormalized mean-field theory (RMFT), which provides rich results detailed in the following chapters. With an additional phase picked up by the original Hamiltonian, some behaviors of interactive fermions under an external magnetic field, which have since been experimentally observed using cold atom techniques, are also highlighted.

This book presents an overview of techniques for discovering high-utility patterns (patterns with a high importance) in data. It introduces the main types of high-utility patterns, as well as the theory and core algorithms for high-utility pattern mining, and describes recent advances, applications, open-source software, and research opportunities. It also discusses several types of discrete data, including customer transaction data and sequential data. The book consists of twelve chapters, seven of which are surveys presenting the main subfields of high-utility pattern mining, including itemset mining, sequential pattern mining, big data pattern mining, metaheuristic-based approaches, privacy-preserving pattern mining, and pattern visualization. The remaining five chapters describe key techniques and applications, such as discovering concise representations and regular patterns.

This book presents a compilation of selected papers from the first International Conference on Big Data Analysis and Deep Learning Applications (ICBDL 2018), and focuses on novel techniques in the fields of big data analysis, machine learning, system monitoring, image processing, conventional neural networks, communication, industrial information, and their applications. Readers will find insights to help them realize more efficient algorithms and systems used in real-life applications and contexts, making the book an essential reference guide for academic researchers, professionals, software engineers in the industry, and regulators of aviation authorities.

This volume of Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing highlights papers presented at the 11th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing (ICGEC 2017). Held from 6 to 8 November 2017 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, the conference was co-sponsored by Springer, Fujian University of Technology in China, National University of Kaohsiung, Harbin Institute of Technology, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, and VSB -Technical University of Ostrava. The conference was intended as an international forum for researchers and professionals engaged in all areas of genetic computing, intelligent computing, evolutionary and grid computing.

This book gathers papers presented at the 10th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing (ICGEC 2016). The conference was co-sponsored by Springer, Fujian University of Technology in China, the University of Computer Studies in Yangon, University of Miyazaki in Japan, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences in Taiwan, Taiwan Association for Web Intelligence Consortium, and VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. The ICGEC 2016, which was held from November 7 to 9, 2016 in Fuzhou City, China, was intended as an international forum for researchers and professionals in all areas of genetic and evolutionary computing.

This book provides information on data-driven infrastructure design, analytical approaches, and technological solutions with case studies for smart cities. This book aims to attract works on multidisciplinary research spanning across the computer science and engineering, environmental studies, services, urban planning and development, social sciences and industrial engineering on technologies, case studies, novel approaches, and visionary ideas related to data-driven innovative solutions and big data-powered applications to cope with the real world challenges for building smart cities.

This volume of Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing contains accepted papers presented at ICGEC 2015, the 9th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing. The conference this year was technically co-sponsored by Ministry of Science and Technology, Myanmar, University of Computer Studies, Yangon, University of Miyazaki in Japan, Kaohsiung University of Applied Science in Taiwan, Fujian University of Technology in China and VSB-Technical University of Ostrava. ICGEC 2015 is held from 26-28, August, 2015 in Yangon, Myanmar. Yangon, the most multiethnic and cosmopolitan city in Myanmar, is the main gateway to the country. Despite being the commercial capital of Myanmar, Yangon is a city engulfed by its rich history and culture, an integration of ancient traditions and spiritual heritage. The stunning SHWEDAGON Pagoda is the center piece of Yangon city, which itself is famous for the best British colonial era architecture. Of particular interest in many shops of Bogyoke Aung San Market, and of world renown, are Myanmar's precious stones-rubies, sapphires and jade. At night time, Chinatown comes alive with its pungent aromas and delicious street food. The conference is intended as an international forum for the researchers and professionals in all areas of genetic and evolutionary computing.

This volume of Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing contains accepted papers presented at ICGEC 2015, the 9th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing. The conference this year was technically co-sponsored by Ministry of Science and Technology, Myanmar, University of Computer Studies, Yangon, University of Miyazaki in Japan, Kaohsiung University of Applied Science in Taiwan, Fujian University of Technology in China and VSB-Technical University of Ostrava. ICGEC 2015 is held from 26-28, August, 2015 in Yangon, Myanmar. Yangon, the most multiethnic and cosmopolitan city in Myanmar, is the main gateway to the country. Despite being the commercial capital of Myanmar, Yangon is a city engulfed by its rich history and culture, an integration of ancient traditions and spiritual heritage. The stunning SHWEDAGON Pagoda is the center piece of Yangon city, which itself is famous for the best British colonial era architecture. Of particular interest in many shops of Bogyoke Aung San Market, and of world renown, are Myanmar's precious stones-rubies, sapphires and jade. At night time, Chinatown comes alive with its pungent aromas and delicious street food. The conference is intended as an international forum for the researchers and professionals in all areas of genetic and evolutionary computing.

Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) synthesize intracellular nano-sized minerals of magnetite and/or greigite magnetosomes for magnetic orientation. They play important roles in global iron cycling and sedimentary magnetism, and have a broad range of potential applications in both biotechnological and biomedical fields. However, because the majority of MTB in nature remain unculturable, our understanding of these specific bacteria remains fairly limited. This thesis describes the development of a novel approach for effectively collecting, purifying and characterizing uncultivated magnetotactic bacteria. The diversity, genomic information and rock magnetic properties of various uncultivated MTB are investigated and characterized using a combination of biological and geophysical methods. The results will lead to a better understanding of the biogeography and biomineralization mechanisms of MTB in nature, and improve our knowledge of the contributions of MTB to biogeochemical cycles of elements and sedimentary magnetism. Dr. Wei Lin works at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

This volume of Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing contains accepted papers presented at ICGEC 2014, the 8th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing. The conference this year was technically co-sponsored by Nanchang Institute of Technology in China, Kaohsiung University of Applied Science in Taiwan, and VSB-Technical University of Ostrava. ICGEC 2014 is held from 18-20 October 2014 in Nanchang, China. Nanchang is one of is the capital of Jiangxi Province in southeastern China, located in the north-central portion of the province. As it is bounded on the west by the Jiuling Mountains, and on the east by Poyang Lake, it is famous for its scenery, rich history and cultural sites. Because of its central location relative to the Yangtze and Pearl River Delta regions, it is a major railroad hub in Southern China. The conference is intended as an international forum for the researchers and professionals in all areas of genetic and evolutionary computing.

Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) synthesize intracellular nano-sized minerals of magnetite and/or greigite magnetosomes for magnetic orientation. They play important roles in global iron cycling and sedimentary magnetism, and have a broad range of potential applications in both biotechnological and biomedical fields. However, because the majority of MTB in nature remain unculturable, our understanding of these specific bacteria remains fairly limited. This thesis describes the development of a novel approach for effectively collecting, purifying and characterizing uncultivated magnetotactic bacteria. The diversity, genomic information and rock magnetic properties of various uncultivated MTB are investigated and characterized using a combination of biological and geophysical methods. The results will lead to a better understanding of the biogeography and biomineralization mechanisms of MTB in nature, and improve our knowledge of the contributions of MTB to biogeochemical cycles of elements and sedimentary magnetism. Dr. Wei Lin works at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

This book addresses the knowledge-gap in the field by focusing on the importance of emic conceptualizations (face1) in theorizing face. Existing research on face has tended to rely on the etic perspective (face2) in theorizing and conceptualizing face. Face and Face Practices in Chinese Talk-in-Interaction applies an interactional pragmatics approach drawing on folk notions and discourse instead of simply describing Chinese in a normative, and thus potentially stereotypical manner. It builds on an analysis of original face-to-face interactional data and employs a combination of methodological approaches to analyze face in business settings. It is the very first study to examine face and face practices in Chinese employing Face Constituting Theory (FCT) as the theoretical framework. In doing so it provides empirical support for the importance of examining the cognitive and the interactional aspects of face practices, as well as providing insightful perspectives on the complex interactional moves that participants employ in managing their interpersonal relationships within business interactions and mediations.In this way, the book addresses key current debates on how face should be conceptualized and theorized. It also demystifies Chinese communication and thereby illuminates some unidentified face practices, both culture-general and cultural-specific.

This book offers the latest research results in security and privacy for Intelligent Edge Computing Systems. It presents state-of-the art content and provides an in-depth overview of the basic background in this related field. Practical areas in both security and risk analysis are addressed as well as connections directly linked to Edge Computing paradigms. This book also offers an excellent foundation on the fundamental concepts and principles of security, privacy and risk analysis in Edge Computation infrastructures. It guides the reader through the core ideas with relevant ease. Edge Computing has burst onto the computational scene offering key technologies for allowing more flexibility at the edge of networks. As Edge Computing has evolved as well as the need for more in-depth solutions in security, privacy and risk analysis at the edge. This book includes various case studies and applications on Edge Computing. It includes the Internet of Things related areas, such as smart cities, blockchain, mobile networks, federated learning, cryptography and cybersecurity. This book is one of the first reference books covering security and risk analysis in Edge Computing Systems. Researchers and advanced-level students studying or working in Edge Computing and related security fields will find this book useful as a reference. Decision makers, managers and professionals working within these fields will want to purchase this book as well.  

This book provides an introduction to the field of periodic pattern mining, reviews state-of-the-art techniques, discusses recent advances, and reviews open-source software. Periodic pattern mining is a popular and emerging research area in the field of data mining. It involves discovering all regularly occurring patterns in temporal databases. One of the major applications of periodic pattern mining is the analysis of customer transaction databases to discover sets of items that have been regularly purchased by customers. Discovering such patterns has several implications for understanding the behavior of customers. Since the first work on periodic pattern mining, numerous studies have been published and great advances have been made in this field. The book consists of three main parts: introduction, algorithms, and applications. The first chapter is an introduction to pattern mining and periodic pattern mining. The concepts of periodicity, periodic support, search space exploration techniques, and pruning strategies are discussed. The main types of algorithms are also presented such as periodic-frequent pattern growth, partial periodic pattern-growth, and periodic high-utility itemset mining algorithm. Challenges and research opportunities are reviewed. The chapters that follow present state-of-the-art techniques for discovering periodic patterns in (1) transactional databases, (2) temporal databases, (3) quantitative temporal databases, and (4) big data. Then, the theory on concise representations of periodic patterns is presented, as well as hiding sensitive information using privacy-preserving data mining techniques. The book concludes with several applications of periodic pattern mining, including applications in air pollution data analytics, accident data analytics, and traffic congestion analytics.

This book presents an overview of how machine learning and data mining techniques are used for tracking and preventing diseases. It covers several aspects such as stress level identification of a person from his/her speech, automatic diagnosis of disease from X-ray images, intelligent diagnosis of Glaucoma from clinical eye examination data, prediction of protein-coding genes from big genome data, disease detection through microscopic analysis of blood cells, information retrieval from electronic medical record using named entity recognition approaches, and prediction of drug-target interactions. The book is suitable for computer scientists having a bachelor degree in computer science. The book is an ideal resource as a reference book for teaching a graduate course on AI for Medicine or AI for Health care. Researchers working in the multidisciplinary areas use this book to discover the current developments. Besides its use in academia, this book provides enough details about the state-of-the-art algorithms addressing various biomedical domains, so that it could be used by industry practitioners who want to implement AI techniques to analyze the diseases. Medical institutions use this book as reference material and give tutorials to medical experts on how the advanced AI and ML techniques contribute to the diagnosis and prediction of the diseases.

This book presents the latest advances and research achievements in the fields of autonomous robots and intelligent systems, presented at the IAS-16 conference, conducted virtually in Singapore, from 22 to 25 June 2021. IAS is a common platform for an exchange and sharing of ideas among the international scientific research and technical community on some of the main trends of robotics and autonomous systems: navigation, machine learning, computer vision, control, and robot design-as well as a wide range of applications. IAS-16 reflects the rise of machine learning and deep learning developments in the robotics field, as employed in a variety of applications and systems. All contributions were selected using a rigorous peer-reviewed process to ensure their scientific quality. Despite the challenge of organising a conference during a pandemic, the IAS biennial conference remains an essential venue for the robotics and autonomous systems community ever since its inception in 1986. Chapters 46 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

This book contains selected papers presented at ICGEC 2021, the 14th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing, held from October 21-23, 2021 in Jilin City, China. The conference was technically co-sponsored by Springer, Northeast Electric Power University Fujian University of Technology, Shandong University of Science and Technology, and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. It is intended as an international forum for the researchers and professionals in all areas of genetic and evolutionary computing. And the readers may learn the up-to-date techniques of the mentioned topics, including swarm intelligence, artificial intelligence, information hiding and data mining techniques, which can help them to bring new ideas or apply the designed approaches from the collected papers to their professional jobs.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Big Data Analytics, BDA 2021, which took place during December 2021. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 16 full and 3 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. The contributions were organized in topical sections named as follows: medical and health applications; machine/deep learning; IoTs, sensors, and networks; fundamentation; pattern mining and data analytics.