This book focuses on distributed and economic Model Predictive Control (MPC) with applications in different fields. MPC is one of the most successful advanced control methodologies due to the simplicity of the basic idea (measure the current state, predict and optimize the future behavior of the plant to determine an input signal, and repeat this procedure ad infinitum) and its capability to deal with constrained nonlinear multi-input multi-output systems. While the basic idea is simple, the rigorous analysis of the MPC closed loop can be quite involved. Here, distributed means that either the computation is distributed to meet real-time requirements for (very) large-scale systems or that distributed agents act autonomously while being coupled via the constraints and/or the control objective. In the latter case, communication is necessary to maintain feasibility or to recover system-wide optimal performance. The term economic refers to general control tasks and, thus, goes beyond the typically predominant control objective of set-point stabilization. Here, recently developed concepts like (strict) dissipativity of optimal control problems or turnpike properties play a crucial role. The book collects research and survey articles on recent ideas and it provides perspectives on current trends in nonlinear model predictive control. Indeed, the book is the outcome of a series of six workshops funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) involving early-stage career scientists from different countries and from leading European industry stakeholders.

This collection indicates how research on teaching and learning from multiple scientific disciplines such as educational science and psychology can be successfully pursued by a co-operation between researchers and school teachers. The contributors adopt different methodological approaches, ranging from field research to laboratory experiments.

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or "Calvinist" theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. It focuses on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, especially his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against the Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his Reformed contemporaries affirm that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insist on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of "libertarian freedom" or "compatibilism." In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called "second scholasticism." His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

In today's world of globalisation the position of the highest national courts is changing. Traditionally, the highest courts have the task of safeguarding the coherency of law within the territory of their jurisdiction. Being at the top of the hierarchy of courts in their country, there was no other authority above them. This picture is being thoroughly disturbed by the internationalisation of law, which has brought the domestic legal systems into close contact with each other and which has created hierarchies among the highest national courts. This book is an important tool for national judges, judges and staff of international courts, civil servants at ministries of justice, and others studying or practising law on the dividing line between the national and international level. It contains a reflection of the exchange of views that took place during a session of the Hague Colloquium on the Fundamental Principles of Law, which sought to identify the challenges which emerge for the highest national courts in an internationalising world. Sam Muller is Director of the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL), The Hague, the Netherlands. Marc Loth was Dean and Professor of jurisprudence and legal theory at the Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands at the time of working on this book. He is a member of the Dutch Hoge Raad (Supreme Court).

We live in complicated, dangerous times. They are also hyper-technical times. As citizens who will elect future presidents of the most powerful and influential country in the world, we need to know truly understand, not just rely on television's talking heads if Iran's nascent nuclear capability is a genuine threat to the West, if biochemical weapons are likely to be developed by terrorists, if there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels that should be nurtured and supported by the government, if nuclear power should be encouraged, and if global warming is actually happening. This book is written in everyday, nontechnical language on the science behind the concerns that our nation faces in the immediate future. Even active readers of serious journalism will be surprised by the lessons that the book contains. It is "must-have" information for all presidents and citizens of the twenty-first century."

This book explores the structural tensions and conflicts that arise with the abolition of border controls between the EU's member states and how this conflict ridden relationship affects and is affected by the institutional shape of the EU's external borders.

Computer Aided Software Engineering brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this important area. Computer Aided Software Engineering serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most important research issues in the field.

You are reading the word "now" right now. But what does that mean? "Now" has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. In Now, eminent physicist Richard A. Muller takes up the challenge. He begins with remarkably clear explanations of relativity, entropy, entanglement, the Big Bang, and more, setting the stage for his own revolutionary theory of time, one that makes testable predictions. Muller's monumental work will spark major debate about the most fundamental assumptions of our universe, and may crack one of physics' longest-standing enigmas.

This fresh study from an internationally respected scholar of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras shows how the Reformers and their successors analyzed and reconciled the concepts of divine sovereignty and human freedom. Richard Muller argues that traditional Reformed theology supported a robust theory of an omnipotent divine will and human free choice and drew on a tradition of Western theological and philosophical discussion. The book provides historical perspective on a topic of current interest and debate and offers a corrective to recent discussions.

We live in complicated, dangerous times. Present and future presidents need to know if North Korea's nascent nuclear capability is a genuine threat to the West, if biochemical weapons are likely to be developed by terrorists, if there are viable alternatives to fossil fuels that should be nurtured and supported by the government, if private companies should be allowed to lead the way on space exploration, and what the actual facts are about the worsening threats from climate change. This is "must-have" information for all presidents-and citizens-of the twenty-first century. Winner of the 2009 Northern California Book Award for General Nonfiction.

This specially curated collection features five reviews of current and key research on crops as livestock feed. The first chapter reviews the impact of feeding ruminants cereal grains on animal physiology and health. The chapter explores the use of starch-containing cereal grains as a feedstuff to improve animal efficiency and performance, as well as to reduce the environmental footprint of ruminant animal production. The second chapter discusses key environmental trade-offs in the use of crops as livestock feed. It reviews key elements in trade-off analysis and explores opportunities for making better use of existing feed resources and producing more feed biomass of higher fodder quality. The third chapter reviews ways of optimising the use of barley for animal feed, from production and breeding through to the application of new technologies such as near infrared spectroscopy and molecular markers. The fourth chapter reviews the use of sorghum as an important source of fodder and forage. It reviews the different types of sorghum used for forage and other applications, and then provides a detailed discussion of the use of forage sorghum as feed for ruminants. The final chapter discusses the use of soybean meal (SBM) as an animal feed. It assesses the nutritional content of SBM, as well dealing with its anti-nutritive compounds in optimising its use.

Stochastic orders are important approximation tools that provide valuable insight into the behaviour of complex stochastic models. Research into stochastic orders is blossoming, with many open problems being studied and a wide range of applications explored. In this book the authors explore the most important concepts of the field, from the basic univariate theory through to the most current applications.

• Comprehensive coverage of the theory and applications of stochastic orders.

• Employs a systematic approach with detailed explanation of each concept.

• Features coverage of univariate and multivariate stochastic orders.

• Covers a range of applications, from queueing theory, reliability theory, statistical physics, actuarial and financial risk, and economics.

• Written by authors with many years experience in researching stochastic orders.

It is not possible to understand the present or future climate unless scientists can account for the enormous and rapid cycles of glaciation that have taken place over the last million years, and which are expected to continue into the future. A great deal has happened in the theory of the ice ages over the last decade, and it is now widley accepted that ice ages are driven by changes in the Earth's orbit. The study of ice ages is very inter-disciplinary, covering geology, physics, glaciology, oceanography, atmospheric science, planetary orbit calculations astrophysics and statistics.

The near meltdown of Fukushima, the upheavals in the Middle East, the BP oil spill, and the looming reality of global warming have reminded the president and all U.S. citizens that nothing has more impact on our lives than the supply and demand for energy. Its procurement dominates our economy and foreign policy more than any other factor. But the "energy question" is more confusing, contentious, and complicated than ever before. We need to know if nuclear power will ever really be safe. We need to know if solar and wind power will ever really be viable. And we desperately need to know if the natural gas deposits in Pennsylvania are a windfall of historic proportions or a false alarm that will create more problems than solutions. Richard A. Muller provides the answers in this must-read manual for our energy priorities now and in the coming years.

This book attempts to understand Calvin in his sixteenth-century context, with attention to continuities and discontinuities between his thought and that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Richard Muller is particularly interested in the interplay between theological and philosophical themes common to Calvin and the medieval doctors, and developments in the rhetoric and argument associated with humanism.

This is a sequel to Richard Muller's The Unaccomodated Calvin (OUP 2000). In the previous book, Muller attempted to situate Calvin's theological work in its historical context and to strip away various twentieth-century theological grids that have clouded our perceptions of the work of the Reformer. In the present book, Muller carries this approach forward, with the goal of overcoming a series of nineteenth- and twentieth-century theological frameworks characteristic of much of the scholarship on Reformed orthodoxy, or what might be called 'Calvinism after Calvin'.

Focus: Music of South Africa provides an in-depth look at the full spectrum of South African music, a musical culture that epitomizes the enormous ethnic, religious, linguistic, class, and gender diversity of the nation itself. Drawing on extensive field and archival research, as well as her own personal experiences, noted ethnomusicologist and South African native Carol A. Muller looks at how South Africans have used music to express a sense of place in South Africa, on the African continent, and around the world. Part One, Creating Connections, provides introductory materials for the study of South African Music. Part Two, Musical Migrations, moves to a more focused overview of significant musical styles in twentieth-century South Africa -- particularly those known through world circuits. Part Three, Focusing In, takes the reader into the heart of two musical cultures with case studies on South African jazz and the music of the Zulu-language followers of Isaiah Shembe. The accompanying downloadable resources offer vivid examples of traditional, popular, and classical South African musical styles.

This book focuses on distributed and economic Model Predictive Control (MPC) with applications in different fields. MPC is one of the most successful advanced control methodologies due to the simplicity of the basic idea (measure the current state, predict and optimize the future behavior of the plant to determine an input signal, and repeat this procedure ad infinitum) and its capability to deal with constrained nonlinear multi-input multi-output systems. While the basic idea is simple, the rigorous analysis of the MPC closed loop can be quite involved. Here, distributed means that either the computation is distributed to meet real-time requirements for (very) large-scale systems or that distributed agents act autonomously while being coupled via the constraints and/or the control objective. In the latter case, communication is necessary to maintain feasibility or to recover system-wide optimal performance. The term economic refers to general control tasks and, thus, goes beyond the typically predominant control objective of set-point stabilization. Here, recently developed concepts like (strict) dissipativity of optimal control problems or turnpike properties play a crucial role. The book collects research and survey articles on recent ideas and it provides perspectives on current trends in nonlinear model predictive control. Indeed, the book is the outcome of a series of six workshops funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) involving early-stage career scientists from different countries and from leading European industry stakeholders.

This collection indicates how research on teaching and learning from multiple scientific disciplines such as educational science and psychology can be successfully pursued by a co-operation between researchers and school teachers. The contributors adopt different methodological approaches, ranging from field research to laboratory experiments.

This book explores the structural tensions and conflicts that arise with the abolition of border controls between the EU's member states and how this conflict ridden relationship affects and is affected by the institutional shape of the EU's external borders.