This book focuses on the performance of mobile robots through the use of multi-hierarchical symbolic representations of the environment.

To perform deliberative actions, a robot must possess some symbolic representation of its workspace, but representations of real environments can become so large that they must be conveniently arranged to facilitate and, in some cases, make possible their use. Practical solutions tested on real robots, for example a robotic wheelchair, are provided.

In this thesis, the author investigates the biophysical basis of the local field potential (LFP) as a way of gaining a better understanding of its underlying physiological mechanisms. The results represent major advances in our understanding and interpretation of LFPs and brain oscillations. They highlight the importance of using suitable experimental and analytical methods to explore the activity of brain circuits and point to the LFP as a useful, but complex variable for this purpose.

The study of complex systems attracts the attention of many researchers in diverse fields. Complex systems are characterized by a high number of entities and a high degree of interactions. One of the most important features is that they do not involve a central organizing authority, but the various elements that make up the systems are self-organized. Moreover, some complex systems possess an emergency priority: climate change and sustainable development research, studies of public health, ecosystem habitats, epidemiology, and medicine, among others.

Unfortunately, a great number of today's overlapping approaches fail to meet the needs of decision makers when managing complex domains. Indeed, the design of complex systems often requires the integration of a number of artificial intelligence tools and techniques. The problem can be viewed in terms of goals, states, and actions, choosing the best action to move the system toward its desired state or behavior. This is why agent-based approaches are used to model complex systems.

The main objective of this book is to bring together existing methods for decision support systems creation within a coherent agent-based framework and to provide an interdisciplinary and flexible methodology for modeling complex and systemic domains.

"

Much has been written on China's State-Owned Enterprises ( SOEs) reform following the restructuring impact on China's economic reform process in the last decade. However, as a major root of social and economic change, little has been discussed beyond a description of SOEs shortcomings and their overall impact on the economy. This book provides a more in-depth analysis of SOEs by assessing the transformation process of eleven specific industries, with reference to the state of competition, the influence of WTO membership and the challenges these industries face in the future. Importantly, the authors also provide a personal perspective alongside the industry analysis with eleven case studies of firms actually undergoing this restructuring process, including interviews with crucial agents of reform such as CEOs and GMs. The provision of both a macro and business perspective of SOEs reforms provides the reader with a complete and accurate insight into the economic, social and business reality of China today. China's State Owned Enterprises' Reforms will therefore be essential reading for those interested in the Chinese economy and Chinese business, as well as economists, foreign investors, MBA and EMBA students and scholars specializing in emerging or transitional economies.

Businesses worldwide are faced with major challenges related to the progressive (and many times unavoidable) incorporation of information technologies into their processes. Often, organizations don t suitably react to the new requirements of these technologies, resulting in outdated policies, practices, and strategies. Human Resource Management in the Digital Economy: Creating Synergy between Competency Models and Information is a reference for both practitioners and academics that demonstrates how to implement e-management and competency models in companies. This book offers perspectives on the impact of integrated e-human resource policies and provides recommendations for addressing the shift from traditional human resource policies to new perspectives.

Bringing together perspectives of international research teams from across five continents, the chapters in this book are divided into four discrete parts that best reflect the worldwide scenarios where conservation and management of open-air rock art sites unfolds: 1) ethics, community and collaborative approaches; 2) methodological tools to support assessment and monitoring; 3) scientific examination and interventions; and 4) global community and collaborative case studies innovating methodologies for ongoing monitoring and management. The diverse origin of contributions results in a holistic and interdisciplinary approach that conciliates perceived intervention necessity, community and stakeholders' interests, and rigorous scientific analysis regarding open-air rock-art conservation and management. The book unites the voices of the global community in tackling a significant challenge: to ensure a better future for open-air rock art. Moving conservation and management of open-air rock art sites in from the periphery of conservation science, this volume is an indispensable guide for archaeologist, conservators and heritage professionals involved in rock art and its preservation.

Based on extensive interviews with industry leaders, Innovative to the Core: Stories from China and the World describes the components of innovative cultures, including both national culture and organizational culture and how they compare to the China model. Distinguishing between innovation and related concepts, chapters detail how talent management, leader behaviors, organizational systems, and company culture must combine and interact to create environments that are innovative to the core. Innovative to the Core displays how most innovative countries and companies are led by visionary and entrepreneurial servant leaders and have agile cultures that feature psychological safety, open communication, and diversity.

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping for Mobile Robots: Introduction and Methods investigates the complexities of the theory of probabilistic localization and mapping of mobile robots as well as providing the most current and concrete developments. This reference source aims to be useful for practitioners, graduate and postgraduate students, and active researchers alike.

While Fernando Ortiz's contribution to our understanding of Cuba and Latin America more generally has been widely recognized since the 1940s, recently there has been renewed interest in this scholar and activist who made lasting contributions to a staggering array of fields. This book is the first work in English to reassess Ortiz's vast intellectual universe. Essays in this volume analyze and celebrate his contribution to scholarship in Cuban history, the social sciences notably anthropology and law, religion and national identity, literature, and music. Presenting Ortiz's seminal thinking, including his profoundly influential concept of 'transculturation', Cuban Counterpoints explores the bold new perspectives that he brought to bear on Cuban society. Much of his most challenging and provocative thinking which embraced simultaneity, conflict, inherent contradiction and hybridity has remarkable relevance for current debates about Latin America's complex and evolving societies."

Much has been written on China's State-Owned Enterprises ( SOEs) reform following the restructuring impact on China's economic reform process in the last decade. However, as a major root of social and economic change, little has been discussed beyond a description of SOEs shortcomings and their overall impact on the economy. This book provides a more in-depth analysis of SOEs by assessing the transformation process of eleven specific industries, with reference to the state of competition, the influence of WTO membership and the challenges these industries face in the future. Importantly, the authors also provide a personal perspective alongside the industry analysis with eleven case studies of firms actually undergoing this restructuring process, including interviews with crucial agents of reform such as CEOs and GMs. The provision of both a macro and business perspective of SOEs reforms provides the reader with a complete and accurate insight into the economic, social and business reality of China today. China's State Owned Enterprises' Reforms will therefore be essential reading for those interested in the Chinese economy and Chinese business, as well as economists, foreign investors, MBA and EMBA students and scholars specializing in emerging or transitional economies.

The aim of the book is to introduce new developments in Ambient Intelligence from researchers of several countries. The book includes different works in the area of Ubiquitous Computing, e-Health, Ambient Assisted Living, Distributed Computing and Context Aware Computing that have been selected by an international committee. The studies have been presented in the 9th International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence held in Toledo in June 2018.

The 15th International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence 2018 (DCAI 2018) is a forum to present applications of innovative techniques for studying and solving complex problems. The exchange of ideas between scientists and technicians from both the academic and industrial sector is essential to facilitate the development of systems that can meet the ever-increasing demands of today's society. The present edition brings together past experience, current work and promising future trends associated with distributed computing, artificial intelligence and their application in order to provide efficient solutions to real problems.This symposium is organized by the University of Castilla-La Mancha, the Osaka Institute of Technology and the University of Salamanca. The present edition was held in Toledo, Spain, from 20th - 22nd June, 2018.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, PAAMS 2018, held in Toledo, Spain, in June 2018. The 20 regular and 19 demo papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. They deal with the application and validation of agent-based models, methods, and technologies in a number of key applications areas, such as: energy and security; engineering and tools; evaluation and ethics; negotiation and organisations; personalization and learning; simulation applications; simulation platforms; social networks and humans. The book also contains two invited talks in full paper length.

In this thesis, the author investigates the biophysical basis of the local field potential (LFP) as a way of gaining a better understanding of its underlying physiological mechanisms. The results represent major advances in our understanding and interpretation of LFPs and brain oscillations. They highlight the importance of using suitable experimental and analytical methods to explore the activity of brain circuits and point to the LFP as a useful, but complex variable for this purpose.

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a recent paradigm emerging from Artificial Intelligence, where computers are used as proactive tools assisting people with their day-to-day activities, making everyone's life more comfortable. Another main concern of AmI originates from the human computer interaction domain and focuses on offering ways to interact with systems in a more natural way by means user friendly interfaces. This field is evolving quickly as can be witnessed by the emerging natural language and gesture based types of interaction. The inclusion of computational power and communication technologies in everyday objects is growing and their embedding into our environments should be as invisible as possible. In order for AmI to be successful, human interaction with computing power and embedded systems in the surroundings should be smooth and happen without people actually noticing it. The only awareness people should have arises from AmI: more safety, comfort and wellbeing, emerging in a natural and inherent way. ISAmI is the International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence and aiming to bring together researchers from various disciplines that constitute the scientific field of Ambient Intelligence to present and discuss the latest results, new ideas, projects and lessons learned, namely in terms of software and applications, and aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines that are interested in all aspects of this area.

This volume presents the papers that have been accepted for the 2015 special sessions of the 13th International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, held at University of Salamanca, Spain, at 3rd-5th June, 2015: Agents Behaviours and Artificial Markets (ABAM); Agents and Mobile Devices (AM); Multi-Agent Systems and Ambient Intelligence (MASMAI); Web Mining and Recommender systems (WebMiRes); Learning, Agents and Formal Languages (LAFLang); Agent-based Modeling of Sustainable Behavior and Green Economies (AMSBGE); Emotional Software Agents (SSESA) and Intelligent Educational Systems (SSIES). The volume also includes the paper accepted for the Doctoral Consortium in PAAMS 2015. PAAMS, the International Conference on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems is an evolution of the International Workshop on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. PAAMS is an international yearly tribune to present, to discuss and to disseminate the latest developments and the most important outcomes related to real-world applications. It provides a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to exchange their experience in the development of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (ISAmI 2015), held in Salamanca, Spain on June 3th-5th at the University of Salamanca. After a careful review, 27 papers from 10 different countries were selected to be presented in ISAmI 2015 at the conference and published in the proceedings. ISAmI has been running annually and aiming to bring together researchers from various disciplines that constitute the scientific field of Ambient Intelligence to present and discuss the latest results, new ideas, projects and lessons learned, namely in terms of software and applications and aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines that are interested in all aspects of this area. Ambient Intelligence is a recent paradigm emerging from Artificial Intelligence, where computers are used as proactive tools assisting people with their day-to-day activities, making everyone's life more comfortable. Another main concern of AmI originates from the human computer interaction domain and focuses on offering ways to interact with systems in a more natural way by means user friendly interfaces. This field is evolving quickly as can be witnessed by the emerging natural language and gesture based types of interaction.

The study of complex systems attracts the attention of many researchers in diverse fields. Complex systems are characterized by a high number of entities and a high degree of interactions. One of the most important features is that they do not involve a central organizing authority, but the various elements that make up the systems are self-organized. Moreover, some complex systems possess an emergency priority: climate change and sustainable development research, studies of public health, ecosystem habitats, epidemiology, and medicine, among others. Unfortunately, a great number of today's overlapping approaches fail to meet the needs of decision makers when managing complex domains. Indeed, the design of complex systems often requires the integration of a number of artificial intelligence tools and techniques. The problem can be viewed in terms of goals, states, and actions, choosing the best action to move the system toward its desired state or behavior. This is why agent-based approaches are used to model complex systems. The main objective of this book is to bring together existing methods for decision support systems creation within a coherent agent-based framework and to provide an interdisciplinary and flexible methodology for modeling complex and systemic domains.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2011, held in Toulouse, France, in December 2011. The 26 revised papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 96 submissions. They represent the current state of the art of the research in the field of the design, analysis and development of distributed and real-time systems.

This book focuses on the performance of mobile robots through the use of multi-hierarchical symbolic representations of the environment.

To perform deliberative actions, a robot must possess some symbolic representation of its workspace, but representations of real environments can become so large that they must be conveniently arranged to facilitate and, in some cases, make possible their use. Practical solutions tested on real robots, for example a robotic wheelchair, are provided.

This book constitutes the proceedings of 24th International Symposium, SSS 2022, which took place in Clermont-Ferrand, France, in November 2022.The 17 regular papers together with 4 invited papers and 7 brief announcements, included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. The SSS 2022 focus on systems built such that they are able to provide on their own guarantees on their structure, performance, and/or security in the face of an adverse environment. The Symposium presents three tracks reflecting major trends related to the conference: (i) Self-stabilizing Systems: Theory and Practice, (ii) Concurrent and Distributed Computing: Foundations, Faulttolerance, and Security, and (iii) Dynamic, Mobile, and Nature-Inspired Computing.

Raw Milk: Balance Between Hazards and Benefits provides an in-depth nutritional and safety analysis of raw milk. This high-quality reference is comprised of contributions from global researchers highly specialized in the field. The book is divided into five sections that address the characteristics of raw milk, production guidelines and concerns, the benefits and hazards of raw milk, and the current market for raw milk. Topics include production physiology and microbiology, rules and guidelines for production, the world market for raw milk and its products, and consumer acceptance. A final section identifies future trends and research needs related to raw milk.