This book brings together the latest research achievements from signal processing and related disciplines, consolidating existing and proposed directions in DSP-based knowledge extraction and information fusion. The book includes contributions presenting both novel algorithms and existing applications, emphasizing on-line processing of real-world data. Readers discover applications that solve biomedical, industrial, and environmental problems.

* In addition to secondary sources from the UNHCR, IOM and extant scholarship, the manuscript draws on survey, ethnographic, and interview data assembled during a multi-year research project led by the author under the auspices of the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies (BCARS), 2014-6 * The author conducted and led fieldwork to thirty-five refugee sites, including formal and informal camps and urban neighborhoods, in Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Serbia and Germany, conducting 180 in-depth interviews with smuggled migrants, expert interviews with 75 government, NGO, and INGO respondents * The author studied and surveyed ethnographic data from rarely-studied sites along major smuggling routes and displacement centers on the so-called Balkan Route (from the Middle East into West Europe: Turkey-Greece-Macedonia-Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia-Austria-Germany)

* In addition to secondary sources from the UNHCR, IOM and extant scholarship, the manuscript draws on survey, ethnographic, and interview data assembled during a multi-year research project led by the author under the auspices of the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies (BCARS), 2014-6 * The author conducted and led fieldwork to thirty-five refugee sites, including formal and informal camps and urban neighborhoods, in Jordan, Turkey, Greece, Serbia and Germany, conducting 180 in-depth interviews with smuggled migrants, expert interviews with 75 government, NGO, and INGO respondents * The author studied and surveyed ethnographic data from rarely-studied sites along major smuggling routes and displacement centers on the so-called Balkan Route (from the Middle East into West Europe: Turkey-Greece-Macedonia-Serbia-Croatia-Slovenia-Austria-Germany)

What shapes the cultural, political and ideological values of young people living in Southeastern Europe? Which identities matter to them? How are their values changing, and how can they be changed? Who is changing them? Europe's periphery is the testing ground for the success of European values and identities. The future stability and political coherence of the Union will be determined in large measure by identity issues in this region. This book examines the ways in which ethnic and national values and identities have been surpassed as the overriding focus in the lives of the region's youth. Employing bottom-up, ethnographic, and interview-based approaches, it explores when and where ethnic and national identification processes become salient. Using intra-national and international comparisons of youth populations of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vojvodina, contributors uncover the mechanisms by which ethnic identities are evoked, reproduced and challenged. In addition to exploring political, regional cultural generational and class identities, the contributors examine wider questions of European unity. This volume offers a corrective to previous thinking about youth ethnic identities and will prove useful to scholars in political science and sociology studying issues of ethnic and national identities and nationalism, as well as youth cultures and identities.

What shapes the cultural, political and ideological values of young people living in Southeastern Europe? Which identities matter to them? How are their values changing, and how can they be changed? Who is changing them? Europe's periphery is the testing ground for the success of European values and identities. The future stability and political coherence of the Union will be determined in large measure by identity issues in this region. This book examines the ways in which ethnic and national values and identities have been surpassed as the overriding focus in the lives of the region's youth. Employing bottom-up, ethnographic, and interview-based approaches, it explores when and where ethnic and national identification processes become salient. Using intra-national and international comparisons of youth populations of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vojvodina, contributors uncover the mechanisms by which ethnic identities are evoked, reproduced and challenged. In addition to exploring political, regional cultural generational and class identities, the contributors examine wider questions of European unity. This volume offers a corrective to previous thinking about youth ethnic identities and will prove useful to scholars in political science and sociology studying issues of ethnic and national identities and nationalism, as well as youth cultures and identities.

This book brings together the latest research achievements from signal processing and related disciplines, consolidating existing and proposed directions in DSP-based knowledge extraction and information fusion. The book includes contributions presenting both novel algorithms and existing applications, emphasizing on-line processing of real-world data. Readers discover applications that solve biomedical, industrial, and environmental problems.

This two volume set LNCS 4668 and LNCS 4669 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2007, held in Porto, Portugal, in September 2007.

The 197 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 376 submissions. The 98 papers of the first volume are organized in topical sections on learning theory, advances in neural network learning methods, ensemble learning, spiking neural networks, advances in neural network architectures neural network technologies, neural dynamics and complex systems, data analysis, estimation, spatial and spatio-temporal learning, evolutionary computing, meta learning, agents learning, complex-valued neural networks, as well as temporal synchronization and nonlinear dynamics in neural networks.

This two volume set LNCS 4668 and LNCS 4669 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks, ICANN 2007, held in Porto, Portugal, in September 2007.

The 197 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 376 submissions. The second volume contains 99 contributions related to computational neuroscience, neurocognitive studies, applications in biomedicine and bioinformatics, pattern recognition, data clustering, self-organization, text mining and internet applications, signal and times series processing, vision and image processing, robotics, control, real world applications, independent component analysis, graphs, emotion and attention: empirical findings and neural models, as well as understanding and creating cognitive systems.

How global organized crime shapes the politics of borders in modern conflicts Separatism has been on the rise across the world since the end of the Cold War, dividing countries through political strife, ethnic conflict, and civil war, and redrawing the political map. Gangsters and Other Statesmen examines the role transnational mafias play in the success and failure of separatist movements, challenging conventional wisdom about the interrelation of organized crime with peacebuilding, nationalism, and state making. Danilo Mandic conducted fieldwork in the disputed territories of Kosovo and South Ossetia, talking to mobsters, separatists, and policymakers in war zones and along major smuggling routes. In this timely and provocative book, he demonstrates how globalized mafias shape the politics of borders in torn states, shedding critical light on an autonomous nonstate actor that has been largely sidelined by considerations of geopolitics, state-centered agency, and ethnonationalism. Blending extensive archival sleuthing and original ethnographic data with insights from sociology and other disciplines, Mandic argues that organized crime can be a fateful determinant of state capacity, separatist success, and ethnic conflict. Putting mafias at the center of global processes of separatism and territorial consolidation, Gangsters and Other Statesmen raises vital questions and urges reconsideration of a host of separatist cases in West Africa, the Middle East, and East Europe.

How global organized crime shapes the politics of borders in modern conflicts Separatism has been on the rise across the world since the end of the Cold War, dividing countries through political strife, ethnic conflict, and civil war, and redrawing the political map. Gangsters and Other Statesmen examines the role transnational mafias play in the success and failure of separatist movements, challenging conventional wisdom about the interrelation of organized crime with peacebuilding, nationalism, and state making. Danilo Mandic conducted fieldwork in the disputed territories of Kosovo and South Ossetia, talking to mobsters, separatists, and policymakers in war zones and along major smuggling routes. In this timely and provocative book, he demonstrates how globalized mafias shape the politics of borders in torn states, shedding critical light on an autonomous nonstate actor that has been largely sidelined by considerations of geopolitics, state-centered agency, and ethnonationalism. Blending extensive archival sleuthing and original ethnographic data with insights from sociology and other disciplines, Mandic argues that organized crime can be a fateful determinant of state capacity, separatist success, and ethnic conflict. Putting mafias at the center of global processes of separatism and territorial consolidation, Gangsters and Other Statesmen raises vital questions and urges reconsideration of a host of separatist cases in West Africa, the Middle East, and East Europe.