This book introduces the linkage between evolutionary computation and complex networks and the advantages of cross-fertilising ideas from both fields. Instead of introducing each field individually, the authors focus on the research that sits at the interface of both fields. The book is structured to address two questions: (1) how complex networks are used to analyze and improve the performance of evolutionary computation methods? (2) how evolutionary computation methods are used to solve problems in complex networks? The authors interweave complex networks and evolutionary computing, using evolutionary computation to discover community structure, while also using network analysis techniques to analyze the performance of evolutionary algorithms. The book is suitable for both beginners and senior researchers in the fields of evolutionary computation and complex networks.

This book explores how children have been affected by armed conflict in the borderlands of Thailand, particularly in the region abutting the Thailand-Myanmar border, and in the most southern part of Thailand. The author argues that the Thai government has made great efforts to protect children from armed conflict in these borderlands. The author analyzes the obstacles facing the Thai government in protecting children from armed conflict in the borderlands, and advances alternative solutions for how the Thai government might better protect children from armed conflict in the foreseeable future. This book not only opens a window for future research on children affected by armed conflict in the borderlands of Thailand and beyond, but also contributes to the breadth of perspective and depth of expertise in related fields, such as studies of human insecurity. It is relevant to scholars, graduate students, and policymakers interested in the impact of armed conflict on children.

This book addresses the theoretical and practical circuit and system concepts that underpin the design of reliable and reproducible, high performance, monolithic feedback circuits. It is intended for practicing electronics engineers and students who wish to acquire an insightful understanding of the ways in which open loop topologies, closed loop architectures, and fundamental circuit theoretic issues combine to determine the limits of performance of analog networks. Since many of the problems that underpin high speed digital circuit design are a subset of the analysis and design dilemmas confronted by wideband analog circuit designers, the book is also germane to high performance digital circuit design.

This book contains a collection of the papers accepted in the 18th Asia Pacific Symposium on Intelligent and Evolutionary Systems (IES 2014), which was held in Singapore from 10-12th November 2014. The papers contained in this book demonstrate notable intelligent systems with good analytical and/or empirical results.

This book contains a collection of the papers accepted in the 18th Asia Pacific Symposium on Intelligent and Evolutionary Systems (IES 2014), which was held in Singapore from 10-12th November 2014. The papers contained in this book demonstrate notable intelligent systems with good analytical and/or empirical results.

Evolutionary algorithms are sophisticated search methods that have been found to be very efficient and effective in solving complex real-world multi-objective problems where conventional optimization tools fail to work well. Despite the tremendous amount of work done in the development of these algorithms in the past decade, many researchers assume that the optimization problems are deterministic and uncertainties are rarely examined.

The primary motivation of this book is to provide a comprehensive introduction on the design and application of evolutionary algorithms for multi-objective optimization in the presence of uncertainties. In this book, we hope to expose the readers to a range of optimization issues and concepts, and to encourage a greater degree of appreciation of evolutionary computation techniques and the exploration of new ideas that can better handle uncertainties. "Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization in Uncertain Environments: Issues and Algorithms" is intended for a wide readership and will be a valuable reference for engineers, researchers, senior undergraduates and graduate students who are interested in the areas of evolutionary multi-objective optimization and uncertainties.

Evolutionary scheduling is a vital research domain at the interface of artificial intelligence and operational research. This edited book gives an overview of many of the current developments in the large and growing field of evolutionary scheduling. It demonstrates the applicability of evolutionary computational techniques to solve scheduling problems, not only to small-scale test problems, but also fully-fledged real-world problems.

With the increasing applications of intelligent robotic systems in various ?elds, the - sign and control of these systems have increasingly attracted interest from researchers. This edited book entitled "Design and Control of Intelligent Robotic Systems" in the book series of "Studies in Computational Intelligence" is a collection of some advanced research on design and control of intelligent robots. The works presented range in scope from design methodologies to robot development. Various design approaches and al- rithms, such as evolutionary computation, neural networks, fuzzy logic, learning, etc. are included. We also would like to mention that most studies reported in this book have been implemented in physical systems. An overview on the applications of computational intelligence in bio-inspired robotics is given in Chapter 1 by M. Begum and F. Karray, with highlights of the recent progress in bio-inspired robotics research and a focus on the usage of computational intelligence tools to design human-like cognitive abilities in the robotic systems. In Chapter 2, Lisa L. Grant and Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy present greedy search, particle swarm optimization and fuzzy logic based strategies for navigating a swarm of robots for target search in a hazardous environment, with potential applications in high-risk tasks such as disaster recovery and hazardous material detection.

Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms and Applications provides comprehensive treatment on the design of multiobjective evolutionary algorithms and their applications in domains covering areas such as control and scheduling. Emphasizing both the theoretical developments and the practical implementation of multiobjective evolutionary algorithms, a profound mathematical knowledge is not required.

Written for a wide readership, engineers, researchers, senior undergraduates and graduate students interested in the field of evolutionary algorithms and multiobjective optimization with some basic knowledge of evolutionary computation will find this book a useful addition to their book case.

Neural Networks: Computational Models and Applications presents important theoretical and practical issues in neural networks, including the learning algorithms of feed-forward neural networks, various dynamical properties of recurrent neural networks, winner-take-all networks and their applications in broad manifolds of computational intelligence: pattern recognition, uniform approximation, constrained optimization, NP-hard problems, and image segmentation. The book offers a compact, insightful understanding of the broad and rapidly growing neural networks domain.

Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) has become a necessity rather than a specialization for electrical and computer engineers. This unique text provides Engineering and Computer Science students with a comprehensive study of the subject, covering VLSI from basic design techniques to working principles of physical design automation tools to leading edge application-specific array processors.

Beginning with CMOS design, the author describes VLSI design from the viewpoint of a digital circuit engineer. He develops physical pictures for CMOS circuits and demonstrates the top-down design methodology using two design projects - a microprocessor and a field programmable gate array. The author then discusses VLSI testing and dedicates an entire chapter to the working principles, strengths, and weaknesses of ubiquitous physical design tools. Finally, he unveils the frontiers of VLSI. He emphasizes its use as a tool to develop innovative algorithms and architecture to solve previously intractable problems.

VLSI Design answers not only the question of "what is VLSI," but also shows how to use VLSI. It provides graduate and upper level undergraduate students with a complete and congregated view of VLSI engineering.

A remarkable facet of the human brain is its ability to manage multiple tasks with apparent simultaneity. Knowledge learned from one task can then be used to enhance problem-solving in other related tasks. In machine learning, the idea of leveraging relevant information across related tasks as inductive biases to enhance learning performance has attracted significant interest. In contrast, attempts to emulate the human brain's ability to generalize in optimization - particularly in population-based evolutionary algorithms - have received little attention to date. Recently, a novel evolutionary search paradigm, Evolutionary Multi-Task (EMT) optimization, has been proposed in the realm of evolutionary computation. In contrast to traditional evolutionary searches, which solve a single task in a single run, evolutionary multi-tasking algorithm conducts searches concurrently on multiple search spaces corresponding to different tasks or optimization problems, each possessing a unique function landscape. By exploiting the latent synergies among distinct problems, the superior search performance of EMT optimization in terms of solution quality and convergence speed has been demonstrated in a variety of continuous, discrete, and hybrid (mixture of continuous and discrete) tasks. This book discusses the foundations and methodologies of developing evolutionary multi-tasking algorithms for complex optimization, including in domains characterized by factors such as multiple objectives of interest, high-dimensional search spaces and NP-hardness.

Over the last two decades, China has emerged as one of the most powerful state actors in the post-Cold War international system. This book provides a multifaceted and spatially oriented analysis of how China’s re-emergence as a global power impacts the dominance of the United States as well as domestic state and non-state actors in various world-regions, including the Asia-Pacific, Africa, South America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, Europe and the Arctic. Chapters reflect on how and under which conditions competition (and cooperation) between the United States and China vary across these regions and what such variations mean for the prospects of war and peace, universal human dignity and global cooperation.

Kai and his mother were sitting on an Air China 747 in San Francisco International Airport, waiting impatiently for take-off. Kai's father had passed away a year before in the spring of 1988. He was taking his mother home to visit his elder brother in China. The take-off had been delayed because one of the Chinese passengers failed to show up even though he had already checked his luggage. He had decided to remain in the US illegally. This incident took Kai back in time to his own painful and courageous decisions. .. A 12 year old Kai was sitting on the train waiting to leave Beijing for Manchuria. Young Kai was confused about why he was leaving, not knowing he and his brothers were being forced to join their exiled parents in the small city of Tonghua. He had spent the past five years with an abusive grandmother and Big Brother in Beijing. Life in Tonghua wasn't any easier for Kai who grew into a teenager with a different accent and a unique physical appearance - 6'7" by the age 15. But the most mind-boggling torment for Kai and his family was still to come. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution began. With half of his relatives in Taiwan, Kai and his family endured political persecution and discrimination. He and his brothers were again forced to leave the city to go to the countryside. Kai set out to overcome these obstacles. He used his basketball skills to land a job in a Liuhe grain depot while playing for the depot's team. Soon after, with China's return to professional sports, two basketball coaches from the National Sports and Athletics Commission recruited him for the National Basketball Team's training camp in Beijing. At the camp, Kai met his best friend Xiao, a track team member, who was later expelled because his father had worked for Kuomintang's army. Kai remained a little longer and then was also expelled for the similar reason. Determined not to return to the isolation of the small town factory, he escaped to Canton. He was caught and then force

China-Taiwan economic ties are now among the key factors influencing the relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait which is still one of the flashpoints in today's world. This book traces the origin and the process of how so-called "cross-strait economic ties" became such a key factor in China-Taiwan relations throughout the 1990s and how this factor has affected China-Taiwan relations since then. By focusing on "Taiwan's domestic politics" as it relates to the domestic conflicts between opposing political and economic forces in Taiwan over the political relations and economic ties across the Taiwan Strait, the book demonstrates that the growth of cross-strait economic ties since 1990 has significantly affected Taiwan's domestic politics which in turn has had a profound impact on China-Taiwan relations. Although the growth of China-Taiwan economic ties could hardly resolve the so-called "Taiwan problem" and might even lead to some political and economic conflicts between the two sides at times, through Taiwan's domestic politics, it has reduced the likelihood of severe confrontation, especially the military one, in the Taiwan Strait. As this book reveals, the interactions between the economic winners, the economic losers, the political parties, the government, and the general public in Taiwan's domestic politics as a result of the growth of cross-strait economic ties have played an important role in the development of China-Taiwan relations, leading to a very confrontational situation from 1995 to 2008, a relatively peaceful Taiwan Strait from 2008 to 2016, and a "cold peace" between the two sides since 2016.

Upon its initial publication, the Handbook of Circuits and Filters broke new ground. It quickly became the resource for comprehensive coverage of issues and practical information that can be put to immediate use. Not content to rest on his laurels, editor Wai-kai Chen divided the second edition into volumes, making the information easily accessible and digestible. In the third edition, these volumes have been revised, updated, and expanded so that they continue to provide solid coverage of standard practices and enlightened perspectives on new and emerging techniques. Feedback, Nonlinear, and Distributed Circuits draws together international contributors who discuss feedback amplifier theory and then move on to explore feedback amplifier configurations. They develop Bode's feedback theory as an example of general feedback theory. The coverage then moves on to the importance of complementing numerical analysis with qualitative analysis to get a global picture of a circuit's performance. After reviewing a wide range of approximation techniques and circuit design styles for discreet and monolithic circuits, the book presents a comprehensive description of the use of piecewise-linear methods in modeling, analysis, and structural properties of nonlinear circuits highlighting the advantages. It describes the circuit modeling in the frequency domain of uniform MTL based on the Telegrapher's equations and covers frequency and time domain experimental characterization techniques for uniform and nonuniform multiconductor structures. This volume will undoubtedly take its place as the engineer's first choice in looking for solutions to problems encountered in the analysis and behavior predictions of circuits and filters.

This 2nd edition provides an in-depth, up-to-date, unified, and comprehensive treatment of the fundamentals of the theory of active networks and its applications to feedback amplifier design. The main purpose is to discuss the topics that are of fundamental importance that transcends the advent of new devices and design tools. Intended primarily as a text in circuit theory in electrical engineering for senior and/or first year graduate students, the book also serve as a reference for researchers and practicing engineers in industry.A special feature of the book is that it bridges the gap between theory and practice, with abundant examples showing how theory solves problems. These examples are actual practical problems, not idealized illustrations of the theory. The topic on topological analysis of active networks is also expanded to benefit more discerning readers.

This 2nd edition provides an in-depth, up-to-date, unified, and comprehensive treatment of the fundamentals of the theory of active networks and its applications to feedback amplifier design. The main purpose is to discuss the topics that are of fundamental importance that transcends the advent of new devices and design tools. Intended primarily as a text in circuit theory in electrical engineering for senior and/or first year graduate students, the book also serve as a reference for researchers and practicing engineers in industry.A special feature of the book is that it bridges the gap between theory and practice, with abundant examples showing how theory solves problems. These examples are actual practical problems, not idealized illustrations of the theory. The topic on topological analysis of active networks is also expanded to benefit more discerning readers.

The third edition presents a unified, up-to-date and detailed account of broadband matching theory and its applications to the design of broadband matching networks and amplifiers. A special feature is the addition of results that are of direct practical value. They are design curves, tables and explicit formulas for designing networks having Butterworth, Chebyshev or elliptic, Bessel or maximally flat group-delay response. These results are extremely useful as the design procedures can be reduced to simple arithmetic. Two case studies towards the end of the book are intended to demonstrate the applications to the practical design of modern filter circuits.

Privacy-preserving computing aims to protect the personal information of users while capitalizing on the possibilities unlocked by big data. This practical introduction for students, researchers, and industry practitioners is the first cohesive and systematic presentation of the field's advances over four decades. The book shows how to use privacy-preserving computing in real-world problems in data analytics and AI, and includes applications in statistics, database queries, and machine learning. The book begins by introducing cryptographic techniques such as secret sharing, homomorphic encryption, and oblivious transfer, and then broadens its focus to more widely applicable techniques such as differential privacy, trusted execution environment, and federated learning. The book ends with privacy-preserving computing in practice in areas like finance, online advertising, and healthcare, and finally offers a vision for the future of the field.

This invaluable book comprehensively describes evolutionary robotics and computational intelligence, and how different computational intelligence techniques are applied to robotic system design. It embraces the most widely used evolutionary approaches with their merits and drawbacks, presents some related experiments for robotic behavior evolution and the results achieved, and shows promising future research directions. Clarity of explanation is emphasized such that a modest knowledge of basic evolutionary computation, digital circuits and engineering design will suffice for a thorough understanding of the material.The book is ideally suited to computer scientists, practitioners and researchers keen on computational intelligence techniques, especially the evolutionary algorithms in autonomous robotics at both the hardware and software levels.

Culled from the pages of CRC's highly successful, best-selling The Circuits and Filters Handbook, Second Edition, Circuit Analysis and Feedback Amplifier Theory presents a sharply focused, comprehensive review of the fundamental theory behind professional applications of circuits and feedback amplifiers. It supplies a concise, convenient reference to the key concepts, models, and equations necessary to analyze, design, and predict the behavior of large-scale circuits and feedback amplifiers, illustrated by frequent examples. Edited by a distinguished authority, this book emphasizes the theoretical concepts underlying the processes, behavior, and operation of these devices. It includes guidance on the design of multiple-loop feedback amplifiers. More than 350 figures and tables illustrate the concepts, and where necessary, the theories, principles, and mathematics of some subjects are reviewed. Expert contributors discuss analysis in the time and frequency domains, symbolic analysis, state-variable techniques, feedback amplifier configurations, general feedback theory, and network functions and feedback, among many other topics. Circuit Analysis and Feedback Amplifier Theory builds a strong theoretical foundation for the design and analysis of advanced circuits and feedback amplifiers while serving as a handy reference for experienced engineers, making it a must-have for both beginners and seasoned experts.

The Principles and Application in Engineering Series is a new series of convenient, economical references sharply focused on particular engineering topics and subspecialties. Each volume in this series comprises chapters carefully selected from CRC's bestselling handbooks, logically organized for optimum convenience, and thoughtfully priced to fit every budget. Extracted from the best-selling VLSI Handbook, VLSI: Analog Circuits and Devices provides a comprehensive resource covering the spectrum of devices and their models. In addition to practical discussions on amplifiers, circuits and filters, and compound semiconductor digital integrated circuit technology, it also includes chapters on design automation, design languages, and algorithms and architectures.

As their name implies, VLSI systems involve the integration of various component systems. While all of these components systems are rooted in semiconductor manufacturing, they involve a broad range of technologies. This volume of the Principles and Applications of Engineering series examines the technologies associated with VLSI systems, including VLSI processes, semiconductor technology, micromachining, microelectronics packaging, compound semiconductor digital ICs, and multichip modules. Highlights include discussions on relatively recent innovations and progress in areas such as SiGE, SiC, and SOI technologies, noise issues, materials, and logic design.

Graphs are extremely useful in modeling systems in physical sciences and engineering problems, because of their intuitive diagrammatic nature. This text gives a reasonably deep account of material closely related to engineering applications. Topics like directed-graph solutions of linear equations, topological analysis of linear systems, state equations, rectangle dissection and layouts, and network flows are included. A major theme of the book is electrical network theory.This book is basically intended as a reference text for researchers, and requires a certain level of mathematical maturity. However the text may equally well be used for graduate level courses on network topology and linear systems and circuits. Some of the later chapters are suitable as topics for advanced seminars. A special feature of the book is that references to other published literature are included for almost all the results presented, making the book especially handy for those wishing to continue with a study of special topics.