This is a rigorous and complete textbook for a first course on information retrieval from the computer science perspective. It provides an up-to-date student oriented treatment of information retrieval including extensive coverage of new topics such as web retrieval, web crawling, open source search engines and user interfaces.

From parsing to indexing, clustering to classification, retrieval to ranking, and user feedback to retrieval evaluation, all of the most important concepts are carefully introduced and exemplified. The contents and structure of the book have been carefully designed by the two main authors, with individual contributions coming from leading international authorities in the field, including Yoelle Maarek, Senior Director of Yahoo Research Israel; Dulce Ponceleon IBM Research; and Malcolm Slaney, Yahoo Research USA.

This completely reorganized, revised and enlarged second edition of "Modern Information Retrieval" contains many new chapters and double the number of pages and bibliographic references of the first edition, and a companion website www.mir2ed.org with teaching material. It will prove invaluable to students, professors, researchers, practitioners, and scholars of this fascinating field of information retrieval.

This self-contained book takes the reader on a journey from the basic facts about atoms to topics at the forefront of current condensed matter research, giving students a broad view of materials science.The contents grew out of the lectures on solid state physics given to both theorists and experimentalists in the US who had little previous background in the area. The topics are of direct relevance for the interpretation of experimental data. Even if they may not be of chronological order, their universality is emphasized. The mathematics is simplified without sacrificing precision, providing an intuitive understanding of the phenomena discussed.The book is easily accessible to any mathematically inclined scientist or engineer with a basic knowledge of quantum mechanics.

In today's globalized world, failure to implement projects can cause companies to struggle in trying to achieve their mission and vision. To ensure a company's success, the implementation of project management maturity and an increase in project complexity have become vital components in the modern engineering field. Measuring Maturity in Complex Engineering Projects is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of project management and complex projects with an embracing vision of the maturity model genesis. Highlighting a range of topics such as knowledge management, project classification, and maturity analysis in the mining, energy, and civil construction sectors, this book is ideally designed for project coordinators and managers, business executives, business professionals, academicians, researchers, and graduate-level students seeking current research on project management maturity in engineering.

This book presents the theory and methods of flexible and generalized uncertainty optimization. Particularly, it describes the theory of generalized uncertainty in the context of optimization modeling. The book starts with an overview of flexible and generalized uncertainty optimization. It covers uncertainties that are both associated with lack of information and are more general than stochastic theory, where well-defined distributions are assumed. Starting from families of distributions that are enclosed by upper and lower functions, the book presents construction methods for obtaining flexible and generalized uncertainty input data that can be used in a flexible and generalized uncertainty optimization model. It then describes the development of the associated optimization model in detail. Written for graduate students and professionals in the broad field of optimization and operations research, this second edition has been revised and extended to include more worked examples and a section on interval multi-objective mini-max regret theory along with its solution method.

The popularization of the Internet, due in larger part to the advent of multifunctional cell phones, poses new challenges for health professionals, patients, and caregivers as well as creates new possibilities for all of us. This comprehensive volume analyzes how this social phenomenon is transforming long-established healthcare practices and perceptions in a country with one of the highest numbers of Internet users: Brazil. After an opening text that analyzes the Internet and E-Health Care as a field of study, the book comprises six parts. The first part introduces the emergence and development of the internet in Brazil, its pioneering experience in internet governance, digital inclusion, and online citizen participation. The second part is dedicated to internet health audiences by analyzing the cases of patients, the young, and the elderly seeking and sharing health information online, especially in virtual communities. The third part is dedicated to the challenges that the expansion of the internet in healthcare poses to all of us, such as the evaluation of the quality of health information available online and the prevention of the risks involved with online sales, cyberbullying, and consumption of prescription medicines. The fourth presents some innovative e-learning experiences carried out with different groups in Brazil, while the fifth part analyses some practical applications involving the Internet and health, including studies on M-Health, the Internet of things, serious games and the use of new information and communication technologies in health promotion. The last chapter analyses the future of healthcare in the Internet Age. The authors establish a critical and creative debate with international scholarship on the subject. This book is written in a direct and comprehensible way for professionals, researchers, students of communication and health, as well as for stakeholders and others interested in better understanding the trends and the different challenges related to the social phenomenon of the internet in health.

This book provides a complete overview of a wide range of nanomaterials from their synthesis and characterization to current and potential applications with special focus on the use of such nano-based products as functional agents in biomedical, environmental and industrial applications. It addresses the intrinsic relationship between aspects involving the synthesis of nanocompounds, their bio-physico-chemical properties and their interactions occurring in biomedical, environmental and industrial matrix. This book is of interest to engineers, academics and research scholars working in these fields.

Statistical Design-Chemometrics is applicable to researchers and professionals who wish to perform experiments in chemometrics and carry out analysis of the data in the most efficient way possible. The language is clear, direct and oriented towards real applications. The book provides 106 exercises with answers to accompany the study of theoretical principles. Forty two cases studies with real data are presented showing designs and the complete statistical analyses for problems in the areas chromatography, electroanalytical and electrochemistry, calibration, polymers, gas adsorption, semiconductors, food technology, biotechnology, photochemistry, catalysis, detergents and ceramics. These studies serve as a guide that the reader can use to perform correct data analyses.
-Provides 42 case studies containing step-by-step descriptions of calculational procedures that can be applied to most real optimization problems
-Contains 106 theoretical exercises to test individual learning and to provide classroom exercises and material for written tests and exams
-Written in a language that facilitates learning for physical and biological scientists and engineers
-Takes a practical approach for those involved in industrial optimization problems

This book offers a legal and socio-political analysis of the Brazilian Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. Discussing Colombian, Guatemalan and Mexican experiences, it fills a gap in the literature regarding Latin American public policy by investigating the creation, work, beneficiaries, broader effects, challenges, and effective ways to improve the Brazilian Program.

This book presents a methodology based on inverse problems for use in solutions for fault diagnosis in control systems, combining tools from mathematics, physics, computational and mathematical modeling, optimization and computational intelligence. This methodology, known as fault diagnosis - inverse problem methodology or FD-IPM, unifies the results of several years of work of the authors in the fields of fault detection and isolation (FDI), inverse problems and optimization. The book clearly and systematically presents the main ideas, concepts and results obtained in recent years. By formulating fault diagnosis as an inverse problem, and by solving it using metaheuristics, the authors offer researchers and students a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective for problem solving in these fields. Graduate courses in engineering, applied mathematics and computing also benefit from this work.

International Trade Subsidy Rules and Tax and Financial Export Incentives is an inquiry into the interrelations between international trade subsidy rules and the use of tax and financial export incentives by developing countries. Its central claim is that developing countries should be allowed to adopt - based on their right to development - certain such incentives without violating the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules concerning subsidies. It advances the idea that the right to development of developing and least-developed countries (LDCs) entitles them to use tax and financial export incentives vis- -vis comparatively more developed nations. However, in order to actualize this right, the existing WTO regulations must go through a process of revision. This process should craft an exception, available exclusively to developing countries and LDCs, allowing them to apply fiscal and financial export incentives against countries with a higher level of development, without being accused of granting prohibited subsidies. As a result of this policy reform, the WTO itself would incorporate development and fair/just trade concerns into its regulatory framework, providing an exceptional treatment for a patently exceptional situation. In doing so, the WTO would be contributing to a more equal international trade scene and a more developed and freer world.

This book provides a comprehensive, in-depth overview of elementary mathematics as explored in Mathematical Olympiads around the world. It expands on topics usually encountered in high school and could even be used as preparation for a first-semester undergraduate course. This second volume covers Plane Geometry, Trigonometry, Space Geometry, Vectors in the Plane, Solids and much more. As part of a collection, the book differs from other publications in this field by not being a mere selection of questions or a set of tips and tricks that applies to specific problems. It starts from the most basic theoretical principles, without being either too general or too axiomatic. Examples and problems are discussed only if they are helpful as applications of the theory. Propositions are proved in detail and subsequently applied to Olympic problems or to other problems at the Olympic level. The book also explores some of the hardest problems presented at National and International Mathematics Olympiads, as well as many essential theorems related to the content. An extensive Appendix offering hints on or full solutions for all difficult problems rounds out the book.

This volume describes up-to-date techniques for improved production of secondary metabolites of economic interest using field and laboratory methods. Biotechnology of Plant Secondary Metabolism: Methods and Protocols explores different secondary metabolite classes, whole-plant and cell/organ culture systems, and environmental and genetic transformation-based modulation of biochemical pathways. Special focus is given to cell and tissue specific metabolism, metabolite transport, microRNA-based technology, heterologous systems expression of enzymes and pathways leading to products of interest, as well as applications using both model and non-model plant species. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Practical and cutting-edge, Biotechnology of Plant Secondary Metabolism: Methods and Protocols is a great resource for scientists of interdisciplinary fields--plant science, plant physiology, pharmacy, molecular biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, and forestry--in reaching their goals of producing plant biochemicals in a sustainable and efficient manner, while minimizing impacts to the environment and providing the required quantities of these commodities to industry.

The proportionality test, as proposed in Robert Alexy's principles theory, is becoming commonplace in comparative constitutional studies. And yet, the question "are courts justified in borrowing proportionality?" has not been expressly put in many countries where judicial borrowings are a reality. This book sheds light on this question and examines the circumstances under which courts are authorized to borrow from alien legal sources to rule on constitutional cases. Taking the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil - and its enthusiastic recourse to proportionality when interpreting the Federal Constitution - as a case study, the book investigates the normative reasons that could justify the court's attitude and offers a comprehensive overview of its case law on controversial constitutional matters like abortion, same-sex union, racial quotas, and the right to public healthcare. Providing a valuable resource for those interested in comparative constitutional law and legal theory, or curious about Brazilian constitutional law, this book questions the alleged universality of the proportionality test, challenges the premises of Alexy's principles theory, and discloses more than 68 Brazilian Supreme Court decisions delivered from 2003 to 2018 that would otherwise have remained unknown to an English-speaking audience.

This book examines recent methods for data-driven fault diagnosis of multimode continuous processes. It formalizes, generalizes, and systematically presents the main concepts, and approaches required to design fault diagnosis methods for multimode continuous processes. The book provides both theoretical and practical tools to help readers address the fault diagnosis problem by drawing data-driven methods from at least three different areas: statistics, unsupervised, and supervised learning.

This book brings together a rich selection of studies in mathematical modeling and computational intelligence, with application in several fields of engineering, like automation, biomedical, chemical, civil, electrical, electronic, geophysical and mechanical engineering, on a multidisciplinary approach. Authors from five countries and 16 different research centers contribute with their expertise in both the fundamentals and real problems applications based upon their strong background on modeling and computational intelligence. The reader will find a wide variety of applications, mathematical and computational tools and original results, all presented with rigorous mathematical procedures. This work is intended for use in graduate courses of engineering, applied mathematics and applied computation where tools as mathematical and computational modeling, numerical methods and computational intelligence are applied to the solution of real problems.

It is hard to deny the ubiquity of web technologies used for educational tools; which have provided significant breakthroughs in learning environments. These innovations have contributed to the growing approach of computer-supported education. Technology Platform Innovations and Forthcoming Trends in Ubiquitous Learning overviews the opportunities provided by new technologies, applications, and research in the areas of ubiquitous learning and how those technologies can be successfully implemented. This publication is addressed to a wide audience of researchers, students, and educators interested in a better comprehension of learning process requirements that are mediate by an assorted set of technology innovations.