The First International Conference on Computational Methods (ICCM04), organized by the department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, was held in Singapore, December 15-17, 2004, with great success.

This conference proceedings contains some 290 papers from more than 30 countries/regions. The papers cover a broad range of topics such as meshfree particle methods, Generalized FE and Extended FE methods, inverse analysis and optimization methods. Computational methods for geomechanics, machine learning, vibration, shock, impact, health monitoring, material modeling, fracture and damage mechanics, multi-physics and multi-scales simulation, sports and environments are also included. All the papers are pre-reviewed before they are accepted for publication in this proceedings. The proceedings will provide an informative, timely and invaluable resource for engineers and scientists working in the important areas of computational methods.

Global warming has worsened the water resource crisis in many arid zones worldwide, from Africa to Asia, affecting millions of people and putting them at risk of hunger. Effective management of arid zone resources, including understanding the risks of toxic trace and heavy elements to humans, coupled with the need to produce more food to feed the world's growing population, has thus become increasingly important. This very timely book, the only one of its kind on the market, fills the gap of our knowledge of trace elements in these regions.This book begins by introducing the nature and properties of arid zone soil, followed by an updated overview and comprehensive coverage of the major aspects of the trace elements and heavy metals of most concern in the world's arid and semi-arid soils.

TOPOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION OF CONTINUUM STRUCTURE WITH GLOBAL STRESS CONSTRAINTS BASED ON ICM METHOD.- TOPOLOGICAL OPTIMIZATION OF FRAME STRUCTURES UNDER MULTIPLE LOADING CASES$^*$.- OPTIMAL DISPLACEMENT CONTROL SIMULATION OF ELECTRIC-MECHANICAL COUPLED TRUSSES.- PROTEIN SECONDARY STRUCTURE PREDICTION METHODS BASED ONRBF NEURAL NETWORKS.- A HYBRID META-HEURISTIC FOR A ROUTING PROBLEM.- IDENTIFICATION OF GEOMETRIC PARAMETERS OF DRAWBEAD USING NEURAL NETWORKS.- IMPROVED IMMUNE GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR SOLVING FLOW SHOP SCHEDULING PROBLEM.- A DISCRETE PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR TRAVELLING SALESMAN PROBLEM.- A SEARCH METHOD FOR FINDING A SIMPLE NASH EQUILIBRIUM.- A HERO EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHM HYBRIDIZING FROM PSO AND GA.- A DATA COLLECTION MODEL FOR INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEM BASED ON SIMPLE RANDOM SAMPLING.- DESTRUCTIVE EXTENSION RULE IN PROPOSITION MODAL LOGIC K.- A NOVEL PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION-BASED APPROACH FOR JOB-SHOP SCHEDULING.- UNCALIBRATED ROBOTIC ARM VISUAL SERVO CONTROL.- INTERLINEATION AND INTERFLATION FUNCTIONS OF MANY VARIABLES (BLENDING FUNCTION INTERPOLATION) AND ECONOMICAL ALGORITHMS IN THE APPROXIMATION THEORY.- INDEPENDENT COMPONENT ANALYSIS OF DYNAMIC CONTRAST-ENHANCED IMAGES: THE NUMBER OF COMPONENTS.- THE GEOMETRIC CONSTRAINT SOLVING BASED ON HYBRID GENETIC ALGORITHM OF CONJUGATE GRADIENT.- FAST IMAGE MOSAICS ALGORITHM USING PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION.- CHECKING CONSISTENCY IN HYBRID QUALITATIVE SPATIAL REASONING.- ICA-SCS DENOISING METHOD FOR WATERMARKING SCHEME.- STUDY AND IMPLEMENTATION OF SIMPLIFIED WWW DATA MODEL IN USE FOR WEB MINING.- AN EXTENSION OF EARLEY'S ALGORITHM FOR EXTENDED GRAMMARS.- THE RESEARCH ON POLICY-BASED REGISTRATION MECHANISM OF MOBILE TERMINALS IN MOBILE IP NETWORK.- OPERATIONAL SEMANTIC TO THE EXECUTION OF THE PROCESS MODEL.- FUZZY CLUSTERING ON THE WEB IMPLEMENTED BY JSP TECHNOLOGY.- TEXT CLASSIFICATION FOR CHINESE WEB DOCUMENTS.- LOGIC-BASED CONSTRAINT HANDLING IN RESOURCE-CONSTRAINED SCHEDULING PROBLEMS.- PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION METHOD USED IN PIXEL-BASED TEXTURE SYNTHESIS.- FORMAL METHOD IN IMPLEMENTATION OF ATLAS LANGUAGE*.- GENETIC ALGORITHM FOR EVALUATION METRICS IN TOPICAL WEB CRAWLING.- A BOUNDARY METHOD TO SPEED UP TRAINING SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES.- A FAST ALGORITHM FOR GENERATING CONCEPTS USING AN ATTRIBUTE TABLE.- ALGORITHM OF MEASUREMENT-BASED ADMISSION CONTROL FOR GPRS.- SURFACE RECOGNITION OF AUTOMOBILE PANEL BASED ON SECTION CURVE IDENTIFICATION.- DYNAMIC CLUSTERING ALGORITHM BASED ON ADAPTIVE RESONANCE THEORY.- ONTOLOGY LEARNING USING WORDNET LEXICON.- GENETIC PROGRAMMING FOR MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD PHYLOGENY INFERENCE.- MINING DOMINANCE ASSOCIATION RULES IN PREFERENCE-ORDERED DATA.- Mining Ordinal Patterns For Data Cleaning.- USER ASSOCIATION MINING BASED ON CONCEPT LATTICE.- A PLM-ORIENTED WORKFLOW MODEL.- A LANGUAGE FOR SPECIFYING CONSTRAINTS IN WFMSs.- ONTOLOGY BASED WORKFLOW MODEL.- CONSTRAINED MULTI-SAMPLE TEXTURE SYNTHESIS.- A GENERAL INCREMENTAL HIERARCHICAL CLUSTERING METHOD.- ACTIVATING IRREGULAR DIMENSIONS IN OLAP.- A NEW COMPUTATIONAL METHOD OF INTERSECTION FOR RAY TRACING.- STUDY ON PARTNERS SELECTION OF AGILE VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE BASED ON PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION.- ADAPTIVE DIRECTIONAL WEIGHTED MEDIAN FILTERING.- AN INTERACTIVE WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT FUNCTION MODEL.- PACKET FAIR SCHEDULING ALGORITHM BASED ON WEIGHTS DYNAMIC COMPENSATION.- EXTENDED ADAPTIVE WEIGHTED AVERAGING FILTER MODEL.- AN IMPROVED QUANTUM-INSPIRED EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHM FOR CLUSTERING GENE EXPRESSION DATA.- AUTOMATIC BUFFER OVERFLOW DETECTION BASED ON OPERATION SEMANTIC.- QUANTUM-INSPIRED EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHM FOR TRAVELLING SALESMAN PROBLEM.- AN IMPROVED COEVOLUTION ALGORITHM FOR FUZZY MODELLING.- A COMPUTATIONAL METHOD FOR SOLVING CAUCHY PROBLEMS OF ELLIPTIC OPERATORS.- NUMERICAL DETERMINATION OF THE RESONANCE FREQUENCIES AND EIGENMODES USING THE MFS.- SCATTERED NODE COMPACT FINITE DIFFERENCE-TYPE FORMULAS GENERATED FROM RADIAL BASIS FUNCTIONS.- EXPLOSION SIMULATI

This book offers comprehensive coverage of trace elements in arid zone regions. It begins by introducing the nature and properties of arid zone soil, followed by coverage of the major aspects of the trace elements and heavy metals of most concern in the world's arid and semi-arid soils. A comprehensive, focused case study on transfer fluxes of trace elements in Israeli arid soils is used to illustrate the themes presented in the book.

This well-known and highly successful book was first published in 1973 and has been completely re-written in subsequent editions (published in 1982 and 2003). This new Fourth Edition has become necessary because of the pace of developments in mass spectrometry of intact lipids, which has given recognition of lipid analysis and 'lipidomics' as a distinct science. To bring the book up to date with these developments, author William W. Christie is joined by co-author Xianlin Han. Although devoting considerable space to mass spectrometry and lipidomics, Lipid analysis remains a practical guide, in one volume, to the complexities of the analysis of lipids. As in past editions, it is designed to act as a primary source, of value at the laboratory bench rather than residing on a library shelf. Lipid analysis deals with the isolation, separation, identification and structural analysis of glycerolipids, including triacylglycerols, phospholipids, sphingolipids, and the various hydrolysis products of these. The chapters follow a logical sequence from the extraction of lipids to the isolation and characterization of particular lipid classes and of molecular species of each, and to the mass spectrometric analysis of lipids and lipidomics. The new influence of mass spectrometry is due mainly to the development of electrospray ionization (ESI) and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI). Most emphasis in this book is placed on ESI, which is enabling structural characterization of different lipid classes and the identification of novel lipids and their molecular species.

Covers the area of lipidomics from fundamentals and theory to applications * Presents a balanced discussion of the fundamentals, theory, experimental methods and applications of lipidomics * Covers different characterizations of lipids including Glycerophospholipids; Sphingolipids; Glycerolipids and Glycolipids; and Fatty Acids and Modified Fatty Acids * Includes a section on quantification of Lipids in Lipidomics such as sample preparation; factors affecting accurate quantification; and data processing and interpretation * Details applications of Lipidomics Tools including for Health and Disease; Plant Lipidomics; and Lipidomics on Cellular Membranes