Search

Summary: Machine learning methods are now an important tool for scientists, researchers, engineers and students in a wide range of areas. This book is written for people who want to adopt and use the main tools of machine learning, but aren’t necessarily going to want to be machine learning researchers. Intended for students in final year undergraduate or first year graduate computer science programs in machine learning, this textbook is a machine learning toolkit. Applied Machine Learning covers many topics for people who want to use machine learning processes to get things done, with a strong emphasis on using existing tools and packages, rather than writing one’s own code. A companion to the author's Probability and Statistics for Computer Science, this book picks up where the earlier book left off (but also supplies a summary of probability that the reader can use). Emphasizing the usefulness of standard machinery from applied statistics, this textbook gives an overview of the major applied areas in learning Covers the ideas in machine learning that everyone going to use learning tools should know, whatever their chosen specialty or career. Broad coverage of the area ensures enough to get the reader started, and to realize that it’s worth knowing more in-depth knowledge of the topic. Practical approach emphasizes using existing tools and packages quickly, with enough pragmatic material on deep networks to get the learner started without needing to study other material.

Summary: This book introduces machine learning methods in finance. It presents a unified treatment of machine learning and various statistical and computational disciplines in quantitative finance, such as financial econometrics and discrete time stochastic control, with an emphasis on how theory and hypothesis tests inform the choice of algorithm for financial data modeling and decision making. With the trend towards increasing computational resources and larger datasets, machine learning has grown into an important skillset for the finance industry. This book is written for advanced graduate students and academics in financial econometrics, mathematical finance and applied statistics, in addition to quants and data scientists in the field of quantitative finance. Machine Learning in Finance: From Theory to Practice is divided into three parts, each part covering theory and applications. The first presents supervised learning for cross-sectional data from both a Bayesian and frequentist perspective. The more advanced material places a firm emphasis on neural networks, including deep learning, as well as Gaussian processes, with examples in investment management and derivative modeling. The second part presents supervised learning for time series data, arguably the most common data type used in finance with examples in trading, stochastic volatility and fixed income modeling. Finally, the third part presents reinforcement learning and its applications in trading, investment and wealth management. Python code examples are provided to support the readers' understanding of the methodologies and applications. The book also includes more than 80 mathematical and programming exercises, with worked solutions available to instructors. As a bridge to research in this emergent field, the final chapter presents the frontiers of machine learning in finance from a researcher's perspective, highlighting how many well-known concepts in statistical physics are likely to emerge as important methodologies for machine learning in finance.

Summary: This book presents the complex topic of using computational intelligence for pattern recognition in a straightforward and applicable way, using Matlab to illustrate topics and concepts. The author covers computational intelligence tools like particle swarm optimization, bacterial foraging, simulated annealing, genetic algorithm, and artificial neural networks. The Matlab based illustrations along with the code are given for every topic. Readers get a quick basic understanding of various pattern recognition techniques using only the required depth in math. The Matlab program and algorithm are given along with the running text, providing clarity and usefulness of the various techniques. Presents pattern recognition and the computational intelligence using Matlab; Includes mixtures of theory, math, and algorithms, letting readers understand the concepts quickly; Outlines an array of classifiers, various regression models, statistical tests and the techniques for pattern recognition using computational intelligence.

Summary: This book presents a cutting-edge research procedure in the Nature-Inspired Computing (NIC) domain and its connections with computational intelligence areas in real-world engineering applications. It introduces readers to a broad range of algorithms, such as genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, the firefly algorithm, flower pollination algorithm, collision-based optimization algorithm, bat algorithm, ant colony optimization, and multi-agent systems. In turn, it provides an overview of meta-heuristic algorithms, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each. Moreover, the book provides a brief outline of the integration of nature-inspired computing techniques and various computational intelligence paradigms, and highlights nature-inspired computing techniques in a range of applications, including: evolutionary robotics, sports training planning, assessment of water distribution systems, flood simulation and forecasting, traffic control, gene expression analysis, antenna array design, and scheduling/dynamic resource management.

Summary: This book presents a wealth of deep-learning algorithms and demonstrates their design process. It also highlights the need for a prudent alignment with the essential characteristics of the nature of learning encountered in the practical problems being tackled. Intended for readers interested in acquiring practical knowledge of analysis, design, and deployment of deep learning solutions to real-world problems, it covers a wide range of the paradigms algorithms and their applications in diverse areas including imaging, seismic tomography, smart grids, surveillance and security, and health care, among others. Featuring systematic and comprehensive discussions on the development processes, their evaluation, and relevance, the book offers insights into fundamental design strategies for algorithms of deep learning.

Summary: This unique book discusses a selection of highly relevant topics in the Social Internet of Things (SIoT), including blockchain, fog computing and data fusion. It also presents numerous SIoT-related applications in fields such as agriculture, health care, education and security, allowing researchers and industry practitioners to gain a better understanding of the Social Internet of Things.

Summary: Research on Smart Grids has recently focused on the energy monitoring issue, with the objective of maximizing the user consumption awareness in building contexts on the one hand, and providing utilities with a detailed description of customer habits on the other. In particular, Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), the subject of this book, represents one of the hottest topics in Smart Grid applications. NILM refers to those techniques aimed at decomposing the consumption-aggregated data acquired at a single point of measurement into the diverse consumption profiles of appliances operating in the electrical system under study. This book provides a status report on the most promising NILM methods, with an overview of the publically available dataset on which the algorithm and experiments are based. Of the proposed methods, those based on the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) and the Deep Neural Network (DNN) are the best performing and most interesting from the future improvement point of view. One method from each category has been selected and the performance improvements achieved are described. Comparisons are made between the two reference techniques, and pros and cons are considered. In addition, performance improvements can be achieved when the reactive power component is exploited in addition to the active power consumption trace.

Summary: This book explores the main concepts, algorithms, and techniques of Machine Learning and data mining for aerospace technology. Satellites are the ‘eagle eyes’ that allow us to view massive areas of the Earth simultaneously, and can gather more data, more quickly, than tools on the ground. Consequently, the development of intelligent health monitoring systems for artificial satellites – which can determine satellites’ current status and predict their failure based on telemetry data – is one of the most important current issues in aerospace engineering. This book is divided into three parts, the first of which discusses central problems in the health monitoring of artificial satellites, including tensor-based anomaly detection for satellite telemetry data and machine learning in satellite monitoring, as well as the design, implementation, and validation of satellite simulators. The second part addresses telemetry data analytics and mining problems, while the last part focuses on security issues in telemetry data.

Summary: The book compiles efficient design and test methodologies for the implementation of reversible logic circuits. The methodologies covered in the book are design approaches, test approaches, fault tolerance in reversible circuits and physical implementation techniques. The book also covers the challenges and the reversible logic circuits to meet these challenges stimulated during each stage of work cycle. The novel computing paradigms are being explored to serve as a basis for fast and low power computation.

Summary: This contributed volume discusses diverse topics to demystify the rapidly emerging and evolving blockchain technology, the emergence of integrated platforms and hosted third-party tools, and the development of decentralized applications for various business domains. It presents various applications that are helpful for research scholars and scientists who are working toward identifying and pinpointing the potential of as well as the hindrances to this technology.

Summary: This book reviews the literature on hand posture estimation using generative methods, identifying the current gaps, such as sensitivity to hand shapes, sensitivity to a good initial posture, difficult hand posture recovery in cases of loss in tracking, and lack of addressing multiple objectives to maximize accuracy and minimize computational cost. To fill these gaps, it proposes a new 3D hand model that combines the best features of the current 3D hand models in the literature. It also discusses the development of a hand shape optimization technique. To find the global optimum for the single-objective problem formulated, it improves and applies particle swarm optimization (PSO), one of the most highly regarded optimization algorithms and one that is used successfully in both science and industry. After formulating the problem, multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) is employed to estimate the Pareto optimal front as the solution for this bi-objective problem. The book also demonstrates the effectiveness of the improved PSO in hand posture recovery in cases of tracking loss. Lastly, the book examines the formulation of hand posture estimation as a bi-objective problem for the first time. The case studies included feature 50 hand postures extracted from five standard datasets, and were used to benchmark the proposed 3D hand model, hand shape optimization, and hand posture recovery.

Summary: In this book Part I presents first an overview of the ECHORD++ project, with its mission and vision together with a detailed structure of its functionalities and instruments: Experiments, Robotic Innovation Facilities and Public end-user Driven Technology Innovation PDTI. Chapter 1 explains how the project is born, the partners, the different instruments and the new concept of cascade funding projects. This novelty made ECHORD++ a special project along the huge number of research groups and consortia involved in the whole project. So far, it is the European funded project with more research team and partners involved in the robotic field. In Chapter 2, one of the instruments in ECHORD++ is explained in detail: RIF. Robotic innovation facilities are a set of laboratories across Europe funded with the project with the goal of hosting consortia involved in any experiment that have special needs when testing their robotic research. In the chapter the three different and specific RIFs will be described and analyzed. Chapter 3 explains an important instrument in ECHORD++: the Experiments. In this part, a big number of research groups have been involve in short time funded research projects. The chapter explains the management of such Experiments, from the call for participation, the candidates selection, the monitoring, reviews and funding for each of the 36 experiments funded for Echord. Chapter 4 is very special because it presents the innovation of funding public end-user driven technology, in particular, robotic technology. The robotic challenge is the key of such an instruments together with the management of the different consortia that participated competitively in the success of the robotic challenge proposed by a public entity, selected also with a very special and innovative process.

Summary: The main objective of this book is to provide a common platform for diverse concepts in satellite image processing. In particular it presents the state-of-the-art in Artificial Intelligence (AI) methodologies and shares findings that can be translated into real-time applications to benefit humankind. Interdisciplinary in its scope, the book will be of interest to both newcomers and experienced scientists working in the fields of satellite image processing, geo-engineering, remote sensing and Artificial Intelligence. It can be also used as a supplementary textbook for graduate students in various engineering branches related to image processing. .

Summary: This book covers challenges and solutions in establishing Industry 4.0 standards for Internet of Things. It proposes a clear view about the role of Internet of Things in establishing standards. The sensor design for industrial problem, challenges faced, and solutions are all addressed. The concept of digital twin and complexity in data analytics for predictive maintenance and fault prediction is also covered. The book is aimed at existing problems faced by the industry at present, with the goal of cost-efficiency and unmanned automation. It also concentrates on predictive maintenance and predictive failures. In addition, it includes design challenges and a survey of literature. Discusses the move towards Industry 4.0 standards and creating a digital twin concept to increase production Presents results and design solutions for industrial standards for IoT Intended for researchers, industrialists and data scientists.

Summary: This book provides an in-depth analysis of the current evolutionary machine learning techniques. Discussing the most highly regarded methods for classification, clustering, regression, and prediction, it includes techniques such as support vector machines, extreme learning machines, evolutionary feature selection, artificial neural networks including feed-forward neural networks, multi-layer perceptron, probabilistic neural networks, self-optimizing neural networks, radial basis function networks, recurrent neural networks, spiking neural networks, neuro-fuzzy networks, modular neural networks, physical neural networks, and deep neural networks. The book provides essential definitions, literature reviews, and the training algorithms for machine learning using classical and modern nature-inspired techniques. It also investigates the pros and cons of classical training algorithms. It features a range of proven and recent nature-inspired algorithms used to train different types of artificial neural networks, including genetic algorithm, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, grey wolf optimizer, whale optimization algorithm, ant lion optimizer, moth flame algorithm, dragonfly algorithm, salp swarm algorithm, multi-verse optimizer, and sine cosine algorithm. The book also covers applications of the improved artificial neural networks to solve classification, clustering, prediction and regression problems in diverse fields.

Summary: This book studies mathematical theories of machine learning. The first part of the book explores the optimality and adaptivity of choosing step sizes of gradient descent for escaping strict saddle points in non-convex optimization problems. In the second part, the authors propose algorithms to find local minima in nonconvex optimization and to obtain global minima in some degree from the Newton Second Law without friction. In the third part, the authors study the problem of subspace clustering with noisy and missing data, which is a problem well-motivated by practical applications data subject to stochastic Gaussian noise and/or incomplete data with uniformly missing entries. In the last part, the authors introduce an novel VAR model with Elastic-Net regularization and its equivalent Bayesian model allowing for both a stable sparsity and a group selection. Provides a thorough look into the variety of mathematical theories of machine learning Presented in four parts, allowing for readers to easily navigate the complex theories Includes extensive empirical studies on both the synthetic and real application time series data.

Summary: This book discusses how the methods and mindsets of design thinking empower large organizations to create groundbreaking innovations. Arguing that innovations must effectively tackle so-called "wicked problems," it shows how design thinking enables managers and innovators to create the organizational spaces and practices needed for breakthrough innovations. Design thinking equips actors with the tools and methods for harnessing the creative tensions inherent in pluralist, often conflicting disciplinary approaches. This, however, requires the transformation of contemporary organizational cultures away from monolithic, integrated models (or identities) toward more pluralist, dynamic and flexible institutional identities. Based on real-world cases from a wide range of organizations around the globe, the book offers managers and innovators practical guidance on initiating and managing the cultural transformations required for effective innovation.

Summary: This book explores the nexus of Sustainability and Information Communication Technologies that are rapidly changing the way we live, learn, and do business. The monumental amount of energy required to power the Zeta byte of data traveling across the globe's billions of computers and mobile phones daily cannot be overstated. This ground-breaking reference examines the possibility that our evolving technologies may enable us to mitigate our global energy crisis, rather than adding to it. By connecting concepts and trends such as smart homes, big data, and the internet of things with their applications to sustainability, the authors suggest that emerging and ubiquitous technologies embedded in our daily lives may rightfully be considered as enabling solutions for our future sustainable development.

Summary: We already observe the positive effects of AI in almost every field, and foresee its potential to help addressing our sustainable development goals and the urgent challenges for the preservation of the environment. We also perceive the risks related to the safety, security, confidentiality, and fairness of AI systems, the threats to free will of possibly manipulative systems, as well as the impacts of AI on the economy, employment, human rights, equality, diversity, inclusion, and social cohesion need to be better assessed. The development and use of AI must be guided by principles of social cohesion, environmental sustainability, resource sharing, and inclusion. It has to integrate human rights, and social, cultural, and ethical values of democracy. It requires continued education and training as well as continual assessment of effects through social deliberation. The "Reflections on AI for Humanity" proposed in this book develop the following issues and sketch approaches for addressing them: How can we ensure the security requirements of critical applications and the safety and confidentiality of data communication and processing? What techniques and regulations for the validation, certification, and audit of AI tools are needed to develop confidence in AI? How can we identify and overcome biases in algorithms? How do we design systems that respect essential human values, ensuring moral equality and inclusion? What kinds of governance mechanisms are needed for personal data, metadata, and aggregated data at various levels? What are the effects of AI and automation on the transformation and social division of labor? What are the impacts on economic structures? What proactive and accommodation measures will be required? How will people benefit from the decision support systems and personal digital assistants without the risk of manipulation? How do we design transparent and intelligible procedures and ensure that their functions reflect our values and criteria? How can we anticipate failure and restore human control over an AI system when it operates outside its intended scope? How can we devote a substantial part of our research and development resources to the major challenges of our time such as climate, environment, health, and education?

Summary: Machine learning methods have lowered the cost of exploring new structures of unknown compounds, and can be used to predict reasonable expectations and subsequently validated by experimental results. As new insights and several elaborative tools have been developed for materials science and engineering in recent years, it is an appropriate time to present a book covering recent progress in this field. Searchable and interactive databases can promote research on emerging materials. Recently, databases containing a large number of high-quality materials properties for new advanced materials discovery have been developed. These approaches are set to make a significant impact on human life and, with numerous commercial developments emerging, will become a major academic topic in the coming years. This authoritative and comprehensive book will be of interest to both existing researchers in this field as well as others in the materials science community who wish to take advantage of these powerful techniques. The book offers a global spread of authors, from USA, Canada, UK, Japan, France, Russia, China and Singapore, who are all world recognized experts in their separate areas. With content relevant to both academic and commercial points of view, and offering an accessible overview of recent progress and potential future directions, the book will interest graduate students, postgraduate researchers, and consultants and industrial engineers.

Summary: This book embodies principles and applications of advanced soft computing approaches in engineering, healthcare and allied domains directed toward the researchers aspiring to learn and apply intelligent data analytics techniques. The first part covers AI, machine learning and data analytics tools and techniques and their applications to the class of several hospital and health real-life problems. In the later part, the applications of AI, ML and data analytics shall be covered over the wide variety of applications in hospital, health, engineering and/or applied sciences such as the clinical services, medical image analysis, management support, quality analysis, bioinformatics, device analysis and operations. The book presents knowledge of experts in the form of chapters with the objective to introduce the theme of intelligent data analytics and discusses associated theoretical applications. At last, it presents simulation codes for the problems included in the book for better understanding for beginners.

Summary: This is the first textbook dedicated to explaining how artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can be used in and for games. After introductory chapters that explain the background and key techniques in AI and games, the authors explain how to use AI to play games, to generate content for games and to model players. The book will be suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in games, artificial intelligence, design, human-computer interaction, and computational intelligence, and also for self-study by industrial game developers and practitioners. The authors have developed a website (http://www.gameaibook.org) that complements the material covered in the book with up-to-date exercises, lecture slides and reading.

Summary: In this book, the author examines the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence systems as they integrate and replace traditional social structures in new sociocognitive-technological environments. She discusses issues related to the integrity of researchers, technologists, and manufacturers as they design, construct, use, and manage artificially intelligent systems; formalisms for reasoning about moral decisions as part of the behavior of artificial autonomous systems such as agents and robots; and design methodologies for social agents based on societal, moral, and legal values. Throughout the book the author discusses related work, conscious of both classical, philosophical treatments of ethical issues and the implications in modern, algorithmic systems, and she combines regular references and footnotes with suggestions for further reading. This short overview is suitable for undergraduate students, in both technical and non-technical courses, and for interested and concerned researchers, practitioners, and citizens.

Summary: This book presents a comprehensive framework for IoT, including its architectures, security, privacy, network communications, and protocols. The book starts by providing an overview of the aforementioned research topics, future directions and open challenges that face the IoT development. The authors then discuss the main architectures in the field, which include Three- and Five-Layer Architectures, Cloud and Fog Based Architectures, a Social IoT Application Architecture. In the security chapter, the authors outline threats and attacks, privacy preservation, trust and authentication, IoT data security, and social awareness. The final chapter presents case studies including smart home, wearables, connected cars, industrial Internet, smart cities, IoT in agriculture, smart retail, energy engagement, IoT in healthcare, and IoT in poultry and farming. Discusses ongoing research into the connection of the physical and virtual worlds; Includes the architecture, security, privacy, communications, and protocols of IoT; Presents a variety of case studies in IoT including wearables, smart cities, and energy management.

Summary: Information granules are fundamental conceptual entities facilitating perception of complex phenomena and contributing to the enhancement of human centricity in intelligent systems. The formal frameworks of information granules and information granulation comprise fuzzy sets, interval analysis, probability, rough sets, and shadowed sets, to name only a few representatives. Among current developments of Granular Computing, interesting options concern information granules of higher order and of higher type. The higher order information granularity is concerned with an effective formation of information granules over the space being originally constructed by information granules of lower order. This construct is directly associated with the concept of hierarchy of systems composed of successive processing layers characterized by the increasing levels of abstraction. This idea of layered, hierarchical realization of models of complex systems has gained a significant level of visibility in fuzzy modeling with the well-established concept of hierarchical fuzzy models where one strives to achieve a sound tradeoff between accuracy and a level of detail captured by the model and its level of interpretability. Higher type information granules emerge when the information granules themselves cannot be fully characterized in a purely numerical fashion but instead it becomes convenient to exploit their realization in the form of other types of information granules such as type-2 fuzzy sets, interval-valued fuzzy sets, or probabilistic fuzzy sets. Higher order and higher type of information granules constitute the focus of the studies on Granular Computing presented in this study. The book elaborates on sound methodologies of Granular Computing, algorithmic pursuits and an array of diverse applications and case studies in environmental studies, option price forecasting, and power engineering.

Summary: The book discusses subjective ratings of quality and preference of unknown voices and dialog partners – their likability, for example. Human natural and artificial voices are studied in passive listening and interactive scenarios. In this book, the background, state of research, and contributions to the assessment and prediction of talker quality that is constituted in voice perception and in dialog are presented. Starting from theories and empirical findings from human interaction, major results and approaches are transferred to the domain of human-computer interaction (HCI). The main objective of this book is to contribute to the evaluation of spoken interaction in humans and between humans and computers, and in particular to the quality subsequently attributed to the speaking system or person based on the listening and interactive experience. Provides a comprehensive overview of research in evaluation of speakers and dialog partners; Presents recent results on the relevance of a first passive and interactive impression; Includes human and HCI evaluation results from a communicative perspective.

Summary: Know how to adapt quantum computing and machine learning algorithms. This book takes you on a journey into hands-on quantum machine learning (QML) through various options available in industry and research. The first three chapters offer insights into the combination of the science of quantum mechanics and the techniques of machine learning, where concepts of classical information technology meet the power of physics. Subsequent chapters follow a systematic deep dive into various quantum machine learning algorithms, quantum optimization, applications of advanced QML algorithms (quantum k-means, quantum k-medians, quantum neural networks, etc.), qubit state preparation for specific QML algorithms, inference, polynomial Hamiltonian simulation, and more, finishing with advanced and up-to-date research areas such as quantum walks, QML via Tensor Networks, and QBoost. Hands-on exercises from open source libraries regularly used today in industry and research are included, such as Qiskit, Rigetti's Forest, D-Wave's dOcean, Google's Cirq and brand new TensorFlow Quantum, and Xanadu's PennyLane, accompanied by guided implementation instructions. Wherever applicable, the book also shares various options of accessing quantum computing and machine learning ecosystems as may be relevant to specific algorithms. The book offers a hands-on approach to the field of QML using updated libraries and algorithms in this emerging field. You will benefit from the concrete examples and understanding of tools and concepts for building intelligent systems boosted by the quantum computing ecosystem. This work leverages the authors active research in the field and is accompanied by a constantly updated website for the book which provides all of the code examples. You will: Understand and explore quantum computing and quantum machine learning, and their application in science and industry Explore various data training models utilizing quantum machine learning algorithms and Python libraries Get hands-on and familiar with applied quantum computing, including freely available cloud-based access Be familiar with techniques for training and scaling quantum neural networks Gain insight into the application of practical code examples without needing to acquire excessive machine learning theory or take a quantum mechanics deep dive.

Summary: This book explains the complete loop to effectively use self-tracking data for machine learning. While it focuses on self-tracking data, the techniques explained are also applicable to sensory data in general, making it useful for a wider audience. Discussing concepts drawn from state-of-the-art scientific literature, it illustrates the approaches using a case study of a rich self-tracking data set. Self-tracking has become part of the modern lifestyle, and the amount of data generated by these devices is so overwhelming that it is difficult to obtain useful insights from it. Luckily, in the domain of artificial intelligence there are techniques that can help out: machine-learning approaches allow this type of data to be analyzed. While there are sample books that explain machine-learning techniques, self-tracking data comes with its own difficulties that require dedicated techniques such as learning over time and across users.

Summary: "The contributions in this book discuss large-scale problems like the optimal design of domes, antennas, transmission line towers, barrel vaults and steel frames with different types of limitations such as strength, buckling, displacement and natural frequencies. The authors use a set of definite algorithms for the optimization of all types of structures. They also add a new enhanced version of VPS and information about configuration processes to all chapters. Domes are of special interest to engineers as they enclose a maximum amount of space with a minimum surface and have proven to be very economical in terms of consumption of constructional materials. Antennas and transmission line towers are the one of the most popular structure since these steel lattice towers are inexpensive, strong, light and wind resistant. Architects and engineers choose barrel vaults as viable and often highly suitable forms for covering not only low-cost industrial buildings, warehouses, large-span hangars, indoor sports stadiums, but also large cultural and leisure centers. Steel buildings are preferred in residential as well as commercial buildings due to their high strength and ductility particularly in regions which are prone to earthquakes."--

Summary: This book provides comprehensive coverage of combined Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) theory and applications. Rather than looking at the field from only a theoretical or only a practical perspective, this book unifies both perspectives to give holistic understanding. The first part introduces the concepts of AI and ML and their origin and current state. The second and third parts delve into conceptual and theoretic aspects of static and dynamic ML techniques. The forth part describes the practical applications where presented techniques can be applied. The fifth part introduces the user to some of the implementation strategies for solving real life ML problems. The book is appropriate for students in graduate and upper undergraduate courses in addition to researchers and professionals. It makes minimal use of mathematics to make the topics more intuitive and accessible. Presents a full reference to artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques - in theory and application; Provides a guide to AI and ML with minimal use of mathematics to make the topics more intuitive and accessible; Connects all ML and AI techniques to applications and introduces implementations.

Summary: This book explains how the media helped to invent the European Union as the supranational polity that we know today. Against conventional EU scholarship, it tells the story of the rise of the Euro-journalists - pro-European advocacy journalists - within the post-war Western European media, and argues that the Euro-journalists pioneered a shift in the media representation of European integration. During the 1950s, multiple visions of Western European cooperation competed in the media, which initially considered the European Community to be a merely technocratic international organization. By the late 1970s, however, the media were symbolically magnifying the Community as a sui generis European polity and the sole embodiment of Europe. Normative research on the media and European integration has focused on how the media might help to construct a democratic and legitimate European Union. In contrast, this book aims to deconstruct a pro-European advocacy journalism, which became dominant within the Western European media between the 1950s and the 1970s. Moreover, the book shows how journalists - as part of Western European elites - played a key role in elite European identity building campaigns.

Summary: This book constitutes the revised selected papers of the Second International Workshop on Understanding Human Activities through 3D Sensors, UHA3DS 2016, that was held in conjunction with the 23rd International Conference on Pattern Recognition, ICPR 2016, held in Cancun, Mexico, in December 2016. The 9 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 12 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Behavior Analysis, Human Motion Recognition, and Application Datasets.

Summary: This book reviews the latest developments in nature-inspired computation, with a focus on the cross-disciplinary applications in data mining and machine learning. Data mining, machine learning and nature-inspired computation are current hot research topics due to their importance in both theory and practical applications. Adopting an application-focused approach, each chapter introduces a specific topic, with detailed descriptions of relevant algorithms, extensive literature reviews and implementation details. Covering topics such as nature-inspired algorithms, swarm intelligence, classification, clustering, feature selection, cybersecurity, learning algorithms over cloud, extreme learning machines, object categorization, particle swarm optimization, flower pollination and firefly algorithms, and neural networks, it also presents case studies and applications, including classifications of crisis-related tweets, extraction of named entities in the Tamil language, performance-based prediction of diseases, and healthcare services. This book is both a valuable a reference resource and a practical guide for students, researchers and professionals in computer science, data and management sciences, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Summary: This book offers the first comprehensive and critical literature review of fuzzy pairwise comparison methods derived from methods originally developed for crisp pairwise comparison matrices. It proposes new fuzzy extensions of these methods and provides a detailed study of the differences and analogies between all the reviewed methods, as well as a detailed description of their drawbacks, with the help of many numerical examples. In order to prevent the drawbacks related to the reviewed fuzzy pairwise comparison methods, the book introduces constrained fuzzy arithmetic in fuzzy extension of the pairwise comparison methods. It proposes new fuzzy pairwise comparison methods based on constrained fuzzy arithmetic and critically compares them with the reviewed methods. It describes the application of the newly developed methods to incomplete large-dimensional pairwise comparison matrices showcased in a real-life case study. Written for researchers, graduate and PhD students interested in multi-criteria decision making methods based on both crisp and fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices, this self-contained book offers an overview of cutting-edge research and all necessary information to understand the described tools and use them in real-world applications.

Subject: This book presents a cutting-edge research procedure in the Nature-Inspired Computing (NIC) domain and its connections with computational intelligence areas in real-world engineering applications. It introduces readers to a broad range of algorithms, such as genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, the firefly algorithm, flower pollination algorithm, collision-based optimization algorithm, bat algorithm, ant colony optimization, and multi-agent systems. In turn, it provides an overview of meta-heuristic algorithms, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each. Moreover, the book provides a brief outline of the integration of nature-inspired computing techniques and various computational intelligence paradigms, and highlights nature-inspired computing techniques in a range of applications, including: evolutionary robotics, sports training planning, assessment of water distribution systems, flood simulation and forecasting, traffic control, gene expression analysis, antenna array design, and scheduling/dynamic resource management.

Summary: This book describes efforts to improve subject-independent automated classification techniques using a better feature extraction method and a more efficient model of classification. It evaluates three popular saliency criteria for feature selection, showing that they share common limitations, including time-consuming and subjective manual de-facto standard practice, and that existing automated efforts have been predominantly used for subject dependent setting. It then proposes a novel approach for anomaly detection, demonstrating its effectiveness and accuracy for automated classification of biomedical data, and arguing its applicability to a wider range of unsupervised machine learning applications in subject-independent settings.

Summary: Implantable sensing, whether used for transient or long-term monitoring of in vivo physiological, bio-electrical, bio-chemical and metabolic changes, is a rapidly advancing field of research and development. Underpinned by increasingly small, smart and energy efficient designs, they become an integral part of surgical prostheses or implants for both acute and chronic conditions, supporting optimised, context aware sensing, feedback, or stimulation with due consideration of system level impact. From sensor design, fabrication, on-node processing with application specific integrated circuits, to power optimisation, wireless data paths and security, this book provides a detailed explanation of both the theories and practical considerations of developing novel implantable sensors. Other topics covered by the book include sensor embodiment and flexible electronics, implantable optical sensors and power harvesting. Implantable Sensors and Systems – from Theory to Practice is an important reference for those working in the field of medical devices. The structure of the book is carefully prepared so that it can also be used as an introductory reference for those about to enter into this exciting research and developing field.

Summary: The research book is a continuation of the authors' previous works, which are focused on recent advances in computer vision methodologies and technical solutions using conventional and intelligent paradigms. The book gathers selected contributions addressing a number of real-life applications including the identification of handwritten texts, watermarking techniques, simultaneous localization and mapping for mobile robots, motion control systems for mobile robots, analysis of indoor human activity, facial image quality assessment, android device controlling, processing medical images, clinical decision-making and foot progression angle detection. Given the tremendous interest among researchers in the development and applications of computer vision paradigms in the field of business, engineering, medicine, security and aviation, the book offers a timely guide for all PhD students, professors, researchers and software developers working in the areas of digital video processing and computer vision technologies.

Summary: This timely text/reference presents a detailed review of the state of the art in deep learning approaches for semantic object detection and segmentation in medical image computing, and large-scale radiology database mining. A particular focus is placed on the application of convolutional neural networks, with the theory supported by practical examples. Topics and features: Highlights how the use of deep neural networks can address new questions and protocols, as well as improve upon existing challenges in medical image computing Discusses the insightful research experience and views of Dr. Ronald M. Summers in medical imaging-based computer-aided diagnosis and its interaction with deep learning Presents a comprehensive review of the latest research and literature on deep learning for medical image analysis Describes a range of different methods that make use of deep learning for object or landmark detection tasks in 2D and 3D medical imaging Examines a varied selection of techniques for semantic segmentation using deep learning principles in medical imaging Introduces a novel approach to interleaved text and image deep mining on a large-scale radiology image database for automated image interpretation This pioneering volume will prove invaluable to researchers and graduate students wishing to employ deep neural network models and representations for medical image analysis and medical imaging applications. Dr. Le Lu is a Staff Scientist in the Radiology and Imaging Sciences Department of the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Bethesda, MD, USA. Dr. Yefeng Zheng is a Senior Staff Scientist at Siemens Healthcare Technology Center, Princeton, NJ, USA. Dr. Gustavo Carneiro is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at The University of Adelaide, Australia. Dr. Lin Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.

Summary: The three volume set LNAI 7506, LNAI 7507 and LNAI 7508 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2012, held in Montreal, Canada, in October 2012. The 197 revised full papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from 271 submissions. They present the state-of-the-art developments in robotics, automation and mechatronics. This volume covers the topics of robotics for rehabilitation and assistance; mechatronics and integration technology in electronics and information devices fabrication; man-machine interactions; manufacturing; micro and nano systems; mobile robots and intelligent autonomous systems; motion control; multi-agent systems and distributed control; and multi-sensor data fusion algorithms.

Summary: This book provides an in-depth insight into the emerging paradigm of End-User Development (EUD), discussing the diversity and potential for creating effective environments for end users. Containing a unique set of contributions from a number of international researchers and institutes, many relevant issues are discussed and solutions proposed, making important aspects of end-user development research available to a broader audience. Most people are familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers. However, developing new or modified applications that can effectively support users' goals still requires considerable programming expertise, that cannot be expected of everyone. One of the fundamental challenges that lie ahead is the development of environments that enable users with little or no programming experience to develop and modify their own applications. The ultimate goal is to empower people to flexibly employ and personalise advanced information a nd communication technologies.

Summary: The topic of this monograph falls within the, so-called, biologically motivated computing paradigm, in which biology provides the source of models and inspiration towards the development of computational intelligence and machine learning systems. Specifically, artificial immune systems are presented as a valid metaphor towards the creation of abstract and high level representations of biological components or functions that lay the foundations for an alternative machine learning paradigm. Therefore, focus is given on addressing the primary problems of Pattern Recognition by developing Artificial Immune System-based machine learning algorithms for the problems of Clustering, Classification and One-Class Classification. Pattern Classification, in particular, is studied within the context of the Class Imbalance Problem. The main source of inspiration stems from the fact that the Adaptive Immune System constitutes one of the most sophisticated biological systems that is exceptionally evolved in order to continuously address an extremely unbalanced pattern classification problem, namely, the self / non-self discrimination process. The experimental results presented in this monograph involve a wide range of degenerate binary classification problems where the minority class of interest is to be recognized against the vast volume of the majority class of negative patterns. In this context, Artificial Immune Systems are utilized for the development of personalized software as the core mechanism behind the implementation of Recommender Systems. The book will be useful to researchers, practitioners and graduate students dealing with Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning and their applications in Personalized Software and Recommender Systems. It is intended for both the expert/researcher in these fields, as well as for the general reader in the field of Computational Intelligence and, more generally, Computer Science who wishes to learn more about the field of Intelligent Computing Systems and its applications. An extensive list of bibliographic references at the end of each chapter guides the reader to probe further into application area of interest to him/her.

Summary: This book presents studies involving algorithms in the machine learning paradigms. It discusses a variety of learning problems with diverse applications, including prediction, concept learning, explanation-based learning, case-based (exemplar-based) learning, statistical rule-based learning, feature extraction-based learning, optimization-based learning, quantum-inspired learning, multi-criteria-based learning and hybrid intelligence-based learning.