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This book involves establishing a set of priorities and a roadmap that can guide scholarly and practical efforts towards sustainability goals. It encourages collaboration across disciplines to address complex sustainability issues that span social, economic, and environmental domains. It also supports the development of robust methodologies for conducting research, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches. But despite the importance of and the need for an agenda for sustainable development research, many efforts are isolated and thematically disconnected. Also, it is difficult to find information on how sustainability research is being undertaken and on the wide range of methods being used. Against this backdrop and in order to facilitate a broad discussion on the contribution of sustainable development research, this book is being produced. The book gathers inputs from universities and research organisations working on matters related to sustainable development research in a variety of contexts. It also provides a platform for the dissemination of information on the latest initiatives, paving the way for technology transfer and networking. Furthermore, the book intends to provide a fertile basis upon which universities, research centres, and practitioners may cooperate more closely in this key area. Last but not least, a further aim of the book is to present methodological approaches and experiences deriving from case studies and projects, which aim to show how sustainability research may be implementing across a range of disciplines. Thanks to its scope and interdisciplinarity, this books makes an excellent reading to everyone interested on sustainability research.

Contemporary societies are aging – but what does that mean? Is this something bad? And can societies age as a whole? By bringing together psychological, gerontological, and sociological findings, this open access book opens up a hitherto unique, multifaceted, and realistic view of the phenomenon of old age and the process of aging. The volume is based on the results of the project “Ageing as Future”, a long-term project network (2007-2021) involving a total of more than 30 scientists worldwide. The focus of the project was threefold: A first issue was concerned with how views on aging influence development in old age; secondly, the project analyzed determinants and consequences of provision for old age; and thirdly, it investigated the different ways in which aging is shaped by managing time in old age. For more than a decade, the authors conducted quantitative and qualitative studies, involving large samples from three different continents. The results show that one-sided views of old age – whether negative stereotypes or positive exaggerations – do not do justice to the complexity of the experience of aging. Based on these results, the authors plead for individual and societal acceptance of the social fact of aging – and for the right to live an autonomous and dignified life in old age just as in other phases of life. Ageing as Future: A study by the Volkswagen Foundation presents findings from a unique large international study that are of interest to aging researchers around the world: academically, socio-politically, practically, and personally. Whether old or young, the book encourages one to question one's own views of aging. When reading this book, it becomes obvious that old age is a highly diverse experience, depending on a host of societal and individual factors.

Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification, Volume 3: Proceedings of the 41st IMAC, A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics, 2023, the third volume of ten from the Conference brings together contributions to this important area of research and engineering. The collection presents early findings and case studies on fundamental and applied aspects of Model Validation and Uncertainty Quantification, including papers on:Introduction of Uncertainty QuantificationUncertainty Quantification in DynamicsModel Form Uncertainty and Selection incl. Round Robin ChallengeSensor and Information FusionVirtual Sensing, Certification, and Real-Time MonitoringSurrogate Modeling

This two-volume set of HCI-Games 2023, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on HCI in Games, held as Part of the 24th International Conference, HCI International 2023, which took place in July 2023 in Copenhagen, Denmark.The total of 1578 papers and 396 posters included in the HCII 2023 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 7472 submissions. The HCI in Games 2023 proceedings intends to help, promote and encourage research in this field by providing a forum for interaction and exchanges among researchers, academics, and practitioners in the fields of HCI and games. The Conference addresses HCI principles, methods and tools for better games.

The Springer Handbook of Augmented Reality presents a comprehensive and authoritative guide to augmented reality (AR) technology, its numerous applications, and its intersection with emerging technologies. This book traces the history of AR from its early development, discussing the fundamentals of AR and its associated science.The handbook begins by presenting the development of AR over the last few years, mentioning the key pioneers and important milestones. It then moves to the fundamentals and principles of AR, such as photogrammetry, optics, motion and objects tracking, and marker-based and marker-less registration. The book discusses both software toolkits and techniques and hardware related to AR, before presenting the applications of AR. This includes both end-user applications like education and cultural heritage, and professional applications within engineering fields, medicine and architecture, amongst others. The book concludes with the convergence of AR with other emerging technologies, such as Industrial Internet of Things and Digital Twins. The handbook presents a comprehensive reference on AR technology from an academic, industrial and commercial perspective, making it an invaluable resource for audiences from a variety of backgrounds.

This book focuses on natural products, in particular medicinal plants and their derived products, as an indispensable source of bioactive molecules that serve as either drug candidates or lead compounds for drug design and discovery. There are several advantages for plant-derived therapeutics, including wide availability, diverse pharmacological actions, and a generally good profile of safety and tolerability. Over the recent years, there have been numerous reports from clinical studies testifying the efficacy and safety of medicinal plants and phytochemicals in treating human diseases. A plethora of basic studies has also unraveled molecular mechanisms underlying the health benefits of herbal medicines. Nevertheless, issues such as identification of bioactive ingredients, standardization of the products, and drug interactions remain to be systematically documented. Bioprospecting of Tropical Medicinal Plants represents a comprehensive analysis of natural products, mainly medicinal plants and phytochemicals. It includes detailed medicinal properties and pharmacological action from in vitro models to clinical trials. The goal is to present the readers a carefully curated collection of plant-derived natural products and their underlying molecular mechanisms.

Deutschland altert – aber was heißt das? Ist das schlimm? Und kann eine Gesellschaft überhaupt als Ganzes altern? In einer Zusammenführung von psychologischen, gerontologischen und soziologischen Erkenntnissen eröffnet dieses Open Access Buch einen bislang einzigartigen, vielseitigen und realistischen Blick auf das Phänomen des Alters und den Prozess des Alterns. Schwerpunkte des Projekts Altern als Zukunft waren Forschungen zu Altersbildern, zur Vorsorge für das Alter sowie zum Zeithandeln im Alter. Über ein Jahrzehnt lang führten die Autoren hierzu quantitative und qualitative Untersuchungen in drei Kontinenten durch. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass vereinseitigende Sichtweisen auf das Alter – seien es negative Stereotypen oder positive Überhöhungen – der Komplexität von Alternserfahrungen nicht gerecht werden. Das Buch richtet sich an alle, die sich für das Altern interessieren: wissenschaftlich, gesellschaftspolitisch, praktisch und persönlich. Ob alt oder jung, das Buch regt dazu an, eigene Sichtweisen zu hinterfragen. Eines wird deutlich: das ‚eine‘ Alter gibt es nicht – und Altern ist unsere Zukunft. Altern als Zukunft plädiert für die individuelle wie gesellschaftliche Akzeptanz der sozialen Tatsache des Alterns – und für das Recht, im höheren Alter genauso selbstbestimmt leben zu können wie in anderen Altersphasen auch.

This proceedings volume highlights the latest research and developments in psychometrics and statistics. It represents selected and peer-reviewed presentations given at the 85th Annual International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS), held virtually on July 13-17, 2020. The IMPS is one of the largest international meetings on quantitative measurement in education, psychology and the social sciences. It draws approximately 500 participants from around the world, featuring paper and poster presentations, symposiums, workshops, keynotes, and invited presentations. Leading experts and promising young researchers have written the included chapters. The chapters address a wide variety of topics including but not limited to item response theory, adaptive testing, Bayesian estimation, propensity scores, and cognitive diagnostic models. This volume is the 9th in a series of recent works to cover research presented at the IMPS.

This book gathers peer-reviewed proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Innovative Computing (IC 2020).This book aims to provide an open forum for discussing recent advances and emerging trends in information technology, science, and engineering. Themes within the scope of the conference include Communication Networks, Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management, Web Intelligence, and any related fields that depend on the development of information technology. The respective contributions presented here cover a wide range of topics, from databases and data mining, networking and communications, the web and Internet of Things, to embedded systems, soft computing, social network analysis, security and privacy, optical communication, and ubiquitous/pervasive computing.Readers such as students, researchers, and industry professionals in the fields of cloud computing, Internet of Things, machine learning, information security, multimedia systems, and information technology benefit from this comprehensive overview of the latest advances in information technology.The book can also benefit young investigators looking to start a new research program.

This book presents a collection of chapters, which address various contexts and challenges of the idea of human enhancement for the purposes of human space missions. The authors discuss pros and cons of mostly biological enhancement of human astronauts operating in hostile space environments, but also ethical and theological aspects are addressed. In contrast to the idea and program of human enhancement on Earth, human enhancement in space is considered a serious and necessary option. This book aims at scholars in the following fields: ethics and philosophy, space policy, public policy, as well as biologists and psychologists.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 31th Australasian Database Conference, ADC 2019, held in Melbourne, VIC, Australia, in February 2020. The 14 full and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. The Australasian Database Conference is an annual international forum for sharing the latest research advancements and novel applications of database systems, data driven applications and data analytics between researchers and practitioners from around the globe, particularly Australia, New Zealand and in the World.

This book brings together the emerging body of work on age-friendly neighbourhoods in Singapore, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and North America. It begins with an overview chapter on the current state of policy, practice and research on age-friendly neighbourhoods in Singapore. This is followed by an annotated bibliography of published materials on age-friendly neighbourhoods in the above-mentioned countries and regions, encompassing theoretical work and empirical research reported on in journal articles, books and conference proceedings. The annotations for Singapore also map the grey literature, including unpublished dissertations and theses. The aim is to provide a sense of the scope of, issues in, and discourse on age-friendly neighbourhoods, the development of which is increasingly being recognised as a key strategy to support healthy ageing and enhance quality of life in ageing societies.

This volume explores the use of mass spectrometry for biomedical applications. Chapters focus on specific therapeutic areas such as oncology, infectious disease, and psychiatry. Additional chapters focus on methodology, technologies and instrumentation, as well as on analysis of protein-protein interactions, protein quantitation, and protein post-translational modifications. Various omics fields such as proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics, lipidomics, and adductomics are also covered. Applications of mass spectrometry in biotechnological and pharmaceutical industry are also discussed. This volume provides readers with a comprehensive and informative manual that will allow them to appreciate mass spectrometry and proteomic research, but also to initiate and improve their own work. This book acts as a technical guide as well as a conceptual guide to the newest information in this exciting field.

Parameterized Complexity in the Polynomial Hierarchy was co-recipient of the E.W. Beth Dissertation Prize 2017 for outstanding dissertations in the fields of logic, language, and information. This work extends the theory of parameterized complexity to higher levels of the Polynomial Hierarchy (PH). For problems at higher levels of the PH, a promising solving approach is to develop fixed-parameter tractable reductions to SAT, and to subsequently use a SAT solving algorithm to solve the problem. In this dissertation, a theoretical toolbox is developed that can be used to classify in which cases this is possible. The use of this toolbox is illustrated by applying it to analyze a wide range of problems from various areas of computer science and artificial intelligence.

The fourth edition of this classic textbook provides major updates. This edition has completely new chapters on Big Data Platforms (distributed storage systems, MapReduce, Spark, data stream processing, graph analytics) and on NoSQL, NewSQL and polystore systems. It also includes an updated web data management chapter that includes RDF and semantic web discussion, an integrated database integration chapter focusing both on schema integration and querying over these systems. The peer-to-peer computing chapter has been updated with a discussion of blockchains. The chapters that describe classical distributed and parallel database technology have all been updated. The new edition covers the breadth and depth of the field from a modern viewpoint. Graduate students, as well as senior undergraduate students studying computer science and other related fields will use this book as a primary textbook. Researchers working in computer science will also find this textbook useful.This textbook has a companion web site that includes background information on relational database fundamentals, query processing, transaction management, and computer networks for those who might need this background. The web site also includes all the figures and presentation slides as well as solutions to exercises (restricted to instructors).

This book advances research on mobile robot localization in unknown environments by focusing on machine-learning-based natural scene recognition. The respective chapters highlight the latest developments in vision-based machine perception and machine learning research for localization applications, and cover such topics as: image-segmentation-based visual perceptual grouping for the efficient identification of objects composing unknown environments; classification-based rapid object recognition for the semantic analysis of natural scenes in unknown environments; the present understanding of the Prefrontal Cortex working memory mechanism and its biological processes for human-like localization; and the application of this present understanding to improve mobile robot localization. The book also features a perspective on bridging the gap between feature representations and decision-making using reinforcement learning, laying the groundwork for future advances in mobile robot navigation research.

Bacterial Pathogens and their Virulence Factors contains a detailed description of 32 major bacterial pathogens that affect human health and their associated virulence determinants. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the different types and classes of general virulence factors involved in host cell adherence and invasion, dissemination within the host, host cell damage, and evasion of host defense systems, as well as mechanisms by which these virulence factors are regulated. Chapters 2 through 33 give concise descriptions of the disease states associated with the 32 bacterial genera and their major pathogenic species, along with an in-depth description of the individual virulence factors that have been found to be functionally involved in pathogenicity. A detailed bibliography derived from primary literature and review articles accompanies each of these chapters, allowing the reader to delve more deeply into individual pathogens and their virulence determinants. Chapter 34 discusses the exciting possibilities and initial successes of using detailed information on a pathogen's virulence toolkit to design new therapeutics aimed at specific virulence traits.

The 2-volume set LNCS 10850 and 10851 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Computer Graphics, AVR 2018, held in Otranto, Italy, in June 2018. The 67 full papers and 26 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: virtual reality; augmented and mixed reality; computer graphics; human-computer interaction; applications of VR/AR in medicine; and applications of VR/AR in cultural heritage; and applications of VR/AR in industry.

This two-volume set LNCS 10827 and LNCS 10828 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, DASFAA 2018, held in Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, in May 2018.The 83 full papers, 21 short papers, 6 industry papers, and 8 demo papers were carefully selected from a total of 360 submissions. The papers are organized around the following topics: network embedding; recommendation; graph and network processing; social network analytics; sequence and temporal data processing; trajectory and streaming data; RDF and knowledge graphs; text and data mining; medical data mining; security and privacy; search and information retrieval; query processing and optimizations; data quality and crowdsourcing; learning models; multimedia data processing; and distributed computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks, AdHocNets 2017, held in Niagara Falls, Ontario, USA, in September 2017. The 19 full papers were selected from 30 submissions and cover a variety of network paradigms including mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), sensor networks, vehicular networks, underwater networks, airborne networks, underground networks, personal area networks, device-to-device (D2D) communications in 5G cellular networks, and home networks. The papers present a wide range of applications in civilian, commercial, and military areas.

This second edition provides a systematic introduction to the work and views of the emerging patent-search research and innovation communities as well as an overview of what has been achieved and, perhaps even more importantly, of what remains to be achieved. It revises many of the contributions of the first edition and adds a significant number of new ones. The first part “Introduction to Patent Searching” includes two overview chapters on the peculiarities of patent searching and on contemporary search technology respectively, and thus sets the scene for the subsequent parts. The second part on “Evaluating Patent Retrieval” then begins with two chapters dedicated to patent evaluation campaigns, followed by two chapters discussing complementary issues from the perspective of patent searchers and from the perspective of related domains, notably legal search. “High Recall Search” includes four completely new chapters dealing with the issue of finding only the relevant documents in a reasonable time span. The last (and with six papers the largest) part on “Special Topics in Patent Information Retrieval” covers a large spectrum of research in the patent field, from classification and image processing to translation. Lastly, the book is completed by an outlook on open issues and future research. Several of the chapters have been jointly written by intellectual property and information retrieval experts. However, members of both communities with a background different to that of the primary author have reviewed the chapters, making the book accessible to both the patent search community and to the information retrieval research community. It also not only offers the latest findings for academic researchers, but is also a valuable resource for IP professionals wanting to learn about current IR approaches in the patent domain.

This volume comprises the proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Intelligence 2015 (ICCI15). This book aims to bring together work from leading academicians, scientists, researchers and research scholars from across the globe on all aspects of computational intelligence. The work is composed mainly of original and unpublished results of conceptual, constructive, empirical, experimental, or theoretical work in all areas of computational intelligence. Specifically, the major topics covered include classical computational intelligence models and artificial intelligence, neural networks and deep learning, evolutionary swarm and particle algorithms, hybrid systems optimization, constraint programming, human-machine interaction, computational intelligence for the web analytics, robotics, computational neurosciences, neurodynamics, bioinspired and biomorphic algorithms, cross disciplinary topics and applications. The contents of this volume will be of use to researchers and professionals alike.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from 10 workshops that were held as the ISC High Performance 2017 conference in Frankfurt, Germany, in June 2017. The 59 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. They stem from the following workshops: Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cloud Computing (VHPC)Visualization at Scale: Deployment Case Studies and Experience ReportsInternational Workshop on Performance Portable Programming Models for Accelerators (P^3MA)OpenPOWER for HPC (IWOPH)International Workshop on Data Reduction for Big Scientific Data (DRBSD)International Workshop on Communication Architectures for HPC, Big Data, Deep Learning and Clouds at Extreme ScaleWorkshop on HPC Computing in a Post Moore's Law World (HCPM)HPC I/O in the Data Center ( HPC-IODC) Workshop on Performance and Scalability of Storage Systems (WOPSSS)IXPUG: Experiences on Intel Knights Landing at the One Year MarkInternational Workshop on Communication Architectures for HPC, Big Data, Deep Learning and Clouds at Extreme Scale (ExaComm)

This volume, the 34th issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, constitutes a special issue consisting of seven papers on the subject of Consistency and Inconsistency in Data-Centric Applications. The volume opens with an invited article on basic postulates for inconsistency measures. Three of the remaining six papers are revised, extended versions of papers presented at the First International Workshop on Consistency and Inconsistency, COIN 2016, held in conjunction with DEXA 2016 in Porto, Portugal, in September 2016. The other three papers were selected from submissions to a call for contributions to this edition. Each of the papers highlights a particular subtopic. However, all are concerned with logical inconsistencies that are either to be systematically avoided, or reasoned with consistently, i.e., without running the danger of an explosion of inferences.

This LNCS double volume LNCS 9931-9932 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th Asia-Pacific Conference APWeb 2016 held in Suzhou, China, in September 2016.The 79 full papers and presented together with 24 short papers and 17 demo papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 215 submissions.the focus of the conference was on following subjects: Spatio-temporal, Textual and Multimedia Data ManagementSocial Media Data AnalysisModelling and Learning with Big DataStreaming and Real-time Data AnalysisRecommendation SystemData Quality and PrivacyQuery Optimization and Scalable Data Processing

This book brings together and integrates contributions on water quality modeling, monitoring and assessment techniques; wastewater treatment technologies; and sociological approaches in a single text. Divided into twenty chapters, it offers a comprehensive reference for students, professionals and researchers working on various aspects of water environment technology. The papers published in this book – selected from those presented at the 1st International Forum on Asian Water Environment Technology, held in 2013 in New Delhi, India – highlight the water environmental problems in Asia and respective countermeasures. This book addresses water quality requirements, emphasizing the factors that affect the water environment. Treated wastewater asa new source of water is also examined, introducing readers to important aspects of water reuse. Selecting the most effective and proper wastewater treatment approach is actually the most essential part of generating a new water resource, as well as protecting the receiving water environments. Thus, the fundamental principles of wastewater treatment and monitoring are a major focus in this book, which is intended to help readers effectively address various water environmental problems in Asian countries.

This book examines and theorizes the dynamics and complexities of leadership in citizenship education in junior secondary schools in Shanghai, China. Specifically, it examines from a macro- and micro-political theoretical perspective the interactions between principals and school party secretaries (SPSs), and how they respond to the demands of macro- and micro-political actors. This qualitative empirical research found four major school leadership/citizenship education scenarios in which principals and SPSs addressed the interests of different macro- and micro-political actors. Moreover, principals and SPSs enjoyed a complicated working relationship at the micro-political (school) level in which they collaborated to fulfill their responsibilities and respond to school macro- and micro-political actors, while competing for power over leadership in citizenship education. Principals'and SPSs'leadership in citizenship education was shaped by inter-related factors, including diverse influences in a multi-leveled world, the integration of politics and education, the demands of macro- and micro-political actors, and personal factors. To interpret these findings, this study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding leadership in citizenship education in China as a political exercise. This theoretical framework is useful for understanding the complexity of school and citizenship education leadership, the micro-political relationship between Chinese principals and SPSs, and their dynamic and complex interactions with macro- and micro-political actors.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems focuses on data management, knowledge discovery, and knowledge processing, which are core and hot topics in computer science. Since the 1990s, the Internet has become the main driving force behind application development in all domains. An increase in the demand for resource sharing across different sites connected through networks has led to an evolution of data- and knowledge-management systems from centralized systems to decentralized systems enabling large-scale distributed applications providing high scalability. Current decentralized systems still focus on data and knowledge as their main resource. Feasibility of these systems relies basically on P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques and the support of agent systems with scaling and decentralized control. Synergy between grids, P2P systems, and agent technologies is the key to data- and knowledge-centered systems in large-scale environments. This volume, the 21st issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems, focuses on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery from Big Data, and contains extended and revised versions of eight papers selected as the best papers from the 14th International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery (DaWaK 2012), held in Vienna, Austria, during September 3-6, 2012. These papers cover several advanced Big Data topics, ranging from data cube computation using MapReduce to multiple aggregations over multidimensional databases, from data warehousing systems over complex energy data to OLAP-based prediction models, from extended query engines for continuous stream analytics to popular pattern mining, and from rare pattern mining to enhanced knowledge discovery from large cross-document corpora.

This book contains papers presented at the Workshop on the Analysis of Large-scale, High-Dimensional, and Multi-Variate Data Using Topology and Statistics, held in Le Barp, France, June 2013. It features the work of some of the most prominent and recognized leaders in the field who examine challenges as well as detail solutions to the analysis of extreme scale data.The book presents new methods that leverage the mutual strengths of both topological and statistical techniques to support the management, analysis, and visualization of complex data. It covers both theory and application and provides readers with an overview of important key concepts and the latest research trends.Coverage in the book includes multi-variate and/or high-dimensional analysis techniques, feature-based statistical methods, combinatorial algorithms, scalable statistics algorithms, scalar and vector field topology, and multi-scale representations. In addition, the book details algorithms that are broadly applicable and can be used by application scientists to glean insight from a wide range of complex data sets.

The book provides a platform for dealing with the flaws and failings of the soft computing paradigm through different manifestations. The different chapters highlight the necessity of the hybrid soft computing methodology in general with emphasis on several application perspectives in particular. Typical examples include (a) Study of Economic Load Dispatch by Various Hybrid Optimization Techniques, (b) An Application of Color Magnetic Resonance Brain Image Segmentation by Para Optimus LG Activation Function, (c) Hybrid Rough-PSO Approach in Remote Sensing Imagery Analysis, (d) A Study and Analysis of Hybrid Intelligent Techniques for Breast Cancer Detection using Breast Thermograms, and (e) Hybridization of 2D-3D Images for Human Face Recognition. The elaborate findings of the chapters enhance the exhibition of the hybrid soft computing paradigm in the field of intelligent computing.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, IDEAL 2015, held in Wroclaw, Poland, in October 2015. The 64 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 127 submissions. These papers provided a valuable collection of recent research outcomes in data engineering and automated learning, from methodologies, frameworks, and techniques to applications. In addition to various topics such as evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, probabilistic modeling, swarm intelligent, multi-objective optimization, and practical applications in regression, classification, clustering, biological data processing, text processing, video analysis, IDEAL 2015 also featured a number of special sessions on several emerging topics such as computational intelligence for optimization of communication networks, discovering knowledge fromdata, simulation-driven DES-like modeling and performance evaluation, and intelligent applications in real-world problems.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed conference proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Business Intelligence for the Real-Time Enterprise, BIRTE 2013, held in Riva del Garda, Italy, in August 2013 and of the 8th International Workshop on Business Intelligence for the Real-Time Enterprise, BIRTE 2014, held in Hangzhou, China, in September 2014, in conjunction with VLDB 2013 and 2014, the International Conference on Very Large Data Bases. The BIRTE workshop series provides a forum for the discussion and advancement of the science and engineering enabling real-time business intelligence and the novel applications that build on these foundational techniques. This volume contains five full, two short, and two demo papers, which were carefully reviewed and selected with an acceptance rate of 45%. In addition, one keynote and three invited papers are included.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the following 9 international workshops: OTM Academy, OTM Industry Case Studies Program, Cloud and Trusted Computing, C&TC, Enterprise Integration, Interoperability, and Networking, EI2N, Industrial and Business Applications of Semantic Web Technologies, INBAST, Information Systems, om Distributed Environment, ISDE, Methods, Evaluation, Tools and Applications for the Creation and Consumption of Structured Data for the e-Society, META4eS, Mobile and Social Computing for collaborative interactions, MSC, and Ontology Content, OnToContent 2014. These workshops were held as associated events at OTM 2014, the federated conferences'On The Move Towards Meaningful Internet Systems and Ubiquitous Computing', in Amantea, Italy, in October 2014. The 56 full papers presented together with 8 short papers, 6 posters and 5 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 96 submissions. The focus of the workshops were on the following subjects models for interoperable infrastructures, applications, privacy and access control, reliability and performance, cloud and configuration management, interoperability in (System-of-)Systems, distributed information systems applications, architecture and process in distributed information system, distributed information system development and operational environment, ontology is use for eSociety, knowledge management and applications for eSociety, social networks and social services, social and mobile intelligence, and multimodal interaction and collaboration.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Similarity Search and Applications, SISAP 2014, held in A Coruña, Spain, in October 2014. The 21 full papers and 6 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Improving Similarity Search Methods and Techniques; Indexing and Applications; Metrics and Evaluation; New Scenarios and Approaches; Applications and Specific Domains.

Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts, which has appeared in semi-annual volumes since 1969, is devoted to the recording, summarizing and indexing of astronomical publications throughout the world. It is prepared under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (according to a resolution adopted at the 14th General Assembly in 1970). Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts aims to present a comprehensive documenta­ tion of literature in all fields of astronomy and astrophysics. Every effort will be made to ensure that the average time interval between the date of receipt of the original literature and publication of the abstracts will not exceed eight months. This time interval is near to that achieved by monthly abstracting journals, compared to which our system of accumu­ lating abstracts for about six months offers the advantage of greater convenience for the user. Volume 31 contains literature published in 1982 and received before July 15, 1982; some older literature which was received late and which is not recorded in earlier volumes is also included. We acknowledge with thanks contributions to this volume by Dr. J. Bouska, Prague, who surveyed journals and publications in Czech and supplied us with abstracts in English.

This book examines the physical principles behind the operation of high-speed transistors operating at frequencies above 10 GHz and having switching times less than 100 psec. If the 1970s cannot be remembered for the opportunities for creating and extensively using transistors operating at such high speeds, then, the situation has changed radically because of rapid progress in sub micrometer technology for manufacturing transistors and integrated circuits from GaAs and other semiconductor materials and the powerful influx of new physical concepts. Not only have transistors having switching speeds of 50-100 psec operating in the 10-20 GHz region been created in recent years, but the possibilities for manufacturing transistors operating one to two orders of magnitude faster have been revealed. As superhigh-speed transistors have been created, many of the most important areas of technology such as communications, computing technology, television, radar, and the manufacture of scientific, industrial, and medical equipment have qualitatively changed. Microwave transistors operating at millimeter wavelengths make it possible to produce compact and highly efficient equipment for communications and radar technology. Transistors with switching speeds better than 10-100 psec make it possible to increase the speed of microprocessors and other computer components to tens of billions of operations per second and thereby solve one of the most pressing problems of modern electronics - increasing the speed of digital information processing.

In the last few years the subject of optical cornmunications has moved rapidly from being a promising research area to a practical reality already being installed and carrying traffic in trunk networks in many countries. At the same time new applications for fibre technology are emerging and are placing new demands on the system components. In telecommunications there is a steady increase of interest in the use of fibres for undersea cables, in local area networks and wideband links, and a little further ahead the possibility of coherent communications systems. With an optical carrier bandwidth of 200 THz, today's maximum bit rates of the order of Gb s-l do not approach the limits of the medium, and questions about the ultimate limits of optical communications are already being asked. On a different front, the rapid advance of fibre sensors, previously drawing heavily on the communications technology, is becoming a major driving force in the development of fibres and other components. This picture of dramatic growth in optical technology gives rise to other phenomena. A profusion of small companies mushrooms to meet the demands of specific market areas, each such company formed around a nucleus of experienced personnel from the established research groups. Multi-­ nationals jostle for position in the optoelectronics marketplace and price wars develop as fibre costs fall. University groups expand with government and industrial funding in attempts to maintain long-term research options and produce trained personnei.

. The theory of difference equations, the methods used in their solutions and their wide applications have advanced beyond their adolescent stage to occupy a central position in Applicable Analysis. In fact, in the last five years, the proliferation of the subject is witnessed by hundreds of research articles and several monographs, two International Conferences and numerous Special Sessions, and a new Journal as well as several special issues of existing journals, all devoted to the theme of Difference Equations. Now even those experts who believe in the universality of differential equations are discovering the sometimes striking divergence between the continuous and the discrete. There is no doubt that the theory of difference equations will continue to play an important role in mathematics as a whole. In 1992, the first author published a monograph on the subject entitled Difference Equations and Inequalities. This book was an in-depth survey of the field up to the year of publication. Since then, the subject has grown to such an extent that it is now quite impossible for a similar survey, even to cover just the results obtained in the last four years, to be written. In the present monograph, we have collected some of the results which we have obtained in the last few years, as well as some yet unpublished ones.

The application of the 111-V compound semiconductors to device fabrica­ tion has grown considerably in the last few years. This process has been stimulated, in part, by the advancement in the understanding of the interface physics and chemistry of the III-V's. The literature on this subject is spread over the last 15 years and appears in many journals and conference proceedings. Understanding this literature requires consider­ able effort by the seasoned researcher, and even more for those starting out in the field or by engineers and scientists who wish to apply this knowledge to the fabrication of devices. The purpose of this book is to bring together much of the fundamental and practical knowledge on the physics and chemistry of the 111-V compounds with metals and dielectrics. The authors of this book have endeavored to provide concise overviews of these areas with many tahles ancI grarhs whic. h c. omr>are and summarize the literature. In this way, the book serves as both an insightful treatise on III-V interfaces and a handy reference to the literature. The selection of authors was mandated by the desire to include both fundamental and practical approaches, covering device and material aspects of the interfaces. All of the authors are recognized experts on III-V interfaces and each has worked for many years in his subject area. This experience is projected in the breadth of understanding in each chapter.

Our intent in producing this book was to provide a text that would be comprehensive enough for an introductory course in integrated optics, yet concise enough in its mathematical derivations to be easily readable by a practicing engineer who desires an overview of the field. The response to the first edition has indeed been gratifying; unusually strong demand has caused it to be sold out during the initial year of publication, thus providing us with an early opportunity to produce this updated and improved second edition. This development is fortunate, because integrated optics is a very rapidly progressing field, with significant new research being regularly reported. Hence, a new chapter (Chap. 17) has been added to review recent progress and to provide numerous additional references to the relevant technical literature. Also, thirty-five new problems for practice have been included to supplement those at the ends of chapters in the first edition. Chapters I through 16 are essentially unchanged, except for brief updating revisions and corrections of typographical errors. Because of the time limitations imposed by the need to provide an uninterrupted supply of this book to those using it as a course text, it has been possible to include new references and to briefly describe recent developments only in Chapter 17. However, we hope to provide details of this continuing progress in a future edition.

This two volume set LNCS 7825 and LNCS 7826 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, DASFAA 2013, held in Wuhan, China, in April 2013. The 51 revised full papers and 10 short papers presented together with 2 invited keynote talks, 1 invited paper, 3 industrial papers, 9 demo presentations, 4 tutorials and 1 panel paper were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 227 submissions. The topics covered in part 1 are social networks; query processing; nearest neighbor search; index; query analysis; XML data management; privacy protection; and uncertain data management; and in part 2: graph data management; physical design; knowledge management; temporal data management; social networks; query processing; data mining; applications; and database applications.

Recognising the benefits of improved control, this book aims to provide simple and yet effective methods of improving controller performance. It bridges the gap between the conventional tuning practice and new generations of autotuning methods. Practical issues facing controller tuning are treated, such as measurement noises, process nonlinearity, load disturbances, and multivariable interaction, and tools are also given. Numerous worked examples and case studies are used to illustrate the autotuning procedure, and MATLAB programs to execute autotuning steps are given. This book is intended to be an independent learning tool, and is particularly invaluable to practitioners and scientist, as well as graduate and undergraduate students. The reader will therefore find it useful, particularly as it is applicable to engineering practice

The introduction of GaAs/ AIGaAs double heterostructure lasers has opened the door to a new age in the application of compound semiconductor materials to microwave and optical technologies. A variety and combination of semiconductor materials have been investigated and applied to present commercial uses with these devices operating at wide frequencies and wavelengths. Semiconductor modulators are typical examples of this technical evolutions and hsve been developed for commercial use. Although these have a long history to date, we are not aware of any book that details this evolution. Consequently, we have written a book to provide a comprehensive account of semiconductor modulators with emphasis on historical details and experimantal reports. The objective is to provide an up-to-date understanding of semiconductor modulators. Particular attention has been paid to multiple quantum well (MQW) modulators operating at long wavelengths, taking into account the low losses and dispersion in silica fibers occuring at around 1.3 and 1.55 mm. At the present time, MQW structures have been investigated but these have not been sufficiently developed to provide characteristic features which would be instructive enough for readers. One problem is the almost daily publication of papers on semiconductor modulators. Not only do these papers provide additional data, but they often modify the interpretations of particular concepts. Almost all chapters refer to the large number of published papers that can be consulted for future study.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Theory and Applications of Models of Computation, TAMC 2013, held in Hong Kong, China, in May 2013. The 31 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. Bringing together a wide range of researchers with interests in computational theory and applications, the papers address the three main themes of the conference which were computability, complexity, and algorithms and present current research in these fields with aspects to theoretical computer science, algorithmic mathematics, and applications to the physical sciences.