Search results for ""ISTE Ltd and John Wiley Sons Inc""

Nearly all solids are compised of grains. However most studies treat materials as a continious solid. The book applies analysis used on loose granular materials to dense grainular materials. This title’s main focus is devoted to static or dynamic loadings applied to dense materials, although rapid flows and widely dispersed media are also mentioned briefly. Three essential areas are covered: Local variable analysis: Contact forces, displacements and rotations, orientation of contacting particles and fabric tensors are all examples of local variables. Their statistical distributions, such as spatial distribution and possible localization, are analyzed, taking into account experimental results or numerical simulations. Change of scales procedures: Also known as “homogenization techniques”, these procedures make it possible to construct continuum laws to be used in a continuum mechanics approach or performing smaller scale analyses. Numerical modeling: Several methods designed to calculate approximate solutions of dynamical equations together with unilateral contact and frictional laws are presented, including molecular dynamics, the distinct element method and non-smooth contact dynamics. Numerical examples are given and the quality of numerical approximations is discussed.

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Spatial analysis is an increasingly important tool for detecting and preventing numerous risk and crisis phenomena such as floods in a geographical area. This book concentrates on examples of prevention but also gives crisis control advice and practical case studies. Some chapters address urban applications in which vulnerabilities are concentrated in area; others address more rural areas with more scattered phenomena.

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This title presents a large variety of models and algorithms dedicated to the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP), which aims at scheduling at minimal duration a set of activities subject to precedence constraints and limited resource availabilities. In the first part, the standard variant of RCPSP is presented and analyzed as a combinatorial optimization problem. Constraint programming and integer linear programming formulations are given. Relaxations based on these formulations and also on related scheduling problems are presented. Exact methods and heuristics are surveyed. Computational experiments, aiming at providing an empirical insight on the difficulty of the problem, are provided. The second part of the book focuses on several other variants of the RCPSP and on their solution methods. Each variant takes account of real-life characteristics which are not considered in the standard version, such as possible interruptions of activities, production and consumption of resources, cost-based approaches and uncertainty considerations. The last part presents industrial case studies where the RCPSP plays a central part. Applications are presented in various domains such as assembly shop and rolling ingots production scheduling, project management in information technology companies and instruction scheduling for VLIW processor architectures.

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Computer-aided automatic processing of images requires the control of a series of operations, which this book analyzes. Knowing the statistical properties of images, sampling them to reduce the observable world to a series of discrete values, restoring images in order to correct degradations – all these operations are explained here, together with the mathematical tools they require. Topics covered include fractal representation, mathematical morphology, wavelet representations and the detection and description of contours and shapes.

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Speech processing addresses various scientific and technological areas. It includes speech analysis and variable rate coding, in order to store or transmit speech. It also covers speech synthesis, especially from text, speech recognition, including speaker and language identification, and spoken language understanding. This book covers the following topics: how to realize speech production and perception systems, how to synthesize and understand speech using state-of-the-art methods in signal processing, pattern recognition, stochastic modelling computational linguistics and human factor studies.

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The purpose of this book is to provide graduate students and practitioners with traditional methods and more recent results for model-based approaches in signal processing. Firstly, discrete-time linear models such as AR, MA and ARMA models, their properties and their limitations are introduced. In addition, sinusoidal models are addressed. Secondly, estimation approaches based on least squares methods and instrumental variable techniques are presented. Finally, the book deals with optimal filters, i.e. Wiener and Kalman filtering, and adaptive filters such as the RLS, the LMS and their variants.

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Thermodynamic Processes 1 offers a comprehensive take on process engineering, whereby technology transforms materials and energy production into various products. The scientific methods required for designing such processes are the result of knowledge from a number of different disciplines. As a result, thermodynamics is the basic discipline in process engineering training. The application of laws and concepts of thermodynamics is essential before the design and optimization of any process, which allows downstream to control its reliability and validity. This book offers a pragmatic approach through practical and varied examples, chosen for their didactic and industrial interest.

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The interdisciplinarity between the biological and human sciences is here to serve a daring objective: to decipher, by means of a logical chain, the explanatory factors of human trajectories and imbalances between societies and nations. To do this, The World’s Construction Mechanism is based on an unprecedented analysis of the dynamics of the human species, combining the contributions of anthropology, archeology, biology, climatology, economics, geography, history and sociology. This book analyzes the roots of societal disharmony and presents ways of realizing a clear-sighted human project that is in step with the general interest of humanity.

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Digital models based on data from medical images have recently become widespread in the field of biomechanics. This book summarizes medical imaging techniques and processing procedures, both of which are necessary for creating bone models with finite element methods. Chapter 1 introduces the main principles and the application of the most commonly used medical imaging techniques. Chapter 2 describes the major methods and steps of medical image analysis and processing. Chapter 3 presents a brief review of recent studies on reconstructed finite element bone models, based on medical images. Finally, Chapter 4 reveals the digital results obtained for the main bone sites that have been targeted by finite element modeling in recent years.

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Numerical simulation is a technique of major importance in various technical and scientific fields. Used to understand diverse physical phenomena or to design everyday objects, it plays a major role in innovation in the industrial sector. Whilst engineering curricula now include training courses dedicated to it, numerical simulation is still not well-known in some economic sectors, and even less so among the general public. Simulation involves the mathematical modeling of the real world, coupled with the computing power offered by modern technology. Designed to perform virtual experiments, digital simulation can be considered as an "art of prediction". Embellished with a rich iconography and based on the testimony of researchers and engineers, this book shines a light on this little-known art. It is the first of two volumes and focuses on the principles, methods and industrial practice of numerical modeling.

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Triangulations, and more precisely meshes, are at the heart of many problems relating to a wide variety of scientific disciplines, and in particular numerical simulations of all kinds of physical phenomena. In numerical simulations, the functional spaces of approximation used to search for solutions are defined from meshes, and in this sense these meshes play a fundamental role. This strong link between meshes and functional spaces leads us to consider advanced simulation methods in which the meshes are adapted to the behaviors of the underlying physical phenomena. This book presents the basic elements of this vision of meshing. These mesh adaptations are generally governed by a posteriori error estimators representing an increase of the error with respect to a size or metric. Independently of this metric of calculation, compliance with a geometry can also be calculated using a so-called geometric metric. The notion of mesh thus finds its meaning in the metric of its elements.

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This book is built to start from elementary and fundamental bases to the first degrees of harmony. It provides many theoretical and technical bases of music, presenting in detail relations between physics and music (harmonics, frequency and time spectrum, dissonance, etc.), physiological relations with human body and education.

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In the context of Distributed and Real-time Embedded Systems (DRES), system developers are faced with reducing system development cost and time while developing correct (relating to safe and QoS properties) and increasingly complex systems. To take up this challenge, Model Driven Development (MDD) advocates the intensive use of models and model transformations on several levels of abstraction. This book includes contributions from academic and professional experts on a range of topics related to MDD practices, methods and emerging technologies. After introducing general concepts about modeling and how to implement model transformations, two presentations provide an overview of the MARTE profile. Coverage is then given to the most common aspects of MDD for DRES: structuring architectures using components, designing hardware architecture, evaluation and validation through tests and performance analysis. Finally, guidance is given as to how and why MDD should be used by presenting a tool to support MDD and describing an industrial application of MDD concepts.

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This volume contains contributions from speakers at the 4th International Symposium on Finite Volumes for Complex Applications, held in Marrakech, Morocco, in July 2005. The subject of these papers ranges from theoretical and numerical results to physical applications. Topics covered include: Theoretical and numerical results • theoretical foundation • convergence • new finite volume schemes • adaptivity • higher order discretization and parallelization Physical applications • multiphase flow and flows through porous media • turbulent flows • shallow water problems • stiff source terms • cryogenic applications • medical and biological applications • image processing Papers on Industrial codes, as well as interdisciplinary approaches are also included in these proceedings.

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Automation of linear systems is a fundamental and essential theory. This book deals with the theory of continuous-state automated systems.

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Fault tree analysis is an important technique in determining the safety and dependability of complex systems. Fault trees are used as a major tool in the study of system safety as well as in reliability and availability studies. The basic methods – construction, logical analysis, probability evaluation and influence study – are described in this book. The following extensions of fault trees, non-coherent fault trees, fault trees with delay and multi-performance fault trees, are also explained. Traditional algorithms for fault tree analysis are presented, as well as more recent algorithms based on binary decision diagrams (BDD).

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This book deals with these parametric methods, first discussing those based on time series models, Capon’s method and its variants, and then estimators based on the notions of sub-spaces. However, the book also deals with the traditional “analog” methods, now called non-parametric methods, which are still the most widely used in practical spectral analysis.

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Knowledge Management (KM) encompasses a wide range of tools and methods that are at the heart of the information and communication society and provide solutions that rely as much on organization as on technology. This title brings together contributions from authors from a range of countries who are recognized as leading figures in this field, both in an academic and a practical sense. It describes the strategic aspects of KM and defines the underlying principles in terms of management, life cycle, process, methods and tools involved in this discipline. Several approaches to the running of KM within organizations are then discussed. The influence of KM on the performance of a company is analyzed and guidelines are given on various KM approaches that can be used to achieve specific goals. Finally, several case studies of companies that have put KM at the heart of their organizational strategy are given to demonstrate how this approach has been put into practice. Given the practical approach taken by this book and the considerable advantages that a good handling of KM can bring to an organization, this title will be of great interest to those involved in this field.

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This book presents an in-depth guide to the subject matter and main points of hydrostructural pedology, as theorized for the first time. The authors focus on the underlying concepts, the purpose and role this field plays within agroenvironmental sciences. It is divided into two parts: Part 1 presents the theory behind hydrostructural pedology. The systemic approach applied to the soil is presented, showing how this leads to the thermodynamic formulation of water in the soil's organized medium and to the systemic modeling of soil–water-coupling in natural or anthropic organizations. Part 2 presents the methodology to complement the first part. In it, the authors determine the hydrostructural characteristics of the pedostructure, characteristic parameters of equilibrium state equations and the hydrostructural functioning of the soil.

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The governance theories that have developed over the past twenty years offer a new framework to consider and examine the collective conditions of a "Responsible Research and Innovation – RRI" linked up with the policy challenges of a society in transition in all its modes of regulation. This book will recall the genesis of the reflexive point of view in the context of the development of the theory of governance. It will then develop the strengths of the model and finally, will show the fruitfulness of its application to the field of the RRI.

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This third volume in the comprehensive Digital Electronics series, which explores the basic principles and concepts of digital circuits, focuses on finite state machines. These machines are characterized by a behavior that is determined by a limited and defined number of states, the holding conditions for each state, and the branching conditions from one state to another. They only allow one transition at a time and can be divided into two components: a combinational logic circuit and a sequential logic circuit.The approach is gradual and relatively independent of each other chapters. To facilitate the assimilation and practical implementation of various concepts, the book is complemented by a selection of practical exercises.

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This book focuses on the challenges of competition in television broadcasting markets. How is the evolution from a two-sided market to platform economics reshaping competition in television broadcasting? How are new market dynamics changing competition for content creation and acquisition and the revenue streams? Will content remain king? Or will new competitive dynamics undermine the sustainable creation of high quality content, especially in small media markets?

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An information system may be regarded as an organized set of resources, both technological and human. Security should take this specificity into consideration in order to ensure an overall security of information systems. The security of information systems is usually tackled in a technological perspective. This book proposes to focus not only on information systems' security in a technological perspective, but also in a human, managerial and organizational perspective.

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This book is the second in a series of volumes which cover the topic of aerospace actuators following a systems-based approach.This second volume brings an original, functional and architectural vision to more electric aerospace actuators. The aspects of signal (Signal-by-Wire) and power (Power-by-Wire) are treated from the point of view of needs, their evolution throughout history, and operational solutions that are in service or in development. This volume is based on an extensive bibliography, numerous supporting examples and orders of magnitude which refer to flight controls and landing gear for various aircraft (fixed or rotorwing, launchers) in commercial, private and military applications. The topics covered in this set of books constitute a significant source of information for individuals and engineers from a variety of disciplines, seeking to learn more about aerospace actuation systems and components.

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In what sort of assemblages, the strategies and digital policies in organization are made? Beyond digital mantras and management slogans/fictions, what is the concrete factory of information management system? What are the parts of the human and no human actors? Is it possible to create a new approach to understand how work change (or not), to explore the potential for a social and cognitive innovation way, considering simultaneously the increase of Data Management and the organizational analytics?

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One of the major challenges for modern organizations is the management of individual and collective knowledge, which is at the root of specific practices designed to optimize knowledge acquisition, maintenance and application. There are, however, still a disproportionately low number of studies focused on the structure and nature of knowledge. This book tackles the subject of daily knowledge: the knowledge related to everyday tasks. How does this knowledge present itself in the mind? How do we acquire and preserve it? To answer these questions, the authors explore a number of techniques which help to keep track of information produced in collaborative activity and extract knowledge by aggregating these traces.

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This book is dedicated to metaheuristics as applied to vehicle routing problems. Several implementations are given as illustrative examples, along with applications to several typical vehicle routing problems. As a first step, a general presentation intends to make the reader more familiar with the related field of logistics and combinatorial optimization. This preamble is completed with a description of significant heuristic methods classically used to provide feasible solutions quickly, and local improvement moves widely used to search for enhanced solutions. The overview of these fundamentals allows appreciating the core of the work devoted to an analysis of metaheuristic methods for vehicle routing problems. Those methods are exposed according to their feature of working either on a sequence of single solutions, or on a set of solutions, or even by hybridizing metaheuristic approaches with others kind of methods.

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A large part of the world’s coastlines consists of sandy beaches and dunes that may undergo dramatic changes during storms. Extreme storm events in some cases dominate the erosion history of the coastline and may have dramatic impacts on densely populated coastal areas. Policy, research and historical background are essential elements that need to be interconnected for effective coastal planning and management. This book discusses this framework, with Chapter 1 providing an insight into policy settings and science-policy interactions in the area of coastal risks related to storms and flooding, and integrated coastal zone management. This is followed by a review of the current understanding of the processes generating extreme coastal events, the morphological evolution of coastlines during and after the events, and the methods for monitoring the process as it occurs or for post-event appraisal. The final chapter discusses the importance of historical approaches regarding coastal threats, taking the Xynthia storm as an example.

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Information is an element of knowledge that can be stored, processed or transmitted. It is linked to concepts of communication, data, knowledge or representation. In a context of steady increase in the mass of information it is difficult to know what information to look for and where to find them. Computer techniques exist to facilitate this research and allow relevant information extraction. Recommendation systems introduced the notions inherent to the recommendation, based, inter alia, information search, filtering, machine learning, collaborative approaches. It also deals with the assessment of such systems and has various applications.

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Over the past 20 years, software architectures have significantly contributed to the development of complex and distributed systems. Nowadays, it is recognized that one of the critical problems in the design and development of any complex software system is its architecture, i.e. the organization of its architectural elements. Software Architecture presents the software architecture paradigms based on objects, components, services and models, as well as the various architectural techniques and methods, the analysis of architectural qualities, models of representation of architectural templates and styles, their formalization, validation and testing and finally the engineering approach in which these consistent and autonomous elements can be tackled.

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This book presents methods for the design of the main microwave active devices. The first chapter focuses on amplifiers working in the linear mode. The authors present the problems surrounding narrowband and wideband impedance matching, stability, polarization and the noise factor, as well as specific topologies such as the distributed amplifier and the differential amplifier. Chapter 2 concerns the power amplifier operation. Specific aspects on efficiency, impedance matching and class of operation are presented, as well as the main methods of linearization and efficiency improvement. Frequency transposition is the subject of Chapter 3. The author presents the operating principle as well as the different topologies using transistors and diodes. Chapter 4 is dedicated to the operation of fixed frequency and tunable oscillators such as the voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) and the yttrium iron garnet (YIG). The final chapter presents the main control functions, i.e. attenuators, phase shifters and switches.

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Flows with chemical reactions can occur in various fields such as combustion, process engineering, aeronautics, the atmospheric environment and aquatics.The examples of application chosen in this book mainly concern homogeneous reactive mixtures that can occur in propellers within the fields of process engineering and combustion:– propagation of sound and monodimensional flows in nozzles, which may include disequilibria of the internal modes of the energy of molecules;– ideal chemical reactors, stabilization of their steady operation points in the homogeneous case of a perfect mixture and classical instruments of experimental and theoretical analysis such as population balances, and the distribution of residence and passage times;– laminar and turbulent flames, separating those which are premixed from those which are not and which do not exhibit the same mechanisms, but which also occur in the case of triple flames.Flows and Chemical Reactions in Homogeneous Mixtures provides information on dimensional analysis, statistical thermodynamics with coupling between internal modes and chemical reactions, the apparition and damping of fluid turbulence as well as its statistical processing, bifurcations, flames in a confined medium and diffusion. Contents 1. Flows in Nozzles.2. Chemical Reactors.3. Laminar and Turbulent Flames.Appendix 1. Dimensionless Numbers, Similarity.Appendix 2. Thermodynamic Functions.Appendix 3. Concepts of Turbulence.Appendix 4. Thermodynamic functions for a mixture in disequilibrium.Appendix 5. Notion of bifurcation.Appendix 6. Confined flame.Appendix 7. Limits of Validity of the First-order Expansions for Diffusion Flames.

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This text addresses the common negative perception of polymer materials on the environment with a thorough analysis of what really occurs when industry and academia collaborate to find environmental solutions. The book examines the environmental and social effects of polymer materials and explains methods of quantifying environmental performance. With an emphasis on the importance of education, the authors stress the importance of awareness and activity in negating polymers' environmental impact.

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This book includes a study of trustworthiness, percentile response time, service availability, and authentication in the networks between users and cloud service providers, and at service stations or sites that may be owned by different service providers. The first part of the book contains an analysis of percentile response time, which is one of the most important SLA (service level agreements) metrics. Effective and accurate numerical solutions for the calculation of the percentile response time in single-class and multi-class queueing networks are obtained. Then, the numerical solution is incorporated in a resource allocation problem. Specifically, the authors present an approach for the resource optimization that minimizes the total cost of computer resources required while preserving a given percentile of the response time. In the second part, the approach is extended to consider trustworthiness, service availability, and the percentile of response time in Web services. These QoS metrics are clearly defined and their quantitative analysis provided. The authors then take into account these QoS metrics in a trust-based resource allocation problem in which a set of cloud computing resources is used by a service provider to host a typical Web services application for single-class customer services and multipleclass customer services respectively. Finally, in the third part of the book a thorough performance evaluation of two notable public key cryptography-based authentication techniques; Public-Key Cross Realm Authentication in Kerberos (PKCROSS) and Public Key Utilizing Tickets for Application Servers (PKTAPP, a.k.a. KX.509/KCA); is given, in terms of computational and communication times. The authors then demonstrate their performance difference using queuing networks. PKTAPP has been proposed to address the scalability issue of PKCROSS. However, their in-depth analysis of these two techniques shows that PKTAPP does not perform better than PKCROSS in a large-scale system. Thus, they propose a new public key cryptography-based group authentication technique. The performance analysis demonstrates that the new technique can scale better than PKCORSS and PKTAPP.

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UHF Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an electronic tagging technology that allows an object, place or person to be automatically identified at a distance without a direct line-of-sight using a radio wave exchange. Applications include inventory tracking, prescription medication tracking and authentication, secure automobile keys, and access control for secure facilities. This book begins with an overview of UHF RFID challenges describing the applications, markets, trades and basic technologies. It follows this by highlighting the main features distinguishing UHF (860MHz-960MHz) and HF (125 kHz and 13.56 MHz) identifications, in terms of reading range, environmental sensitivity, throughput and safety. The architecture of the integrated circuits and the organization of the memory are then described. One chapter is devoted to the air interface protocol aspects, including coding, modulation, multi readers operation and anti-collision algorithms to manage the tag responses. Focus will be put upon the EPC Gen2 protocol adopted in the ISO 18000 Part 6. The core of the book will cover the design and manufacturing issues of RFID tags. The influence of the propagation medium (warehouse, libraries, etc.), the tag close environment (bottles, linens, containers, carton boxes,etc.) and the coupling between tags will also be carefully addressed. The final chapter is dedicated to an industrial use case in the supply chain management, either in the retail inventory or blood traceability.

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This book targets new trends in microwave engineering by downscaling components and devices for industrial purposes such as miniaturization and function densification, in association with the new approach of activation by a confined optical remote control. It covers the fundamental groundwork of the structure, property, characterization methods and applications of 1D and 2D nanostructures, along with providing the necessary knowledge on atomic structure, how it relates to the material band-structure and how this in turn leads to the amazing properties of these structures. It thus provides new graduates, PhD students and post-doctorates with a resource equipping them with the knowledge to undertake their research.

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Reconciliation of Geometry and Perception in Radiation Physics approaches the topic of projective geometry as it applies to radiation physics and attempts to negate its negative reputation. With an original outlook and transversal approach, the book emphasizes common geometric properties and their potential transposition between domains. After defining both radiation and geometric properties, authors Benoit and Pierre Beckers explain the necessity of reconciling geometry and perception in fields like architectural and urban physics, which are notable for the regularity of their forms and the complexity of their interactions.

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Swift ion beam analysis (IBA) of materials and their surfaces has been widely applied to many fields over the last half century, constantly evolving to meet new requirements and to take advantage of developments in particle detection and data treatment. Today, emerging fields in nanosciences introduce extreme demands to analysis methods at the nanoscale. This book addresses how analysis with swift ion beams is rising to meet such needs. Aimed at early stage researchers and established researchers wishing to understand how IBA can contribute to their analytical requirements in nanosciences, the basics of the interactions of charged particles with matter, as well as the operation of the relevant equipment, are first presented. Many recent examples from nanoscience research are then explored in which the specific analytical capabilities of IBA are emphasized, together with the place of IBA alongside the wealth of other analytical methods.

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This book shows how dispersion engineering in two dimensional dielectric photonic crystals can provide new effects for the precise control of light propagation for integrated nanophotonics.Dispersion engineering in regular and graded photonic crystals to promote anomalous refraction effects is studied from the concepts to experimental demonstration via nanofabrication considerations. Self collimation, ultra and negative refraction, second harmonic generation, mirage and invisibility effects which lead to an unprecedented control of light propagation at the (sub-)wavelength scale for the field of integrated nanophotonics are detailed and commented upon.

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Based on a convergence of network technologies, the Next Generation Network (NGN) is being deployed to carry high quality video and voice data. In fact, the convergence of network technologies has been driven by the converging needs of end-users.The perceived end-to-end quality is one of the main goals required by users that must be guaranteed by the network operators and the Internet Service Providers, through manufacturer equipment. This is referred to as the notion of Quality of Experience (QoE) and is becoming commonly used to represent user perception. The QoE is not a technical metric, but rather a concept consisting of all elements of a user's perception of the network services. The authors of this book focus on the idea of how to integrate the QoE into a control-command chain in order to construct an adaptive network system. More precisely, in the context of Content-Oriented Networks used to redesign the current Internet architecture to accommodate content-oriented applications and services, they aim to describe an end-to-end QoE model applied to a Content Distribution Network architecture. About the Authors Abdelhamid Mellouk is Full Professor at University of Paris-Est C-VdM (UPEC), Networks & Telecommunications (N&T) Department and LiSSi Laboratory, France. Head of several executive national and international positions, he was the founder of the Network Control Research activity at UPEC with extensive international academic and industrial collaborations. His general area of research is in adaptive real-time control for high-speed new generation dynamic wired/wireless networks in order to maintain acceptable Quality of Service/Experience for added-value services. He is an active member of the IEEE Communications Society and has held several offices including leadership positions in IEEE Communications Society Technical Committees.Said Hoceini is Associate Professor at University of Paris-Est C-VdM (UPEC), Networks & Telecommunications (N&T) Department and LiSSi Laboratory, France. His research focuses on routing algorithms, quality of service, quality of experience, and wireless sensor networks, as well as bio-inspired artificial intelligence approaches. His work has been published in several international conferences and journals and he serves on several TPCs.Hai Anh Tran is Associate Professor at the Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST), Vietnam. His research focuses on QoE aspects, QoS adaptive control/command mechanisms, wired routing, as well as bio-inspired artificial intelligence approaches.

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The purpose of this book is to present the main metaheuristics and approximate and stochastic methods for optimization of complex systems in Engineering Sciences. It has been written within the framework of the European Union project ERRIC (Empowering Romanian Research on Intelligent Information Technologies), which is funded by the EU’s FP7 Research Potential program and has been developed in co-operation between French and Romanian teaching researchers. Through the principles of various proposed algorithms (with additional references) this book allows the reader to explore various methods of implementation such as metaheuristics, local search and populationbased methods. It examines multi-objective and stochastic optimization, as well as methods and tools for computer-aided decision-making and simulation for decision-making.

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Most books dedicated to the issues of bio-sensing are organized by the well-known scheme of a biosensor. In this book, the authors have deliberately decided to break away from the conventional way of treating biosensing research by uniquely addressing biomolecule immobilization methods on a solid surface, fluidics issues and biosensing-related transduction techniques, rather than focusing simply on the biosensor. The aim is to provide a contemporary snapshot of the biosensing landscape without neglecting the seminal references or products where needed, following the downscaling (from the micro- to the nanoscale) of biosensors and their respective best known applications. To conclude, a brief overview of the most popularized nanodevices applied to biology is given, before comparing biosensor criteria in terms of targeted applications.

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An overview of the methods used for risk analysis in a variety of industrial sectors, with a particular focus on the consideration of human aspects, this book provides a definition of all the fundamental notions associated with risks and risk management, as well as clearly placing the discipline of risk analysis within the broader context of risk management processes.The author begins by presenting a certain number of basic concepts, followed by the general principle of risk analysis. He then moves on to examine the ISO31000 standard, which provides a specification for the implementation of a risk management approach. The ability to represent the information we use is crucial, so the representation of knowledge, covering both information concerning the risk occurrence mechanism and details of the system under scrutiny, is also considered. The different analysis methods are then presented, firstly for the identification of risks, then for their analysis in terms of cause and effect, and finally for the implementation of safety measures.Concrete examples are given throughout the book and the methodology and method can be applied to various fields (industry, health, organization, technical systems). Contents Part 1. General Concepts and Principles1. Introduction.2. Basic Notions.3. Principles of Risk Analysis Methods.4. The Risk Management Process (ISO31000).Part 2. Knowledge Representation5. Modeling Risk.6. Measuring the Importance of a Risk.7. Modeling of Systems for Risk Analysis.Part 3. Risk Analysis Method8. Preliminary Hazard Analysis.9. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis.10. Deviation Analysis Using the HAZOP Method.11. The Systemic and Organized Risk Analysis Method.12. Fault Tree Analysis.13. Event Tree and Bow-Tie Diagram Analysis.14. Human Reliability Analysis.15. Barrier Analysis and Layer of Protection Analysis.Part 4. AppendicesAppendix 1. Occupational Hazard Checklists.Appendix 2. Causal Tree Analysis.Appendix 3. A Few Reminders on the Theory of Probability.Appendix 4. Useful Notions in Reliability Theory.Appendix 5. Data Sources for Reliability.Appendix 6. A Few Approaches for System Modelling.Appendix 7. CaseStudy: Chemical Process.Appendix 8. XRisk Software. About the Authors Jean-Marie Flaus is Professor at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France.

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Risk management deals with prevention, decision-making, action taking, crisis management and recovery, taking into account the consequences of unexpected events. The authors of this book are interested in ecological processes, human behavior, as well as the control and management of life-critical systems, which are potentially highly automated. Three main attributes define life-critical systems, i.e. safety, efficiency and comfort. They typically lead to complex and time-critical issues and can belong to domains such as transportation (trains, cars, aircraft), energy (nuclear, chemical engineering), health, telecommunications, manufacturing and services. The topics covered relate to risk management principles, methods and tools, and reliability assessment: human errors as well as system failures, socio-organizational issues of crisis occurrence and management, co-operative work including human−machine cooperation and CSCW (computer-supported cooperative work): task and function allocation, authority sharing, interactivity, situation awareness, networking and management evolution and lessons learned from Human-Centered Design.

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Blind identification consists of estimating a multi-dimensional system only through the use of its output, and source separation, the blind estimation of the inverse of the system. Estimation is generally carried out using different statistics of the output. The authors of this book consider the blind identification and source separation problem in the complex-domain, where the available statistical properties are richer and include non-circularity of the sources – underlying components. They define identifiability conditions and present state-of-the-art algorithms that are based on algebraic methods as well as iterative algorithms based on maximum likelihood theory. Contents 1. Mathematical Preliminaries. 2. Estimation by Joint Diagonalization. 3. Maximum Likelihood ICA. About the Authors Eric Moreau is Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Toulon, France. His research interests concern statistical signal processing, high order statistics and matrix/tensor decompositions with applications to data analysis, telecommunications and radar. Tülay Adali is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Machine Learning for Signal Processing Laboratory at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA. Her research interests concern statistical and adaptive signal processing, with an emphasis on nonlinear and complex-valued signal processing, and applications in biomedical data analysis and communications. Blind identification consists of estimating a multidimensional system through the use of only its output. Source separation is concerned with the blind estimation of the inverse of the system. The estimation is generally performed by using different statistics of the outputs. The authors consider the blind estimation of a multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) system that mixes a number of underlying signals of interest called sources. They also consider the case of direct estimation of the inverse system for the purpose of source separation. They then describe the estimation theory associated with the identifiability conditions and dedicated algebraic algorithms. The algorithms depend critically on (statistical and/or time frequency) properties of complex sources that will be precisely described.

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A review of the principles of the safety of software-based equipment, this book begins by presenting the definition principles of safety objectives. It then moves on to show how it is possible to define a safety architecture (including redundancy, diversification, error-detection techniques) on the basis of safety objectives and how to identify objectives related to software programs. From software objectives, the authors present the different safety techniques (fault detection, redundancy and quality control). “Certifiable system” aspects are taken into account throughout the book. Contents 1. Safety Management. 2. From System to Software. 3. Certifiable Systems. 4. Risk and Safety Levels. 5. Principles of Hardware Safety. 6. Principles of Software Safety. 7. Certification. About the Authors Jean-Louis Boulanger is currently an Independent Safety Assessor (ISA) in the railway domain focusing on software elements. He is a specialist in the software engineering domain (requirement engineering, semi-formal and formal method, proof and model-checking). He also works as an expert for the French notified body CERTIFER in the field of certification of safety critical railway applications based on software (ERTMS, SCADA, automatic subway, etc.). His research interests include requirements, software verification and validation, traceability and RAMS with a special focus on SAFETY.

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Nanotechnologies: Concepts, Processing and Applications describes and explains how nanotechnologies have entered our everyday lives through scientific and industrial applications with the emphasis placed on the new perspectives in various fields related to societal problems. This book details how successive discoveries of new nanocarbon structures along with progress in different microscopy techniques have caused nanomaterials to take on an increasingly important role in electronics, electrochemical energy storage – batteries and fuel cells – and the electrical conversion of solar energy. Views once seen as futuristic on nanomachines and nanorobotics, therapeutic hopes and medical advances – such as those resulting from the application of new in-situ drug-delivery nanotechniques – are all presented. The most innovative developments are analyzed in terms of applications and should enable the reader to form his or her own opinion about the reality of the progress that can be expected from nanotechnologies in the near future. The book offers background reading for teachers in colleges who wish to have an overview on this subject.

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The energy consumption of a building has, in recent years, become a determining factor during its design and construction. With carbon footprints being a growing issue, it is important that buildings be optimized for energy conservation and CO2 reduction. This book therefore presents AI models and optimization techniques related to this application. The authors start with a review of recent models for the prediction of building energy consumption: engineering methods, statistical methods, artificial intelligence methods, ANNs and SVMs in particular. The book then focuses on SVMs, by first applying them to building energy consumption, then presenting the principles and various extensions, and SVR. The authors then move on to RDP, which they use to determine building energy faults through simulation experiments before presenting SVR model reduction methods and the benefits of parallel computing. The book then closes by presenting some of the current research and advancements in the field.

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