Advances in Computer Science and Engineering: Texts - Böcker

Computation is ubiquitous: modern life would be inconceivable without it.Written as a series of conversations with influential computer scientists, mathematicians and physicists, this book provides access to the inner thinking of those who have made essential contributions to the development of computing and its applications. You will learn about the interviewees' education, career path, influences, methods of work, how they cope with failure and success, how they relax, how they see the future, and much more.The conversations are presented in jargon-free language suitable for a general audience, but with enough technical detail for more specialized readers. The aim of the book is not only to inform and entertain, but also to motivate and stimulate.

This book presents fundamental contributions to computer science as written and recounted by those who made the contributions themselves. As such, it is a highly original approach to a “living history” of the field of computer science. The scope of the book is broad in that it covers all aspects of computer science, going from the theory of computation, the theory of programming, and the theory of computer system performance, all the way to computer hardware and to major numerical applications of computers.

Knowledge Mining Using Intelligent Agents explores the concept of knowledge discovery processes and enhances decision-making capability through the use of intelligent agents like ants, termites and honey bees. In order to provide readers with an integrated set of concepts and techniques for understanding knowledge discovery and its practical utility, this book blends two distinct disciplines — data mining and knowledge discovery process, and intelligent agents-based computing (swarm intelligence and computational intelligence). For the more advanced reader, researchers, and decision/policy-makers are given an insight into emerging technologies and their possible hybridization, which can be used for activities like dredging, capturing, distributions and the utilization of knowledge in their domain of interest (i.e. business, policy-making, etc.).By studying the behavior of swarm intelligence, this book aims to integrate the computational intelligence paradigm and intelligent distributed agents architecture to optimize various engineering problems and efficiently represent knowledge from the large gamut of data.

Analysis and Synthesis of Computer Systems presents a broad overview of methods that are used to evaluate the performance of computer systems and networks, manufacturing systems, and interconnected services systems. Aside from a highly readable style that rigorously addresses all subjects, this second edition includes new chapters on numerical methods for queueing models and on G-networks, the latter being a new area of queuing theory that one of the authors has pioneered.This book will have a broad appeal to students, practitioners and researchers in several different areas, including practicing computer engineers as well as computer science and engineering students.

Neural Nets and Chaotic Carriers develops rational principles for the design of associative memories, with a view to applying these principles to models with irregularly oscillatory operation so evident in biological neural systems, and necessitated by the meaninglessness of absolute signal levels.Design is based on the criterion that an associative memory must be able to cope with “fading data”, i.e., to form an inference from the data even as its memory of that data degrades. The resultant net shows striking biological parallels. When these principles are combined with the Freeman specification of a neural oscillator, some remarkable effects emerge. For example, the commonly-observed phenomenon of neuronal bursting appears, with gamma-range oscillation modulated by a low-frequency square-wave oscillation (the “escapement oscillation”). Bridging studies and new results of artificial and biological neural networks, the book has a strong research character. It is, on the other hand, accessible to non-specialists for its concise exposition on the basics.

This book identifies the organizing concepts of physical and biological phenomena by an analysis of the foundations of mathematics and physics. Our aim is to propose a dialog between different conceptual universes and thus to provide a unification of phenomena. The role of “order” and symmetries in the foundations of mathematics is linked to the main invariants and principles, among them the geodesic principle (a consequence of symmetries), which govern and confer unity to various physical theories. Moreover, an attempt is made to understand causal structures, a central element of physical intelligibility, in terms of both symmetries and symmetry breakings. A distinction between the principles of (conceptual) construction and of proofs, both in physics and in mathematics, guides most of the work.The importance of mathematical tools is also highlighted to clarify differences in the models for physics and biology that are proposed by continuous and discrete mathematics, such as computational simulations.Since biology is particularly complex and not as well understood at a theoretical level, we propose a “unification by concepts” which in any case should precede mathematization. This constitutes an outline for unification also based on highlighting conceptual differences, complex points of passage and technical irreducibilities of one field to another. Indeed, we suppose here a very common monist point of view, namely the view that living objects are “big bags of molecules”. The main question though is to understand which “theory” can help better understand these bags of molecules. They are, indeed, rather “singular”, from the physical point of view. Technically, we express this singularity through the concept of “extended criticality”, which provides a logical extension of the critical transitions that are known in physics. The presentation is mostly kept at an informal and conceptual level.

This volume investigates algorithmic methods based on machine learning in order to design sequential investment strategies for financial markets. Such sequential investment strategies use information collected from the market's past and determine, at the beginning of a trading period, a portfolio; that is, a way to invest the currently available capital among the assets that are available for purchase or investment.The aim is to produce a self-contained text intended for a wide audience, including researchers and graduate students in computer science, finance, statistics, mathematics, and engineering.

Computer system performance evaluation is a key discipline for the understanding of the behavior and limitations of large scale computer systems and networks. This volume provides an overview of the milestones and major developments of the field.The contributions to the book include many of the principal leaders from industry and academia with a truly international coverage, including several IEEE and ACM Fellows, two Fellows of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the European Academy, and a former President of the Association of Computing Machinery.