SERIES ON INNOVATIVE INTELLIGENCE – serie

There is a trend to offer courses by virtual means. This approach has definite advantages. For example, virtual programs target professionals who would otherwise have to leave their jobs to pursue the degree. An enormous proportion of universities are in the process of developing courses in a virtual environment.This book deals with virtual environments for teaching and learning. The chapters can be considered to be representative of the many approaches taken and the diversity of applications. The different perspectives and different solutions adopted are the result of intense research in various countries in the area of e-learning.

Modern defence forces rely mainly on intelligent information systems and high technology armour. This volume reflects the latest trends in military information systems research by bringing together international contributions that span from communications technology, through intelligent agents and large-scale modeling and simulation, to sociotechnical systems. Together, the articles represent a good cross section of contemporary information systems research.The book also shows the wealth of research on advanced information systems and on technologies developed for defence purposes. Some of the chapters may serve as a component of advanced defence training programs. They provide an important overview of crucial research, which has evolved over the last ten years.

The Internet/WWW has made it possible to easily access quantities of information never available before. However, both the amount of information and the variation in quality pose obstacles to the efficient use of the medium. Artificial intelligence techniques can be useful tools in this context. Intelligent systems can be applied to searching the Internet and data-mining, interpreting Internet-derived material, the human–Web interface, remote condition monitoring and many other areas.This volume presents the latest research on the interaction between intelligent systems (neural networks, adaptive and connectionist paradigms, fuzzy and rule-based systems, intelligent agents) and the Internet/WWW. It surveys both the employment of intelligent systems to facilitate and enhance the use of the Internet, and applications where the Internet is a channel through which intelligent techniques are applied.

This book provides a thorough theoretical and practical introduction to the application of neural networks to pattern recognition and intelligent signal processing. It has been tested on students, unfamiliar with neural networks, who were able to pick up enough details to successfully complete their masters or final year undergraduate projects. The text also presents a comprehensive treatment of a class of neural networks called common bandwidth spherical basis function NNs, including the probabilistic NN, the modified probabilistic NN and the general regression NN.

In recent years, complex-valued neural networks have widened the scope of application in optoelectronics, imaging, remote sensing, quantum neural devices and systems, spatiotemporal analysis of physiological neural systems, and artificial neural information processing. In this first-ever book on complex-valued neural networks, the most active scientists at the forefront of the field describe theories and applications from various points of view to provide academic and industrial researchers with a comprehensive understanding of the fundamentals, features and prospects of the powerful complex-valued networks.

This book presents recent advances in the theory and implementation of intelligent and other computational techniques in the insurance industry. The paradigms covered encompass artificial neural networks and fuzzy systems, including clustering versions, optimization and resampling methods, algebraic and Bayesian models, decision trees and regression splines. Thus, the focus is not just on intelligent techniques, although these constitute a major component; the book also deals with other current computational paradigms that are likely to impact on the industry. The application areas include asset allocation, asset and liability management, cash-flow analysis, claim costs, classification, fraud detection, insolvency, investments, loss distributions, marketing, pricing and premiums, rate-making, retention, survival analysis, and underwriting.

Watermarking techniques involve the concealment of information within a text or images and the transmission of this information to the receiver with minimum distortion. This is a very new area of research. The techniques will have a significant effect on defence, business, copyright protection and other fields where information needs to be protected at all costs from attackers.This book presents the recent advances in the theory and implementation of watermarking techniques. It brings together, for the first time, the successful applications of intelligent paradigms (including comparisons with conventional methods) in many areas. The accompanying CD-Rom provides readers with source codes and executables to put into practice general topics in watermarking.Intelligent Watermarking Techniques will be of great value to undergraduate and postgraduate students in many disciplines, including engineering and computer science. It is also targeted at researchers, scientists and engineers.