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This textbook presents the fundamentals of statistical thermodynamics and electronic structure theory and focuses on introducing the central concepts of thermodynamics and their relation to microscopic theories in a conceptually clear and simple way. The emphasis is on the description of what is going on at the microscopic level, which allows readers to understand the various facets of entropy as the fundamental driving force of all material behaviors. An atomistic perspective is introduced from the beginning, highlighting the importance of molecular structure and microscopic degrees of freedom for understanding the thermodynamic properties of materials, such as heat capacity and magnetization. Because of their importance in various research fields, classical and quantum aspects are treated equally, allowing modern research topics to be addressed with molecular simulation and electronic structure theory. It is a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students in chemistry, physics, and materials science, and its modular structure makes it suitable for any reader.
This book explores the role of fractional calculus and associated partial differential equations in modeling multiscale phenomena and overlapping macroscopic & microscopic scales, offering an innovative and powerful tool for modeling complex systems. While integer order PDEs have a long-standing history, the novel setting of fractional PDEs opens up new possibilities for the simulation of multi-physics phenomena. The book examines a range of releavant examples that showcase the seamless transition from wave propagation to diffusion or from local to non-local dynamics in both continuum and discrete systems. These systems have been argued as being particularly relevant in contexts such as nonlinear optics, lattice nonlinear dynamical systems, and dispersive nonlinear wave phenomena, where the exploration of the potential fractionality has emerged as a highly active topic for current studies.The volume consists of contributions from a diverse group of active scholars and expertsacross different fields, providing a detailed examination of the field's past, present, and future state-of-the-art in the interplay of fractional PDEs and nonlinear wave phenomena. It is intended to be of wide interest to both seasoned researchers and beginners in the Field of Nonlinear Science. This book sets the stage for the next decade of research and beyond and is a timely and relevant reference of choice for this crucial junction of current research.
This book constitutes the refereed post proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Advances in Computer Games, ACG 2023, held online, during November 28-30, 2023.The 14 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 29 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Chess and its Variants, Solving Games, Board Games, Card Games, Player Investigation, Math, Games, and Puzzles.
This collection provides a wide array of concrete and inspiring "playful" approaches to teaching in a range of higher education contexts and discipline areas, grounded in the learning sciences and within a future-oriented revisioning of the university learning environment. Within the broad area of active learning strategies, this text offers a curated collection of creative innovations such as game-based learning, gamification of courses, escape rooms, semester-long quests, dramatic role-plays, artistic endeavors and more. Containing descriptive and impact research that evidences the power of playful pedagogy, this text will offer a range of novel, transferable and usable materials for readers to apply in their lecture halls and classrooms tomorrow.
This book addresses behavior safety and clinical practice with persons who have intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). It focuses on safety concerns among children, youth, and adults with IDD who are susceptible to accidents and personal injury, lack self-preservation skills to prevent and avoid risk exposure, demonstrate behavior that is harmful (e.g., abuse, aggression, and property destruction), and receive restrictive and potentially unsafe interventions. The book examines characteristics of service settings, including strategies that promote environmental safety, training of care providers to implement safety protocols, and mitigation of risk factors associated with disease transmission. In addition, it describes evidence-based practices at the person-specific, intervention, and organizational levels, featuring service recommendations and directions for future research. Key areas of coverage include: Concepts and principles of behavior-based safety (BBS).Safety assessment and measurement.Prevention and risk-avoidance strategies.Safety skills training with children, youth, and adults.Environmental factors associated with personal safety.Clinical practice guidelines and evidence-based research support. Behavior Safety and Clinical Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities is an essential resource for professionals and practitioners as well as researchers, professors, and graduate students across such disciplines as developmental, clinical child, and school psychology, public health, social work, special education, applied behavior analysis, organizational behavior management, and all related psychology, education, and behavioral health fields.
Pupillometry, the study of the eyes' pupils, has a rich history, dating back to the 1800s. For example, to appear "dark with desire," women once used atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade) as a cosmetic, because the atropine dilated their pupils, making them appear more romantically aroused. We now know that this relationship is largely driven by the activity of the sympathetic nervous system; specifically, a small brainstem nucleus known as the locus coeruleus (LC). Because of tight connections between the musculature of the eyes and LC, monitoring the pupils can reveal important insights into brain activity during mental processes. Many of these processes are related to attention and arousal (cognitive or emotional), with the LC controlling mental readiness via secretion of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. While these complicated neurochemical processes happen in the brain, they are often overtly observable via pupil dilation. Although pupillometry was popular in the 1960s and 1970s, it fell out of favor until experiencing a renaissance approximately 10 years ago. With the advent of new eye-tracking and neural recording technology, measuring (and analyzing) pupil size is now easier than ever. Because all modern eye-trackers use pupil size in the calculation of gaze location, they also provide researchers with moment-by-moment pupil size measures in output files. Although previously considered "extra" data to support gaze location analyses, researchers have begun to conduct eye-tracking studies solely to gain access to pupil size data. These data have been used to study thought processes in many domains, including cognitive science, psychopathologies, business/marketing, security contexts, and the study of addiction. The diversity of interest in pupillometry is matched by the diversity in approaches taken to data collection, analysis, and interpretation. To date, there exists no book or tutorial review devoted specifically to ensuring that researchers carry out rigorous and reproducible work across these varied domains. Modern Pupillometry: Cognition, Neuroscience, and Practical Applications fills this gap by exploring the history, neuroscience, and methodological considerations of pupillometry research within and beyond psychology.
On the one hand, the book closes the gap between applied civil engineering hydraulics books and standard fluid mechanics works; on the other hand, it is designed as a course that can be applied modularly. The goal is to present the facts in an understandable and descriptive way and with experiments, software, and materials that are available anywhere. This is an open access book.
This book constitutes the MICCAI Challenge, MMAC 2023, that held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2023, Vancouver, BC, Canada, which took place in October 2023. The 11 long papers included in this volume presents a wide range of state-of-the-art deep learning methods developed for the various tasks presented in the challenge.
This revised new edition gives a unique and broad coverage of basic laser-related phenomena that allow graduate students, scientists and engineers to carry out research in quantum optics and laser physics. It covers quantization of the electromagnetic field, quantum theory of coherence, atom-field interaction models, resonance fluorescence, quantum theory of damping, laser theory using both the master equation and the Langevin theory, the correlated emission laser, input-output theory with applications to non-linear optics, quantum trajectories, quantum non-demolition measurements and generation of non-classical vibrational states of ions in a Paul trap. This fourth edition provides a new chapter on weak measurement, as well as a new chapter on complementarity. There is also new material included for atom optics and new problems have been added. Each topic is presented in a unified and didactic manner, and is accompanied by specific problems and hints to solutions to deepen the knowledge.
This book delivers a brief introduction to misinformation, and various novel approaches for solving misinformation detection problems. It considers all kinds of false information as fake news or misinformation and uses the terms fake news and misinformation interchangeably, in text, images, audio and video. The primary purpose is to provide a foundation for the problems of misinformation or false content detection including various challenges and approaches to solve them. The book starts with an overall description of misinformation. It briefly introduces the history, various issues or challenges, reasons for creating and spreading misinformation, and its impact on individuals and society. The second chapter discusses prior works on misinformation detection and explores various datasets, recent advancements, and state-of-the-art mechanisms. Chapter three demonstrates that the presence of surprising content in a story draws instant attention and appeals to strong emotional stimuli, and subsequently explores the application of novelty and emotion in the misinformation detection domain. Next, chapter four first introduces multitasking and discusses its advantages, before developing a framework for joint learning of interrelated tasks such as emotion recognition, novelty detection, and misinformation detection. The fifth chapter explores various datasets and mechanisms leveraging multimodal information, and eventually explains the fusion mechanisms of text and image modalities to obtain an efficient multimodal feature that ultimately helps to classify multimedia fake news. Chapter six discusses how novelty and emotion can be helpful in multimodal misinformation detection. It shows that detecting misleading information is difficult without earlier knowledge about that particular news and explores the possible solutions to tackle this problem. Eventually, chapter seven introduces the concept of multilingualism and implements an effective neural model to detectfabricated multilingual information, which overcomes the research and development gap in misinformation detection for regional languages. The final chapter eight briefly summarizes the presented results. This book is mainly written for researchers and graduate students specializing in fake news search and detection, as well as for industry professionals who need to explore various dimensions of misinformation detection regardless of their past knowledge and experience.
The primary aim of this text is to help transition undergraduates to study graduate level mathematics. It unites real and complex analysis after developing the basic techniques and aims at a larger readership than that of similar textbooks that have been published, as fewer mathematical requisites are required. The idea is to present analysis as a whole and emphasize the strong connections between various branches of the field. Ample examples and exercises reinforce concepts, and a helpful bibliography guides those wishing to delve deeper into particular topics. Graduate students who are studying for their qualifying exams in analysis will find use in this text, as well as those looking to advance their mathematical studies or who are moving on to explore another quantitative science.Chapter 1 contains many tools for higher mathematics; its content is easily accessible, though not elementary. Chapter 2 focuses on topics in real analysis such as p-adic completion, Banach Contraction Mapping Theorem and its applications, Fourier series, Lebesgue measure and integration. One of this chapter's unique features is its treatment of functional equations. Chapter 3 covers the essential topics in complex analysis: it begins with a geometric introduction to the complex plane, then covers holomorphic functions, complex power series, conformal mappings, and the Riemann mapping theorem. In conjunction with the Bieberbach conjecture, the power and applications of Cauchy's theorem through the integral formula and residue theorem are presented.
This open access book provides cybersecurity practitioners with the knowledge needed to understand the risks of the increased availability of powerful large language models (LLMs) and how they can be mitigated. It attempts to outrun the malicious attackers by anticipating what they could do. It also alerts LLM developers to understand their work's risks for cybersecurity and provides them with tools to mitigate those risks. The book starts in Part I with a general introduction to LLMs and their main application areas. Part II collects a description of the most salient threats LLMs represent in cybersecurity, be they as tools for cybercriminals or as novel attack surfaces if integrated into existing software. Part III focuses on attempting to forecast the exposure and the development of technologies and science underpinning LLMs, as well as macro levers available to regulators to further cybersecurity in the age of LLMs. Eventually, in Part IV, mitigation techniques that should allow safe and secure development and deployment of LLMs are presented. The book concludes with two final chapters in Part V, one speculating what a secure design and integration of LLMs from first principles would look like and the other presenting a summary of the duality of LLMs in cyber-security. This book represents the second in a series published by the Technology Monitoring (TM) team of the Cyber-Defence Campus. The first book entitled "Trends in Data Protection and Encryption Technologies" appeared in 2023. This book series provides technology and trend anticipation for government, industry, and academic decision-makers as well as technical experts.
The 2nd edition of this textbook features more than 100 pages of new material, including four new chapters, as well as an improved discussion of differential geometry concepts and their applications. The textbook aims to provide a comprehensive geometric description of Special and General Relativity, starting from basic Euclidean geometry to more advanced non-Euclidean geometry and differential geometry. Readers will learn about the Schwarzschild metric, the relativistic trajectory of planets, the deflection of light, the black holes, and the cosmological solutions like de Sitter, Friedman-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker, and Gödel ones, as well as the implications of each of them for the observed physical world. In addition, the book provides step-by-step solutions to problems and exercises, making it an ideal introduction for undergraduate students and readers looking to gain a better understanding of Special and General Relativity. In this new edition, a wide discussion on metric-affine theories of gravity and equivalent formulations of General Relativity is reported. The aim is presenting also topics which could be useful for PhD students and researchers studying General Relativity from an advanced point of view.
These proceedings offer an insightful exploration of integrating data analytics in system engineering. This book highlights the essential role of data in driving innovation, optimizing processes, and solving complex challenges in the field. Targeted at industry professionals, researchers, and enthusiasts, this book serves as a comprehensive resource, providing actionable insights and showcasing transformative applications of data in engineering. It is a must-read for anyone keen on understanding and participating in the ongoing evolution of system engineering in our data-centric world.
This book presents cutting-edge research and methodologies in software engineering, specifically focusing on systems and network systems. It showcases novel development approaches and network system optimizations, highlighting the field's dynamic evolution. The book is designed for experts, scholars, and professionals, offering insights and tools crucial for advancing the software engineering landscape. Its diverse content makes it an invaluable resource for seasoned professionals and those new to the field, inspiring and enriching readers' understanding of software engineering's future directions.
This book constitutes the Third International Challenge on Kidney and Kidney Tumor Segmentation, KiTS 2023, which was held in conjunction with the 26th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2023. The challenge took place in Vancouver, BC, Canada, on October 8, 2023. The 22 contributions presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 29 submissions. This challenge aims to develop the best system for automatic semantic segmentation of kidneys, renal tumors and renal cysts.
This book covers the recent advancements in quantum research and nanotechnology. The chapters investigate the synthesis, design, and applications of quantum dots in nanocomposites, presenting a comprehensive exploration of their principles, manufacturing processes, and diverse applications in electronics, photonics, energy, medicine, and beyond. With a focus on both theoretical foundations and practical insights derived from recent research, the book delves into the distinctive quantum mechanical characteristics of quantum dots, diverse fabrication methods, and the various possibilities emerging from their combination with various matrices. This book offers a captivating blend of theoretical knowledge and practical observations.
The 3-volume set LNCS 14583-14585 constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security, ACNS 2024, which took place in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in March 2024. The 54 full papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 230 submissions. They have been organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: Cryptographic protocols; encrypted data; signatures; Part II: Post-quantum; lattices; wireless and networks; privacy and homomorphic encryption; symmetric crypto; Part III: Blockchain; smart infrastructures, systems and software; attacks; users and usability.
The 3-volume set LNCS 14583-14585 constitutes the proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Applied Cryptography and Network Security, ACNS 2024, which took place in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in March 2024. The 54 full papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 230 submissions. They have been organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: Cryptographic protocols; encrypted data; signatures; Part II: Post-quantum; lattices; wireless and networks; privacy and homomorphic encryption; symmetric crypto; Part III: Blockchain; smart infrastructures, systems and software; attacks; users and usability.
Based on original findings from research carried out in six low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, this book brings together conceptual and empirical analyses of private higher education and social and academic inequality, a topic largely unexplored in the social science literature, particularly on private higher education. Field surveys of different categories of actors in numerous private universities have combined common methods and tools in countries chosen for the differences in their social structures and the characteristics, organization and development of their private higher education systems. Based on these qualitative surveys, combined with available quantitative data on higher education, this book analyzes the production and reproduction of social and academic inequalities in countries as diverse as Argentina, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Vietnam. Finally, the historical and social structuringof the private education systems in the selected countries provides the framework for analyses that go beyond the traditional higher education demand/supply and public policy approaches to explore the perspective of the actors - institutional administrators, teaching staff and students.
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed and revised selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods, ICPRAM 2023, held in Lisbon, Portugal, during February 22-24, 2023. The 28 full papers and 42 short papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 157 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: theory and methods and applications.
This volume constitutes revised selected papers of several workshops, the EDOC Forum and the Demonstrations and Doctoral Consortium track, which were held in conjunction with the 27th International Conference on Enterprise Design, Operations, and Computing, EDOC 2023, in Groningen, The Netherlands, during October 30-November 3, 2023. The 18 revised full papers and 7 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. They stem from the following satellite events: - Workshop on Intelligent Digital Architecture, Methods, and Services for Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 (IDAMS)- Workshop on Empirical Methodologies for Research in Enterprise Architecture and Service-Oriented Computing (iRESEARCH)- Workshop on the Modelling and Implementation of Digital Twins for Complex Systems (MIDas4CS)- Workshop on Service-oriented Enterprise Architecture for Enterprise Engineering (SoEA4EE)- EDOC Forum- Demonstrations Track- Doctoral Consortium
This book offers accessible probabilistic modelling of relevant financial problems. It is divided into two parts. The first part (cookbook) is written by emphasizing the key definitions and theorems without wasting too much of the reader with unnecessary technical details. Here, the first kind of target audience is graduate students in Economics with no prior exposition to probability theory (except for undergraduate courses in Applied Statistics) which are provided by a self-contained account of probabilistic modelling mainly applied to finance. The fundamental concepts of random variable/vector and probability distributions are introduced beforehand with respect to the usual treatment of this subject in standard probability textbook, trying to strike a balance between precise mathematical definitions and their applied knowledge. All the analytic tools developed are illustrated through examples of probability distributions of future stock prices, returns and profit and loss, together with their main characteristics, such as moments, moment generating and characteristic functions, location-scale families, and quantiles. The extension to the multivariate case for fixed time horizons is presented, together with the fundamentals of stochastic processes both in discrete and continuous time as candidate models for asset prices and return dynamics. Convergence concepts are presented as applied to the problem of point estimation of means, variances, correlation coefficients and risk measures. Short sections on risk and copula functions, further illustrate the potential application of probability models to financial problems. The second part of the book can be accessed by those students with more mathematical preparation. All the relevant proofs of results which are only stated in the first part and some advanced exercises with complete solutions are presented.
This book offers a comprehensive overview of atomically precise electrocatalysts, including single-atom, dual-atom, and multi-atom catalysts, which are considered to be superior electrode materials for fuel cells and water electrolyzers. By presenting a systematic examination of these materials in ascending order of metal atom number, the book provides a deep understanding of their synthesis processes, energy applications, and potential for improving their performance. Unlike any contemporary book on the topic, this book explores the reaction mechanisms and structure-performance relationships in catalytic processes at atomic level. Essentially, by driving the development of fuel cells and water electrocatalyzers, this book helps meet the world's growing energy demands. With its cutting-edge insights, this book is an indispensable resource for researchers, engineers, and students working in the field of renewable energy.
This book explores the need for innovative approaches to administrative digitization, leveraging technologies such as AI, blockchain, and smart processes to meet citizens' expectations, with a particular focus on the role of Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) in driving successful digital transformations within public institutions. Administrative digitization requires fresh inputs to match the leaps seen in the industry sector, utilizing technologies like AI-driven automation, blockchain transactions, and security tools. Smart process solutions are seen as transformative in upholding service standards aligned with citizens' state expectations. Unlike commercial companies, collaboration offers those overseeing public sector digitization enhanced scaling opportunities by drawing from experiences in other regions and metropolises, directly applicable and reusable. In the public realm, digital strategies mirror legal and social conditions, necessitating adjustments and adaptation options for Chief Digital Officers as they lead digital transformation. Methodological focal points in task structure redesign, process optimization, and motivating actors yield diverse action areas for the CDO's new role in public institutions. This book explores the instruments, strategies, and attitudes necessary to successfully implement transformative initiatives in organizations, emphasizing proven concepts with practical applicability, enabling readers to derive their own interaction options as digital guidance leaders. The book is a concise introduction to the specific requirements for visionary designers driving dynamic changes in user-centric public services.
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the German Association for Pattern Recognition, DAGM-GCPR 2023, which took place in Heidelberg, Germany, during September 19-22, 2023. The 40 full papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 76 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Segmentation and action recognition; 3D reconstruction and neural rendering; Photogrammetry and remote sensing; Pattern recognition in the life sciences; Interpretable machine learning; Weak supervision and online learning; Robust models.
This book presents machine learning approaches to identify the most important predictors of crucial variables for dealing with the challenges of managing production units and designing agriculture policies. The book focuses on the agricultural sector in the European Union and considers statistical information from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).Presently, statistical databases present a lot of information for many indicators and, in these contexts, one of the main tasks is to identify the most important predictors of certain indicators. In this way, the book presents approaches to identifying the most relevant variables that best support the design of adjusted farming policies and management plans. These subjects are currently important for students, public institutions and farmers. To achieve these objectives, the book considers the IBM SPSS Modeler procedures as well as the respective models suggested by this software.The book is read by students in production engineering, economics and agricultural studies, public bodies and managers in the farming sector.
This book celebrates and explores some philosophical issues raised by the work of Alan Weir, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Glasgow, having previously held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Queen's, Belfast. In a number of areas, Weir has elaborated strikingly original views which involve a radical departure from the mainstream. These include formalism in the philosophy of mathematics, and as well as naïve set theory, with a universal set, and a naïve theory of truth. In contrast to other contemporary defenders of the latter two theories, Weir rejects dialetheism and accepts classical rules for the logical connectives. He avoids contradictions by restricting certain structural inference rules, specifically some generalized versions of transitivity. In addition, Weir has developed radical versions of naturalism and physicalism (partly informed by his work on Quine) and perceptual realism. This collection includes contributions by a distinguished group of philosophers on Weir's philosophy, as well as a memoir and a new essay on the philosophy of mathematics by Weir himself.
The three-volume set LNICST 561, 562 563 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 19th EAI International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, CollaborateCom 2023, held in Corfu Island, Greece, during October 4-6, 2023. The 72 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 176 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Collaborative Computing, Edge Computing & Collaborative working, Blockchain applications, Code Search and Completion, Edge Computing Scheduling and Offloading.Volume II: Deep Learning and Application, Graph Computing, Security and Privacy Protection and Processing and Recognition.Volume III: Onsite Session Day2, Federated learning and application, Collaborative working, Edge Computing and Prediction, Optimization and Applications.
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