This book discusses heuristic methods – methods lacking a solid theoretical justification – which are ubiquitous in numerous application areas, and explains techniques that can make heuristic methods more reliable. Focusing on algebraic techniques, i.e., those that use only a few specific features of a situation, it describes various state-of-the-art applications, ranging from fuzzy methods for dealing with imprecision to general optimization methods and quantum-based methods for analyzing economic phenomena. The book also includes recent results from leading researchers, which could (and hopefully will) provide the basis for future applications. As such, it is a valuable resource for mathematicians interested in potential applications of their algebraic results and ideas, as well as for application specialists wanting to discover how algebraic techniques can help in their domains.

This book describes current and potential use of artificial intelligence and computational intelligence techniques in biomedicine and other application areas. Medical applications range from general diagnostics to processing of X-ray images to e-medicine-related privacy issues. Medical community understandably prefers methods that have been successful other on other application areas, where possible mistakes are not that critical. This book describes many promising methods related to deep learning, fuzzy techniques, knowledge graphs, and quantum computing. It also describes the results of testing these new methods in communication networks, education, environmental studies, food industry, retail industry, transportation engineering, and many other areas. This book helps practitioners and researchers to learn more about computational intelligence methods and their biomedical applications—and to further develop this important research direction.

What is a game? Classically, a game is perceived as something played by human beings. Its mathematical analysis is human-centered, explores the structures of particular games, economic or social environments and tries to model supposedly 'rational' human behavior in search of appropriate 'winning strategies'. This point of view places game theory into a very special scientific corner where mathematics, economics and psychology overlap and mingle.This book takes a novel approach to the subject. Its focus is on mathematical models that apply to game theory in particular but exhibit a universal character and thus extend the scope of game theory considerably.This textbook addresses anyone interested in a general game-theoretic view of the world. The reader should have mathematical knowledge at the level of a first course in real analysis and linear algebra. However, possibly more specialized aspects are further elaborated and pointers to relevant supplementary literature are given. Moreover, many examples invite the reader to participate 'actively' when going through the material. The scope of the book can be covered in one course on Mathematical Game Theory at advanced undergraduate or graduate level.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems, QEST 2014, held in Florence, Italy, in September 2014. The 24 full papers and 5 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: Kronecker and product form methods; hybrid systems; mean field/population analysis; models and tools; simulation; queueing, debugging and tools; process algebra and equivalences; automata and Markov process theory; applications, theory and tools; and probabilistic model checking.

With the advancement of computers, the use of modeling to reduce time and expense, and improve process optimization, predictive capability, process automation, and control possibilities, is now an integral part of food science and engineering. New technology and ease of use expands the range of techniques that scientists and researchers have at the

This volume features the complete text of the material presented at the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Papers have been loosely grouped by topic and an author index is provided in the back. As in previous years, the symposium included an interesting mixture of papers on many topics from researchers with diverse backgrounds and different goals, presenting a multifaceted view of cognitive science. In hopes of facilitating searches of this work, an electronic index on the Internet's World Wide Web is provided. Titles, authors, and summaries of all the papers published here have been placed in an online database which may be freely searched by anyone. You can reach the web site at: www-csli.stanford.edu/cogsci97.

This volume presents reflections on a variety of environmental issues in South-Eastern Europe from diverse contemporary scientific disciplines. The contributions address many crucial issues including national environmental policies, economic instruments for preventing crimes against the environment, international waste trafficking, threats to air, water and soil due to mining, management of dump areas, environment protection and food safety from a perspective of public health. The book will be a useful resource for researchers, developers and decision makers interested in the stability and sustainable development of the South-Eastern European countries.

This publication brings together the latest research findings in the key area of chemical process control; including dynamic modelling and simulation - modelling and model validation for application in linear and nonlinear model-based control: nonlinear model-based predictive control and optimization - to facilitate constrained real-time optimization of chemical processes; statistical control techniques - major developments in the statistical interpretation of measured data to guide future research; knowledge-based v model-based control - the integration of theoretical aspects of control and optimization theory with more recent developments in artificial intelligence and computer science.

Information management is a common paradigm in modern decision-making. A wide range of decision-making techniques have been proposed in the literature to model complex business and engineering processes. In this Special Issue, 16 selected and peer-reviewed original research articles contribute to business information management in various current real-world problems by proposing crisp or uncertain multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models and techniques, mostly including multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approaches, in addition to a single paper proposing an interactive multi-objective decision-making (MODM) approach. Particular attention is devoted to information aggregation operators—65% of papers dealt with this item. The topics of this Special Issue gained attention in Europe and Asia. A total of 48 authors from seven countries contributed to this Issue. The papers are mainly concentrated in three application areas: supplier selection and rational order allocation, the evaluation and selection of goods or facilities, and personnel selection/partner selection. A number of new approaches are proposed that are expected to attract great interest from the research community.