Before the Riders came to their remote valley the Yendri led a tranquil pastoral life. When the Riders conquered and enslaved them, only a few escaped to the forests. Rebellion wasn't the Yendri way; they hid, or passively resisted, taking consolation in the prophecies of their spiritual leader. Only one possessed the necessary rage to fight back: Gard the foundling, half-demon, who began a one-man guerrilla war against the Riders. His struggle ended in the loss of the family he loved, and condemnation from his own people. Exiled, he was taken as a slave by powerful mages ruling an underground kingdom. Bitterer and wiser, he found more subtle ways to earn his freedom. This is the story of his rise to power, his vengeance, his unlikely redemption and his maturation into a loving father--as well as a lord and commander of demon armies. Kage Baker, author of the popular and witty fantasy, The Anvil of the World, returns to that magical world for another story of love, adventure, and a fair bit of ironic humor. At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

This volume contains the proceedings of Analysis and Design of Hybrid Systems 2006: the 2nd IFAC Conference on Analysis and Design of Hybrid Systems, organized in Alghero (Italy) on June 7-9, 2006. ADHS is a series of triennial meetings that aims to bring together researchers and practitioners with a background in control and computer science to provide a survey of the advances in the field of hybrid systems, and of their ability to take up the challenge of analysis, design and verification of efficient and reliable control systems. ADHS'06 is the second Conference of this series after ADHS'03 in Saint Malo. - 65 papers selected through careful reviewing process - Plenary lectures presented by three distinguished speakers - Featuring interesting new research topics

Because they incorporate both time- and event-driven dynamics, stochastic hybrid systems (SHS) have become ubiquitous in a variety of fields, from mathematical finance to biological processes to communication networks to engineering. Comprehensively integrating numerous cutting-edge studies, Stochastic Hybrid Systems presents a captivating treatment of some of the most ambitious types of dynamic systems. Cohesively edited by leading experts in the field, the book introduces the theoretical basics, computational methods, and applications of SHS. It first discusses the underlying principles behind SHS and the main design limitations of SHS. Building on these fundamentals, the authoritative contributors present methods for computer calculations that apply SHS analysis and synthesis techniques in practice. The book concludes with examples of systems encountered in a wide range of application areas, including molecular biology, communication networks, and air traffic management. It also explains how to resolve practical problems associated with these systems. Stochastic Hybrid Systems achieves an ideal balance between a theoretical treatment of SHS and practical considerations. The book skillfully explores the interaction of physical processes with computerized equipment in an uncertain environment, enabling a better understanding of sophisticated as well as everyday devices and processes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference on Formal Techniques for Networked and Distributed Systems, FORTE 2005, held in Taipei, Taiwan, in October 2005. The 33 revised full papers and 6 short papers presented together with 3 keynote speeches were carefully reviewed and selected from 88 submissions. The papers cover all current aspects of formal methods for distributed systems and communication protocols such as formal description techniques (MSC, UML, Use cases, . . .), semantic foundations, model-checking, SAT-based techniques, process algebrae, abstractions, protocol testing, protocol verification, network synthesis, security system analysis, network robustness, embedded systems, communication protocols, and several promising new techniques.

This volume presents a well balanced combination of state-of-the-art theoretical results in the field of nonlinear controller and observer design, combined with industrial applications stemming from mechatronics, electrical, (bio–) chemical engineering, and fluid dynamics. The unique combination of results of finite as well as infinite–dimensional systems makes this book a remarkable contribution addressing postgraduates, researchers, and engineers both at universities and in industry. The contributions to this book were presented at the Symposium on Nonlinear Control and Observer Design: From Theory to Applications (SYNCOD), held September 15–16, 2005, at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. The conference and this book are dedicated to the 65th birthday of Prof. Dr.–Ing. Dr.h.c. Michael Zeitz to honor his life – long research and contributions on the fields of nonlinear control and observer design.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, HSCC 2005, held in Zurich, Switzerland in March 2005. The 40 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited papers and the abstract of an invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected from 91 submissions. The papers focus on modeling, analysis, and implementation of dynamic and reactive systems involving both discrete and continuous behaviors. Among the topics addressed are tools for analysis and verification, control and optimization, modeling, engineering applications, and emerging directions in programming language support and implementation.

This book is a collection of the best papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (ICINCO). ICINCO brought together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in the application of informatics to Control, Automation and Robotics. The research papers focused on real world applications, covering three main themes: Intelligent Control Systems, Optimization, Robotics and Automation and Signal Processing, Systems Modeling and Control.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, HSCC 2004, held in Philadelphia, PA, USA, in March 2004. The 43 revised full papers presented together with an invited article were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. The papers address all current issues in hybrid systems such as tools for analysis and verification, control and optimization, modeling and engineering applications, and emerging topics in programming language support and implementation; a special focus is on the interplay between biomolecular networks, systems biology, formal methods, and control of hybrid systems.

Petri Nets were introduced and still successfully used to analyze and model discrete event systems especially in engineering and computer sciences such as in automatic control. Recently this discrete Petri Nets formalism was successfully extended to continuous and hybrid systems. This monograph presents a well written and clearly organized introduction in the standard methods of Petri Nets with the aim to reach an accurate understanding of continuous and hybrid Petri Nets, while preserving the consistency of basic concepts throughout the book. The book is a monograph as well as a didactic tool which is easy to understand due to many simple solved examples and detailed figures. In its second completely reworked edition various sections, concepts and recently developed algorithms are added as well as additional examples/exercises.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems, QEST 2023, which took place in Antwerp, Belgium, in September 2023. The 23 papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 44 submissions. They deal with current topics in quantitative evaluation and verification of computer systems and networks, focusing on data-driven and machine-learning systems, case studies, and tool papers. The book also contains the extended abstract of the invited talk from David Parker.