This proceedings volume contains 55 research and expository articles on a wide range of currently active and interesting areas in pure and applied mathematics. The research articles report on the current research accomplishments and the significance of the results. Every expository article aims to make the subject interesting by including the state of the subject, description and motivation of the problems, the relevance of the results, and open problems for future research directions. This book serves as a good reference not only for researchers but also for graduate students.

The theory of semigroups is a relatively young branch of mathematics, with most of the major results having appeared after the Second World War. This book describes the evolution of (algebraic) semigroup theory from its earliest origins to the establishment of a full-fledged theory. Semigroup theory might be termed `Cold War mathematics' because of the time during which it developed. There were thriving schools on both sides of the Iron Curtain, although the two sides were not always able to communicate with each other, or even gain access to the other's publications. A major theme of this book is the comparison of the approaches to the subject of mathematicians in East and West, and the study of the extent to which contact between the two sides was possible.

In World Mathematical Year 2000 the traditional St. Flour Summer School was hosted jointly with the European Mathematical Society. Sergio Albeverio reviews the theory of Dirichlet forms, and gives applications including partial differential equations, stochastic dynamics of quantum systems, quantum fields and the geometry of loop spaces. The second text, by Walter Schachermayer, is an introduction to the basic concepts of mathematical finance, including the Bachelier and Black-Scholes models. The fundamental theorem of asset pricing is discussed in detail. Finally Michel Talagrand, gives an overview of the mean field models for spin glasses. This text is a major contribution towards the proof of certain results from physics, and includes a discussion of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and the p-spin interaction models.

ALAN 1. BISHOP The first International Handbook on Mathematics Education was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1996. However, most of the writing for that handbook was done in 1995 and generally reflected the main research and development foci prior to 1994. There were four sections, 36 chapters, and some 150 people contributed to the final volume either as author, reviewer, editor, or critical friend. The task was a monumental one, attempting to cover the major research and practice developments in the international field of mathematics education as it appeared to the contributors in 1995. Inevitably there were certain omissions, some developments were only starting to emerge, and some literatures were only sketchy and speculative. However that Handbook has had to be reprinted three times, so it clearly fulfilled a need and I personally hope that it lived up to what I wrote in its Introduction: The Handbook thus attempts not merely to present a description of the international 'state-of-the-field', but also to offer synthetic and reflective overviews on the different directions being taken by the field, on the gaps existing in our present knowledge, on the current problems being faced, and on the future possibilities for development. (Bishop et aI. , 1996) Since that time there has been even more activity in our field, and now seems a good time to take stock again, to reflect on what has happened since 1995, and to create a second Handbook with the same overall goals.

This three-volume set of books highlights major advances in the development of concepts and techniques in the area of new technologies and architectures of contemporary information systems. Further, it helps readers solve specific research and analytical problems and glean useful knowledge and business value from the data. Each chapter provides an analysis of a specific technical problem, followed by a numerical analysis, simulation and implementation of the solution to the real-life problem. Managing an organisation, especially in today’s rapidly changing circumstances, is a very complex process. Increased competition in the marketplace, especially as a result of the massive and successful entry of foreign businesses into domestic markets, changes in consumer behaviour, and broader access to new technologies and information, calls for organisational restructuring and the introduction and modification of management methods using the latest advances in science. This situation has prompted many decision-making bodies to introduce computer modelling of organisation management systems. The three books present the peer-reviewed proceedings of the 39th International Conference “Information Systems Architecture and Technology” (ISAT), held on September 16–18, 2018 in Nysa, Poland. The conference was organised by the Computer Science and Management Systems Departments, Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wroclaw University of Technology and Sciences and University of Applied Sciences in Nysa, Poland. The papers have been grouped into three major parts: Part I—discusses topics including but not limited to Artificial Intelligence Methods, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Big Data, Knowledge Based Management, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and High Performance Computing, Distributed Computer Systems, Content Delivery Networks, and Service Oriented Computing. Part II—addresses topics including but not limited to System Modelling for Control, Recognition and Decision Support, Mathematical Modelling in Computer System Design, Service Oriented Systems and Cloud Computing, and Complex Process Modelling. Part III—focuses on topics including but not limited to Knowledge Based Management, Modelling of Financial and Investment Decisions, Modelling of Managerial Decisions, Production Systems Management and Maintenance, Risk Management, Small Business Management, and Theories and Models of Innovation.

This volume composes the proceedings of the Second International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence––Technologies and Applications (ICCCI 2010), which was hosted by National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences and Wroclaw University of Technology, and was held in Kaohsiung City on November 10-12, 2010. ICCCI 2010 was technically co-sponsored by Shenzhen Graduate School of Harbin Institute of Technology, the Tainan Chapter of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the Taiwan Association for Web Intelligence Consortium and the Taiwanese Association for Consumer Electronics. It aimed to bring together researchers, engineers and po- cymakers to discuss the related techniques, to exchange research ideas, and to make friends. ICCCI 2010 focused on the following themes: • Agent Theory and Application • Cognitive Modeling of Agent Systems • Computational Collective Intelligence • Computer Vision • Computational Intelligence • Hybrid Systems • Intelligent Image Processing • Information Hiding • Machine Learning • Social Networks • Web Intelligence and Interaction Around 500 papers were submitted to ICCCI 2010 and each paper was reviewed by at least two referees. The referees were from universities and industrial organizations. 155 papers were accepted for the final technical program. Four plenary talks were kindly offered by: Gary G. Yen (Oklahoma State University, USA), on “Population Control in Evolutionary Multi-objective Optimization Algorithm,” Chin-Chen Chang (Feng Chia University, Taiwan), on “Applying De-clustering Concept to Information Hiding,” Qinyu Zhang (Harbin Institute of Technology, China), on “Cognitive Radio Networks and Its Applications,” and Lakhmi C.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference, UNESST 2011, held as Part of the Future Generation Information Technology Conference, FGIT 2011, Jeju Island, Korea, in December 2011. The papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and focuse on the various aspects of u- and e-service, science and technology.

Papers on two problems related to the Smarandache function, the additive k-power complements, the generalization of sequence of numbers with alternate common differences, an equation related to the Smarandache function and its positive integer solutions, the pseudo Smarandache square-free function, and other similar topics. Contributors: W. Zhang, Y. Guo, W. Xiong, S. Yilmaz, M. Turgut, A. A. Majumdar, B. Ahmad, J. Zhang, P. Zhang, N. Dung, and many others.

Mathematics and Science education have both grown in fertile directions in different geographic regions. Yet, the mainstream discourse in international handbooks does not lend voice to developments in cognition, curriculum, teacher development, assessment, policy and implementation of mathematics and science in many countries. Paradoxically, in spite of advances in information technology and the “flat earth” syndrome, old distinctions and biases between different groups of researcher’s persist. In addition limited accessibility to conferences and journals also contribute to this problem. The International Sourcebooks in Mathematics and Science Education focus on under-represented regions of the world and provides a platform for researchers to showcase their research and development in areas within mathematics and science education. The First Sourcebook on Asian Research in Mathematics Education: China, Korea, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia and India provides the first synthesized treatment of mathematics education that has both developed and is now prominently emerging in the Asian and South Asian world. The book is organized in sections coordinated by leaders in mathematics education in these countries and editorial teams for each country affiliated with them. The purpose of unique sourcebook is to both consolidate and survey the established body of research in these countries with findings that have influenced ongoing research agendas and informed practices in Europe, North America (and other countries) in addition to serving as a platform to showcase existing research that has shaped teacher education, curricula and policy in these Asian countries. The book will serve as a standard reference for mathematics education researchers, policy makers, practitioners and students both in and outside Asia, and complement the Nordic and NCTM perspectives.