Open Access Books - Technology - 2017

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  • Publication
    Rangeland Systems
    ( 2017)
    David D. Briske (editors)
    This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses the implications of these conceptual advances to management and policy. The third assesses several major challenges confronting global rangelands in the 21st century. This book will compliment applied range management textbooks by describing the conceptual foundation on which the rangeland profession is based. It has been written to be accessible to a broad audience, including ecosystem managers, educators, students and policy makers. The content is founded on the collective experience, knowledge and commitment of 80 authors who have worked in rangelands throughout the world. Their collective contributions indicate that a more comprehensive framework is necessary to address the complex challenges confronting global rangelands. Rangelands represent adaptive social-ecological systems, in which societal values, organizations and capacities are of equal importance to, and interact with, those of ecological processes. A more comprehensive framework for rangeland systems may enable management agencies, and educational, research and policy making organizations to more effectively assess complex problems and develop appropriate solutions.
  • Publication
    S-BPM in the Production Industry
    ( 2017)
    Matthias Neubauer, Christian Stary (editors)
    This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.This volume presents several case studies highlighting the latest findings in Industry 4.0 projects utilizing S-BPM features. Their potential is explored in detail, while the limits of engineering a company from a communication-centred perspective are also discussed.After a general introduction and an overview of the book in chapter 1, chapter 2 starts by condensing the industrial challenges driven by the German “Industry 4.0” trend to form a concrete vision for future production industries. Subsequently, chapter 3 introduces the basic concepts of S-BPM and its capabilities, in particular for supporting the restructuring of processes. The next three chapters then present various case studies, e.g. at an SME offering the production of atypical, unique and special purpose machinery, equipment and technologically complex units particularly useful in the automotive and electronic industries; and at a further SME producing highly-customized floor cleaning machines. Rounding out the coverage, the last two chapters summarize the achievements and lessons learned with regard to the road ahead.Overall, the book provides a realistic portrait of the status quo based on current findings, and outlines the future activities to be pursued in order to establish stakeholder-centred digital production systems. As such, developers, educators, and practitioners will find both the conceptual background and results from the field reflecting the state-of-the-art in vertical and horizontal process integration.
  • Publication
    A Tale of Two Systems
    ( 2017)
    "This is the story of a web-based information system rebuild. The system in question is www.teachengineering.org, a digital library of K-12 engineering curriculum that was built from the ground up with established technology and which for 13 years enjoyed lasting support from its growing user community and its sponsors. These 13 years, however, cover the period during which smart phones and tablets became commonplace, during which the Internet of Things started replacing the Semantic Web, during which NoSQL databases made their way out of the research labs and into everyday development shops, during which we collectively started moving IT functions and services into ‘the cloud,’ and during which computing performance doubled a few times, yet again. During this same period, TeachEngineering’s user base grew from a few hundred to more than 3 million users annually, its collection size quadrupled, it went through several user interface renewals, and significant functionality was added while having an exemplary service record, and it enjoyed continued financial support from its sponsors. In this monograph we provide a side-by-side of this rebuild. We lay out the choices made in the old architecture —we refer to it as TE 1.0— and compare and contrast them with the choices made for TE 2.0. We explain why both the 1.0 and 2.0 choices were made and discuss the advantages and disadvantages associated with them."
  • Publication
    MIPS Assembly Language Programming using QtSpim
    ( 2017)
    Ed Jorgensen
    There are a number of excellent, comprehensive, and in-depth texts on MIPS assembly language programming. This is not one of them.The purpose of this text is to provide a simple and free reference for university level programming and architecture units that include a brief section covering MIPS assembly language programming. The text assumes usage of the QtSpim simulator. An appendix is included that covers the download, installation, and basic use of the QtSpim simulator.The scope of this text addresses basic MIPS assembly language programming including instruction set usage, stacks, procedure/function calls, QtSpim simulator system services, multiple dimension arrays, and basic recursion.
  • Publication
    Handbook of Ocean Wave Energy
    ( 2017)
    Arthur Pecher, Jens Peter Kofoed (Editors)
    This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book offers a concise, practice-oriented reference-guide to the field of ocean wave energy. The ten chapters highlight the key rules of thumb, address all the main technical engineering aspects and describe in detail all the key aspects to be considered in the techno-economic assessment of wave energy converters. Written in an easy-to-understand style, the book answers questions relevant to readers of different backgrounds, from developers, private and public investors, to students and researchers. It is thereby a valuable resource for both newcomers and experienced practitioners in the wave energy sector.
  • Publication
    Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development
    ( 2017)
    Juha I. Uitto, Jyotsna Puri, Rob D. van den Berg (editors)
    This authoritative book presents the ever progressing state of the art in evaluating climate change strategies and action. It builds upon a selection of relevant and practical papers and presentations given at the 2nd International Conference on Evaluating Climate Change and Development held in Washington DC in 2014 and includes perspectives from independent evaluations of the major international organisations supporting climate action in developing countries, such as the Global Environment Facility. The first section of the book sets the stage and provides an overview of independent evaluations, carried out by multilateral development banks and development organisations. Important topics include how policies and organisations aim to achieve impact and how this is measured, whether climate change is mainstreamed into other development programs, and whether operations are meeting the urgency of climate change challenges.
  • Publication
    Sustainable Manufacturing
    ( 2017)
    Rainer Stark, Günther Seliger, Jérémy Bonvoisin (Editors)
    This edited volume presents the research results of the Collaborative Research Center 1026 “Sustainable manufacturing - shaping global value creation”. The book aims at providing a reference guide of sustainable manufacturing for researchers, describing methodologies for development of sustainable manufacturing solutions. The volume is structured in four chapters covering the following topics: sustainable manufacturing technology, sustainable product development, sustainable value creation networks and systematic change towards sustainable manufacturing. The target audience comprises both researchers and practitioners in the field of sustainable manufacturing, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students. This work is licensed under a CC BY
  • Publication
    Theory and Applications of Ordered Fuzzy Numbers
    ( 2017)
    Piotr Prokopowicz, Jacek Czerniak, Dariusz Mikołajewski, Łukasz Apiecionek, Dominik Ślȩzak (editors)
    This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This open access book offers comprehensive coverage on Ordered Fuzzy Numbers, providing readers with both the basic information and the necessary expertise to use them in a variety of real-world applications. The respective chapters, written by leading researchers, discuss the main techniques and applications, together with the advantages and shortcomings of these tools in comparison to other fuzzy number representation models. Primarily intended for engineers and researchers in the field of fuzzy arithmetic, the book also offers a valuable source of basic information on fuzzy models and an easy-to-understand reference guide to their applications for advanced undergraduate students, operations researchers, modelers and managers alike. This work is licensed under a CC BY
  • Publication
    Error-Correction Coding and Decoding
    ( 2017)
    Martin Tomlinson, Cen Jung Tjhai, Marcel A. Ambroze, Mohammed Ahmed, Mubarak Jibril
    This book discusses both the theory and practical applications of self-correcting data, commonly known as error-correcting codes. The applications included demonstrate the importance of these codes in a wide range of everyday technologies, from smartphones to secure communications and transactions. Written in a readily understandable style, the book presents the authors’ twenty-five years of research organized into five parts: Part I is concerned with the theoretical performance attainable by using error correcting codes to achieve communications efficiency in digital communications systems. Part II explores the construction of error-correcting codes and explains the different families of codes and how they are designed. Techniques are described for producing the very best codes. Part III addresses the analysis of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, primarily to calculate their stopping sets and low-weight codeword spectrum which determines the performance of these codes. Part IV deals with decoders designed to realize optimum performance. Part V describes applications which include combined error correction and detection, public key cryptography using Goppa codes, correcting errors in passwords and watermarking. This book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in error-correcting codes and their applications, ranging from non-experts to professionals at the forefront of research in their field. This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
  • Publication
    Advances in Seed Biology
    ( 2017)
    Jose C. Jimenez-Lopez (Editors)
    The seed can be considered the most important plant reproductive element, as a dispersal unit for a successful reproduction in all gymnosperms and flowering plants. The formation of the seed is part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, starting with a mature ovule and following with the fertilization by pollen and some growth within the mother plant to the final outcome of an embryo developed from the zygote, the seed coat from the integuments of the ovule, and a nurturing endosperm in several species. Thanks to this key element as it is the seed, the spermatophytes now dominate all types of biological niches on land, from forests to grasslands, both in hot and cold climates. In this metadata information era, we have the chance for a deeper understanding of seed physiological and developmental processes in order to provide the fundamental basis for making plant (seed) biology research relevant and productive,coping with future challenges.
  • Publication
    Symbiotic Interaction
    ( 2017)
    Luciano Gamberini, Anna Spagnolli, Giulio Jacucci, Benjamin Blankertz, Jonathan Freeman
    This book is published open access under a CC BY license.​This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction, Symbiotic 2016, held in Padua, Italy, in October 2016.The 12 full papers and 3 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. The idea of symbiotic systems put forward in this workshop capitalizes on the computers’ ability to implicitly detect the users goals, preferences or/and psycho-physiological states and thereby enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI). The papers present an overview of the symbiotic relationships between humans and computers with emphasis on user-driven research on symbiotic systems, adaptive systems, implicit input data, physiological computing and BCI, but also on understanding the nature of the interdependence and agency between computers and humans more broadly.
  • Publication
    Model-Driven Development and Operation of Multi-Cloud Applications
    ( 2017)
    Elisabetta Di Nitto, Peter Matthews, Dana Petcu, Arnor Solberg (Editors)
    This books is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book summarizes work being undertaken within the collaborative MODAClouds research project, which aims to facilitate interoperability between heterogeneous Cloud platforms and remove the constraints of deployment, portability, and reversibility for end users of Cloud services. Experts involved in the project provide a clear overview of the MODAClouds approach and explain how it operates in a variety of applications. While the wide spectrum of available Clouds constitutes a vibrant technical environment, many early-stage issues pose specific challenges from a software engineering perspective. MODAClouds will provide methods, a decision support system, and an open source IDE and run-time environment for the high-level design, early prototyping, semiautomatic code generation, and automatic deployment of applications on multiple Clouds. It will free developers from the need to commit to a fixed Cloud technology stack during software design and offer benefits in terms of cost savings, portability of applications and data between Clouds, reversibility (moving applications and data from Cloud to non-Cloud environments), risk management, quality assurance, and flexibility in the development process.
  • Publication
    Railway Ecology
    ( 2017)
    Luís Borda-de-Água, Rafael Barrientos, Pedro Beja, Henrique Miguel Pereira (editors)
    This book provides a unique overview of the impacts of railways on biodiversity, integrating the existing knowledge on the ecological effects of railways on wildlife, identifying major knowledge gaps and research directions and presenting the emerging field of railway ecology.The book is divided into two major parts: Part one offers a general review of the major conceptual and theoretical principles of railway ecology. The chapters consider the impacts of railways on wildlife populations and concentrate on four major topics: mortality, barrier effects, species invasions and disturbances (ranging from noise to chemical pollution). Part two focuses on a number of case studies from Europe, Asia and North America written by an international group of experts.
  • Publication
    Cloud-Based Benchmarking of Medical Image Analysis
    ( 2017)
    Allan Hanbury, Henning Müller, Georg Langs (editors)
    This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book presents the VISCERAL project benchmarks for analysis and retrieval of 3D medical images (CT and MRI) on a large scale, which used an innovative cloud-based evaluation approach where the image data were stored centrally on a cloud infrastructure and participants placed their programs in virtual machines on the cloud. The book presents the points of view of both the organizers of the VISCERAL benchmarks and the participants. The book is divided into five parts. Part I presents the cloud-based benchmarking and Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm that the VISCERAL benchmarks used. Part II focuses on the datasets of medical images annotated with ground truth created in VISCERAL that continue to be available for research. It also covers the practical aspects of obtaining permission to use medical data and manually annotating 3D medical images efficiently and effectively. The VISCERAL benchmarks are described in Part III, including a presentation and analysis of metrics used in evaluation of medical image analysis and search. Lastly, Parts IV and V present reports by some of the participants in the VISCERAL benchmarks, with Part IV devoted to the anatomy benchmarks and Part V to the retrieval benchmark. This book has two main audiences: the datasets as well as the segmentation and retrieval results are of most interest to medical imaging researchers, while eScience and computational science experts benefit from the insights into using the Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm for evaluation and benchmarking on huge amounts of data.Back to top
  • Publication
    Air Quality Integrated Assessment
    ( 2017)
    Giorgio Guariso
    ;
    Marialuisa Volta
    This book reports on the results of an extended survey conducted across Europe within the framework of the APPRAISAL FP7 project to determine the extent to which an integrated assessment approach to air quality is being adopted, on the one hand, by regional and local authorities to develop air quality plans and, on the other, by researchers. Following a detailed analysis of the role and structure of the components of an integrated assessment study, the results of the survey are considered from a variety of perspectives. Above all, the book discusses the new light the survey sheds on emission abatement policies and measures planned at regional and local scales, and on their synergies/trade-offs with measures implemented at the national scale. Detailed consideration is given to the currently available modeling methodologies for identifying emission sources, assessing the effectiveness of emission reduction measures, and evaluating the impacts of emission abatement measures on human health. Current strengths and weaknesses revealed by the survey are explored, and the application of an integrated assessment tool in two case studies (in Brussels and Porto) is discussed. The book will appeal to all those interested in the use of integrated assessment in connection with the sources, effects and control of air pollution.
  • Publication
    Recent Advances in Carbon Capture and Storage
    ( 2017)
    Yongseung Yun (Editor)
    Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been considered as a practical way in sequestering the huge anthropogenic CO2 amount with a reasonable cost until a more pragmatic solution appears. The CCS can work as a bridge before fulfilling the no-CO2 era of the future by applying to large-scale CO2 emitting facilities. But CCS appears to lose some passion by the lack of progress in technical developments and in commercial success stories other than EOR. This is the time to go back to basics, starting from finding a solution in small steps. The CCS technology desperately needs far newer ideas and breakthroughs that can overcome earlier attempts through improving, modifying, and switching the known principles. This book tries to give some insight into developing an urgently needed technical breakthrough through the recent advances in CCS research, in addition to the available small steps like soil carbon sequestration. This book provides the fundamental and practical information for researchers and graduate students who want to review the current technical status and to bring in new ideas to the conventional CCS technologies.
  • Publication
    Scaling a Software Business
    ( 2017)
    Brian Fitzgerald, Klaas-Jan Stol, Sten Minör, Henrik Cosmo
    This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book is intended primarily for practitioners who are facing the “softwareisation” of their business. It presents the Scaling Management Framework, a model based on collected experiences from companies that have already made the journey to give software a central role within the organization. The model is unique because it suggests a holistic method to analyze and plan your journey. It simply means that you can’t just focus solely on your products or services. You also have to look closely at your processes and your organization, the way you make decisions and get things done. Inevitably, these will have to change. Software has changed the rules of the game. The world talks about the digitalization in industry and society – how the focus has shifted from producing tangible things towards software and services. This trend started many years ago, but is now affecting every company, whether it’s a software company or not. There are many companies that have already made a digitalization journey – and many are about to embark on this journey – like you. How do you transform your organization when software is becoming a critical part of your business? This book comes with a map, a compass, and suggested journeys along with selected travel stories comprising best practices and lessons learned from past digitalization journeys. Use the map to find your way in the digitalization landscape, and use the compass to find the direction of your journey.
  • Publication
    Informatics in the Future
    ( 2017)
    Hannes Werthner, Frank van Harmelen (editors)
    This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license.This volume discusses the prospects and evolution of informatics (or computer science), which has become the operating system of our world, and is today seen as the science of the information society. Its artifacts change the world and its methods have an impact on how we think about and perceive the world. Classical computer science is built on the notion of an “abstract” machine, which can be instantiated by software to any concrete problem-solving machine, changing its behavior in response to external and internal states, allowing for self-reflective and “intelligent” behavior. However, current phenomena such as the Web, cyber physical systems or the Internet of Things show us that we might already have gone beyond this idea, exemplifying a metamorphosis from a stand-alone calculator to the global operating system of our society.Thus computer scientists will need to reconsider the foundations of their discipline to realize the full potential of our field. Taking often contradictory developments into consideration, researchers will not be able to tackle specific technological or methodological problems in the future without also a broader reflection on their field. The papers in this book take a first step forward and reflect on these issues from different perspectives. The broad spectrum of topics includes. Informatics: a discipline with a (short) history and a high impact. Interdisciplinarity: how to do research. Ethics: what is our responsibility. Diversity: why are there so few women in informatics. Combining informatics, history and art: a special contribution. This book is intended for all informatics researchers, in academia as well as in industry. It is our responsibility – not only as scientists but also as citizens – to make the public aware of the dichotomies and dialectic relationships of computer science.
  • Publication
    Paris Climate Agreement: Beacon of Hope
    ( 2017)
    Ross J. Salawitch, Timothy P. Canty, Austin P. Hope, Walter R. Tribett, Brian F. Bennett
    This volume presents an Empirical Model of Global Climate developed by the authors and uses that model to show that global warming will likely remain below 2ºC, relative to preindustrial, throughout this century provided: a) both the unconditional and conditional Paris INDC commitments are followed; b) the emission reductions needed to achieve the Paris INDCs are carried forward to 2060 and beyond.The first section of the book provides a short overview of Earth’s climate system, describing and contrasting climatic changes throughout the planet’s history and anthropogenic changes post-Industrial Revolution. The second section describes the climate model developed by the authors (Canty et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 2013) and contrasts the model with climate models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013 Report. Chapter 3 examines both the unconditional (i.e., firm commitments) and conditional Paris INDCs (commitments contingent on financial flow and/or technology transfer) through the lens of their climate model and concludes that if all of the Paris INDCs are followed, then they are indeed a beacon of hope for Earth’s climate. The fourth part of the book offers a perspective of energy needs and subsequent emissions reductions required to meet the Paris temperature goals, illuminating challenges faced both in the developing world and the developed world. Throughout the book, easy-to-understand charts and graphics illustrate concepts. The scientific basis of Chapters 2 and 3 was first presented in a keynote session of the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society in January, 2016.
  • Publication
    Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming
    ( 2017)
    Hubert Baumeister, Horst Lichter, Matthias Riebisch (editors)
    This book is open access under a CC BY license,The volume constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2017, held in Cologne, Germany, in May 2017.The 14 full and 6 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 46 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: improving agile processes; agile in organization; and safety critical software. In addition, the volume contains 3 doctoral symposium papers (from 4 papers submitted).