Böcker utgivna av Springer Nature Switzerland

This book provides a foundational understanding of polymer dielectrics based on percolative composites. It covers the microstructure and physical properties, such as dielectric, electrical, magnetic, and rheological properties, of polymer composites, as well as how these properties can be explained using various theoretical models and spectroscopy techniques, such as dielectric spectroscopy, impedance spectroscopy, and conductivity spectroscopy. The book also discusses non-percolative polymer composites and the suitability of polymer dielectrics for electrical energy storage in various devices. It is intended for graduate students and professionals in fields such as condensed matter physics, applied physics, statistical physics, materials science, polymer science and technology, chemistry, and engineering. It will be particularly useful for physicists, materials scientists, polymer scientists, chemists, engineers, and others interested in the physics and applications of percolativecomposites based on polymer matrix.

This book treats the mechanical behavior of one-dimensional sandwich structures, a typicaloncept in the context of lightweight design. Such structures are composed of different constituent (e.g., layers) in order to achieve overall properties, which are better than for a single component alone. This book covers the basic mechanical load cases, i.e., tension/compression, bending, and shear. Based on this knowledge, different failure modes, i.e., plastic yielding, and global and local instabilities are investigated. In addition, an introduction to classic optimization problems, i.e., the formulation of an objective function (e.g., the weight of a structure) and corresponding restrictions, is included. The consideration here is limited to one- or two-dimensional design spaces, i.e., with a maximum of two design variables. For such simple cases, the minimum of the objective function can often be determined using analytical or graphical methods.

In this book, Per Bauhn does three things. First, he outlines some aspects of contemporary philosophical views on animals and morality, including the criticism of speciesism and the animal rights argument. Second, he criticizes these views, arguing that we cannot escape a speciesist perspective on morality, and that there are no good reasons why we should believe that non-human animals have moral rights. Third, he argues that cruelty against non-human animals is morally wrong, but not because animal rights are being violated but because human agents who inflict cruelty on non-human animals are failing their duty to develop in themselves the virtue of justice. This latter argument is reminiscent of Immanuel Kant¿s idea that we have only indirect duties towards animals, but unlike that idea, Bauhn's argument does not depend on any causal hypothesis that humans who are cruel to animals are likely to be cruel also to their fellow humans. Instead, Bauhn's argument relies on the fact that being cruel to non-human animals and other innocent beings is conceptually and logically inconsistent with the virtue of justice ¿ a virtue which agents are rationally required to develop in themselves.

This monograph explores a dual variational formulation of solutions to nonlinear diffusion equations with general nonlinearities as null minimizers of appropriate energy functionals. The author demonstrates how this method can be utilized as a convenient tool for proving the existence of these solutions when others may fail, such as in cases of evolution equations with nonautonomous operators, with low regular data, or with singular diffusion coefficients. By reducing it to a minimization problem, the original problem is transformed into an optimal control problem with a linear state equation. This procedure simplifies the proof of the existence of minimizers and, in particular, the determination of the first-order conditions of optimality. The dual variational formulation is illustrated in the text with specific diffusion equations that have general nonlinearities provided by potentials having various stronger or weaker properties. These equations can represent mathematical modelsto various real-world physical processes. Inverse problems and optimal control problems are also considered, as this technique is useful in their treatment as well.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 29th International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality, REFSQ 2023, which took place in Barcelona, Spain, during April 17-20, 2023.The 12 full technical design and scientific evaluation papers, 8 short research previews and vision papers, and 5 experience reports presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 78 submissions.They were organized in topical sections as follows: Requirements communication and conceptualization; NLP and machine learning for AI; RE for artificial intelligence; crowd RE; and RE in practice.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design, EvoMUSART 2023, held as part of Evo* 2023, in April 2023, co-located with the Evo* 2023 events, EvoCOP, EvoApplications, and EuroGP.The 20 full papers and 7 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. They cover a wide range of topics and application areas of artificial intelligence, including generative approaches to music and visual art, deep learning, and architecture.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Foundations and Practice of Security, FPS 2022, held in Ottawa, ON, Canada, during December 12¿14, 2022.The 26 regular and 3 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 83 submissions. The papers have been organized in the following topical sections: Cryptography; Machine Learning; Cybercrime and Privacy; Physical-layer Security; Blockchain; IoT and Security Protocols; and Short Papers.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis, IDA 2022, which was held in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, during April 12-14, 2023.The 38 papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 91 submissions. IDA is an international symposium presenting advances in the intelligent analysis of data. Distinguishing characteristics of IDA are its focus on novel, inspiring ideas, its focus on research, and its relatively small scale.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 23rd European Conference on Evolutionary Computation in Combinatorial Optimization, EvoCOP 2023, held as part of Evo*2023, in Brno, Czech Republic in April 2023, co-located with the Evo*2023 events: EvoMUSART, EvoApplications, and EuroGP.The 15 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 32 submissions. They present recent theoretical and experimental advances in combinatorial optimization, evolutionary algorithms, and related research fields.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Smart Computing and Communication, SmartCom 2022, held in New York City, NY, USA, during November 18¿20, 2022.The 64 papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 312 submissions. SmartCom 2023 focus on recent booming developments in Web-based technologies and mobile applications which have facilitated a dramatic growth in the implementation of new techniques, such as cloud computing, edge computing, big data, pervasive computing, Internet of Things, security and privacy, blockchain, Web 3.0, and social cyber-physical systems.The conference gathered all high-quality research/industrial papers related to smart computing and communications and aimed at proposing a reference guideline for further research.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services, GECON 2022, held in Izola, Slovenia, in September 2022. The 4 full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 22 submissions. In addition, this book includes 6 work-in-progress papers, 4 new ideas paper, and two invited papers. This series of conferences serves as a meeting place to bring together distributed systems expertise (e.g., in resource allocation, quality of service management, and energy consumption) with economics expertise (focusing on both micro- and macro-economic modelling and analysis) for creating effective solutions in this space.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th International Conference, ICISC 2022, held in Seoul, South Korea, during November 30¿December 2, 2022. The 24 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 69 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: ¿Public Key Encryption with Hierarchical Authorized Keyword Search, Implicit Key-stretching Security of Encryption Schemes.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Code-Based Cryptography, CBCrypto 2022, which was held during May 29-30, 2022 in Trondheim, Norway.The 8 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. These contributions span all aspects of code-based cryptography, from design to software and hardware implementations, works about recent NIST PQC standardization candidates, side channel analysis, and improved decoding techniques.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 26th European Conference on Genetic Programming, EuroGP 2023, held as part of EvoStar 2023, in Brno, Czech Republic, during April 12¿14, 2023, and co-located with the EvoStar events, EvoCOP, EvoMUSART, and EvoApplications. The 14 revised full papers and 8 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The wide range of topics in this volume reflects the current state of research in the field. The collection of papers cover topics including developing new variants of GP algorithms for both optimization and machine learning problems as well as exploring GP to address complex real-world problems.

This book highlights recent research on bio-inspired computing and its various innovative applications in information and communication technologies. It presents 85 high-quality papers from the 13th International Conference on Innovations in Bio-Inspired Computing and Applications (IBICA 2022) and 12th World Congress on Information and Communication Technologies (WICT 2022), which was held online during 15¿17 December 2022. As a premier conference, IBICA¿WICT brings together researchers, engineers and practitioners whose work involves bio-inspired computing, computational intelligence and their applications in information security, real-world contexts, etc. Including contributions by authors from 25 countries, the book offers a valuable reference guide for all researchers, students and practitioners in the fields of Computer Science and Engineering.

This book highlights the recent research on soft computing, pattern recognition, nature-inspired computing, and their various practical applications. It presents 69 selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Soft Computing and Pattern Recognition (SoCPaR 2022) and 19 papers from the 14th World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing (NaBIC 2022), which was held online, from December 14 to 16, 2022. A premier conference in the field of soft computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning applications, SoCPaR-NaBIC 2022 brought together researchers, engineers, and practitioners whose work involves intelligent systems, network security, and their applications in industry. Including contributions by authors from over 25 countries, the book offers a valuable reference guide for all researchers, students, and practitioners in the fields of computer science and engineering.

This book gathers peer-review contributions to the 5th International Workshop on Gerontechnology, IWoG 2022, held on November 17-18, 2022, in Évora, Portugal, and in Caceres, Spain. They report on cutting-edge technologies and optimized workflows for promoting active aging and assisting older adults at home, as well as in healthcare centers. They discuss the main challenges in the development, use and delivery of health care services and technologies. Besides proposing solutions for improving monitoring and management of health parameters and age-related diseases, the chapters also describe approaches for helping seniors in their daily tasks and facilitating their communication and integration with assistive technologies. All in all, this book provides health professionals, researchers, and service providers with extensive information on the latest trends in the development and application of gerontechnology, with a special emphasis on improving quality of life and socialintegration of the elderly.

This book provides a conceptual description of the PDCA cycle and the tools that support it. A brief literature review is given for each tool, indicating the timeline according to Scopus, the main areas in which they are applied, the main authors and the journals that most publish on these topics. It reports three industrial applications, one focusing on cost reduction, the second on optimizing a manufacturing company's raw material receiving process, and the third one on eliminating waste and increasing performance.

Strengthening financial sector regulatory arrangements has been a major focus of the G-20 since the crisis in 2008, and progress in strengthening financial regulations is often cited as its success. Nonetheless, the overall contribution of the G20 as a political forum for the oversight of international financial regulation is diming as FinTech is blurring the boundaries between intermediaries and markets, as well as between digital service providers moving into the financial space, nonbank financial companies, and banks. Along the same line, financial technology is causing paradigm changes to the traditional financial system, presenting both challenges and opportunities. As FinTech grows rapidly, the importance of regulation and supervision becomes more prominent.The three cornerstones of banking: taking deposits, making loans, and facilitating payments are being reassembled functionally and digitally outside of the bank regulatory perimeter by certain firms. Without comprehensive consolidated supervision, no single regulator can see the whole picture and understand how a firm as a whole operates and takes risk. No crypto firm to date is subject to comprehensive consolidated supervision, creating gaps in supervision alongside risks. Countries around the world are taking divergent views on cryptocurrency and other so-called ¿Web3¿ technologies based on blockchain. This book aims to provide a comparison between the various available approaches, models, or legislations by identifying certain key legislative policies within the G-20 as they cope with innovative financial technologies, and will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of banking, financial regulation, risk management, and financial technology.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings the 14th TPC Technology Conference on Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking, TPCTC 2022, which was held in Sydney, NSW, Australia, on September 5, 2022.The 5 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 12 submissions. The conference focuses on Pick and Mix Isolation Levels; Benchmarking considerations for Trustworthy and Responsible AI (Panel); Preliminary Scaling Characterization with TPCx-AI and New Initiatives.

This book aims to analyze from a multidisciplinary perspective the current geopolitical conflict between East and West, between two differentiated and apparently conflicting cosmogonic visions. The geopolitical evolution of the current panorama seems to lead to a new world in the field of international relations, a new board played on a planetary level. Once again, bloc geopolitics can be glimpsed in the immediate future, in which the most important actors such as Russia, China, the United States of America, and the European Union are called to position themselves with respect to the territorial and strategic ambitions of the opponent. International law seems to be overwhelmed by military actions and factual pressure on the ground, while the battle of ideas extends to the technological field and cyberspace. The different origins of the authors, with extensive academic, military, police forces, and business experience undoubtedly enriches the unique perspective that this work intendsto address, always in the attempt to enforce international law and the channels of dialogue between nations, such as the best solution to conflicts.

This book explores the different functions and metaphorical concepts of alchemy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry and bridges them together with the exempla tradition in late medieval English literature. Such poetic narratives function as exemplary models which directly address the ambiguity of medieval English alchemical practice. This book examines the foundation of this relationship between alchemical narrative and exemplum in the poetry of Gower and Chaucer in the fourteenth century before exploring its diffusion in lesser-known anonymous poems and recipes in the fifteenth century, namely alchemical dialogues between Morienus and Merlin, Albertus Magnus and the Queen of Elves, and an alchemical version of John Lydgate¿s poem The Churl and the Bird. It investigates how this exemplarity can be read as inherent to understanding poetic narratives containing alchemy, as well as enabling the reader to reassess the understanding and expectations of science and narrative within medieval English poetry.

This book constitutes revised selected and extended papers presented at track 4 of the Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems, FedCSIS 2022, which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, during September 4¿7, 2022.The FedCSIS Information Systems and Technologies Track included AIST 2022, ISM 2022, DSH 2022, and KAM 2022. AIST 2022 received 11 submissions, from which 2 full papers and 1 short paper have been accepted; for ISM 2022 2 full and 3 short papers have been accepted from 15 submissions; and for DSH 2022 2 full and 1 short papers have been accepted from 11 submissions. From the 17 submissions to KAM 2022, no paper passed the extended reviews, so the overall acceptance rate was 20% for full and 18% for short papers. The papers were organized in topical sections named: Approaches to improving business; approaches to improving society; and methods for improving business and society.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design, COSADE 2023, held in Munich, Germany, during April 3¿4, 2023. The 12 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 28 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: fault-injection analyses and countermeasures; side-channel analyses and countermeasures; attacks on PQC and countermeasure; and analyses and tools.

This book provides insights into practical aspects of electric circuits. The author provides real-world examples throughout this book. The devices chosen for this book can be found in nearly all laboratories. No expensive measurement devices are used throughout the book. Someone who reads this book has a better understanding of practical aspects of electric circuits. Chapter 1 introduces tools that will be used in the next chapters. Chapter 2 studies the resistors and contains 9 experiments. Chapter 3 studies the digital multimeters and contains 7 experiments. Chapter 4 studies Kirchhoff's voltage/current law, nodal/mesh analysis and Thevenin equivalent circuits. This chapter contains 5 experiments. Chapter 5 studies the first and second order circuits (RC, RL and RLC) and contains 4 experiments. Chapter 6 studies the DC and AC steady state behavior of electric circuits and frequency response of filters and has 5 experiments. Chapter 7 studies magnetic coupling and transformers and contains 3 experiments. Appendix A shows how different types of graphs can be drawn with MATLAB. Appendix B reviews the concept of root mean square.

This open access book constitutes revised selected papers from the International Workshops held at the 4th International Conference on Process Mining, ICPM 2022, which took place in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, during October 23¿28, 2022.The conference focuses on the area of process mining research and practice, including theory, algorithmic challenges, and applications. The co-located workshops provided a forum for novel research ideas. The 42 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 89 submissions. They stem from the following workshops:¿ 3rd International Workshop on Event Data and Behavioral Analytics (EDBA)¿ 3rd International Workshop on Leveraging Machine Learning in Process Mining (ML4PM)¿ 3rd International Workshop on Responsible Process Mining (RPM) (previously known as Trust, Privacy and Security Aspects in Process Analytics)¿ 5th International Workshop on Process-Oriented Data Science for Healthcare (PODS4H)¿3rd International Workshop on Streaming Analytics for Process Mining (SA4PM)¿ 7th International Workshop on Process Querying, Manipulation, and Intelligence (PQMI)¿ 1st International Workshop on Education meets Process Mining (EduPM)¿ 1st International Workshop on Data Quality and Transformation in Process Mining (DQT-PM)

2024 Ming Chuan University Research AwardThis book proposes a model of reading called hyperobject reading that bridges the Anthropocene scale variance between humans and humanity by focusing on the large-scale problems and phenomena themselves. Hyperobject reading draws on narratology and reader-response theory, as well as newer developments such as the postcritical turn and object-oriented ontology. The theoretical introduction sets out the building blocks of hyperobject reading. Chapter 2 intervenes in critical disability studies and debates about the ecosomatic paradigm; Chapter 3 intervenes in debates about technological evolution, analogue vs. digital subjectivity, and affect theory; and Chapter 4 intervenes in debates about autofiction, contemporary metafiction, and the position and role of the narrator in first-person narratives where the narrator and protagonist can be distinguished. The analytical conclusion sketches the conceptual anatomy of the hyperobject and three possible responses. No part of the Earth today is free from human influence, but literary success suggests effective real-world strategies.

Over the course of his distinguished career, Vladimir Maz'ya has made a number of groundbreaking contributions to numerous areas of mathematics, including partial differential equations, function theory, and harmonic analysis. The chapters in this volume - compiled on the occasion of his 80th birthday - are written by distinguished mathematicians and pay tribute to his many significant and lasting achievements.