Cost-effective energy efficient building retrofitting : Materials, technologies, optimization and case studies
The building sector is responsible for high energy consumption and its global demand is expected to grow as each day there are approximately 200,000 new inhabitants on planet Earth. The majority of electric energy will continue to be generated from the combustion of fossil fuels releasing not only carbon dioxide, but also methane and nitrous oxide. Energy efficiency measures are therefore crucial to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of the building sector. Energy efficient building retrofitting needs to not only be technically feasible, but also economically viable. New building materials and advanced technologies already exist, but the knowledge to integrate all active components is still scarce and far from being widespread among building industry stakeholders.
Corporate Control and Enterprise Reform in China : An Econometric Analysis of Block Share Trades
This study sheds light on the efficiency of corporate control allocation in Chinese listed firms. Using a panel data set for the period 1996 to 2006, it examines the frequency, causes and consequences of changes in corporate control. The results indicate that poorly performing firms are the predominant targets of control changes; shareholder and creditor control generally act as a complement for changes in control. Following the change in ownership there is a substantial amount of corporate restructuring and an improvement in operating performance. Significant differences in these dimensions emerge, however, between State and private transfers of control. The findings not only provide insights into the motives and constraints of the key players involved in governance practices in China; but they also contain useful implications for other emerging markets around the world that have weak legal systems and weak property rights protection.
Contributions to Simulation Speed-Up : Rare Event Simulation and Short-Term Dynamic Simulation for Mobile Network Planning
Eugen Lamers explains the principle of simulation speed-up in general, demonstrates the technique RESTART for the simulation of rare events, and addresses its efficiency on distributed systems.
Construction and Building Automation : From Concepts to Implementation
Intended to be used as a textbook in undergraduate civil engineering and construction courses to introduce cutting edge mechanical, electrical and computer science topics that are needed for civil and construction engineers to collaborate in inter-disciplinary automation projects. Introduces hardware and software needed for automating engineering tasks ; Presents examples of applications in the control of building systems ; Illustrates of the use of automation for improving construction processes ; Provides a lucid introduction to advanced computing concepts, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and control algorithms to construction and engineering students.
Computer Vision Metrics : Survey, Taxonomy, and Analysis
Computer Vision Metrics provides an extensive survey and analysis of over 100 current and historical feature description and machine vision methods, with a detailed taxonomy for local, regional and global features. This book provides necessary background to develop intuition about why interest point detectors and feature descriptors actually work, how they are designed, with observations about tuning the methods for achieving robustness and invariance targets for specific applications. The survey is broader than it is deep, with over 540 references provided to dig deeper. The taxonomy includes search methods, spectra components, descriptor representation, shape, distance functions, accuracy, efficiency, robustness and invariance attributes, and more.
Computer organization and design, enhanced : The hardware / software interface ; 5th ed.
Contains new examples and material highlighting the emergence of mobile computing and the cloud. It explores this generational change with updated content featuring tablet computers, cloud infrastructure, and the ARM (mobile computing devices) and x86 (cloud computing) architectures. The book uses a MIPS processor core to present the fundamentals of hardware technologies, assembly language, computer arithmetic, pipelining, memory hierarchies and I/O.Because an understanding of modern hardware is essential to achieving good performance and energy efficiency, this edition adds a new concrete example, Going Faster, used throughout the text to demonstrate extremely effective optimization techniques. There is also a new discussion of the Eight Great Ideas of computer architecture.
Computer Graphics for Artists : An Introduction
Far too often artists, even professionals, lack a basic understanding of the principles of computer graphics resulting in inefficiency and a lower quality of work. This book addresses these issues by providing fundamental information in a university course format, with theoretical material, detailed illustrations, and projects to test the reader’s understanding of the concepts covered.
Computer algebra in scientific computing ; 22nd International Workshop, CASC 2020, Linz, Austria, September 14–18, 2020, Proceedings
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Workshop on Computer Algebra in Scientific Computing, CASC 2020, held in Linz, Austria, in September 2020. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 34 full papers presented together with 2 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. They deal with cutting-edge research in all major disciplines of computer algebra. The papers cover topics such as polynomial algebra, symbolic and symbolic-numerical computation, applications of symbolic computation for investigating and solving ordinary differential equations, applications of CAS in the investigation and solution of celestial mechanics problems, and in mechanics, physics, and robotics.
Computational logic in multi-agent systems ; 4th International Workshop, CLIMA IV, Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA, January 6-7, 2004, Revised Selected and Invited Papers
Though multiagent systems (MASs) are being increasingly used, few methods exist to ensure survivability of MASs. All existing methods suffer from two flaws. First, a centralized survivability algorithm (CSA) ensures survivability of the MAS – unfortunately, if the node on which the CSA exists goes down, the survivability of the MAS is questionable. Second, no mechanism exists to change how the MAS is deployed when external factors trigger a re-evaluation of the survivability of the MAS. In this paper, we present three algorithms to address these two important problems. Our algorithms can be built on top of any CSA. Our algorithms are completely distributed and can handle external triggers to compute a new deployment. We report on experiments assessing the efficiency of these algorithms.
Computational intelligence in economics and finance ; Vol. II
Computational intelligence (CI), as an alternative to statistical and econometric approaches, has been applied to a wide range of economics and finance problems in recent years, for example to price forecasting and market efficiency. This book contains research ranging from applications in financial markets and business administration to various economics problems. Not only are empirical studies utilizing various CI algorithms presented, but so also are theoretical models based on computational methods. In addition to direct applications of computational intelligence, readers can also observe how these methods are combined with conventional analytical methods such as statistical and econometric models to yield preferred results.
Combinatorial optimization and applications ; 1st International Conference, COCOA 2007, Xi'an, China, August 14-16, 2007, Proceedings
This book presented feature original research in the areas of combinatorial optimization - both theoretical issues and and applications motivated by real-world problems thus showing convincingly the usefulness and efficiency of the algorithms discussed in a practical setting.
Cognitive Wireless Networks : Concepts, Methodologies and Visions Inspiring the Age of Enlightenment of Wireless Communications
Cognition, a continuous process involving sensing, reasoning, understanding and reacting, can be applied to wireless networks in order to adapt the system to the highly dynamic wireless ecosystem. The ultimate goals are to enhance the efficiency in the use of radio resources as well as to improve both link and network performance. This book presents a detailed overview of a rapidly emerging topic in modern communications: cognitive wireless networks. The key aspects of cognitive and cooperative principles in wireless networks are discussed in this book. Furthermore, Cognitive Wireless Networks advocates the concept of breaking up the cellular communication architecture by introducing cooperative strategies among wireless devices. Cognitive wireless networking is the key to success in handling the upcoming dynamic network configurations and exploiting this cross-over to the fullest extent.
Cognitive Radio, Software Defined Radio, and Adaptive Wireless Systems
This book is aimed to discuss the cognitive radio, software defined radio (SDR), and adaptive radio concepts from several aspects. Cognitive radio and cognitive networks will be investigated from a broad aspect of wireless communication system enhancement while giving special emphasis on better spectrum utilization. Applications of cognitive radio, SDR and cognitive radio architectures, spectrum efficiency and soft spectrum usage, adaptive wireless system design, measurements and awareness of various parameters including interference temperature and geo-location information are some of the important topics that will be covered in this book.
Cognitive Computing in Human Cognition : Perspectives and Applications
This edited book designs the Cognitive Computing in Human Cognition to analyze to improve the efficiency of decision making by cognitive intelligence. The book is also intended to attract the audience who work in brain computing, deep learning, transportation, and solar cell energy. Due to this in the recent era, smart methods with human touch called as human cognition is adopted by many researchers in the field of information technology with the Cognitive Computing.
Cloud-Resolving Modeling of Convective Processes
Introduces the framework of cloud-resolving model, methodologies for analysis of modeling outputs, and validation of simulations with observations. The book details important scientific findings in the aspects of surface rainfall processes, precipitation efficiency, dynamic and thermodynamic processes associated with tropical convection, diurnal variations, radiative and cloud microphysical processes associated with development of cloud clusters, air-sea coupling on convective scales, climate equilibrium states, and remote sensing applications.
Closing the POWER gap between ASIC & custom : Tools and techniques for low power design
Details design tools and techniques for realizing low power and energy efficiency in a highly productive design methodology.Important topics include: - Microarchitectural techniques to reduce energy per operation / - Power reduction with timing slack from pipelining / - Analysis of the benefits of using multiple supply and threshold voltages / - Placement techniques for multiple supply voltages - Verification for multiple voltage domains / - Improved algorithms for gate sizing, and assignment of supply and threshold voltages / - Power gating design automation to reduce leakage / - Relationships among statistical timing, power analysis, and parametric yield optimization / Design examples illustrate that these techniques can improve energy efficiency by two to three times.
Mathematical and Computational Models for Congestion Charging
This book presents rigorous treatments of issues related to congestion pricing. The chapters describe recent advances in areas such as mathematical and computational models for predicting traffic congestion, determining when, where, and how much to levy tolls, and analyzing the impact of tolls on transporation systems. The analyses and methodologies developed in this book provide Mechanisms that aid in determining and comparing congestion pricing schemes; Methodologies for evaluating the efficiency of existing and proposed congestion pricing schemes; A means to predict the impact of pricing on urban transporation systems; and Information essential to the financial and political success of congestion pricing programs.
Material Flow Management : Improving Cost Efficiency and Environmental Performance
The implementation of material flow management offers enterprises a high potential for realizing new economic competitive advantages. The eco-efficient optimization of material flows aims at reducing costs while simultaneously achieving long-term sustainability with regard to ecological and societal aspects. Knowledge of existing methods and the latest trends is a key prerequisite for successfully implementing, refining and disseminating material flow management approaches.
Marketing effectiveness and accountability in SMEs : A multimethodological approach
Sheds light on marketing effectiveness and accountability marketing in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Using a multi-method investigation, it includes a knowledge inquiry of marketing knowledge and customer knowledge, a qualitative inquiry utilizing semi structured interviews and thematic data analysis, a quantitative analysis utilizing survey and structural equations modelling, and a case study that employs both narrative (storytelling) data analysis and an accountability audit with a techno marketing SME.
Marine Resource Conservation and Poverty Reduction Strategies in Tanzania
Despite the social, nutritional, economical and environmental importance of Tanzanian coastal areas, yet they are vulnerable to both over-exploitation and degradation of their habitats. Using the data from two coastal villages and econometric methods as well as Stochastic Production Frontier techniques, the book demonstrates the extent which various socio-economic dimensions of rural coastal households influence livelihood pathways, production efficiency and attitudes towards conservation initiatives. Thus, attention to differential patterns of rural coastal households presents more viable possibilities for coastal villages to have conservation-development policies/programs that lead to poverty reduction.



















