Dynamic Models in Biology Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an excellent book for students or faculty interested in learning more about the current state of the art in modeling of biological systems. The authors make a great effort to keep the mathematical sophistication at a level that students (or faculty) who primarily have a biological background will still be able to follow in some detail. They are also able to suggest some of the exciting current areas of research and new areas for the future. All in all, well worth reading if you are interested in the topic of modeling of biological systems.

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Brownian Agents and Active Particles: Collective Dynamics in the Natural and Social Sciences (Springer Series in Synergetics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Brownian Agents and Active Particles: Collective Dynamics in the Natural and Social Sciences
by Frank Schweitzer
The field discussed by the book of Frank Schweitzer has been recently popularized by a novel of Michael Crichton: "Prey". If you want to know more about flocks and swarms and you are interested not only in science fiction, but also in science, the work of Frank Schweitzer is the right place to start with. The popularization of a rather esoteric scientific field, as the one discussed by Schweitzer, is a clear sign of its increasing relevance.
As usual, Crichton's book has a list of references and, as usual, almost only research performed in the United States is quoted. You will find many clues on this US tendency to completely overlook the work done elsewhere in the world also in the book of Schweitzer. Schweitzer's bibliography does justice to the huge efforts taking place in Germany and in Europe. Even if it is very difficult to give proper credits dealing with such a large range of issues as Schweitzer does, his bibliography is to be praised. His book is about Brownian agents, a smart generalization of Brownian particles including internal states. Brownian agents can be effectively used as phenomenological models for many natural and social phenomena including track formation in biological systems, movement and trail formation of humans, evolutionary optimization strategies, urban growth, quantitative sociodynamics, spatial opinion structures in social systems.
Schweitzer's approach is gradual. The first four chapters are devoted to introducing more and more complexities and subtleties in the Brownian agent models, and the focus is on the models themselves rather than on the systems. Reading and understanding these chapters may be a difficult time-consuming task, but the reward is high. Starting from chapter five (on tracks and trail formation in biological systems) and ending with chapter ten (on opinion formation), the reader can amuse him/herself in dealing with models of real systems and devote his/her attention to the more relevant issues for his/her research.
This book contains some gems. My favorite one is in chapter nine: the discussion of a spatial dynamic model for the labor market introduced by the well-known US economist Paul Krugman where "workers are assumed to move toward locations that offer them higher real wages". Schweitzer shows not only that Krugman's model is nothing else that an instance of a selection equation of the Fisher-Eigen type, but also, using the formalism developed previously, he can easily generalize it and question the economic meaning of the assumptions leading to Krugman's equations.
A limit of this book is that the comparison between theoretical results and available empirical data is not always discussed. In many cases, however, not many empirical data are available or of good quality. In this respect, this book can become a stimulus for further empirical research in the fields outlined.
Finally, as in many contemporary books, there are various misprints scattered throughout the chapters. However, these are minor and do not hamper the understanding of the text.
I can recommend this book to all those working in the field of complex systems. They will find a detailed survey of the Brownian agent method and they might get good hints for further research in some of the fascinating fields herein discussed.

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This book lays out a vision for a coherent framework for understanding complex systems. By developing the genuine idea of Brownian agents, the author combines concepts from informatics, such as multiagent systems, with approaches of statistical many-particle physics. It demonstrates that Brownian agent models can be successfully applied in many different contexts, ranging from physicochemical pattern formation to swarming in biological systems.

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Agent-Based Models (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is fine as far as it goes. But ABM can only be done with software and it fails to mention one of the key players in this area. The author points out that NetLogo is easiest to learn but too simple for large models. Then he points you to the programmers-only solutions of Repast, Swarm, and Mason -- all academic development environments that require you to program in Java. He bemoans the gap between these two extremes yet somehow he skips AnyLogic which is a true high-level application with drag-and-drop model building, sophisticated libraries, model wizards to help beginners, and many advanced features.
It's hard to believe someone would write a book on ABM without first doing at least a Google search on the available tools.
At any rate, the book is a solid theoretical treatment. If you are an expert Java programmer with the time to code models from scratch this will be an important book.

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Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a technique increasingly used in a broad range of social sciences. It involves building a computational model consisting of 'agents," each of which represents an actor in the social world, and an "environment" in which the agents act. Agents are able to interact with each other and are programmed to be pro-active, autonomous and able to perceive their virtual world. The techniques of ABM are derived from artificial intelligence and computer science, but are now being developed independently in research centers throughout the world.In Agent-Based Models, Nigel Gilbert reviews a range of examples of agent-based modeling, describes how to design and build your own models, and considers practical issues such as verification, validation, planning a modeling project, and how to structure a scholarly article reporting the results of agent-based modeling. It includes a glossary, an annotated list of resources, advice on which programming environment to use when creating agent-based models, and a worked, step-by-step example of the development of an ABM.This latest volume in the SAGE Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series will have wide appeal in the social sciences, including the disciplines of sociology, economics, social psychology, geography, economic history, science studies, and environmental studies. It is appropriate for graduate students, researchers and academics in these fields, for both those wanting to keep up with new developments in their fields and those who are considering using ABM for their research.Key Features

Aimed at readers who are new to ABM

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MASTER DATA MANAGEMENT AND DATA GOVERNANCE, 2/E Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is great for beginners just starting out with MDM as well as seasoned professionals. I was introduced to MDM with the first version of this book. That was not my copy, so I bought the second edition for myself.
This book covers everything MDM from architectural considerations to governance and market trends.
The book offers some really sound advice on building the business case for MDM and how to communicate that business case effectively. Listen to their advice!!!! I am an architect, purely a technical guy, but I can tell you from experience without the backing of the business your project will be squashed.
The book covers the technical aspects of implementation in great detail. This book will give you the insight you need to fully understand the complexities of an MDM project. There are a ton of vendors out their claiming to have a magic install of MDM available for purchase, but the truth is they just do not exist. MDM is a process with many steps involved, not a product.
All in all if you are involved or getting involved with MDM this is the book to read.


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The latest techniques for building a customer-focused enterprise environment
"The authors have appreciated that MDM is a complex multidimensional area, and have set out to cover each of these dimensions in sufficient detail to provide adequate practical guidance to anyone implementing MDM. While this necessarily makes the book rather long, it means that the authors achieve a comprehensive treatment of MDM that is lacking in previous works." -- Malcolm Chisholm, Ph.D., President, AskGet.com Consulting, Inc.
Regain control of your master data and maintain a master-entity-centric enterprise data framework using the detailed information in this authoritative guide. Master Data Management and Data Governance, Second Edition provides up-to-date coverage of the most current architecture and technology views and system development and management methods. Discover how to construct an MDM business case and roadmap, build accurate models, deploy data hubs, and implement layered security policies. Legacy system integration, cross-industry challenges, and regulatory compliance are also covered in this comprehensive volume.

Plan and implement enterprise-scale MDM and Data Governance solutions
Develop master data model
Identify, match, and link master records for various domains through entity resolution
Improve efficiency and maximize integration using SOA and Web services
Ensure compliance with local, state, federal, and international regulations
Handle security using authentication, authorization, roles, entitlements, and encryption
Defend against identity theft, data compromise, spyware attack, and worm infection
Synchronize components and test data quality and system performance

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Metaheuristics: From Design to Implementation (Wiley Series on Parallel and Distributed Computing) Review

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(More customer reviews)The book is a good and detailed description of what metaheuristics involves. This is applied to solving hard computational problems. There are summaries of many methods developed over the last 50 years. The simplex method. Metropolis Monte Carlo. Simulated annealing. Genetic algorithms. And others. There is deliberately not enough information about most of these for you to use them given only the book as a starting point. Space considerations.
But mostly the book explains at a higher level, how methods can be understood. Some are for exploiting; ie. intensively looking in a given region of the objective space around a starting point. Simulated annealing is a good example of such a method.
Other methods are for exploring. A broader search in the objective or solution space. Genetic algorithms, with their mutations and crossover recombinations are very strong here, using ideas borrowed from biological evolution.
More importantly, the book shows how many hard problems have to be tackled by a combination of exploring and exploiting. The combining of algorithms is what gives metaheuristics its name.
One caveat is that even at a summary level, the description of tabu search was a bit unclear, compared to the excellent synopses of simulated annealing and genetic algorithms.

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A unified view of metaheuristics
This book provides a complete background on metaheuristics and shows readers how to design and implement efficient algorithms to solve complex optimization problems across a diverse range of applications, from networking and bioinformatics to engineering design, routing, and scheduling. It presents the main design questions for all families of metaheuristics and clearly illustrates how to implement the algorithms under a software framework to reuse both the design and code.
Throughout the book, the key search components of metaheuristics are considered as a toolbox for:

Designing efficient metaheuristics (e.g. local search, tabu search, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm optimization, scatter search, ant colonies, bee colonies, artificial immune systems) for optimization problems

Designing efficient metaheuristics for multi-objective optimization problems

Designing hybrid, parallel, and distributed metaheuristics

Implementing metaheuristics on sequential and parallel machines

Using many case studies and treating design and implementation independently, this book gives readers the skills necessary to solve large-scale optimization problems quickly and efficiently. It is a valuable reference for practicing engineers and researchers from diverse areas dealing with optimization or machine learning; and graduate students in computer science, operations research, control, engineering, business and management, and applied mathematics.

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Data-Driven 3D Facial Animation Review

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(More customer reviews)The book sits squarely at the intersection of two fields. Text to speech (TTS). And 3d animation, specifically of human faces. Both fields are still of course actively worked on, since neither is perfect. The difficulty here is to integrate the two. The papers in the book describe the many challenges facing researchers.
One of which is simply to do this in real time, or as close to real time as possible. A key motivation here is the rise of 3d worlds, like Second Life. Currently, all those have crude renderings of faces; and voice output from characters tends to be minimal and poorly done.
Going thru the book shows that implementing the subtle facial movements is tough. Because ultimately, evolution has hardwired us to be very perceptive of facial expressions. There are nuances that people can easily detect in actual faces, that are currently hard to express in code and generated images. The concept of blendshapes appears in many places in the text. Referring to building faces out of a rich eigen set of fundamental face images.

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Data-Driven 3D Facial Animation systematically describes the important techniques developed over the last ten years or so. Although 3D facial animation is used more and more in the entertainment industries, to date there have been very few books that address the techniques involved. Comprehensive in scope, the book covers not only traditional lip-sync (speech animation), but also expressive facial motion, facial gestures, facial modeling, editing and sketching, and facial animation transferring. It provides an up-to-date reference source for academic research and for professionals working in the facial animation field.

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Dynamic Simulations of Multibody Systems Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is very unique in that it successfully combines
Physically Based Modeling with Computational Geometry.
Everyone in developing realtime dynamic simulation systems
with 3-dimensional computer graphics should have one.

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This book introduces the techniques needed to produce realistic simulations and animations of particle and rigid body systems. It focuses on both the theoretical and practical aspects of developing and implementing physically based dynamic simulation engines that can be used to generate convincing animations of physical events involving particles and rigid bodies. It can also be used to produce accurate simulations of mechanical systems, such as a robotic parts feeder. The book is intended for researchers in computer graphics, computer animation, computer-aided mechanical design and modeling software developers.

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From Observations to Simulations: A Conceptual Introduction to Weather And Climate Modeling Review

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(More customer reviews)This book explains why we cannot rely on observations and experiments to understand and predict weather and climate. It discusses how models and ensembles are necessary in atmospheric science. The book is written for non-scientists and is well done. As an atmospheric science student, I found this analysis very useful in an environment where model use is presumed rather than justified. It is translated from Italian so there are some translation problems. It is also wordy and repetitious in some sections. Overall, it is a useful summary of numerical weather and climate modeling.

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From Observations to Simulations leads us on a fascinating journey through the methods used for the scientific analysis of complex systems such as the atmosphere and the Earth system: from meteorology and climatology, as observational sciences, to the development of models and the use of computers as virtual laboratories. In plain, accessible language, avoiding technicalities, but highlighting the conceptually meaningful aspects, the book describes this "Copernican revolution" in meteorology and climatology, a change in methodological paradigm that rigorously tests the definition of some classical concepts, such as "causality" and "prediction." This is the first book that guides the general public (and sets the specialists thinking) through research on complex systems which is contributing to a change in our outlook on nature.

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Space Modeling and Simulation Review

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(More customer reviews)"This book will be of interest to engineers in program management and other disciplines who need to understand issues associated with modeling and simulation for the development and operation of space systems. The first portion of the book explores general issues in modeling and simulation, ­essentials of obtaining an appropriate model and a computer simulation based on this model, and how simulation-based acquisition using these principles can yield superior space systems. This is followed by chapters on the engineering of space system life-cycle phases."
--SciTech Book News

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Continuous System Simulation Review

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(More customer reviews)This book provides an excellent description of many different integration schemes and describes their regions of stability. Understanding numerical stability is a necessity for modeling and simulation engineers. It is possible to simulate an unstable system with simulation results that appear stable. Cellier explains how and why this can happen as well as explaining other pitfalls of simulating continuous systems.

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Highly computer-oriented text, introducing numerical methods and algorithms along with the applications and conceptual tools. Includes homework problems, suggestions for research projects, and open-ended questions at the end of each chapter. Written by our successful author who also wrote Continuous System Modeling, a best-selling Springer book first published in the 1991 (sold about 1500 copies).

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Explorations in Monte Carlo Methods (Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Pretty clear, with some concise explanations of a variety of topics. The reader should have taken introductory courses in statistics and discrete mathematics. With that background, the math is not too difficult here; rarely does the reader wonder how the author got from one step to the next.

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Monte Carlo methods are among the most used and useful computational tools available today, providing efficient and practical algorithims to solve a wide range of scientific and engineering problems. Applications covered in this book include optimization, finance, statistical mechanics, birth and death processes, and gambling systems.Explorations in Monte Carlo Methods provides a hands-on approach to learning this subject. Each new idea is carefully motivated by a realistic problem, thus leading from questions to theory via examples and numerical simulations. Programming exercises are integrated throughout the text as the primary vehicle for learning the material. Each chapter ends with a large collection of problems illustrating and directing the material. This book is suitable as a textbook for students of engineering and the sciences, as well as mathematics.

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The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit Review

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(More customer reviews)but were afraid to ask. This is the definitive book on the DW lifecycle. After having worked on two not-so-perfect data warehousing projects, I found myself on more than one occasion seeing in print many of the ideas that I have either arrived at by trial and error or had a hunch were the right way to go. I would have given this book five stars, except for one thing: you really need to have read Kimball's first book, The Data Warehouse Toolkit, to get the proper foundation for reading the DW Lifecylcle Toolkit. I bought the DW Lifecycle Toolkit first thinking that I could jump right ahead. Not so. Much to my chagrin, I ended up buying the DW Toolkit and reading it first. These books really should be offered with the option to be purchased together. That way, the reader will know up front that both books are a must read.

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A thorough update to the industry standard for designing, developing, and deploying data warehouse and business intelligence systems
The world of data warehousing has changed remarkably since the first edition of The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit was published in 1998. In that time, the data warehouse industry has reached full maturity and acceptance, hardware and software have made staggering advances, and the techniques promoted in the premiere edition of this book have been adopted by nearly all data warehouse vendors and practitioners. In addition, the term "business intelligence" emerged to reflect the mission of the data warehouse: wrangling the data out of source systems, cleaning it, and delivering it to add value to the business.
Ralph Kimball and his colleagues have refined the original set of Lifecycle methods and techniques based on their consulting and training experience. The authors understand first-hand that a data warehousing/business intelligence (DW/BI) system needs to change as fast as its surrounding organization evolves. To that end, they walk you through the detailed steps of designing, developing, and deploying a DW/BI system. You'll learn to create adaptable systems that deliver data and analyses to business users so they can make better business decisions.
With substantial new and updated content, this second edition of The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit again sets the standard in data warehousing for the next decade. It shows you how to:
Identify and prioritize data warehouse opportunities
Create an architecture plan and select products
Design a powerful, flexible, dimensional model
Build a robust ETL system
Develop BI applications to deliver data to business users
Deploy and sustain a healthy DW/BI environment

The authors are members of the Kimball Group. Each has focused on data warehousing and business intelligence consulting and education for more than 15 years; most have written other books in the Toolkit series. Learn more about the Kimball Group and Kimball University at www.kimballgroup.com.
This book is also available as part of the Kimball's Data Warehouse Toolkit Classics Box Set (ISBN: 9780470479575) with the following 3 books:

The Data Warehouse Toolkit, 2nd Edition (9780471200246)
The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, 2nd Edition (9780470149775)
The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit (9780764567575)

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A Primer of Ecology with R (Use R) Review

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(More customer reviews)This primer provides an excellent, upper-level, introduction to theoretical and simulation ecology. Working through the presented R code and exercises provides a deeper understanding of the thinking of many of the most famous theoretical ecologists, while also introducing the methods by which students can examine ecological questions through simulation.

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Provides simple explanations of the important concepts in population and community ecology.Provides R code throughout, to illustrate model development and analysis, as well as appendix introducing the R language.Interweaves ecological content and code so that either stands alone. Supplemental web site for additional code.

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Handbook of Dynamic System Modeling (Chapman & Hall/CRC Computer & Information Science Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)What took so long? James Gleick's classic popularization "Chaos ..." came out in 1987. Many other books have followed at all levels, from easy-to-read self-study up to unintelligible topological dynamics. Thanks to Prof. Fishwick, we finally have a first-rate Handbook on a subject invented by Isaac Newton, though anticipated by Archimedes and Claudius Ptolemy. (Classical mechanics is NON-linear, relativity and quantum mechanics slightly more so.) This Handbook is really an anthology that presents a lot of the advances of dynamic systems analysis into a host of subject areas, as well as some new methodologies. For something more like a traditional handbook, a collection of algorithms and recipes, there is the Numerical Recipes series, complete with source code. Enjoy! Compute! Publish! Win glorious international recognition. You now have the giants upon whose shoulders you can stand to be able see farther. Numerical Recipes 3rd Edition: The Art of Scientific Computing

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The topic of dynamic models tends to be splintered across various disciplines, making it difficult to uniformly study the subject. Moreover, the models have a variety of representations, from traditional mathematical notations to diagrammatic and immersive depictions. Collecting all of these expressions of dynamic models, the Handbook of Dynamic System Modeling explores a panoply of different types of modeling methods available for dynamical systems.Featuring an interdisciplinary, balanced approach, the handbook focuses on both generalized dynamic knowledge and specific models. It first introduces the general concepts, representations, and philosophy of dynamic models, followed by a section on modeling methodologies that explains how to portray designed models on a computer. After addressing scale, heterogeneity, and composition issues, the book covers specific model types that are often characterized by specific visual- or text-based grammars. It concludes with case studies that employ two well-known commercial packages to construct, simulate, and analyze dynamic models.A complete guide to the fundamentals, types, and applications of dynamic models, this handbook shows how systems function and are represented over time and space and illustrates how to select a particular model based on a specific area of interest.

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Understanding Agent Systems (Springer Series on Agent Technology) Review

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(More customer reviews)There are several books on intelligent agents and multi-agents systems that I've come across, but most are either too broad-ranging and shallow so that they don't actually get to important core issues, or they're too narrow and mathematical for my liking (and for many others). This excellent book somehow manages to pull off the feat of providing a good introduction to agents, while also drilling down to some fascinating and deep issues in multi-agent systems. What's particularly good is that it does two things - it analyses and explains the issues with really clear textual description, and then provides a more formal description (using the Z specification language) that is surprisingly readable.
After providing an introductory chapter, the book presents a "framework" for understanding agent systems (hence the title) in which it brings together various different notions of agents. The chapters cover the framework itself, the different kinds of inter-agent
relationships that arise within it (to get to multi-agent systems), and more complex agents with greater sophistication. There are also a couple of case-study chapters that show how the model can be used to give descriptions of BDI systems and the contract net.
Throughout, the authors provide really good explanations, and then also formal descriptions using Z. Whether or not you buy the claim that Z is the most used industrial formal method, it turns out that despite the mathematical nature of the Z specification, the book as a whole is really very readable. It is worth noting that the level of mathematical description in the book for describing the framework and the systems is pretty close to abstract code descriptions (which is perhaps not surprising given that Z is intended for use for specifying software). With the appendix intro to Z, the book should also be a useful resource for developers wanting to understand exactly what would be involved in building systems.
One of the difficulties I've found when reading about agents is trying to make sense of some very different ideas and systems, and trying to understand how they fit together. This book provides some of the answers. In summary, the book covers some basic agent concepts, and builds them up to describe quite complex multi-agent systems, moving from abstract ideas to descriptions of specific implemented systems, and showing how they come together. It provides an excellent
introduction to agents, and keeps going to address some much deeper issues.

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Mark d'Inverno and Michael Luck presenta formal approach to dealing with agents and agent systems in this second edition of Understanding Agent Systems. The Z specification language is used to establish an accessible and unified formal account of agent systems and inter-agent relationships. In particular, the framework provides precise and unambiguous meanings for common concepts and terms for agent systems, allows for the description of alternative agent models and architectures, and serves as a foundation for subsequent development of increasingly refined agent concepts. The practicability of this approach is verified by applying the formal framework to three detailed case studies. The book will appeal equally to researchers, students, and professionals in industry.

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Artificial Life Models in Software Review

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(More customer reviews)Remember Conway's Game of Life? Surely you must, if you are interested in this book. The Game has been around since the 70s. The editors have cultivated recent research papers that demonstrate how far the field has advanced. Reinforced by some pretty colour plates that depict artificial entities [dare we call them living?] in some surroundings. These include the modelling of bee flights through a garden, and simulated trajectories of a group of bacteria.
Nor is the Game of Life ignored. One plate shows it in three dimensions. The Game is played in 2 dimensions, with time as the third dimension. An obvious choice that gives interesting trajectories of the cells.
The narrative adds to the illustrations. By describing a variety of computer simulations [worlds?]. Where the experimenter can tweak many parameters, and watch her world unfold. Some worlds are impressively rich in complexity of observed behaviours.
The only drawback in the book is its skimpy index. A mere two pages. It should have been more detailed.

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The advent of powerful processing technologies and the advances in software development tools have drastically changed the approach and implementation of computational research in fundamental properties of living systems through simulating and synthesizing biological entities and processes in artificial media. Nowadays realistic physical and physiological simulation of natural and would-be creatures, worlds and societies becomes a low-cost task for ordinary home computers. The progress in technology has dramatically reshaped the structure of the software, the execution of a code, and visualization fundamentals. This has led to the emergence of novel breeds of artificial life software models, including three-dimensional programmable simulation environment, distributed discrete events platforms and multi-agent systems. This second edition reflects the technological and research advancements, and presents the best examples of artificial life software models developed in the World and available for users.

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Modeling and Simulation In SIMULINK for Engineers and Scientists Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was clearly written by someone for whom English was not their first language. I admire the attempt -- I sincerely doubt I could write a book in a language that is not my own -- but the book definitely should have been read and tested by some technically-savvy individuals for whom English is their primary language. Since such testing apparently did not occur, this book is very difficult to read. I can only assume that the frequently-used statement of "without the loss of generosity" was actually supposed to be "without the loss of generality," as I never really expected Simulink to be generous.
The examples appear to be useful, but they are arranged in a confusing manner, making them hard to follow.
Compared to many Simulink books, this one is rather inexpensive. I'm currently wishing, however, that I'd splurged a bit more by purchasing a more expensive but, hopefully, better written book.

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The subject matter of this book is to present the procedural steps required for modeling and simulating the basic dynamic system problems in SIMULINK (a supplementary part of MATLAB) which follow some definitive model. However, the key features of the tex

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