# PERFORM

This book establishes the foundations needed to realize the ultimate goals for artificial intelligence, such as autonomy and trustworthiness. Aimed at scientists, researchers, technologists, practitioners, and students, it brings together contributions offering the basics, the challenges and the state-of-the-art on trusted autonomous systems in a s...

At the core of institutional theories, 'values' is a central term and figures in most definitions; however it remains understudied and under-explored. The editors of this open access book identify a resurgence of interest in the values-construct which underpins discussions of identity, 'ethos' and the purpose/nature of public an...

This open access handbook provides the first comprehensive overview of biometrics exploiting the shape of human blood vessels for biometric recognition, i.e. vascular biometrics, including finger vein recognition, hand/palm vein recognition, retina recognition, and sclera recognition. After an introductory chapter summarizing the state of the art i...

Asia's recent demographic transitions and rural - urban structural transformations are extraordinary and involve complexities that require in-depth study.The chapters within this volume examine those complexities using a range of traditional and nontraditional measures - such as multidimensional poverty, gaps, and polarization - to arrive at t...

The International Symposium on Hearing is a prestigious,triennial gathering where world-class scientists present and discuss the most recent advances in the field of human and animal hearing research. The 2015 edition will particularly focus on integrative approaches linking physiological, psychophysical and cognitive aspects of normal and impaired...

This free book is the first comprehensive guide to a new soft computing technique which is used in complex forensic cases. The chapters include detailed technical and practical overviews, and discussions about the latest tools, open problems and ethical and legal issues involved. The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in fore...

The book examines the methodological challenges in analyzing the effectiveness of development policies. It presents a selection of tools and methodologies that can help tackle the complexities of which policies work best and why, and how they can be implemented effectively given the political and economic framework conditions of a country. The cont...

This free book provides a glimpse into the Japanese management technique known as "Kaizen," and the ways it has been disseminated around the developing world. The novelty of this book is three-fold: it provides a contextualized view of the mechanisms of initiatives implementing Kaizen in developing countries; compared with productivity st...

This free book presents a unique collection of practical examples from the field of pharma business management and research. It covers a wide range of topics such as: 'Brexit and its Impact on pharmaceutical Law - Implications for Global Pharma Companies', 'Implementation of Measures and Sustainable Actions to Improve Employee's...

This open access book focuses on the development of methods, interoperable and integrated ICT tools, and survey techniques for optimal management of the building process. The construction sector is facing an increasing demand for major innovations in terms of digital dematerialization and technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, advan...

The objective of this book is to help at-risk organizations to decipher the "safety cloud", and to position themselves in terms of operational decisions and improvement strategies in safety, considering the path already travelled, their context, objectives and constraints. What link can be established between safety culture and safety mod...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Semantic Systems, SEMANTiCS 2019, held in Karlsruhe, Germany, in September 2019.The 20 full papers and 8 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 88 submissions. They cover topics such as: web semantics and linked (open) dat...

This open access book, authored by a world-leading researcher in this field, describes fundamentals of dynamic spectrum management, provides a systematic overview on the enabling technologies covering cognitive radio, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, and offers valuable guidance for designing advanced wireless communications systems. This b...

This open access book addresses several questions regarding the implementation of human and organisational factors (HOF) so that recent improvements in industrial safety can be built upon. It addresses sources of frustration in senior management with high expectations of operational recommendations and disquiet on the part of HOF specialists strugg...

This free book belongs to the Maritime Business and Economic History strand of the Palgrave Studies in Maritime Economics book series.This volume highlights the contribution of the shipping industry to the transformations in business and society of the postwar era. Shipping was both an example and an engine of globalization and structural change. I...

Sustainability imposes an unprecedented challenge on society and has become the driving force of an urgent search for innovative solutions in all branches of economy. Manufacturing plays a key role in many areas of human living, and it is both part of the problem and of the solution. This book offers an overview of the broad field of research on s...

The proceedings of the international conference "SMSEC2014", a joint conference of the first "Social Modeling and Simulations" and the 10th "Econophysics Colloquium", held in Kobe in November 2014 with 174 participants, are gathered herein. Cutting edge scientific researches on various social phenomena are reviewed. Ne...

This book presents work collected through the Liquefaction Experiments and Analysis Projects (LEAP) in 2017. It addresses the repeatability, variability, and sensitivity of lateral spreading observed in twenty-four centrifuge model tests on mildly sloping liquefiable sand. The centrifuge tests were conducted at nine different centrifuge facilitie...

This free book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Workshop on Multiple-Aspect Analysis of Semantic Trajectories, MASTER 2019, held in conjunction with the 19th European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, ECML PKDD 2019, in Würzburg, Germany, in September 2019. The 8 ful...

This Open Access textbook provides students and researchers in the life sciences with essential practical information on how to quantitatively analyze data images. It refrains from focusing on theory, and instead uses practical examples and step-by step protocols to familiarize readers with the most commonly used image processing and analysis platf...

This free book presents an overview and step-by-step explanation of process management. It starts with the individual participants' perspectives on their work in a process and its structuring and harmonization, and then moves on to its specification in a model and how it is embedded in the organizational and IT environment of the company. Last...

In a world where new technologies are being developed at a dizzying pace, how can we best approach oral genres that represent heritage? Taking an innovative and interdisciplinary approach, this volume explores the idea of sharing as a model to construct and disseminate the knowledge of literary heritage with the people who are represented by and in...

The next frontier for wireless LANs is 802.11ac, a standard that increases throughput beyond one gigabit per second. This concise guide provides in-depth information to help you plan for 802.11ac, with technical details on design, network operations, deployment, and monitoring. Author Matthew Gast - an industry expert who led the development of ...

JavaScript lies at the heart of almost every modern web application, from social apps like Twitter to browser-based game frameworks like Phaser and Babylon. Though simple for beginners to pick up and play with, JavaScript is a flexible, complex language that you can use to build full-scale applications. This much anticipated and thoroughly revis...

The mission of the first edition of this book was to introduce the anykernel and rump kernels and motivate their existence. Additionally, we explored the characteristics of the technology through various experiments. The paramount, often criminally overlooked experiment was the one hiding in plain sight: is it possible to construct the system in a ...

This project was initiated in 2009 with the aim to spread knowledge about mobile technologies and encourage people to enter our community or deepen their existing knowledge. More than twenty writers from the mobile community share their know-how in dealing with topics such as accessibility in mobile apps, UX design, mobile analytics, prototyping...

How to Read a Folktale offers the first English translation of Ibonia, a spellbinding tale of old Madagascar. Ibonia is a folktale on epic scale. Much of its plot sounds familiar: a powerful royal hero attempts to rescue his betrothed from an evil adversary and, after a series of tests and duels, he and his lover are joyfully united with a marriage...

Principles of Macroeconomics is an adaptation of the textbook, Macroeconomics: Theory, Markets, and Policy by D. Curtis and I. Irvine, and presents a complete and concise examination of introductory macroeconomics theory and policy suitable for a first introductory course. Examples are domestic and international in their subject matter and are o...

Fundamentals of Business, 2nd Edition is an 372-page open education resource intended to serve as a no-cost, faculty customizable primary text for one-semester undergraduate introductory business courses. It covers the following topics in business: Teamwork; economics; ethics; entrepreneurship; business ownership, management, and leadership; organi...

Organized, authored, and edited over the course of five months by a class of eighteen Virginia Tech undergraduate students, Welcome to the Beatles represents their collective contribution to the larger scholarship on the most important band in rock history. The chapters build upon the work of noted author and historian Mark Lewisohn and take into a...

Exploring Business introduces students to business roles and concepts in an exciting way. This text will help you decide whether business is right for you and, if so, what areas of business you'd like to study further. Exploring Business is adapted from a work produced by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not r...

Understanding and creating a mobile app development strategy is an important process for today's development decision-makers opening up new business opportunities or empowering employees to be more productive with new capabilities. Microsoft defines an end-to-end platform for the agile creation of mobile apps that can target any platform (iOS,...