This book meets the present and future needs for the interaction between various science and technology/engineering areas on the one hand and different branches of soft computing on the other. Soft computing is the recent development about the computing methods which include fuzzy set theory/logic, evolutionary computation (EC), probabilistic reasoning, artificial neural networks, machine learning, expert systems, etc. Soft computing refers to a partnership of computational techniques in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and some other engineering disciplines, which attempt to study, model, and analyze complex problems from different interdisciplinary problems. This, as opposed to traditional computing, deals with approximate models and gives solutions to complex real-life problems. Unlike hard computing, soft computing is tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximations. Interdisciplinary sciences include various challenging problems of science and engineering. Recent developments in soft computing are the bridge to handle different interdisciplinary science and engineering problems. In recent years, the correspondingly increased dialog between these disciplines has led to this new book. This is done, firstly, by encouraging the ways that soft computing may be applied in traditional areas, as well as point towards new and innovative areas of applications and secondly, by encouraging other scientific disciplines to engage in a dialog with the above computation algorithms outlining their problems to both access new methods as well as to suggest innovative developments within itself.

The field of Soft Computing in Humanities and Social Sciences is at a turning point. The strong distinction between “science” and “humanities” has been criticized from many fronts and, at the same time, an increasing cooperation between the so-called “hard sciences” and “soft sciences” is taking place in a wide range of scientific projects dealing with very complex and interdisciplinary topics. In the last fifteen years the area of Soft Computing has also experienced a gradual rapprochement to disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and also in the field of Medicine, Biology and even the Arts, a phenomenon that did not occur much in the previous years. The collection of this book presents a generous sampling of the new and burgeoning field of Soft Computing in Humanities and Social Sciences, bringing together a wide array of authors and subject matters from different disciplines. Some of the contributors of the book belong to the scientific and technical areas of Soft Computing while others come from various fields in the humanities and social sciences such as Philosophy, History, Sociology or Economics. Rudolf Seising received a Ph.D. degree in philosophy of science and a postdoctoral lecture qualification (PD) in history of science from the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. He is an Adjoint Researcher at the European Centre for Soft Computing in Mieres (Asturias), Spain. Veronica Sanz earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain). At the moment she is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Science, Technology and Society Center in the University of California at Berkeley. Veronica Sanz earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University Complutense of Madrid (Spain). At the moment she is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Science, Technology and Society Center in the University of California at Berkeley.

Soft computing is playing an increasing role in the study of complex systems in science and engineering. There is a large spectrum of successful applications of soft computing in very different applications domains such as aerospace, communication, consumer appliances, electric power systems, process engineering, transportation, and manufacturing automation and robotics. It has taken a while to bring the early ideas of soft computing to an area and a discipline that seems to be more than appropriate for that. Here it is! This book studies SOFT computing in SOFTware engineering environment. The book is HARD in terms of its results. It covers a range of core topics from software engineering that are soft from its very nature: selection of components, software design, software reuse, software cost estimation and software processes. Soft computing differs from conventional (hard) computing in its ability to be tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximation. The guiding principle of soft computing is: Exploit the tolerance for imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximation to achieve tractability, robustness and low solution cost. The role model for soft computing is the human mind. This seems to be a natural fit with software engineering, a human-based development activity based on sound engineering principles. A recent survey by researchers reveals that "Software Engineering research tends to be quite self-contained, not relying on other disciplines for its thinking".

This volume covers the fields of measurement and information acqulSltlon. It contains a collection of papers representing the current research trends in these areas. What are those trends? The first one is the enormous growth in the amount of information and the amazing technologies, which make this information available anywhere and anytime. The second one is a substantial development of methods of the information presentation including, to name just a few, multimedia, virtual environment, computer animation. The third one is the all-time boosting demand for improving the quality of decisions made on the base of this information in various applications ranging from engineering to business. Nowadays information acquisition should not only provide more information but also provide it in such a way as to assure effective and efficient processing of this information. And here comes a relatively new methodology of soft computing. Application of soft computing in measurement and information acquisition is considered in this volume.

Soft Numerical Computing in Uncertain Dynamic Systems is intended for system specialists interested in dynamic systems that operate at different time scales. The book discusses several types of errors and their propagation, covering numerical methods—including convergence and consistence properties and characteristics—and proving of related theorems within the setting of soft computing. Several types of uncertainty representation like interval, fuzzy, type 2 fuzzy, granular, and combined uncertain sets are discussed in detail. The book can be used by engineering students in control and finite element fields, as well as all engineering, applied mathematics, economics, and computer science students. One of the important topics in applied science is dynamic systems and their applications. The authors develop these models and deliver solutions with the aid of numerical methods. Since they are inherently uncertain, soft computations are of high relevance here. This is the reason behind investigating soft numerical computing in dynamic systems. If these systems are involved with complex-uncertain data, they will be more practical and important. Real-life problems work with this type of data and most of them cannot be solved exactly and easily—sometimes they are impossible to solve. Clearly, all the numerical methods need to consider error of approximation. Other important applied topics involving uncertain dynamic systems include image processing and pattern recognition, which can benefit from uncertain dynamic systems as well. In fact, the main objective is to determine the coefficients of a matrix that acts as the frame in the image. One of the effective methods exhibiting high accuracy is to use finite differences to fill the cells of the matrix. - Explores dynamic models, how time is fundamental to the structure of the model and data, and how a process unfolds - Investigates the dynamic relationships between multiple components of a system in modeling using mathematical models and the concept of stability in uncertain environments - Exposes readers to many soft numerical methods to simulate the solution function's behavior

Brings mathematics to bear on your real-world, scientific problems Mathematical Methods in Interdisciplinary Sciences provides a practical and usable framework for bringing a mathematical approach to modelling real-life scientific and technological problems. The collection of chapters Dr. Snehashish Chakraverty has provided describe in detail how to bring mathematics, statistics, and computational methods to the fore to solve even the most stubborn problems involving the intersection of multiple fields of study. Graduate students, postgraduate students, researchers, and professors will all benefit significantly from the author's clear approach to applied mathematics. The book covers a wide range of interdisciplinary topics in which mathematics can be brought to bear on challenging problems requiring creative solutions. Subjects include: Structural static and vibration problems Heat conduction and diffusion problems Fluid dynamics problems The book also covers topics as diverse as soft computing and machine intelligence. It concludes with examinations of various fields of application, like infectious diseases, autonomous car and monotone inclusion problems.

Hard boundaries have traditionally existed between such fields as fuzzy systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms, chaotic systems and expert systems. Gradually those boundaries are tending to vanish and "soft computing"-based systems that mix these different approaches have begun to emerge. Soft Computing Techniques in Human-Related Sciences focuses on the use of novel techniques such as artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms to solve practical problems related to humans: their activities, health and social needs. This volume illustrates and presents in an organized manner some of the recent progress in the applications of soft computing to fields related to social science, medical science, psychology, psychiatry , management of health and community services, and humanoid robots. Soft Computing Techniques in Human-Related Sciences begins with an introductory chapter to aid newcomers with the basic concepts, and progresses to the methodology of the use of soft computing in robotics, prosthetics, medicine, psycchology and man-machine interaction.

Science has made great progress in the twentieth century, with the establishment of proper disciplines in the fields of physics, computer science, molecular biology, and many others. At the same time, there have also emerged many engineering ideas that are interdisciplinary in nature, beyond the realm of such orthodox disciplines. These in clude, for example, artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, evolutional computation, data mining, and so on. In or der to generate new technology that is truly human-friendly in the twenty-first century, integration of various methods beyond specific disciplines is required. Soft computing is a key concept for the creation of such human friendly technology in our modern information society. Professor Rutkowski is a pioneer in this field, having devoted himself for many years to publishing a large variety of original work. The present vol ume, based mostly on his own work, is a milestone in the devel opment of soft computing, integrating various disciplines from the fields of information science and engineering. The book consists of three parts, the first of which is devoted to probabilistic neural net works. Neural excitation is stochastic, so it is natural to investi gate the Bayesian properties of connectionist structures developed by Professor Rutkowski. This new approach has proven to be par ticularly useful for handling regression and classification problems vi Preface in time-varying environments. Throughout this book, major themes are selected from theoretical subjects that are tightly connected with challenging applications.

Soft computing techniques are no longer limited to the arena of computer science. The discipline has an exponentially growing demand in other branches of science and engineering and even into health and social science. This book contains theory and applications of soft computing in engineering, health, and social and applied sciences. Different soft computing techniques such as artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary algorithms and hybrid systems are discussed. It also contains important chapters in machine learning and clustering. This book presents a survey of the existing knowledge and also the current state of art development through original new contributions from the researchers. This book may be used as a one-stop reference book for a broad range of readers worldwide interested in soft computing. In each chapter, the preliminaries have been presented first and then the advanced discussion takes place. Learners and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds will find several useful tools and techniques to develop their soft computing skills. This book is meant for graduate students, faculty and researchers willing to expand their knowledge in any branch of soft computing. The readers of this book will require minimum prerequisites of undergraduate studies in computation and mathematics.

Without mathematics no science would survive. This especially applies to the engineering sciences which highly depend on the applications of mathematics and mathematical tools such as optimization techniques, finite element methods, differential equations, fluid dynamics, mathematical modelling, and simulation. Neither optimization in engineering, nor the performance of safety-critical system and system security; nor high assurance software architecture and design would be possible without the development of mathematical applications. De Gruyter Series on the Applications of Mathematics in Engineering and Information Sciences (AMEIS) focusses on the latest applications of engineering and information technology that are possible only with the use of mathematical methods. By identifying the gaps in knowledge of engineering applications the AMEIS series fosters the international interchange between the sciences and keeps the reader informed about the latest developments.