This book offers a self-contained guide to the theory and main applications of soft sets. It introduces readers to the basic concepts, the algebraic and topological structures, as well as hybrid structures, such as fuzzy soft sets and intuitionistic fuzzy sets. The last part of the book explores a range of interesting applications in the fields of decision-making, pattern recognition, and data science. All in all, the book provides graduate students and researchers in mathematics and various applied science fields with a comprehensive and timely reference guide to soft sets.

Of recent coinage, the term "nondifferentiable optimization" (NDO) covers a spectrum of problems related to finding extremal values of nondifferentiable functions. Problems of minimizing nonsmooth functions arise in engineering applications as well as in mathematics proper. The Chebyshev approximation problem is an ample illustration of this. Without loss of generality, we shall consider only minimization problems. Among nonsmooth minimization problems, minimax problems and convex problems have been studied extensively ([31], [36], [57], [110], [120]). Interest in NDO has been constantly growing in recent years (monographs: [30], [81], [127] and articles and papers: [14], [20], [87]-[89], [98], [130], [135], [140]-[142], [152], [153], [160], all dealing with various aspects of non smooth optimization). For solving an arbitrary minimization problem, it is neces sary to: 1. Study properties of the objective function, in particular, its differentiability and directional differentiability. 2. Establish necessary (and, if possible, sufficient) condi tions for a global or local minimum. 3. Find the direction of descent (steepest or, simply, feasible--in appropriate sense). 4. Construct methods of successive approximation. In this book, the minimization problems for nonsmooth func tions of a finite number of variables are considered. Of fun damental importance are necessary conditions for an extremum (for example, [24], [45], [57], [73], [74], [103], [159], [163], [167], [168].

The Second International Conference on Fuzzy Information and Engineering (ICFIE2007) is a major symposium for scientists, engineers and practitioners in China as well as the world to present their latest results, ideas, developments and applications in all areas of fuzzy information and knowledge engineering. It aims to strengthen relations between industry research laboratories and universities, and to create a primary symposium for world scientists.

In the beginning of 1983, I came across A. Kaufmann's book "Introduction to the theory of fuzzy sets" (Academic Press, New York, 1975). This was my first acquaintance with the fuzzy set theory. Then I tried to introduce a new component (which determines the degree of non-membership) in the definition of these sets and to study the properties of the new objects so defined. I defined ordinary operations as "n", "U", "+" and "." over the new sets, but I had began to look more seriously at them since April 1983, when I defined operators analogous to the modal operators of "necessity" and "possibility". The late George Gargov (7 April 1947 - 9 November 1996) is the "god father" of the sets I introduced - in fact, he has invented the name "intu itionistic fuzzy", motivated by the fact that the law of the excluded middle does not hold for them. Presently, intuitionistic fuzzy sets are an object of intensive research by scholars and scientists from over ten countries. This book is the first attempt for a more comprehensive and complete report on the intuitionistic fuzzy set theory and its more relevant applications in a variety of diverse fields. In this sense, it has also a referential character.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2010, held in Changsha, China, in August 2010. The 85 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on neural networks, evolutionary learning & genetic algorithms, fuzzy theory and models, fuzzy systems and soft computing, particle swarm optimization and niche technology, supervised & semi-supervised learning, unsupervised & reinforcement learning, combinatorial & numerical optimization, systems biology and computational biology, neural computing and optimization, nature inspired computing and optimization, knowledge discovery and data mining, artificial life and artificial immune systems, intelligent computing in image processing, special session on new hand based biometric methods, special session on recent advances in image segmentation, special session on theories and applications in advanced intelligent computing, special session on search based software engineering, special session on bio-inspired computing and applications, special session on advance in dimensionality reduction methods and its applications, special session on protein and gene bioinformatics: methods and applications.

The book introduces the concept of “generalized interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy soft sets”. It presents the basic properties of these sets and also, investigates an application of generalized interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy soft sets in decision making with respect to interval of degree of preference. The concept of “interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy soft rough sets” is discussed and interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy soft rough set based multi criteria group decision making scheme is presented, which refines the primary evaluation of the whole expert group and enables us to select the optimal object in a most reliable manner. The book also details concept of interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets of type 2. It presents the basic properties of these sets. The book also introduces the concept of “interval valued intuitionistic fuzzy soft topological space (IVIFS topological space)” together with intuitionistic fuzzy soft open sets (IVIFS open sets) and intuitionistic fuzzy soft closed sets (IVIFS closed sets).

“Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” has been created for publications on advanced studies in neutrosophy, neutrosophic set, neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic statistics that started in 1995 and their applications in any field, such as the neutrosophic structures developed in algebra, geometry, topology, etc. Some articles in this issue: Parameter Reduction of Neutrosophic Soft Sets and Their Applications, Geometric Programming (NGP) Problems Subject to (⋁,.) Operator; the Minimum Solution, Ngpr Homeomorphism in Neutrosophic Topological Spaces, Generalized Neutrosophic Separation Axioms in Neutrosophic Soft Topological Spaces.

“Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” has been created for publications on advanced studies in neutrosophy, neutrosophic set, neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic statistics that started in 1995 and their applications in any field, such as the neutrosophic structures developed in algebra, geometry, topology, etc.

“Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” has been created for publications on advanced studies in neutrosophy, neutrosophic set, neutrosophic logic, neutrosophic probability, neutrosophic statistics that started in 1995 and their applications in any field, such as the neutrosophic structures developed in algebra, geometry, topology, etc.

This volume is a collection of fourteen papers, written by different authors and co-authors (listed in the order of the papers): N. Radwan, M. Badr Senousy, A. E. D. M. Riad, Chunfang Liu, YueSheng Luo, J. M. Jency, I. Arockiarani, P. P. Dey, S. Pramanik, B. C. Giri, N. Shah, A. Hussain, Gaurav, M. Kumar, K. Bhutani S. Aggarwal, V. Pătraşcu, F. Yuhua, S. Broumi, A. Bakali, M. Talea, F. Smarandache, M. Khan, S. Afzal, H. E. Khalid, M. A. Baset ,I. M. Hezam.