Art permeates our culture, yet many have lost all criteria for making aesthetic judgments. This resource chronicles biblical foundations of art as well as the role of Christians in the artistic arena.

The works of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. With breathtaking imagination and extraordinary storytelling, they have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre. 'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson The State of the Art is the only collection of Iain M. Banks's short fiction and includes the acclaimed Culture novella of the same name. From science fiction to horror, dark fantasy to twisted comedy, all eight stories bear the indefinable stamp of Banks's staggering talent. Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks: 'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday 'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian 'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman 'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph The novels of Iain M. Banks: The Culture series Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons Excession Inversions Look to Windward Matter Surface Detail The Hydrogen Sonata The State of the Art Other books by Iain M. Banks Against a Dark Background Feersum Endjinn The Algebraist Also now available: The Culture: The Drawings - an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks' Culture series of novels in incredible detail.

After fire destroyed Missouri's capitol in 1911, voters approved a bond issue to construct a new statehouse. The tax to pay the bonds produced a one-million-dollar surplus, leaving a vast amount of money to decorate the new building. A special commission of art-minded Missourians employed some of the nation's leading painters and sculptors to create powerful and often huge pieces of art to adorn Missouri's most important new structure. The art of the Missouri capitol was considered among the finest to adorn any state capitol. But the passage of time has lessened recognition of the pieces and their creators. Most people--even those daily wandering the marble halls--have little knowledge of the significance of the art and the history it portrays. Bob Priddy and Jeffrey Ball return the capitol's decorations to prominence in The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone. The book tells the many stories behind the art: the rigors of its creation, the political roadblocks that endangered the decoration program, and the triumph of the commissioners who devoted more than ten years to the project. The Art of the Missouri Capitol presents the art in 270 images, many by Lloyd Grotjan, mostly of the building's many compelling paintings, murals, and sculptures. Priddy, a journalist who has covered the Missouri legislature for more than three decades, and Ball, an art historian, use a wealth of historical materials to connect the grand design of the capitol decorations with accounts of sometimes temperamental artists and meddling politicians. The authors provide historical and artistic context to explain the many surprising, controversial choices the artists made, and they use Missouri history to explain the tales depicted in the artwork, revealing the events--and inaccuracies--that the paintings bring to life. The authors honor the Missouri capitol's artistic excellence in a way that will appeal to art enthusiasts and history buffs as well as to general readers. The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone is the definitive account of the art's creation, of the men who produced it, and of the Missourians who lived the history that inspired it.

Narrative – State of the Art which was originally published as a Special Issue of Narrative Inquiry 16:1 (2006) is edited by Michael Bamberg and contains 24 chapters (with a brief introduction by the editor) that look back and take stock of developments in narrative theorizing and empirical work with narratives. The attempt has been made to bring together researchers from different disciplines, with very different concerns, and have them express their conceptions of the current state of the art from their perspectives. Looking back and taking stock, this volume further attempts to begin to deliver answers to the questions (i) What was it that made the original turn to narrative so successful? (ii) What has been accomplished over the last 40 years of narrative inquiry? (iii) What are the future directions for narrative inquiry? The contributions to this volume are deliberately kept short so that the readers can browse through them and get a feel about the diversity of current narrative theorizing and emerging new trends in narrative research. It is the ultimate aim of this edited volume to stir up discussions and dialogue among narrative researchers across these disciplines and to widen and open up the territory of narrative inquiry to new and innovative work.

Reinforcement learning encompasses both a science of adaptive behavior of rational beings in uncertain environments and a computational methodology for finding optimal behaviors for challenging problems in control, optimization and adaptive behavior of intelligent agents. As a field, reinforcement learning has progressed tremendously in the past decade. The main goal of this book is to present an up-to-date series of survey articles on the main contemporary sub-fields of reinforcement learning. This includes surveys on partially observable environments, hierarchical task decompositions, relational knowledge representation and predictive state representations. Furthermore, topics such as transfer, evolutionary methods and continuous spaces in reinforcement learning are surveyed. In addition, several chapters review reinforcement learning methods in robotics, in games, and in computational neuroscience. In total seventeen different subfields are presented by mostly young experts in those areas, and together they truly represent a state-of-the-art of current reinforcement learning research. Marco Wiering works at the artificial intelligence department of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He has published extensively on various reinforcement learning topics. Martijn van Otterlo works in the cognitive artificial intelligence group at the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. He has mainly focused on expressive knowledge representation in reinforcement learning settings.

Neuro-symbolic AI is an emerging subfield of Artificial Intelligence that brings together two hitherto distinct approaches. ”Neuro” refers to the artificial neural networks prominent in machine learning, ”symbolic” refers to algorithmic processing on the level of meaningful symbols, prominent in knowledge representation. In the past, these two fields of AI have been largely separate, with very little crossover, but the so-called “third wave” of AI is now bringing them together. This book, Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence: The State of the Art, provides an overview of this development in AI. The two approaches differ significantly in terms of their strengths and weaknesses and, from a cognitive-science perspective, there is a question as to how a neural system can perform symbol manipulation, and how the representational differences between these two approaches can be bridged. The book presents 17 overview papers, all by authors who have made significant contributions in the past few years and starting with a historic overview first seen in 2016. With just seven months elapsed from invitation to authors to final copy, the book is as up-to-date as a published overview of this subject can be. Based on the editors’ own desire to understand the current state of the art, this book reflects the breadth and depth of the latest developments in neuro-symbolic AI, and will be of interest to students, researchers, and all those working in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

State of the Art in Neural Networks and Their Applications presents the latest advances in artificial neural networks and their applications across a wide range of clinical diagnoses. Advances in the role of machine learning, artificial intelligence, deep learning, cognitive image processing and suitable data analytics useful for clinical diagnosis and research applications are covered, including relevant case studies. The application of Neural Network, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning methods in biomedical image analysis have resulted in the development of computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) systems that aim towards the automatic early detection of several severe diseases. State of the Art in Neural Networks and Their Applications is presented in two volumes. Volume 1 covers the state-of-the-art deep learning approaches for the detection of renal, retinal, breast, skin, and dental abnormalities and more. Includes applications of neural networks, AI, machine learning, and deep learning techniques to a variety of imaging technologies Provides in-depth technical coverage of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD), with coverage of computer-aided classification, Unified Deep Learning Frameworks, mammography, fundus imaging, optical coherence tomography, cryo-electron tomography, 3D MRI, CT, and more Covers deep learning for several medical conditions including renal, retinal, breast, skin, and dental abnormalities, Medical Image Analysis, as well as detection, segmentation, and classification via AI

MULTIPLE CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS: State of the Art Surveys is the most comprehensive work available to survey the state of the art in MCDA to date. Its 25 chapters are organized in eight parts and are written by 52 international leading experts. Each of these parts covers one of the central streams of multiple criteria decision analysis literature. These literature streams are: MCDA today, Foundations of MCDA, Our Ranking Methods, Multiattribute Utility Theory, Non-Classical MCDA Approaches, Multiobjective Mathematical Programming, Applications, and MCDM Software. The handbook presents the most up-to-date discussions on well-established methodologies and theories in the field, while systematically surveying emerging fields in MCDA such as conjoint measurement, fuzzy preferences, fuzzy integrals, rough sets, etc. MULTIPLE CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS: State of the Art Surveys is a valuable reference volume (more than 2000 references) for the field of decision analysis. It provides graduate students, researchers, and practitioners with a sweeping survey of MCDA theory, methodologies, and applications. It is a handbook that is particularly suitable for use in seminars in Decision Analysis, Decision Support, and Decision Theory.

Clinical Nuclear Cardiology—now in its fourth edition—covers the tremendous clinical growth in this field, focusing on new instrumentation and techniques. Drs. Barry L. Zaret and George A Beller address the latest developments in technology, radiopharmaceuticals, molecular imaging, and perfusion imaging. Thoroughly revised to include 20 new chapters—Digital/Fast SPECT, Imaging in Revascularized Patients, and more—this new edition provides state-of-the-art guidance on key areas and hot topics with stunning visuals. Online access to the fully searchable text at expertconsult.com includes highly illustrated case studies that let you see the problem using a variety of imaging modalities. In other words, this is an invaluable resource no clinician or researcher in nuclear cardiology should be without. - Features an editorial and contributing team of worldwide leaders in nuclear cardiology to provide you with current and authoritative guidance. - Includes a section focusing on acute coronary syndromes to provide you with practical management tools for these conditions. - Presents a full-color design that allows color images to be integrated throughout the text. - Includes access to the fully searchable contents of the book online at expertconsult.com, along with highly illustrated case studies that let you see the problem using a variety of imaging modalities. - Features 20 new chapters including Cellular Mechanisms of Tracer Uptake and Clearance; Attenuation/Scatter Corrections: Clinical Aspects; Hybrid Imaging; Digital/Fast SPECT; Imaging in Revascularized Patients; and more. - Focuses on perfusion imaging in a section dedicated to this hot topic so you get all the information you need to stay current.

This is a State of the Art Report resulting from the work of RILEM Technical Committee 224-AAM in the period 2007-2013. The Report summarises research to date in the area of alkali-activated binders and concretes, with a particular focus on the following areas: binder design and characterisation, durability testing, commercialisation, standardisation, and providing a historical context for this rapidly-growing research field.