Good afternoon, Monsieur Le Bon. A good day to you, too, Monsieur Joly. How long has the patient been in a persistent vegetative state? I think since the mid eighties. And the patient is still alive? Yes, Maurice, the brain is still wholly intact, as are the organs... But Gustave, why does not the patient wake up? It seems that the patient is aware of everything that happens around him, but for some reason prefers to flee from reality. I understand, Gustave; this is tragic, very tragic but also not bad, because then we can openly talk while we play. All right, Maurice, lets get the patient to the table and let him watch our game...

Cities and Their Vital Systems asks basic questions about the longevity, utility, and nature of urban infrastructures; analyzes how they grow, interact, and change; and asks how, when, and at what cost they should be replaced. Among the topics discussed are problems arising from increasing air travel and airport congestion; the adequacy of water supplies and waste treatment; the impact of new technologies on construction; urban real estate values; and the field of "telematics," the combination of computers and telecommunications that makes money machines and national newspapers possible.

This three-volume set LNCS 10361, LNCS 10362, and LNAI 10363 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2017, held in Liverpool, UK, in August 2017. The 212 full papers and 20 short papers of the three proceedings volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 612 submissions. This first volume of the set comprises 71 papers. The papers are organized in topical sections such as Evolutionary Computation and Learning; Neural Networks; Nature Inspired Computing and Optimization; Signal Processing; Pattern Recognition; Biometrics Recognition; Image Processing; Information Security; Virtual Reality and Human-Computer Interaction; Business Intelligence and Multimedia Technology; Genetic Algorithms; Biomedical Informatics Theory and Methods; Particle Swarm Optimization and Niche Technology; Swarm Intelligence and Optimization; Independent Component Analysis; Compressed Sensing and Sparse Coding; Natural Computing; Intelligent Computing in Computer Vision; Computational Intelligence and Security for Image Applications in Social Network; Neural Networks: Theory and Application.

Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences was first conceived, published, and disseminated by the Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis (CINDAS) * at Purdue University in 1957, starting its coverage of theses with the academic year 1955. Beginning with Volume 13, the printing and dissemination phases of the activity were transferred to University Microfilms/Xerox of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the thought that such an arrangement would be more beneficial to the academic and general scientific and technical community. After five years of this joint undertaking we had concluded that it was in the interest of all con cerned if the printing and distribution of the volume were handled by an international publishing house to assure improved service and broader dissemination. Hence, starting with Volume 18, Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences has been disseminated on a worldwide basis by Plenum Publishing Cor poration of New York, and in the same year the coverage was broadened to include Canadian universities. All back issues can also be ordered from Plenum. We have reported in Volume 26 (thesis year 1981) a total of 11 ,048 theses titles from 24 Canadian and 21 8 United States universities. We are sure that this broader base for these titles reported will greatly enhance the value of this important annual reference work. While Volume 26 reports theses submitted in 1981, on occasion, certain univer sities do report theses submitted in previous years but not reported at the time.