For half a century, computer scientists have been working on systems for discovering lawful patterns in letters, numbers, words and images. The research has expanded into the computational study of the process of scientific discovery, producing such well-known AI programs as BACON and DENDRAL. However, autonomous discovery systems...

Is there a rational way to measure coder skills and contributions and the way that software teams fit together? Could metrics help you improve coder self-awareness, teamwork, mentoring, and goal-setting? Could more detailed data help you make better hiring decisions, help make performance reviews fairer, and help your software teams...

In this age of universal electronic connectivity, of viruses and hackers, of electronic eavesdropping and electronic fraud, there is indeed no time at which security does not matter.Two trends have come together to make the topic of this book of vital interest. First, the explosive growth in computer systems and their interconnections...

With PHP for the World Wide Web, Fourth Edition: Visual QuickStart Guide, readers can start from the beginning to get a tour of the programming language, or look up specific tasks to learn just what they need to know. This task-based visual reference guide uses step-by-step instructions and plenty of screenshots to teach beginning and...

The phenomenal success of the iPhone, iPad and the iPod touch has ushered in a “gold rush” for developers, but with well over 300,000 apps in the highly competitive App Store, it has become increasingly difficult for new apps to stand out in the crowd. Achieving consumer awareness and sales longevity for your iOS app requires a...

Case-based reasoning (CBR) is an artificial intelligence approach whereby new problems are solved by remembering, adapting and reusing solutions to a previously solved, similar problem. The collection of previously solved...

GNU/Linux is a remarkable operating system that comes with a complete development environment that is stable, reliable, and extremely powerful. The shell, being the native interface to communicate with the operating system, is capable of controlling the entire operating system. An understanding of shell scripting helps you to have better...

The IFIP World Computer Congress (WCC) is one of the most important conferences in the area of computer science at the worldwide level and it has a federated structure, which takes into account the rapidly growing and expanding interests in this area. Informatics is rapidly changing and becoming more and more connected to a number of human...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Unifying Theories of Programming, UTP 2010, held in Shanghai, China, in November 2010, in conjunction with the 12th International Conference on Formal Engineering Methods, ICFEM 2010. The 12 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited talks were...

I’ll tell you a secret. One that my friends and family mostly know about, and many people who meet me eventually figure out. But it is one of those slightly embarrassing secrets – one that I don’t usually just tell people when I meet them for the first time. But you’re going to be my friend for the next 300 pages, so...

Sensor networks are meant to create awareness in space and time. They may be measuring the presence of an object or a condition, characterizing an object stream or a situational pattern, or even detect abnormalities that are to occur. This book provides new theory on the design of wireless sensor networks, based on concepts developed for...

Soils long have been taken for granted being so commonplace and lacking often striking features. However, soil is one of the most complex media on Earth, vital for the biogeosphere and human civilization. With increased usage of soil for world food production, building materials, waste repositories, etc awareness has grown for the need of...