Boolean Function Complexity

Since first described, multiple properties of classical conditioning have been discovered, establishing the need for mathematical models to help explain the defining features. The mathematical complexity of the models puts our understanding of their workings beyond the ability of our intuitive thinking and makes computer simulations irreplaceable. The complexity of the models frequently results in function redundancy, a natural property of biologically evolved systems that is much desired in technologically designed products. Experts provide the latest advancements in the field and present detailed descriptions of how the models simulate conditioned behaviour and its physiological bases. It offers advanced students and researchers examples of how the models are used to analyse existing experimental results and design future experiments. This volume is of great interest to psychologists and neuroscientists, as well as computer scientists and engineers searching for ideas applicable to t

Cephalopods are generally regarded as the most intelligent group among the invertebrates. Despite their popularity, relatively little is known about the range and function of their cognitive abilities. This book fills that gap, accentuating the varied and fascinating aspects of cognition across the group. Starting with the brain, learning and memory, Part I looks at early learning, memory acquisition and cognitive development in modern cephalopods. An analysis of the chambered nautilus, a living fossil, is included, providing insight into the evolution of behavioural complexity. Part II surveys environmental responses, especially within the active and learning-dependent coleoids. The ever-intriguing camouflage abilities of octopus and cuttlefish are highlighted, alongside bioluminescence, navigation and other aspects of visual and cognitive competence. Covering the range of cognitive function, this text underscores the importance of the cephalopods within the field of comparative cogni

Cephalopods are generally regarded as the most intelligent group among the invertebrates. Despite their popularity, relatively little is known about the range and function of their cognitive abilities. This book fills that gap, accentuating the varied and fascinating aspects of cognition across the group. Starting with the brain, learning and memory, Part I looks at early learning, memory acquisition and cognitive development in modern cephalopods. An analysis of the chambered nautilus, a living fossil, is included, providing insight into the evolution of behavioural complexity. Part II surveys environmental responses, especially within the active and learning-dependent coleoids. The ever-intriguing camouflage abilities of octopus and cuttlefish are highlighted, alongside bioluminescence, navigation and other aspects of visual and cognitive competence. Covering the range of cognitive function, this text underscores the importance of the cephalopods within the field of comparative cogni

Mathematical and numerical modelling of the human cardiovascular system has attracted remarkable research interest due to its intrinsic mathematical difficulty and the increasing impact of cardiovascular diseases worldwide. This book addresses the two principal components of the cardiovascular system: arterial circulation and heart function. It systematically describes all aspects of the problem, stating the basic physical principles, analysing the associated mathematical models that comprise PDE and ODE systems, reviewing sound and efficient numerical methods for their approximation, and simulating both benchmark problems and clinically inspired problems. Mathematical modelling itself imposes tremendous challenges, due to the amazing complexity of the cardiovascular system and the need for computational methods that are stable, reliable and efficient. The final part is devoted to control and inverse problems, including parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification and the developmen

In competitive and contested democratic elections, insuring integrity is critical. Evaluating Elections shows why systematic analysis and reporting of election performance is important and how data-driven performance management can be used by election officials to improve elections. The authors outline how performance management systems can function in elections and their benefits for voters, candidates and political parties. Journalists, election administrators and even candidates often ask whether recent elections were run well, whether there were problems in the administration of a particular state's elections and how well elections were run across the country. The authors explain that such questions are difficult to answer because of the complexity of election administration and because there is currently no standard or accepted framework to assess the general quality of an election.

In competitive and contested democratic elections, insuring integrity is critical. Evaluating Elections shows why systematic analysis and reporting of election performance is important and how data-driven performance management can be used by election officials to improve elections. The authors outline how performance management systems can function in elections and their benefits for voters, candidates and political parties. Journalists, election administrators and even candidates often ask whether recent elections were run well, whether there were problems in the administration of a particular state's elections and how well elections were run across the country. The authors explain that such questions are difficult to answer because of the complexity of election administration and because there is currently no standard or accepted framework to assess the general quality of an election.

This collaborative volume presents trends arising from the fruitful interaction between the themes of combinatorics on words, automata and formal language theory, and number theory. Presenting several important tools and concepts, the authors also reveal some of the exciting and important relationships that exist between these different fields. Topics include numeration systems, word complexity function, morphic words, Rauzy tilings and substitutive dynamical systems, Bratelli diagrams, frequencies and ergodicity, Diophantine approximation and transcendence, asymptotic properties of digital functions, decidability issues for D0L systems, matrix products and joint spectral radius. Topics are presented in a way that links them to the three main themes, but also extends them to dynamical systems and ergodic theory, fractals, tilings and spectral properties of matrices. Graduate students, research mathematicians and computer scientists working in combinatorics, theory of computation, numbe

Network thinking and network analysis are rapidly expanding features of ecological research. Network analysis of ecological systems include representations and modelling of the interactions in an ecosystem, in which species or factors are joined by pairwise connections. This book provides an overview of ecological network analysis including generating processes, the relationship between structure and dynamic function, and statistics and models for these networks. Starting with a general introduction to the composition of networks and their characteristics, it includes details on such topics as measures of network complexity, applications of spectral graph theory, how best to include indirect species interactions, and multilayer, multiplex and multilevel networks. Graduate students and researchers who want to develop and understand ecological networks in their research will find this volume inspiring and helpful. Detailed guidance to those already working in network ecology but looking

Network thinking and network analysis are rapidly expanding features of ecological research. Network analysis of ecological systems include representations and modelling of the interactions in an ecosystem, in which species or factors are joined by pairwise connections. This book provides an overview of ecological network analysis including generating processes, the relationship between structure and dynamic function, and statistics and models for these networks. Starting with a general introduction to the composition of networks and their characteristics, it includes details on such topics as measures of network complexity, applications of spectral graph theory, how best to include indirect species interactions, and multilayer, multiplex and multilevel networks. Graduate students and researchers who want to develop and understand ecological networks in their research will find this volume inspiring and helpful. Detailed guidance to those already working in network ecology but looking

This book approaches post-truth and relativism in a multidisciplinary fashion. Researchers from astrophysics, philosophy, psychology, media studies, religious studies, anthropology, social epistemology and sociology discuss and analyse the impact of relativism and post-truth both within the academy and in society at large. The motivation for this multidisciplinary approach is that relativism and post-truth are multifaceted phenomena with complex histories that have played out differently in different areas of society and different academic disciplines. There is hence a multitude of ways in which to use and understand the concepts and the phenomena to which they refer, and a multitude of critiques and defenses as well. No single volume can capture the ongoing discussions in different areas in all their complexity, but the different chapters of the book can function as exemplifications of the ramifications these phenomena have had.

Life occurs, as far as we know, only as part of the earthly biosphere. Yet the earth's biotic resources are experiencing a spreading crisis that is leading not only to the most rapid loss of species in the last 65 million years, but also causing abrupt changes in the structure and function of natural communities. This disturbance, unfortunately, is the result of human carelessness in the name of advancing civilisation. As our technologies and societies continue to improve and grow, we remove ourselves more and more from our natural habitat; as a consequence, we destroy countless numbers of species of every style and complexity. To identify and begin rectifying this dangerous situation, a group of outstanding environmental scientists has compiled a collection of case studies that illustrate the changes being wrought on the biosphere by the human presence.

Life occurs, as far as we know, only as part of the earthly biosphere. Yet the earth's biotic resources are experiencing a spreading crisis that is leading not only to the most rapid loss of species in the last 65 million years, but also causing abrupt changes in the structure and function of natural communities. This disturbance, unfortunately, is the result of human carelessness in the name of advancing civilisation. As our technologies and societies continue to improve and grow, we remove ourselves more and more from our natural habitat; as a consequence, we destroy countless numbers of species of every style and complexity. To identify and begin rectifying this dangerous situation, a group of outstanding environmental scientists has compiled a collection of case studies that illustrate the changes being wrought on the biosphere by the human presence.

Presenting new approaches to studying food webs, this book uses practical management and policy examples to demonstrate the theory behind ecosystem management decisions and the broader issue of sustainability. All the information that readers need to use food web analyses as a tool for understanding and quantifying transition processes is provided. Advancing the idea of food webs as complex adaptive systems, readers are challenged to rethink how changes in environmental conditions affect these systems. Beginning with the current state of thinking about community organisation, complexity and stability, the book moves on to focus on the traits of organisms, the adaptive nature of communities and their impacts on ecosystem function. The final section of the book addresses the applications to management and sustainability. By helping to understand the complexities of multispecies networks, this book provides insights into the evolution of organisms and the fate of ecosystems in a changing

This book focuses on girls and girlhoods, texts for and about girls, and the cultural contexts that shape girls’ experience. It brings together scholars from girls’ studies and children’s literature, fields that have traditionally conducted their research separately, and the collaboration showcases the breadth and complexity of girl-related studies. Contributors from disciplines such as sociology, literature, education, and gender studies combine these disciplinary approaches in novel ways with insights from international studies, postcolonial studies, game studies, and other fields. Several of the authors engage in activist and policy-development work around girls who experience poverty and marginalization. Each essay is concerned in one way or another with the politics of girlhood as they manifest in national and cultural contexts, in the everyday practices of girls, and in textual ideologies and agendas. In contemporary Western societies girls and girlhood function to some degree as

In this book, the author proposes an interesting approach to the study of one of the most central concepts in social analysis, that of social structure. He provides a critique of the leading models and argues that each is inadequate to the task of explaining the complexity of structures that make up society and the processes by which these structures are formed and are interlinked. A conceptualization of the processes of societal formation is then presented, drawing on developments in the physical, biological and cognitive sciences. This conceptualization allows for the multiplicity of processes of structuration, which the author refers to as logics, some of which function at the individual or 'micro' level, others at the organizational or 'meso' level, and still others at the society-wide, or 'macro' level. The author terms this conceptualization a theory of heterarchy and it is a truly comprehensive theory of societal structuration.

This book presents a holistic view on compiler assisted practical secure multi-party computation (MPC) over Boolean circuits. It discusses that two or more parties jointly evaluate a function over the

The images gathered in this volume function as a paranamic cartography of contemporary Mexico. The photographers have captured the complexity and diversity of the country, renewing our perceptions of

The human eye is so complex and works so precisely that surely, one might believe, its current shape and function must be the product of design. How could such an intricate object have come about by chance? Tackling this subject--in writing that the New York Times called "a masterpiece"--Richard Dawkins builds a carefully reasoned and lovingly illustrated argument for evolutionary adaptation as the mechanism for life on earth.The metaphor of Mount Improbable represents the combination of perfection and improbability that is epitomized in the seemingly "designed" complexity of living things. Dawkins skillfully guides the reader on a breathtaking journey through the mountain's passes and up its many peaks to demonstrate that following the improbable path to perfection takes time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins's eloquent descriptions of extraordinary adaptations such as the teeming populations of figs, the intricate silken world of spiders, and the evolution of wings on the bo