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This book investigates the South African business cycle and its links to structural change in the economy. Against the backdrop of the democratic transition in 1994 and the global financial crisis, the authors study how business cycles in South Africa have changed and how cycles are related to key developments in the financial markets, international trade and business sentiment in the country. By focusing on peaks and troughs in economic activity ¿ so-called ¿turning-point cycles¿ ¿ the book links up with the common approach of international policymakers to studying fluctuations in economic activity. The authors also introduce new approaches to measuring phases of the business cycle (to understand slow recoveries after the global crisis), provide comprehensive descriptions to complement quantitative analyses, and utilize new data sources that allow the measurement of economic activity over longer periods. As such, the book provides the first integrated overview of business cycles inan emerging market, providing academics and policymakers with a better understanding of the measurement challenges and drivers of the cycle.

This unique volume reviews the latest advances in domain adaptation in the training of machine learning algorithms for visual understanding, offering valuable insights from an international selection of experts in the field. The text presents a diverse selection of novel techniques, covering applications of object recognition, face recognition, and action and event recognition.Topics and features: reviews the domain adaptation-based machine learning algorithms available for visual understanding, and provides a deep metric learning approach; introduces a novel unsupervised method for image-to-image translation, and a video segment retrieval model that utilizes ensemble learning; proposes a unique way to determine which dataset is most useful in the base training, in order to improve the transferability of deep neural networks; describes a quantitative method for estimating the discrepancy between the source and target data to enhance image classification performance; presentsa technique for multi-modal fusion that enhances facial action recognition, and a framework for intuition learning in domain adaptation; examines an original interpolation-based approach to address the issue of tracking model degradation in correlation filter-based methods.This authoritative work will serve as an invaluable reference for researchers and practitioners interested in machine learning-based visual recognition and understanding.

This book provides an in-depth account of the fascinating but far from simple actions and processes that take place when a brass instrument is played. Written by three leading researchers in brass instrument acoustics who are also experienced brass players, it draws together the many recent advances in our understanding of the subtly interrelated factors shaping the musician''s control of the instrument''s sound. The reader is introduced to models of sound generation, propagation and radiation. In particular, the current understanding of the behaviour of the player''s lips, the modes of vibration of the air column inside the instrument, and the radiation of sound from a brass instrument bell are explained. The functions of the mouthpiece and of mutes are discussed. Spectral enrichment arising from nonlinear propagation of the internal sound wave in loud playing is shown to be an important influence on the timbre of many types of brass instrument. The characteristics of brass instruments in contemporary use (including cornets, trumpets, french horns, trombones and tubas) are identified, and related to those of the great variety of instruments at earlier stages in the evolution of the brass family. This copiously illustrated book concludes with case studies of the recreation of ancient instruments and some of the current applications of electronics and information technology to brass instrument performance. While most of the material presented is accessible by a general readership, the topic of musical instrument modelling is developed at a mathematical level which makes it a useful academic resource for advanced teaching and research. Written by three internationally acknowledged experts in the acoustics and organology of brass instruments who are also experienced brass instrument players. Provides both an accessible introduction to brass instrument science and a review of recent research results and mathematical modeling techniques Represents the first monograph on the science underlying the design and performance of musical instruments of the brass family

This book presents and analyzes how restructuring processes due to technological change are reflected and processed in political and public discourses in the United States in the most recent past. More specifically, this work examines how the themes of automation, digitization, and the platform economy and their impact on the future of work are reflected in public discourse through the analysis of journalistic articles, and political discourse through the analysis of congressional hearings. Public and political discourses, as well as economic narratives, shape our understanding of certain developments such as technological change, our behavior more generally, and societal support of said developments. Therefore, it is vital to investigate and analyze these discourses in order to show how technological change is perceived and evaluated today. This work draws from concepts and methods of several different disciplines, most notably using a combination of corpus-linguistic methods and exemplary textual analysis. This way, this work stands as truly interdisciplinary, with a unique approach to the quantitative and qualitative examination of discourses.

This book is devoted to the development of optimal control theory for finite dimensional systems governed by deterministic and stochastic differential equations driven by vector measures. The book deals with a broad class of controls, including regular controls (vector-valued measurable functions), relaxed controls (measure-valued functions) and controls determined by vector measures, where both fully and partially observed control problems are considered. In the past few decades, there have been remarkable advances in the field of systems and control theory thanks to the unprecedented interaction between mathematics and the physical and engineering sciences. Recently, optimal control theory for dynamic systems driven by vector measures has attracted increasing interest. This book presents this theory for dynamic systems governed by both ordinary and stochastic differential equations, including extensive results on the existence of optimal controls and necessary conditions foroptimality. Computational algorithms are developed based on the optimality conditions, with numerical results presented to demonstrate the applicability of the theoretical results developed in the book.This book will be of interest to researchers in optimal control or applied functional analysis interested in applications of vector measures to control theory, stochastic systems driven by vector measures, and related topics. In particular, this self-contained account can be a starting point for further advances in the theory and applications of dynamic systems driven and controlled by vector measures.

This book contains contributions presented at the 12th International Conference on Complex Networks (CompleNet), 24-26 May 2021. CompleNet is an international conference on complex networks that brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse disciplines¿from sociology, biology, physics, and computer science¿who share a passion to better understand the interdependencies within and across systems. CompleNet is a venue to discuss ideas and findings about all types networks, from biological, to technological, to informational and social. It is this interdisciplinary nature of complex networks that CompleNet aims to explore and celebrate.

This volume constitutes the refereed and revised post-conference proceedings of the 5th IFIP WG 5.15 International Conference on Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction, ITDRR 2020, in Sofia, Bulgaria, in December 2020.*The 18 full papers and 6 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The papers focus on various aspects and challenges of coping with disaster risk reduction. The main topics include areas such as natural disasters, remote sensing, big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobile computing, emergency management, disaster information processing, disaster risk assessment and management.*The conference was held virtually.

This book mainly focuses on the widely distributed nature of computational tools, models, and methods, ultimately related to the current importance of computational machines as mediators of cognition. An entirely new eco-cognitive approach to computation is offered, to underline the question of the overwhelming cognitive domestication of ignorant entities, which is persistently at work in our current societies. Eco-cognitive computationalism does not aim at furnishing an ultimate and static definition of the concepts of information, cognition, and computation, instead, it intends, by respecting their historical and dynamical character, to propose an intellectual framework that depicts how we can understand their forms of ¿emergence¿ and the modification of their meanings, also dealing with impressive unconventional non-digital cases. The new proposed perspective also leads to a clear description of the divergence between weak and strong levels of creative ¿abductive¿ hypothetical cognition: weak accomplishments are related to ¿locked abductive strategies¿, typical of computational machines, and deep creativity is instead related to ¿unlocked abductive strategies¿, which characterize human cognizers, who benefit from the so-called ¿eco-cognitive openness¿.

This book purports to devise a pattern of the self that accounts for the role that change and identity play in self-shaping. It focuses on the process through which we discover, know and shape ourselves and wonder whether there is a core of our individuality and how we should account for it. The core is described along with its range of possible variations and its constraints. This volume provides arguments on how individual essence ¿ far from being something monolithic ¿ is inherently dynamic.The text delves into the link between change and identity in self-shaping, arguably the fundamental issue of personal individuality. Different theories and standpoints are addressed and scrutinized. Descriptive phenomenology will enter along with Max Scheler¿s stance on axiology, as well as the keystones that account for self-shaping. This book appeals to students and researchers working on the implications of phenomenology for self identification and personal individuality.

This book approaches its subject matter by promoting concepts, methods and solutions for the digital transformation of manufacturing through service orientation in holonic and agent-based control with distributed intelligence. The scientific theme of the book concerns ¿Manufacturing as a Service¿, developed by virtualizing and encapsulating manufacturing resources, activities and controls into cloud networked services in an open perspective that spans models from shop floor resource allocation to enterprise infrastructure sharing. The papers included in the application space have a profound human dedication and aim at solving societal needs serving the partnership of the future¿people and industry in the era of Society 5.0. The book¿s readership includes researchers and engineers working in manufacturing, supply chains and logistics areas who innovate, develop and use digital control solutions and students enrolled in Engineering and Service Science programs.

¿The Ganges: Cultural, Economic, and Environmental Importance¿ is a geographical, cultural, economic, and environmental interpretation of the Ganga River. The Ganga River originates from Gaumukh- situated in the high Himalaya, flows through the world¿s biggest fertile alluvial plain, and inlets into the Bay of Bengal at Ganga Sagar. It makes a unique natural and cultural landscape and is believed to be the holiest river of India. The Hindus called it ¿Mother Gangä and worship it. The towns/cities, situated on its bank, are world-famous and are known as the highland and valley pilgrimages. The water of the Ganga is pious, and the Hindus use it on different occasions while performing the rituals and customs. This book is unique because no previous study which presents a complete and comprehensive geographical description of the Ganga has been composed. This book presents the historical and cultural significance of the Ganga and its tributaries. Empirical, archival, and observation methods were applied to conduct this study. There are a total of 10 chapters in this book such as ¿Introduction¿, ¿the Ganga Basin¿, ¿Geography of the Ganga Basin¿, ¿the Ganges System: Ganga and its Tributaries¿, ¿Ganga between Gaumukh and Uttarkashi¿, ¿the Major Cultural Towns¿, ¿Major Fairs and Festivals¿, ¿Economic Significance of the Gangä, ¿Environmental Issues¿, and ¿Conclusions¿. The contents of the book are enriched by 89 figures, 15 tables, and substantial citations and references.

¿This proceedings volume gathers together selected peer-reviewed papers presented at the second edition of the XXVI International Joint Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management (IJCIEOM), which was virtually held on February 22-24, 2021 with the main organization based at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Works cover a range of topics in industrial engineering, including operations and process management, global operations, managerial economics, data science and stochastic optimization, logistics and supply chain management, quality management, product development, strategy and organizational engineering, knowledge and information management, sustainability, and disaster management, to name a few. These topics broadly involve fields like operations, manufacturing, industrial and production engineering, and management. This book can be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in optimization research, operations research, and correlated fields.

This book features influential scholarly research and technical contributions, professional trajectories, disciplinary shifts, personal insights, and a combination of these from a group of remarkable women scholars within precision agriculture.

This book elaborates on the combined challenges regarding intrapreneurship, sustainability of human resources management (HRM) and digital transformation faced by today's organizations.

It includes papers for both application areas of COINs, (1) optimizing organizational creativity and performance, and (2) discovering and predicting new trends by identifying COINs on the Web through online social media analysis.

This book provides an overview of the latest progress on rationality questions in algebraic geometry. It discusses new developments such as universal triviality of the Chow group of zero cycles, various aspects of stable birationality, cubic and Fano fourfolds, rationality of moduli spaces and birational invariants of group actions on varieties, contributed by the foremost experts in their fields.The question of whether an algebraic variety can be parametrized by rational functions of as many variables as its dimension has a long history and played an important role in the history of algebraic geometry. Recent developments in algebraic geometry have made this question again a focal point of research and formed the impetus to organize a conference in the series of conferences on the island of Schiermonnikoog. The book follows in the tradition of earlier volumes, which originated from conferences on the islands Texel and Schiermonnikoog.