This contributed volume, written by leading international researchers, reviews the latest developments of genetic programming (GP) and its key applications in solving current real world problems, such as energy conversion and management, financial analysis, engineering modeling and design, and software engineering, to name a few. Inspired by natural evolution, the use of GP has expanded significantly in the last decade in almost every area of science and engineering. Exploring applications...

Contemporary and challenging, this thought-provoking book outlines a number of the key dilemmas in animal welfare for today's, and tomorrow's, world. The issues discussed range from the welfare of hunted animals, to debates around intensive farming versus sustainability, and the effects of climate and environmental change. The book explores the effects of fences on wild animals and human impacts on carrion animals; the impacts of tourism on animal welfare; philosophical questions about spe...

This handbook offers a comprehensive treatise on Grammatical Evolution (GE), a grammar-based Evolutionary Algorithm that employs a function to map binary strings into higher-level structures such as programs. GE's simplicity and modular nature make it a very flexible tool. Since its introduction almost twenty years ago, researchers have applied it to a vast range of problem domains, including financial modelling, parallel programming and genetics. Similarly, much work has been conducted to...

Automatic Re-engineering of Software Using Genetic Programming describes the application of Genetic Programming to a real world application area - software re-engineering in general and automatic parallelization specifically. Unlike most uses of Genetic Programming, this book evolves sequences of provable transformations rather than actual programs. It demonstrates that the benefits of this approach are twofold: first, the time required for evaluating a population is drastically r...

A thorough examination of the characteristics` belonging to a high-performing school, this book is written by the Chairman of the Specialist Schools Trust and the education advisor to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. It draws on numerous case studies of successful schools, as well as showing how previously failing schools have been turned around. Looking at such areas as leadership, staffing, target-setting, discipline and order, curriculum innovation and individual learning, the book offer...

Artificial neural networks are most suitable for solving problems that are complex, ill-defined, highly nonlinear, of many and different variables, and/or stochastic. Such problems are abundant in medicine, in finance, in security and beyond.This volume covers the basic theory and architecture of the major artificial neural networks. Uniquely, it presents 18 complete case studies of applications of neural networks in various fields, ranging from cell-shape classification to micro-trading i...

Designed to serve as the first point of reference on the subject, Comprehensive Chemometrics presents an integrated summary of the present state of chemical and biochemical data analysis and manipulation. The work covers all major areas ranging from statistics to data acquisition, analysis, and applications.This major reference work provides broad-ranging, validated summaries of the major topics in chemometrics—with chapter introductions and advanced reviews for each area....

A range of new and innovative tools used for preformulation and formulation of medicines help optimize pharmaceutical development projects. Such tools also assist with the performance evaluation of the pharmaceutical process, allowing any potential gaps to be identified. These tools can be applied in both basic research and industrial environment. Formulation tools for pharmaceutical development considers these key research and industrial tools.Nine chapters by leading contributors cover: ...

Drawing on lessons from the recent history of social work to identify how and why it has lost its privilege and influence, this book challenges social work students to understand why social work has failed to maintain its position as a driver of social reform. Bamford looks forward to a new model of practice that places a commitment to put social justice back at the heart of professional practice.The book contributes to the topical debates about social work education and the identi...

This open access book introduces and explains machine learning (ML) algorithms and techniques developed for statistical inferences on a complex process or system and their applications to simulations of chemically reacting turbulent flows.These two fields, ML and turbulent combustion, have large body of work and knowledge on their own, and this book brings them together and explain the complexities and challenges involved in applying ML techniques to simulate and study reacting flo...

School leadership and management are fundamental components of school improvement. This is the first study of its kind to relate the principles of effective leadership to the broad spectrum of school life in Ireland.A key resource for school leaders in their personal and professional study, this book critically appraises issues in leading and managing schools. The editors bring together an array of renowned scholars to inform and stimulate the debate on the future of leadership dev...

Mick Waters has consistently been a down-to-earth voice in the increasingly complex world of education for many years. He has regularly endeared himself to school communities in the UK and overseas by talking the sort of sense they needed to hear - practical, challenging, inspiring, insightful, engaging. His unique perspective, closeness to the classroom and ability to see innovation in terms of its impact on learners mean his views are always worth listening to. In this long-awaited book,...