Veena will let nothing stand in her way to get her daughter back. Seven-year-old Molly has been snatched from her and dragged off to a secret military lab. Veena's clues have dried up, and now she's on the run. While fleeing, she stumbles upon an alien technology that could change everything, or at least give her a bargaining chip to trade for her daughter's freedom with—if only she could figure out how to make it work. But first she needs to rescue her husband. At least she knows where he is now...sort of. Trapped in a cave somewhere on a planet of inedible moss inhabited by a group of reclusive, unwelcoming Luddites. Chasing sparse clues, Veena and her crew race through a secret underground city, a run-down space station, across a glittering collection of floating islands and out into the void of deep space—all with a bounty hunter hot on their tail. Can she figure out how to use the alien technology before it's too late? Is it the answer to getting her daughter back? Find out in this race-across-the-galaxy sequel to Fractured Orbits.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms, ESA 2003, held in Budapest, Hungary, in September 2003. The 66 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 165 submissions. The scope of the papers spans the entire range of algorithmics from design and mathematical analysis issues to real-world applications, engineering, and experimental analysis of algorithms.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Fifth International School and Symposium on Advanced Distributed Systems, ISSADS 2005, held in Guadalajara, Mexico in January 2005. The 50 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from over 100 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on database systems, distributed and parallel algorithms, real-time distributed systems, cooperative information systems, fault tolerance, information retrieval, modeling and simulation, wireless networks and mobile computing, artificial life and multi agent systems.

This book presents a systematic approach to analyze nature-inspired algorithms. Beginning with an introduction to optimization methods and algorithms, this book moves on to provide a unified framework of mathematical analysis for convergence and stability. Specific nature-inspired algorithms include: swarm intelligence, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, bee-inspired algorithms, bat algorithm, firefly algorithm, and cuckoo search. Algorithms are analyzed from a wide spectrum of theories and frameworks to offer insight to the main characteristics of algorithms and understand how and why they work for solving optimization problems. In-depth mathematical analyses are carried out for different perspectives, including complexity theory, fixed point theory, dynamical systems, self-organization, Bayesian framework, Markov chain framework, filter theory, statistical learning, and statistical measures. Students and researchers in optimization, operations research, artificial intelligence, data mining, machine learning, computer science, and management sciences will see the pros and cons of a variety of algorithms through detailed examples and a comparison of algorithms.

Advances in Parallel Computing series presents the theory and use of of parallel computer systems, including vector, pipeline, array, fifth and future generation computers and neural computers. This volume features original research work, as well as accounts on practical experience with and techniques for the use of parallel computers.

A gentle introduction to game programming on the Windows platform for the complete beginner.