Advances in Electrical Engineering and Computational Science contains sixty-one revised and extended research articles written by prominent researchers participating in the conference. Topics covered include Control Engineering, Network Management, Wireless Networks, Biotechnology, Signal Processing, Computational Intelligence, Computational Statistics, Internet Computing, High Performance Computing, and industrial applications. Advances in Electrical Engineering and Computational Science will offer the state of art of tremendous advances in electrical engineering and computational science and also serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working with/on electrical engineering and computational science.

The final volume in this tripartite series on Brain Augmentation is entitled “From Clinical Applications to Ethical Issues and Futuristic Ideas”. Many of the articles within this volume deal with translational efforts taking the results of experiments on laboratory animals and applying them to humans. In many cases, these interventions are intended to help people with disabilities in such a way so as to either restore or extend brain function. Traditionally, therapies in brain augmentation have included electrical and pharmacological techniques. In contrast, some of the techniques discussed in this volume add specificity by targeting select neural populations. This approach opens the door to where and how to promote the best interventions. Along the way, results have empowered the medical profession by expanding their understanding of brain function. Articles in this volume relate novel clinical solutions for a host of neurological and psychiatric conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, epilepsy, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), traumatic brain injury, and disorders of consciousness. In disease, symptoms and signs denote a departure from normal function. Brain augmentation has now been used to target both the core symptoms that provide specificity in the diagnosis of a disease, as well as other constitutional symptoms that may greatly handicap the individual. The volume provides a report on the use of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in ASD with reported improvements of core deficits (i.e., executive functions). TMS in this regard departs from the present-day trend towards symptomatic treatment that leaves unaltered the root cause of the condition. In diseases, such as schizophrenia, brain augmentation approaches hold promise to avoid lengthy pharmacological interventions that are usually riddled with side effects or those with limiting returns as in the case of Parkinson’s disease. Brain stimulation can also be used to treat auditory verbal hallucination, visuospatial (hemispatial) neglect, and pain in patients suffering from multiple sclerosis. The brain acts as a telecommunication transceiver wherein different bandwidth of frequencies (brainwave oscillations) transmit information. Their baseline levels correlate with certain behavioral states. The proper integration of brain oscillations provides for the phenomenon of binding and central coherence. Brain augmentation may foster the normalization of brain oscillations in nervous system disorders. These techniques hold the promise of being applied remotely (under the supervision of medical personnel), thus overcoming the obstacle of travel in order to obtain healthcare. At present, traditional thinking would argue the possibility of synergism among different modalities of brain augmentation as a way of increasing their overall effectiveness and improving therapeutic selectivity. Thinking outside of the box would also provide for the implementation of brain-to-brain interfaces where techniques, proper to artificial intelligence, could allow us to surpass the limits of natural selection or enable communications between several individual brains sharing memories, or even a global brain capable of self-organization. Not all brains are created equal. Brain stimulation studies suggest large individual variability in response that may affect overall recovery/treatment, or modify desired effects of a given intervention. The subject’s age, gender, hormonal levels may affect an individual’s cortical excitability. In addition, this volume discusses the role of social interactions in the operations of augmenting technologies. Finally, augmenting methods could be applied to modulate consciousness, even though its neural mechanisms are poorly understood. Finally, this volume should be taken as a debate on social, moral and ethical issues on neurotechnologies. Brain enhancement may transform the individual into someone or something else. These techniques bypass the usual routes of accommodation to environmental exigencies that exalted our personal fortitude: learning, exercising, and diet. This will allow humans to preselect desired characteristics and realize consequent rewards without having to overcome adversity through more laborious means. The concern is that humans may be playing God, and the possibility of an expanding gap in social equity where brain enhancements may be selectively available to the wealthier individuals. These issues are discussed by a number of articles in this volume. Also discussed are the relationship between the diminishment and enhancement following the application of brain-augmenting technologies, the problem of “mind control” with BMI technologies, free will the duty to use cognitive enhancers in high-responsibility professions, determining the population of people in need of brain enhancement, informed public policy, cognitive biases, and the hype caused by the development of brain- augmenting approaches.

The National Puzzlers' League (NPL) was founded in 1883 and is the oldest puzzlers' organization in the world. For over 100 years, crosswords and other word puzzles that appear in the NPL's monthly magazine, The Enigma, could be enjoyed only by NPL members. Now, for the first time, a selection of the league's favorite cryptic crosswords is available in book form for puzzle fans everywhere to enjoy. Unlike regular crossword puzzles, each clue in a cryptic crossword has two parts--one that's straightforward and one that involves one or more types of wordplay--and part of the fun is determining which part is which and what type of wordplay is involved. For example, Shoestring allowances lead to tears (11) is a cryptic clue for LACERATIONS. The straightforward part of the clue is tears, which is a definition for LACERATIONS. The wordplay part of the clue is Shoestring allowances which can be expressed as LACE + RATIONS which lead to LACERATIONS. The number in parentheses tells you the number and length of the answer words--in this case, it's one 11-letter word. Another example, with a different type of wordplay is Rearrange, rearrange ram's front (9) which is a cryptic clue for TRANSFORM. Rearrange is a straightforward definition of TRANSFORM and rearrange ram's front tells you to rearrange, or anagram, the nine letters in ram's front giving you the nine-letter word TRANSFORM. One of most fascinating things about cryptics is that the clues are a combination of tremendous creativity and imagination, on one hand, and strict, formal rules, on the other. This book contains 45 variety cryptics from members of the NPL, many of them by distinguished puzzle authors, as well as a foreword by Will Shortz, the New York Times crossword editor and the NPL's official historian PuzzleMeter: Difficulty--Very Difficult; Style--Contemporary]

This article is dedicated to Claudio Bunster on the occasion of his 60th birthday. It is a great honor to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to him, who in my opinion has been the greatest national physicist ever, for his wise guidance and intrepid support through the years. As a Chilean, I can further tell that Claudio’s contributions have been well far beyond theoretical physics, helping our country to be ready to face future challenges through science. Gravity in diverse dimensions is a subject in which Claudio has done major c- tributions, encouraging in many ways the following work, that is being made along different fronts in collaboration with my colleagues Diego Correa, Gustavo Dotti, Julio Oliva and David Tempo. Thepursuitforwormholesolutions,whicharehandlesinthespacetimetopology, it is as old as General Relativity and it has appeared in theoretical physics within different subjects, ranging from the attempt of describing physics as pure geometry, as in the Einstein–Rosen bridge model of a particle [1], to the concept of “charge withoutcharge”[2],aswell asindifferentissuesconcerningthe Euclideanapproach to quantum gravity (see, e.g., [3]). More recently, the systematic study of this kind of objects was pushed forward by the works of Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever [4,5].

The main themes presented in this volume are exercise intolerance and muscle contracture. This comprehensive and updated volume allows neurologists, specialists in internal medicine, rheumatologists, pathologists, biochemists, physiatrists and all researchers interested in neuromuscular diseases to become familiar with many new and homogen data concerning exercise intolerance and muscle contracture.

The Essential Reference for the Field, Featuring Protocols, Analysis, Fundamentals, and the Latest Advances Impedance Spectroscopy: Theory, Experiment, and Applications provides a comprehensive reference for graduate students, researchers, and engineers working in electrochemistry, physical chemistry, and physics. Covering both fundamentals concepts and practical applications, this unique reference provides a level of understanding that allows immediate use of impedance spectroscopy methods. Step-by-step experiment protocols with analysis guidance lend immediate relevance to general principles, while extensive figures and equations aid in the understanding of complex concepts. Detailed discussion includes the best measurement methods and identifying sources of error, and theoretical considerations for modeling, equivalent circuits, and equations in the complex domain are provided for most subjects under investigation. Written by a team of expert contributors, this book provides a clear understanding of impedance spectroscopy in general as well as the essential skills needed to use it in specific applications. Extensively updated to reflect the field’s latest advances, this new Third Edition: Incorporates the latest research, and provides coverage of new areas in which impedance spectroscopy is gaining importance Discusses the application of impedance spectroscopy to viscoelastic rubbery materials and biological systems Explores impedance spectroscopy applications in electrochemistry, semiconductors, solid electrolytes, corrosion, solid state devices, and electrochemical power sources Examines both the theoretical and practical aspects, and discusses when impedance spectroscopy is and is not the appropriate solution to an analysis problem Researchers and engineers will find value in the immediate practicality, while students will appreciate the hands-on approach to impedance spectroscopy methods. Retaining the reputation it has gained over years as a primary reference, Impedance Spectroscopy: Theory, Experiment, and Applications once again present a comprehensive reference reflecting the current state of the field.

At the time of Professor Rademacher's death early in 1969, there was available a complete manuscript of the present work. The editors had only to supply a few bibliographical references and to correct a few misprints and errors. No substantive changes were made in the manu script except in one or two places where references to additional material appeared; since this material was not found in Rademacher's papers, these references were deleted. The editors are grateful to Springer-Verlag for their helpfulness and courtesy. Rademacher started work on the present volume no later than 1944; he was still working on it at the inception of his final illness. It represents the parts of analytic number theory that were of greatest interest to him. The editors, his students, offer this work as homage to the memory of a great man to whom they, in common with all number theorists, owe a deep and lasting debt. E. Grosswald Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, U.S.A. J. Lehner University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 and National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC 20234, U.S.A. M. Newman National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC 20234, U.S.A. Contents I. Analytic tools Chapter 1. Bernoulli polynomials and Bernoulli numbers ....... . 1 1. The binomial coefficients ..................................... . 1 2. The Bernoulli polynomials .................................... . 4 3. Zeros of the Bernoulli polynomials ............................. . 7 4. The Bernoulli numbers ....................................... . 9 5. The von Staudt-Clausen theorem .............................. . 10 6. A multiplication formula for the Bernoulli polynomials ........... .