Avery Cates is an army man. Between the army's new dental plan and a set of first class augments, he's been given a second chance - albeit a quick one. When a corrupt officer decides to make some money on the side by selling new recruits, Cates finds himself in uncharted territory. Sold to the highest bidder, his visions of escape and revenge quickly come to an end when he realizes who's bought him - and for what. Because the high bidder is Canny Orel himself. And he wants Cates to do one last job as the System slides into chaos. Cates will have one shot at getting back at Canny - but this time, Canny is holding all the cards.

In the last surviving human city, an ex-spy gets sucked into a dangerous quest that will take him beyond the city walls when a winged man turns up dead in his morgue in this innovative and original dystopian space adventure. Spearpoint, the last human city, is an enormous atmosphere-piercing spire. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different—and rigidly enforced—level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon's world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint's Celestial Levels—and with the dying body comes bad news. If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint's base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon's own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police, but by the very nature of reality—and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability . . .

Dr. Peter Hobson has created three electronic simulations of his own personality. But they all have escaped from Hobson's computer into the web-and one of them is a killer.

This book uses a practical approach in the application of theoretical concepts to digital communications in the design of software defined radio modems. This book discusses the design, implementation and performance verification of waveforms and algorithms appropriate for digital data modulation and demodulation in modern communication systems. Using a building-block approach, the author provides an introductory to the advanced understanding of acquisition and data detection using source and executable simulation code to validate the communication system performance with respect to theory and design specifications. The author focuses on theoretical analysis, algorithm design, firmware and software designs and subsystem and system testing. This book treats system designs with a variety of channel characteristics from very low to optical frequencies. This book offers system analysis and subsystem implementation options for acquisition and data detection appropriate to the channel conditions and system specifications, and provides test methods for demonstrating system performance. This book also: Outlines fundamental system requirements and related analysis that must be established prior to a detailed subsystem design Includes many examples that highlight various analytical solutions and case studies that characterize various system performance measures Discusses various aspects of atmospheric propagation using the spherical 4/3 effective earth radius model Examines Ionospheric propagation and uses the Rayleigh fading channel to evaluate link performance using several robust waveform modulations Contains end-of-chapter problems, allowing the reader to further engage with the text Digital Communications with Emphasis on Data Modems is a great resource for communication-system and digital signal processing engineers and students looking for in-depth theory as well as practical implementations.

Building a robot that learns to perform a task has been acknowledged as one of the major challenges facing artificial intelligence. Self-improving robots would relieve humans from much of the drudgery of programming and would potentially allow operation in environments that were changeable or only partially known. Progress towards this goal would also make fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence by furthering our understanding of how to successfully integrate disparate abilities such as perception, planning, learning and action. Although its roots can be traced back to the late fifties, the area of robot learning has lately seen a resurgence of interest. The flurry of interest in robot learning has partly been fueled by exciting new work in the areas of reinforcement earning, behavior-based architectures, genetic algorithms, neural networks and the study of artificial life. Robot Learning gives an overview of some of the current research projects in robot learning being carried out at leading universities and research laboratories in the United States. The main research directions in robot learning covered in this book include: reinforcement learning, behavior-based architectures, neural networks, map learning, action models, navigation and guided exploration.

Real-time model predictive controller (MPC) implementation in active vibration control (AVC) is often rendered difficult by fast sampling speeds and extensive actuator-deformation asymmetry. If the control of lightly damped mechanical structures is assumed, the region of attraction containing the set of allowable initial conditions requires a large prediction horizon, making the already computationally demanding on-line process even more complex. Model Predictive Vibration Control provides insight into the predictive control of lightly damped vibrating structures by exploring computationally efficient algorithms which are capable of low frequency vibration control with guaranteed stability and constraint feasibility. In addition to a theoretical primer on active vibration damping and model predictive control, Model Predictive Vibration Control provides a guide through the necessary steps in understanding the founding ideas of predictive control applied in AVC such as: · the implementation of computationally efficient algorithms · control strategies in simulation and experiment and · typical hardware requirements for piezoceramics actuated smart structures. The use of a simple laboratory model and inclusion of over 170 illustrations provides readers with clear and methodical explanations, making Model Predictive Vibration Control the ideal support material for graduates, researchers and industrial practitioners with an interest in efficient predictive control to be utilized in active vibration attenuation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences, ISCIS 2005, held in Istanbul, Turkey in October 2005. The 92 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 491 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on computer networks, sensor and satellite networks, security and cryptography, performance evaluation, e-commerce and Web services, multiagent systems, machine learning, information retrieval and natural language processing, image and speech processing, algorithms and database systems, as well as theory of computing.