A necessary and thought-provoking read for the age of coronavirus, exploring eleven scenarios that may trigger the collapse of the modern world — from pandemics to nuclear apocalypse to robot uprisings — and what we can do to prevent and survive them. In the twenty first century, our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Yet it is a fact of mathematical life that higher and higher levels of complexity lead to systems that are increasingly fragile and susceptible to sudden, spectacular collapse. In this highly provocative and grippingly readable book, John Casti brilliantly argues that today’s advanced, overly complex societies have grown highly vulnerable to extreme events that will ultimately topple civilization like a house of cards. Like Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan meets Jared Diamond’s Collapse, Casti’s book provides a much-needed wake-up call, sounding a fascinating and frightening warning about civilized society’s inability to recover from a global catastrophe. An eye-opening and necessary read, X-Events is a shocking look at a world teetering on the brink of collapse, and a population under constant threat from pandemic viruses, worldwide communication breakdowns, nuclear winter, or any number of unforeseeable “X-Events.” Fascinating and chilling, X-Events provides a provocative tour of the catastrophic outlier scenarios that could quickly send us crashing back to the preindustrial age – and shows that they may not be as far-fetched as they seem.

This handbook is designed to help information technology and networking professionals to smoothly navigate the network communication protocol territories. (Computer Books - General Information)

Two dimensional event set is introduced, and it is applied to algebraic structures. Two dimensional BCK/BCI-eventful algebra, paired B-algebra and paired BCK/BCI-algebra are de ned, and several properties are investigated. Conditions for two dimensional eventful algebra to be a B-algebra and a BCK/BCI-algebra are provided. The process of inducing a paired B-algebra using a group is discussed. Using two dimensional BCI-eventful algebra, a commutative group is established.

Proceedings of the 31st Symposium on Rock Mechanics, held at Golden, Colo., June 1990. The papers cover such areas as experimental studies; conceptual, analytical, and numerical modeling; and design and construction methods. Many address practical mining problems, with particular area emphasis on co

This volume has its origin in the Seventeenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods, MAXENT 97. The workshop was held at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, on August 4 -8, 1997. As in the past, the purpose of the workshop was to bring together researchers in different fields to present papers on applications of Bayesian methods (these include maximum entropy) in science, engineering, medicine, economics, and many other disciplines. Thanks to significant theoretical advances and the personal computer, much progress has been made since our first Workshop in 1981. As indicated by several papers in these proceedings, the subject has matured to a stage in which computational algorithms are the objects of interest, the thrust being on feasibility, efficiency and innovation. Though applications are proliferating at a staggering rate, some in areas that hardly existed a decade ago, it is pleasing that due attention is still being paid to foundations of the subject. The following list of descriptors, applicable to papers in this volume, gives a sense of its contents: deconvolution, inverse problems, instrument (point-spread) function, model comparison, multi sensor data fusion, image processing, tomography, reconstruction, deformable models, pattern recognition, classification and group analysis, segmentation/edge detection, brain shape, marginalization, algorithms, complexity, Ockham's razor as an inference tool, foundations of probability theory, symmetry, history of probability theory and computability. MAXENT 97 and these proceedings could not have been brought to final form without the support and help of a number of people.

This monograph looks at causal nets from a philosophical point of view. The author shows that one can build a general philosophical theory of causation on the basis of the causal nets framework that can be fruitfully used to shed new light on philosophical issues. Coverage includes both a theoretical as well as application-oriented approach to the subject. The author first counters David Hume’s challenge about whether causation is something ontologically real. The idea behind this is that good metaphysical concepts should behave analogously to good theoretical concepts in scientific theories. In the process, the author offers support for the theory of causal nets as indeed being a correct theory of causation. Next, the book offers an application-oriented approach to the subject. The author shows that causal nets can investigate philosophical issues related to causation. He does this by means of two exemplary applications. The first consists of an evaluation of Jim Woodward’s interventionist theory of causation. The second offers a contribution to the new mechanist debate. Introductory chapters outline all the formal basics required. This helps make the book useful for those who are not familiar with causal nets, but interested in causation or in tools for the investigation of philosophical issues related to causation.