Chicanas in Charge

by José Angel Gutiérrez, Michelle Meléndez, Sonia Adriana Noyola

2007 · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

No state has a greater density of Chicano community leaders and politicians than does Texas. This study examines the lives and politics of a distinguished group of Chicana women who have risen to positions of power. The authors profile women who serve in various public capacities--federal judges, candidates for Lieutenant Governor, a statewide chair of a political party, and members of school boards and city and county governments. The diverse careers of these women offer rare glimpses of the kinds of struggles they face, both as women and as members of the Chicano community. Chicans in Charge will be of great value to those interested in gender studies, political science, local government, public policy, oral history, biography, and Chicano studies.

Pattern Mining with Evolutionary Algorithms

by Sebastián Ventura, José María Luna

2016 · Springer

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the field of pattern mining with evolutionary algorithms. To do so, it covers formal definitions about patterns, patterns mining, type of patterns and the usefulness of patterns in the knowledge discovery process. As it is described within the book, the discovery process suffers from both high runtime and memory requirements, especially when high dimensional datasets are analyzed. To solve this issue, many pruning strategies have been developed. Nevertheless, with the growing interest in the storage of information, more and more datasets comprise such a dimensionality that the discovery of interesting patterns becomes a challenging process. In this regard, the use of evolutionary algorithms for mining pattern enables the computation capacity to be reduced, providing sufficiently good solutions. This book offers a survey on evolutionary computation with particular emphasis on genetic algorithms and genetic programming. Also included is an analysis of the set of quality measures most widely used in the field of pattern mining with evolutionary algorithms. This book serves as a review of the most important evolutionary algorithms for pattern mining. It considers the analysis of different algorithms for mining different type of patterns and relationships between patterns, such as frequent patterns, infrequent patterns, patterns defined in a continuous domain, or even positive and negative patterns. A completely new problem in the pattern mining field, mining of exceptional relationships between patterns, is discussed. In this problem the goal is to identify patterns which distribution is exceptionally different from the distribution in the complete set of data records. Finally, the book deals with the subgroup discovery task, a method to identify a subgroup of interesting patterns that is related to a dependent variable or target attribute. This subgroup of patterns satisfies two essential conditions: interpretability and interestingness.

Mechanisms, Symbols, and Models Underlying Cognition

by José Mira, José R. Álvarez

2005 · Springer Science & Business Media

The two-volume set LNCS 3561 and LNCS 3562 constitute the refereed proceedings of the First International Work-Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2005, held in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain in June 2005. The 118 revised papers presented are thematically divided into two volumes; the first includes all the contributions mainly related with the methodological, conceptual, formal, and experimental developments in the fields of Neurophysiology and cognitive science. The second volume collects the papers related with bioinspired programming strategies and all the contributions related with the computational solutions to engineering problems in different application domains.

Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth

by Francisco Rodríguez, Manuel Berenguel, José Luis Guzmán, Armando Ramírez-Arias

2014 · Springer

A discussion of challenges related to the modeling and control of greenhouse crop growth, this book presents state-of-the-art answers to those challenges. The authors model the subsystems involved in successful greenhouse control using different techniques and show how the models obtained can be exploited for simulation or control design; they suggest ideas for the development of physical and/or black-box models for this purpose. Strategies for the control of climate- and irrigation-related variables are brought forward. The uses of PID control and feedforward compensators, both widely used in commercial tools, are summarized. The benefits of advanced control techniques—event-based, robust, and predictive control, for example—are used to improve on the performance of those basic methods. A hierarchical control architecture is developed governed by a high-level multiobjective optimization approach rather than traditional constrained optimization and artificial intelligence techniques. Reference trajectories are found for diurnal and nocturnal temperatures (climate-related setpoints) and electrical conductivity (fertirrigation-related setpoints). The objectives are to maximize profit, fruit quality, and water-use efficiency, these being encouraged by current international rules. Illustrative practical results selected from those obtained in an industrial greenhouse during the last eight years are shown and described. The text of the book is complemented by the use of illustrations, tables and real examples which are helpful in understanding the material. Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth will be of interest to industrial engineers, academic researchers and graduates from agricultural, chemical, and process-control backgrounds.

Even Convexity and Optimization

by María D. Fajardo, Miguel A. Goberna, Margarita M.L. Rodríguez, José Vicente-Pérez

2020 · Springer Nature

This tutorial is the first comprehensive introduction to (possibly infinite) linear systems containing strict inequalities and evenly convex sets. The book introduces their application to convex optimization. Particular attention is paid to evenly convex polyhedra and finite linear systems containing strict inequalities. The book also analyzes evenly convex and quasiconvex functions from a conjugacy and duality perspective. It discusses the applications of these functions in economics. Written in an expository style the main concepts and basic results are illustrated with suitable examples and figures..

Nanotechnology for Microelectronics and Photonics

by Raúl José Martín-Palma, José Martínez-Duart

2017 · Elsevier

Nanotechnology for Microelectronics and Photonics, Second Edition has been thoroughly revised, expanded, and updated. The aim of the book is to present the most recent advances in the field of nanomaterials, as well as the devices being developed for novel nanoelectronics and nanophotonic systems. It covers the many novel nanoscale applications in microelectronics and photonics that have been developed in recent years. Looking to the future, the book suggests what other applications are currently in development and may become feasible within the next few decades based on novel materials such as graphene, nanotubes, and organic semiconductors. In addition, the inclusion of new chapters and new sections to keep up with the latest developments in this rapidly-evolving field makes Nanotechnology for Microelectronics and Photonics, Second Edition an invaluable reference to research and industrial scientists looking for a guide on how nanostructured materials and nanoscale devices are used in microelectronics, optoelectronics, and photonics today and in future developments. - Presents the fundamental scientific principles that explain the novel properties and applications of nanostructured materials in the quantum frontier - Offers clear and concise coverage of how nanotechnology is currently used in the areas of microelectronics, optoelectronics, and photonics, as well as future proposed devices - Includes nearly a hundred problems along with helpful hints and full solutions for more than half of them