Complex Biological Systems. Adaptation and Tolerance to Extreme Environments

The emergence of social networks, OpenCourseWare, Massive Open Online Courses, informal remote learning and connectivist approaches to learning has made the analysis and evaluation of Digital Learning Environments more complex. Modeling these complex systems makes it possible to transcribe the phenomena observed and facilitates the study of these processes with the aid of specific tools. Once this essential step is taken, it then becomes possible to develop plausible scenarios from the observation of emerging phenomena and dominant trends. This book highlights the contribution of complex systems theory in the study of next generation Digital Learning Environments. It describes a realistic approach and proposes a range of effective management tools to achieve it.

With the growing maturity of information and communication technologies, systems have been interconnected within growing networks, yielding new services through a combination of the system functionalities. This leads to an increasing complexity that has to be managed in order to take advantage of these system integrations. This book provides key answers as to how such systems of systems can be engineered and how their complexity can be mastered. After reviewing some definitions on systems of systems engineering, the book focuses on concrete applications and offers a survey of the activities and techniques that allow engineering of complex systems and systems of systems. Case studies, ranging from emergency situations such as Hurricane Katrina and its crisis management or a generic scenario of a major traffic accident and its emergency response, to the establishment of a scientific basis in the Antarctic region illustrate key factors of success and traps to avoid in order to cope with such situations.

This book presents real-world examples of formal techniques in an industrial context. It covers formal methods such as SCADE and/or the B Method, in various fields such as railways, aeronautics, and the automotive industry. The purpose of this book is to present a summary of experience on the use of “formal methods” (based on formal techniques such as proof, abstract interpretation and model-checking) in industrial examples of complex systems, based on the experience of people currently involved in the creation and assessment of safety critical system software. The involvement of people from within the industry allows the authors to avoid the usual confidentiality problems which can arise and thus enables them to supply new useful information (photos, architecture plans, real examples, etc.). The authors cover the following topics: an example of use of SCADE, constraint solving in B, validation of Petri Nets-based automated rail safety, data validation, etc.

This book presents results of projects carried out by both scientific and industry researchers into the techniques to help in maintenance, control, supervision and security of systems, taking into account the technical environmental and human factors. This work is supported by the Scientific Group GIS 3SGS. It is a collaborative work from 13 partners (academic and industrial) who have come together to deal with security problems. The problems and techniques discussed mainly focus on stochastic and dynamic modeling, maintenance, forecasting, diagnosis, reliability, performance, organizational, human and environmental factors, uncertainty and experience feedback. Part 1. Industrial Issues 1. Safety and Performance of Electricity Production Facilities, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Primet, Philippe Klein, Carole Duval and Antoine Despujols. 2. Monitoring of Radioactive Waste Disposal Cells in Deep Geological Formation, St?phane Buschaert and Sylvie Lesoille. 3. Towards Fourth-generation Nuclear Reactors, Jean-Philippe Nabot, Olivier Gastaldi, Fran?ois Baqu?, K?vin Paumel and Jean-Philippe Jeannot. Part 2. Supervison and Modeling of Complex Systems 4. Fault-tolerant Data-fusion Method: Application on Platoon Vehicle Localization, Maan El Badaoui El Najiar, Cherif Smaili, Fran?ois Charpillet, Denis Pomorski and Mireille Bayart. 5. Damage and Forecast Modeling, Anne Barros, Eric Levrat, Mitra Fouladirad, Khanh Le Son, Thomas Ruin, Beno?t Iung, Alexandre Voisin, Maxime Monnin, Antoine Despujols, Emmanuel R?my and Ludovic B?n?trix. 6. Diagnosis of Systems with Multiple Operating Modes, Taha Boukhobza, Fr?d?ric Hamelin, Beno?t Marx, Gilles Mourot, Anca Maria Nagy, Jos? Ragot, Djemal Eddine Chouaib Belkhiat, Kevin Guelton, Dalel Jabri, Noureddine Manamanni, Sinuh? Martinez, Nadhir Messai, Vincent Cocquempot, Assia Hakem, Komi Midzodzi Pekpe, Talel Zouari, Michael Defoort, Mohammed Djemai and J?r?my Van Gorp. 7. Multitask Learning for the Diagnosis of Machine Fleet, Xiyan He, Gilles Mourot, Didier Maquin, Jos? Ragot, Pierre Beauseroy, Andr? Smolarz and Edith Grall-Ma?s. 8. The APPRODYN Project: Dynamic Reliability Approaches to Modeling Critical Systems, Jean-Fran?ois Aubry, Genia Babykina, Nicolae Brinzei, Slimane Medjaher, Anne Barros, Christophe Berenguer, Antoine Grall, Yves Langeron, Danh Ngoc Nguyen, Gilles Deleuze, Beno?te De Saporta, Fran?ois Dufour and Huilong Zhang. Part 3. Characterizing Background Noise, Identifying Characteristic Signatures in Test Cases and Detecting Noise Reactors 9. Aims, Context and Type of Signals Studied, Fran?ois Baqu?, Olivier Descombin, Olivier Gastaldi and Yves Vandenboomgaerde. 10. Detection/Classification of Argon and Water Injections into Sodium into an SG of a Fast Neutron Reactor, Pierre Beauseroy, Edith Grall-Ma?s and Igor Nikiforov. 11. A Dynamic Learning-based Approach to the Surveillance and Monitoring of Steam Generators in Prototype Fast Reactors, Laurent Hartert, Moamar Sayed-Mouchaweh and Danielle Nuzillard. 12. SVM Time-Frequency Classification for the Detection of Injection States, Simon Henrot, El-Hadi Djermoune and David Brie. 13. Time and Frequency Domain Approaches for the Characterization of Injection States, Jean-Philippe Cassar and Komi Midzodzi Pekpe. Part 4. Human, Organizational and Environmental Factors in Risk Analysis 14. Risk Analysis and Management in Systems Integrating Technical, Human, Organizational and Environmental Aspects, Geoffrey Fallet-Fidry, Carole Duval, Christophe Simon, Eric Levrat, Philippe Weber and Beno?t Iung. 15. Integrating Human and Organizational Factors into the BCD Risk Analysis Model: An Influence Diagram-based approach, Karima Sedki,

Uniquely comprehensive and up to date, this book covers terrestrial as well as extraterrestrial drilling and excavation, combining the technology of drilling with the state of the art in robotics. The authors come from industry and top ranking public and corporate research institutions and provide here real-life examples, problems, solutions and case studies, backed by color photographs throughout. The result is a must-have for oil companies and all scientists involved in planetary research with robotic probes. With a foreword by Harrison «Jack» Schmitt – the first geologist to drill on the moon.

A presentation of real examples of industrial uses for formal methods such as SCADE, the B-Method, ControlBuild, Matelo, etc. in various fields, such as railways, aeronautics, and the automotive industry, the purpose of this book is to present a summary of experience on the use of these “formal methods” (such as proof and model-checking) in industrial examples of complex systems. It is based on the experience of people who are currently involved in the creation and evaluation of safety critical system software. The involvement of people from within the industry allows us to avoid the usual problems of confidentiality which could arise and thus enables us to supply new useful information (photos, architecture plans, real examples, etc.).

The development and coordination of managerial devices to help businesses cope with the numerous challenges they face have been the subject of many empirical analyses in recent years. This books draws from these studies to answer the question of how to coordinate a team in extreme environments. Embracing a practice-based perspective, it identifies work practices and technological uses that improve coordination within teams. Organizations need to know how to support the coordination of teams that evolve in highly changing, uncertain and risky contexts. Beyond reviewing current literature on the analysis of coordination in the field, the author draws on military case studies and illustrations to offer readers practical ways to implement devices that facilitate coordination within teams.

The coastal zone is one of the most dynamic environments on our planet and is much affected by global change, especially sea-level rise. Coastal environments harbour valuable ecosystems, but they are also hugely important from a societal point of view. This book, which draws on the expertise of 21 leading international coastal scientists, represents an up-to-date account of coastal environments and past, present and future impacts of global change. The first chapter of the book outlines key principles that underpin coastal systems and their behaviour. This is followed by a discussion of key processes, including sea level change, sedimentation, storms, waves and tides, that drive coastal change. The main part of the book consists of a discussion of the main coastal environments (beaches, dunes, barriers, salt marshes, tidal flats, estuaries, coral reefs, deltas, rocky and glaciated coasts and coastal groundwater), and how these are affected by global change. The final chapter highlights strategies for coping with coastal change. Readership: final year undergraduate and postgraduate-level students on coastal courses in a wide range subjects, including geography, environmental management, geology, oceanography and coastal/civil engineering. The book will also be a valuable resource for researchers and applied scientists dealing with coastal environments. Additional resources for this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/masselink/coastal

Provides a detailed and systematic description of the Method of Moments (Boundary Element Method) for electromagnetic modeling at low frequencies and includes hands-on, application-based MATLAB® modules with user-friendly and intuitive GUI and a highly visualized interactive output. Includes a full-body computational human phantom with over 120 triangular surface meshes extracted from the Visible Human Project® Female dataset of the National library of Medicine and fully compatible with MATLAB® and major commercial FEM/BEM electromagnetic software simulators. This book covers the basic concepts of computational low-frequency electromagnetics in an application-based format and hones the knowledge of these concepts with hands-on MATLAB® modules. The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 discusses low-frequency electromagnetics, basic theory of triangular surface mesh generation, and computational human phantoms. Part 2 covers electrostatics of conductors and dielectrics, and direct current flow. Linear magnetostatics is analyzed in Part 3. Part 4 examines theory and applications of eddy currents. Finally, Part 5 evaluates nonlinear electrostatics. Application examples included in this book cover all major subjects of low-frequency electromagnetic theory. In addition, this book includes complete or summarized analytical solutions to a large number of quasi-static electromagnetic problems. Each Chapter concludes with a summary of the corresponding MATLAB® modules. Combines fundamental electromagnetic theory and application-oriented computation algorithms in the form of stand alone MATLAB® modules Makes use of the three-dimensional Method of Moments (MoM) for static and quasistatic electromagnetic problems Contains a detailed full-body computational human phantom from the Visible Human Project® Female, embedded implant models, and a collection of homogeneous human shells Low-Frequency Electromagnetic Modeling for Electrical and Biological Systems Using MATLAB® is a resource for electrical and biomedical engineering students and practicing researchers, engineers, and medical doctors working on low-frequency modeling and bioelectromagnetic applications.