This is the first textbook dedicated to explaining how artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can be used in and for games. After introductory chapters that explain the background and key techniques in AI and games, the authors explain how to use AI to play games, to generate content for games and to model players. The book will be suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses in games, artificial intelligence, design, human-computer interaction, and computational intelligence, and also for self-study by industrial game developers and practitioners. The authors have developed a website (http://www.gameaibook.org) that complements the material covered in the book with up-to-date exercises, lecture slides and reading.
The world has witnessed extraordinary economic growth, poverty reduction and increased life expectancy and population since the end of WWII, but it has occurred at the expense of undermining life support systems on Earth and subjecting future generations to the real risk of destabilising the planet. This timely book exposes and explores this colossal environmental cost and the dangerous position the world is now in. Standing up for a Sustainable World is written by and about key individuals who have not only understood the threats to our planet, but also become witness to them and confronted them.
This book encompasses the entire range of writing skills that today's experimental scientist may need to employ. Chapters cover routine forms, such as laboratory notes, abstracts, and memoranda; dissertations; journal articles; and grant proposals. Robert Goldbort discusses how best to approach various writing tasks as well as how to deal with the everyday complexities that may get in the way of ideal practice--difficult collaborators, experiments gone wrong, funding rejections. He underscores the importance of an ethical approach to science and scientific communication and insists on the necessity of full disclosure.
Climate Adaptation and Resilience Across Scales provides professionals with guidance on adapting the built environment to a changing climate. This edited volume brings together practitioners and researchers to discuss climate-related resilience from the building to the city scale. This book highlights North American cases that deal with issues such as climate projections, public health, adaptive capacity of vulnerable populations, and design interventions for floodplains, making the content applicable to many locations around the world. The contributors in this book discuss topics ranging from how built environment professionals respond to a changing climate, to how the building stock may need to adapt to climate change, to how resilience is currently being addressed in the design, construction, and operations communities. The purpose of this book is to provide a better understanding of climate change impacts, vulnerability, and resilience across scales of the built environment. Architects, urban designers, planners, landscape architects, and engineers will find this a useful resource for adapting buildings and cities to a changing climate.
This book details the current status of cervical MISS for expert surgeons, young surgeons or clinicians, and residents and fellows with little or no experience on this field of surgery. Because of the involvement of different and highly trained specialists from all over the world, the aim of this book is to satisfy the requirements for knowing the most advanced surgical techniques and their application. Also included are the indications and surgical techniques involving an open standard approach, giving a most exhaustive knowledge of the cervical spine surgery. Due to the difficulty of finding books with both minimal invasive cervical spine surgery and more conventional standard “open” surgery, the benefit of this book is to permit the surgeons and residents and medical doctors, to have a more complete and immediate knowledge of the topics. Due to the scientific multidisciplinary nature of the MISS, several professionals such as orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, radiologists, anesthesiologists and pain management specialists, have been involved in order to create a book in which all the aspects of MISS have been treated.
'From Paris to New York by Land" is a travel adventure memoir of Harry de Windt. He notes, "Many who read the following account of our long land journey will not unnaturally ask: "What was the object of this stupendous voyage, or the reward to be gained by this apparently unnecessary risk of life and endurance of hardships?" I would reply that my primary purpose was to ascertain the feasibility of constructing a railway to connect the chief cities of France and America, Paris and New York. The European Press was at the time of our departure largely interested in this question, which fact induced the proprietors of the Daily Express of London, the Journal of Paris, and the New York World to contribute towards the expenses of the expedition..."
Biomedical Natural Language Processing is a comprehensive tour through the classic and current work in the field. It discusses all subjects from both a rule-based and a machine learning approach, and also describes each subject from the perspective of both biological science and clinical medicine. The intended audience is readers who already have a background in natural language processing, but a clear introduction makes it accessible to readers from the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology, as well. The book is suitable as a reference, as well as a text for advanced courses in biomedical natural language processing and text mining.
DIVThe Art of Vintage Journaling and Collage is a distinctive guidebook exploring the art of collage and journaling using unique, collected ephemera from antique stores, flea markets, secondhand shops, and even your own home to unlock your creativity. Capture your thoughts in handmade, illustrated travel journals, recipe keepsake books, and nature and garden sketchbooks and create stunning collages to frame or use as note cards and gift tags to share with family and friends. The Art of Vintage Journaling and Collage presents Maryjo and Sunny Koch's gorgeous work from their books, Vintage Collage-Works and Vintage Collage Journals. There are more than 75 different collage project ideas and over 14 complete journal projects. Basic techniques and project details are illustrated through step-by-step photos and a gallery is included at the back of the book containing ready-to-use vintage clip art. All levels of artist or hobbyist will find this an inspirational and invaluable book./div
A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them. Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us—and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem. Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole—and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands. The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called “artificial intelligence.” They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software. In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s “first-responders,” and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they—and we—succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story. The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture—and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.
Show your Slytherin house pride by recording your magical adventures in this Harry Potter: Slytherin Ruled Notebook. This finely crafted notebook—one of six Harry Potter notebooks—is designed to display the gorgeous concept art created for the Harry Potter films, featuring fan-favorite locations such as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Fans can choose among the six notebooks—Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Hogwarts, and the Deathly Hallows—or collect them all. This new addition to Insight Editions’ best-selling Harry Potter stationery line adapts the design of our deluxe hardcover ruled journal in a new softcover format. Featuring a flexible leatherette cover and 128 lined, acid-free pages of high-quality, heavy stock paper, the Harry Potter: Slytherin Ruled Notebook takes both pen and pencil nicely to encourage inspiration, inviting fans to record their thoughts and chronicle their adventures.
