The first book to address the underlying premises of systems integration and how to exposit them into a practical and productive manner, this book prepares systems managers and systems engineers to ...consider their decisions in light of systems integration metrics. The book addresses two questions: Is there a way to express the interplay of human actions and the result of system interactions of a product with its environment, and are there methods that combine to improve the integration of systems? The systems integration theory and integration frameworks proposed in the book tie General Systems Theory with practice.
Time-delay occurs in many dynamical systems. This book presents some basic theories of stability and stabilization of systems with time-delay. Attention is paid to synthesis of systems with ...time-delay, such as sliding mode control of systems with time-delay.
This open access book constitutes selected papers presented during the 30th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, held in Munster, Ireland, in December 2022. The 41 ...presented papers were thoroughly reviewed and selected from the 102 submissions. They are organized in topical sections on machine learning, deep learning and applications; responsible and trustworthy artificial intelligence; natural language processing and recommender systems; knowledge representation, reasoning, optimisation and intelligent applications.
Our ability to acknowledge and recognize our own identity — our “self” — is a characteristic doubtless unique to humans. Where does this feeling come from? How does the combination of ...neurophysiological processes coupled with our interaction with the outside world construct this coherent identity? We know that our social interactions contribute via the eyes, ears, etc. However, our self is not only influenced by our senses. It is also influenced by the actions we perform and those we see others perform. Our brain anticipates the effects of our own actions and simulates the actions of others. In this way, we become able to understand ourselves and to understand the actions and emotions of others. This book describes the new field of “Motor Cognition”. Though motor actions have long been studied by neuroscientists and physiologists, it is only recently that scientists have considered the role of actions in building the self. How consciousness of action is part of self-consciousness, how one's own actions determine the sense of being an agent, how actions performed by others impact on ourselves for understanding others, differentiating ourselves from them and learning from them: these questions are raised and discussed throughout the book, drawing on experimental, clinical, and theoretical bases. The advent of new neuroscience techniques, such as neuroimaging and direct electrical brain stimulation, together with a renewal of behavioral methods in cognitive psychology, provide new insights into this area. Mental imagery of action, self-recognition, consciousness of actions, imitation can be objectively studied using these new tools. The results of these investigations shed light on clinical disorders in neurology, psychiatry, and in neuro-development.
This book presents the recently introduced and already widely referred semi-discretization method for the stability analysis of delayed dynamical systems. Delay differential equations often come up ...in different fields of engineering, like feedback control systems, machine tool vibrations, balancing/stabilization with reflex delay. The behavior of such systems is often counter-intuitive and closed form analytical formulas can rarely be given even for the linear stability conditions. If parametric excitation is coupled with the delay effect, then the governing equation is a delay differential equation with time periodic coefficients, and the stability properties are even more intriguing. The semi-discretization method is a simple but efficient method that is based on the discretization with respect to the delayed term and the periodic coefficients only. The method can effectively be used to construct stability diagrams in the space of system parameters.
The enteric nervous system (ENS) is large, complex and uniquely able to orchestrate gastrointestinal behaviour independently of the central nervous system (CNS). An intact ENS is essential for life ...and ENS dysfunction is often linked to digestive disorders. The part the ENS plays in neurological disorders, as a portal or participant, has also become increasingly evident. ENS structure and neurochemistry resemble that of the CNS, therefore pathogenic mechanisms that give rise to CNS disorders might also lead to ENS dysfunction, and nerves that interconnect the ENS and CNS can be conduits for disease spread. We review evidence for ENS dysfunction in the aetiopathogenesis of autism spectrum disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, Parkinson disease and Alzheimer disease. Animal models suggest that common pathophysiological mechanisms account for the frequency of gastrointestinal comorbidity in these conditions. Moreover, the neurotropic pathogen, varicella zoster virus (VZV), unexpectedly establishes latency in enteric and other autonomic neurons that do not innervate skin. VZV reactivation in these neurons produces no rash and is therefore a clandestine cause of gastrointestinal disease, meningitis and strokes. The gut-brain alliance has raised consciousness as a contributor to health, but a gut-brain axis that contributes to disease merits equal attention.
This paper is concerned with synchronization of distributed node dynamics to a prescribed target or control node dynamics. A design method is presented for adaptive synchronization controllers for ...distributed systems having non-identical unknown nonlinear dynamics, and for a target dynamics to be tracked that is also nonlinear and unknown. The development is for strongly connected digraph communication structures. A Lyapunov technique is presented for designing a robust adaptive synchronization control protocol. The proper selection of the Lyapunov function is the key to ensuring that the resulting control laws thus found are implementable in a distributed fashion. Lyapunov functions are defined in terms of a local neighborhood tracking synchronization error and the Frobenius norm. The resulting protocol consists of a linear protocol and a nonlinear control term with adaptive update law at each node. Singular value analysis is used. It is shown that the singular values of certain key matrices are intimately related to structural properties of the graph.
Consensusability of multi-agent systems (MASs) is a fundamental problem in the MAS research area, since when starting to design a consensus protocol, one should know whether or not there exists such ...a protocol that has the ability to make the MAS involved consensus. This technical note is aimed at studying the joint impact of the agent dynamic structure and the communication topology on consensusability. For the MASs with fixed topology and agents described by linear time-invariant systems, a necessary condition of consensusability with respect to a set of admissible consensus protocols is given, which is shown, under some mild conditions, to be necessary and sufficient.
The central nervous system (CNS) contains a sophisticated neural network that must be constantly surveyed in order to detect and mitigate a diverse array of challenges. The innate and adaptive immune ...systems actively participate in this surveillance, which is critical for the maintenance of CNS homeostasis and can facilitate the resolution of infections, degeneration, and tissue damage. Infections and sterile injuries represent two common challenges imposed on the CNS that require a prompt immune response. While the inducers of these two challenges differ in origin, the resultant responses orchestrated by the CNS share some overlapping features. Here, we review how the CNS immunologically discriminates between pathogens and sterile injuries, mobilizes an immune reaction, and, ultimately, regulates local and peripherally-derived immune cells to provide a supportive milieu for tissue repair.
Injury is a key driver of inflammation, a critical yet necessary response involving several mediators that is aimed at restoring tissue homeostasis. Inflammation in the central nervous system can be ...triggered by a variety of stimuli, some intrinsic to the brain and others arising from peripheral signals. Fine-tuned regulation of this response is crucial in a system that is vulnerable due to, for example, aging and ongoing neurodegeneration. In this context, seemingly harmless interventions like a common surgery to repair a broken limb can overwhelm the immune system and become the driver of further complications such as delirium and other perioperative neurocognitive disorders. Here, we discuss potential mechanisms by which the immune system affects the central nervous system after surgical trauma. Together, these neuroimmune interactions are becoming hallmarks of and potential therapeutic targets for multiple neurologic conditions, including those affecting the perioperative space.
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