"This book highlights the development of robust and effective vision-based motion understanding systems, addressing specific vision applications such as surveillance, sport event analysis, healthcare, video conferencing, and motion video indexing and retrieval"--Provided by publisher.

This is just...entropy, he said, thinking that this explained everything, and he repeated the strange word a few times. 1 ? Karel Capek , “Krakatit” This “strange word” denotes one of the most basic quantities of the physics of heat phenomena, that is, of thermodynamics. Although the concept of entropy did indeed originate in thermodynamics, it later became clear that it was a more universal concept, of fundamental signi?cance for chemistry and biology, as well as physics. Although the concept of energy is usually considered more important and easier to grasp, it turns out, as we shall see, that the idea of entropy is just as substantial—and moreover not all that complicated. We can compute or measure the quantity of energy contained in this sheet of paper, and the same is true of its entropy. Furthermore, entropy has remarkable properties. Our galaxy, the solar system, and the biosphere all take their being from entropy, as a result of its transferenceto the surrounding medium. Thereis a surprisingconnectionbetween entropyandinformation,thatis,thetotalintelligencecommunicatedbyamessage. All of this is expounded in the present book, thereby conveying informationto the readeranddecreasinghis entropy;butitis uptothe readertodecidehowvaluable this information might be.

"How to think like a computer scientist"--Cover.

This textbook and guide focuses on methodologies for bias analysis in epidemiology and public health, not only providing updates to the first edition but also further developing methods and adding new advanced methods. As computational power available to analysts has improved and epidemiologic problems have become more advanced, missing data, Bayes, and empirical methods have become more commonly used. This new edition features updated examples throughout and adds coverage addressing: Measurement error pertaining to continuous and polytomous variables Methods surrounding person-time (rate) data Bias analysis using missing data, empirical (likelihood), and Bayes methods A unique feature of this revision is its section on best practices for implementing, presenting, and interpreting bias analyses. Pedagogically, the text guides students and professionals through the planning stages of bias analysis, including the design of validation studies and the collection of validity data from other sources. Three chapters present methods for corrections to address selection bias, uncontrolled confounding, and measurement errors, and subsequent sections extend these methods to probabilistic bias analysis, missing data methods, likelihood-based approaches, Bayesian methods, and best practices.

Information Theory and Evolution discusses the phenomenon of life, including its origin and evolution (and also human cultural evolution), against the background of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Among the central themes is the seeming contradiction between the second law of thermodynamics and the high degree of order and complexity produced by living systems. This paradox has its resolution in the information content of the Gibbs free energy that enters the biosphere from outside sources, as the author will show. The role of information in human cultural evolution is another focus of the book. The first edition of Information Theory and Evolution made a strong impact on thought in the field by bringing together results from many disciplines. The new second edition offers updated results based on reports of important new research in several areas, including exciting new studies of the human mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA. Another extensive discussion featured in the second edition is contained in a new appendix devoted to the relationship of entropy and Gibbs free energy to economics. This appendix includes a review of the ideas of Alfred Lotka, Frederick Soddy, Nicholas Georgiescu-Roegen and Herman E. Daly, and discusses the relevance of these ideas to the current economic crisis. The new edition discusses current research on the origin of life, the distinction between thermodynamic information and cybernetic information, new DNA research and human prehistory, developments in current information technology, and the relationship between entropy and economics.

A First Course in Systems Biology is an introduction for advanced undergraduate and graduate students to the growing field of systems biology. Its main focus is the development of computational models and their applications to diverse biological systems. The book begins with the fundamentals of modeling, then reviews features of the molecular inventories that bring biological systems to life and discusses case studies that represent some of the frontiers in systems biology and synthetic biology. In this way, it provides the reader with a comprehensive background and access to methods for executing standard systems biology tasks, understanding the modern literature, and launching into specialized courses or projects that address biological questions using theoretical and computational means. New topics in this edition include: default modules for model design, limit cycles and chaos, parameter estimation in Excel, model representations of gene regulation through transcription factors, derivation of the Michaelis-Menten rate law from the original conceptual model, different types of inhibition, hysteresis, a model of differentiation, system adaptation to persistent signals, nonlinear nullclines, PBPK models, and elementary modes. The format is a combination of instructional text and references to primary literature, complemented by sets of small-scale exercises that enable hands-on experience, and large-scale, often open-ended questions for further reflection.

This book provides an elementary-level introduction to R, targeting both non-statistician scientists in various fields and students of statistics. The main mode of presentation is via code examples with liberal commenting of the code and the output, from the computational as well as the statistical viewpoint. Brief sections introduce the statistical methods before they are used. A supplementary R package can be downloaded and contains the data sets. All examples are directly runnable and all graphics in the text are generated from the examples. The statistical methodology covered includes statistical standard distributions, one- and two-sample tests with continuous data, regression analysis, one-and two-way analysis of variance, regression analysis, analysis of tabular data, and sample size calculations. In addition, the last four chapters contain introductions to multiple linear regression analysis, linear models in general, logistic regression, and survival analysis.

This 5th edition of this essential textbook continues to meet the growing demand of practitioners, researchers, educators, and students for a comprehensive introduction to key topics in biomedical informatics and the underlying scientific issues that sit at the intersection of biomedical science, patient care, public health and information technology (IT). Emphasizing the conceptual basis of the field rather than technical details, it provides the tools for study required for readers to comprehend, assess, and utilize biomedical informatics and health IT. It focuses on practical examples, a guide to additional literature, chapter summaries and a comprehensive glossary with concise definitions of recurring terms for self-study or classroom use. Biomedical Informatics: Computer Applications in Health Care and Biomedicine reflects the remarkable changes in both computing and health care that continue to occur and the exploding interest in the role that IT must play in care coordination and the melding of genomics with innovations in clinical practice and treatment. New and heavily revised chapters have been introduced on human-computer interaction, mHealth, personal health informatics and precision medicine, while the structure of the other chapters has undergone extensive revisions to reflect the developments in the area. The organization and philosophy remain unchanged, focusing on the science of information and knowledge management, and the role of computers and communications in modern biomedical research, health and health care.

Key coverage of new topics includes medical identity theft and prevention, National Quality Forum (NQF) patient safety measures, ACSX12 Version 5010 HIPAA transaction standards, EMS rule on mandatory electronic claims submission, and standards and implementation specifications for electronic health record technology. Increased emphasis on producing and submitting claims electronically gives you an edge in today’s competitive job market. UPDATED! Additional ICD-10 coding content prepares you for the upcoming switch to the new coding system. NEW! Content on ARRA, HI-TECH, and the Health Insurance Reform Act ensures you are familiar with the latest health care legislation and how it impacts what you do on the job.

"Practical recipes for visualizing data"--Cover.