Andreas Tolk

Enver Yücesan

John Fowler

Guodong Shao

​This broad-ranging text/reference presents a fascinating review of the state of the art of modeling and simulation, highlighting both the seminal work of preeminent authorities and exciting developments from promising young researchers in the field. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of system simulation, the book showcases the historical importance of this influential conference while also looking forward to a bright future for the simulation community. Topics and features: examines the challenge of constructing valid and efficient models, emphasizing the benefits of the process of simulation modeling; discusses model calibration, input model risk, and approaches to validating emergent behaviors in large-scale complex systems with non-linear interactions; reviews the evolution of simulation languages, and the history of the Time Warp algorithm; offers a focus on the design and analysis of simulation experiments under various goals, and describes how data can be “farmed” to support decision making; provides a comprehensive overview of Bayesian belief models for simulation-based decision making, and introduces a model for ranking and selection in cloud computing; highlights how input model uncertainty impacts simulation optimization, and proposes an approach to quantify and control the impact of input model risk; surveys the applications of simulation in semiconductor manufacturing, in social and behavioral modeling, and in military planning and training; presents data analysis on the publications from the Winter Simulation Conference, offering a big-data perspective on the significant impact of the conference. This informative and inspiring volume will appeal to all academics and professionals interested in computational and mathematical modeling and simulation, as well as to graduate students on the path to form the next generation of WSC pioneers.

Seminal Research from 50 Years of Winter Simulation Conferences

Advances in Modeling and Simulation

Address of John Fowler, Esq. President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, on Taking the Chair ... After His Election, January 9, 1866

For the first time, a riveting insider's account of the fascinating world of Dr. Dian Fossey’s mountain gorilla camp, telling the often-shocking story of the unraveling of Fossey’s Rwandan facility alongside adventures tracking mountain gorillas over hostile terrain, confronting aggressive silverbacks, and rehabilitating orphaned baby gorillas. In A Forest in the Clouds, John Fowler takes us into the world of Karisoke Research Center, the remote mountain gorilla camp of Dr. Dian Fossey, a few years prior to her gruesome murder. Drawn to the adventure and promise of learning the science of studying mountain gorillas amid the beauty of Central Africa’s cloud forest, Fowler soon learns the cold harsh realities of life inside Fossey’s enclave ten thousand feet up in the Virunga Volcanoes. Instead of the intrepid scientist he had admired in the pages of National Geographic, Fowler finds a chain-smoking, hard-drinking woman bullying her staff into submission. While pressures mount from powers beyond Karisoke in an effort to extricate Fossey from her domain of thirteen years, she brings new students in to serve her most pressing need—to hang on to the remote research camp that has become her mountain home. Increasingly bizarre behavior has targeted Fossey for extrication by an ever-growing group of detractors—from conservation and research organizations to the Rwandan government. Amid the turmoil, Fowler must abandon his own research assignments to assuage the troubled Fossey as she orders him on illegal treks across the border into Zaire, over volcanoes, in search of missing gorillas, and to serve as surrogate parent to an orphaned baby ape in preparation for its traumatic re-introduction into a wild gorilla group. This riveting story is the only first-person account from inside Dian Fossey’s beleaguered camp. Fowler must come to grips with his own aspirations, career objectives, and disappointments as he develops the physical endurance to keep up with mountain gorillas over volcanic terrain in icy downpours above ten thousand feet, only to be affronted by the frightening charges of indignant giant silverbacks or to be treed by aggressive forest buffalos. Back in camp, he must nurture the sensitivity and patience needed for the demands of rehabilitating an orphaned baby gorilla. A Forest in the Clouds takes the armchair adventurer on a journey into an extraordinary world that now only exists in the memories of the very few who knew it.

A Forest in the Clouds: My Year Among the Mountain Gorillas in the Remote Enclave of Dian Fossey

English Decoration in the 18th Century

Iain Boyd Whyte

Benjamin Baker

Aonaghus Iain MacDhomhnuill

Angus J. Macdonald

Colin Baxter

When the Forth Bridge opened on 4 March 1890, it was the longest railway bridge in the world and the first large structure made of steel. Crossing the wide Firth of Forth west of Edinburgh in Scotland, it represents one of the greatest engineering triumphs of Victorian Britain, man's victory over the intractable topography of land and water. Not surprisingly, such a vigorous rebuff of the natural order was condemned at the time by those late Victorians who resisted the march of technology, and William Morris described the Bridge as the "supremest specimen of all ugliness". In response, Benjamin Baker insisted that its beauty lay in its functional elegance. Contrasting the bridge with the only comparable structure of the period, the Eiffel Tower, he concluded: "The Eiffel Tower is a foolish piece of work, ugly, ill-proportioned and of no real use to anyone." But the beauty and fascination of the Forth Bridge lies not simply in its functional performance, but in its scale and power. Over a mile long and higher than the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, it rivals the natural phenomena that the philosophers of the 18th century identified as sources of sublime beauty. Immanuel Kant pointed to hurricanes, boundless oceans and high waterfalls as objects of sublime contemplation, "because they raise the forces of the soul above the heights of the vulgar commonplace, and discover within us a power of resistance of quite another kind, which gives us courage to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of nature". In the 19th century the awe-inspiring feats of nature were rivalled by the inventions of the engineers, and the thrill of the waterfall or the lightning flash was eclipsed by the sight of the roaring locomotive dashing across the majestic span of the Forth Bridge.

John Fowler, Benjamin Baker, Forth Bridge

John Fowler

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