This book was written and prepared at ICA (Applied Computational IntelligenceLaboratory) at PUC-Rio (Pontifical Catholic University), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Many people at ICA helped to make this book possible. We would like to express our deep gratitude to them in this effort.Firstly, thanks are due to people who contributed to this book in different sections with the results of their research work; these are (in alphabetical order): Rodrigo M.L.A. Costa, Maíra Ferreira de Noronha, Cristina Santini, Hélio Takahiro Sinohara,and Moisés Henrique Szwarcman.We are also deeply indebted to our undergraduate and postgraduate studentsCarlos Augusto Louzada Costa, Paulo Henrique Dargam, Lucas Ferraz, LaércioBrito Gonçalves, and Karla Tereza Figueiredo Leite who spent days of workformatting text, drawing figures, correcting typing, and so on.We would like to extend our thanks to the editors for their support andcomprehension.We also would like to acknowledge a series of grants received from Brazilianfunding agencies: CAPES, CNPq, and FAPERJ, which allowed us in many ways towrite this book.In this book we have included many citations from other published work, as wellas parts of our own published papers. We would like to acknowledge all permissionsreceived from their editors to use their material in this book.Finally, we would like to thank our institution PUC-Rio University and theDepartment of Electric Engineering for their support.