Since its first appearance in 2008, this book has changed the landscape of Virgilian studies. Analysing closely the logic and the literary genres of Virgil's three poems, it politely confronts the modern orthodoxy that Virgil signalled distaste for the methods of his ruler, Octavian-Augustus. It refreshes the study of Virgil's poetry by comparing it with the detail (normally neglected by scholars) of Rome's civil wars after Julius Caesar's death, when Octavian's survival looked highly unlikely. And it argues that Virgil wrote as a passionate - and brave - partisan of Octavian, who - like a good lawyer - confronted his patron's undeniable failings in order to defend. Awarded in 2011 the prize of the Vergilian Society for 'the book that makes the greatest contribution toward our understanding and appreciation of Virgil'.

Since 1980, in-the-know computer gamers have been enthralled by the unpredictable, random, and incredibly deep gameplay of Rogue and those games inspired by it, known to fans as "roguelikes." For decades, this venerable genre was off the radar of most players and developers for a variety of reasons: deceptively simple graphics (often just text characters), high difficulty, and their demand that a player brings more of themselves to the game than your typical AAA title asks. This book covers many of the most prominent titles and explains in great detail what makes them interesting, the ways to get started playing them, the history of the genre, and more. It includes interviews, playthroughs, and hundreds of screenshots. It is a labor of love: if even a fraction of the author's enthusiasm for these games gets through these pages to you, then you will enjoy it a great deal. Key Features: Playing tips and strategy for newcomers to the genre Core roguelikes Rogue, Angband, NetHack, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, ADOM, and Brogue The "lost roguelikes" Super Rogue and XRogue, and the early RPG dnd for PLATO systems The Japanese console roguelikes Taloon's Mystery Dungeon and Shiren the Wanderer Lesser-known but extremely interesting games like Larn, DoomRL, HyperRogue, Incursion, and Dungeon Hack "Rogue-ish" games that blur the edges of the genre, including Spelunky, HyperRogue, ToeJam & Earl, Defense of the Oasis, Out There, and Zelda Randomizer Interviews with such developers as Keith Burgun (100 Rogues and Auro), Rodain Joubert (Desktop Dungeons), Josh Ge (Cogmind), Dr. Thomas Biskup (ADOM), and Robin Bandy (devnull public NetHack tournament) An interview regarding Strange Adventures in Infinite Space Design issues of interest to developers and enthusiasts Author Bio: John Harris has bumped around the Internet for more than 20 years. In addition to writing the columns @Play and Pixel Journeys for GameSetWatch and developer interviews for Gamasutra, he has spoken at Roguelike Celebration. John Harris has a MA in English Literature from Georgia Southern University.

This study centers on issues of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. In the middle ages, geography was viewed as divinely ordered, so Britain's location at the periphery of the inhabitable world caused anxiety among its inhabitants. Far from the world's holy center, the geographic margins were considered monstrous. Medieval geography, for centuries scorned as crude, is now the subject of several careful studies. Monsters have likewise been the subject of recent attention in the growing field of "monster studies," though few works situate these creatures firmly in their specific historical contexts. This book sits at the crossroads of these two discourses (geography and monstrosity), treated separately in the established scholarship but inseparable in the minds of medieval authors and artists.

Before the enormously successful NES console changed the video game landscape in the 1980s, Nintendo became famous for producing legendary arcade machines like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. Drawing on original interviews, news reports and other documents, this book traces Nintendo's rise from a small business that made playing cards to the top name in the arcade industry. Twenty-eight game titles are examined in-depth, along with the people and events that defined the company for more than four decades.

The Meaning of Video Games takes a textual studies approach to an increasingly important form of expression in today's culture. It begins by assuming that video games are meaningful-not just as sociological or economic or cultural evidence, but in their own right, as cultural expressions worthy of scholarly attention. In this way, this book makes a contribution to the study of video games, but it also aims to enrich textual studies. Early video game studies scholars were quick to point out that a game should never be reduced to merely its "story" or narrative content and they rightly insist on the importance of studying games as games. But here Steven E. Jones demonstrates that textual studies-which grows historically out of ancient questions of textual recension, multiple versions, production, reproduction, and reception-can fruitfully be applied to the study of video games. Citing specific examples such as Myst and Lost, Katamari Damacy, Halo, Facade, Nintendo's Wii, and Will Wright's Spore, the book explores the ways in which textual studies concepts-authorial intention, textual variability and performance, the paratext, publishing history and the social text-can shed light on video games as more than formal systems. It treats video games as cultural forms of expression that are received as they are played, out in the world, where their meanings get made.

Architecture for the Commons dives into an analysis of how the tectonics of a building is fundamentally linked to the economic organizations that allow them to exist. By tracing the origins and promises of current technological practices in design, the book provides an alternative path, one that reconsiders the means of achieving complexity through combinatorial strategies. This move requires reconsidering serial production with crowdsourcing and user content in mind. The ideas presented will be explored through the design research developed within Plethora Project, a design practice that explores the use of video game interfaces as a mechanism for participation and user design. The research work presented throughout the book seeks to align with a larger project that is currently taking place in many different fields: The Construction of the Commons. By developing both the ideological and physical infrastructure, the project of the Commons has become an antidote to current economic practices that perpetuate inequality. The mechanisms of the production and governance of the Commons are discussed, inviting the reader to get involved and participate in the discussion. The current political and economic landscape calls for a reformulation of our current economic practices and alternative value systems that challenge the current market monopolies. This book will be of great interest not only to architects and designers studying the impact of digital technologies in the field of design but also to researchers studying novel techniques for social participation and cooperating of communities through digital networks. The book connects principles of architecture, economics and social sciences to provide alternatives to the current production trends.

The use of new media in the service of cultural heritage is a fast growing field, known variously as virtual or digital heritage. New Heritage, under this denomination, broadens the definition of the field to address the complexity of cultural heritage such as the related social, political and economic issues. This book is a collection of 20 key essays, of authors from 11 countries, representing a wide range of professions including architecture, philosophy, history, cultural heritage management, new media, museology and computer science, which examine the application of new media to cultural heritage from a different points of view. Issues surrounding heritage interpretation to the public and the attempts to capture the essence of both tangible (buildings, monuments) and intangible (customs, rituals) cultural heritage are investigated in a series of innovative case studies.

A unifying foundation to design and implement process-aware information systems
This publication takes on the formidable task of establishing a unifying foundation and set of common underlying principles to effectively model, design, and implement process-aware information systems. Authored by leading authorities and pioneers in the field, Process-Aware Information Systems helps readers gain a thorough understanding of major concepts, languages, and techniques for building process-aware applications, including:
* UML and EPCs: two of the most widely used notations for business process modeling
* Concrete techniques for process design and analysis
* Process execution standards: WfMC and BPEL
* Representative commercial tools: ARIS, TIBCO Staffware, and FLOWer
Each chapter begins with a description of the problem domain and then progressively unveils relevant concepts and techniques. Examples and illustrations are used extensively to clarify and simplify complex material. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises, ranging from simple questions to thought-provoking assignments. Sample solutions for many of the exercises are available on the companion Web site.
Armed with a new and deeper understanding, readers are better positioned to make their own contributions to the field and evaluate various approaches to a particular task or problem. This publication is recommended as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in computer science and information systems, as well as for professionals involved in workflow and business process management, groupware and teamwork, enterprise application integration, and business-to-business integration.
A Solution's Manual is available online. An Instructor Support FTP site is also available.

Mobile Multimedia in Action displays a revealing picture of how people communicate using camera phones and other mobile multimedia devices. With such devices spreading faster than practically any other new technology, questions about how these devices are being used (and abused) to capture and distribute embarrassing or raunchy images and content, and what should be done about it, are surfacing. This volume presents the first detailed study of the use of these devices. Using a variant of social science research known as ethnomethodology, Koskinen explores the kinds of images people take with camera phones and how they use sound to enhance these images. The book asks two main questions. First, what kinds of methods of expression, such as visuals or sound, do people use when they design multimedia messages? Second, how do people interact with and respond to each other through mobile multimedia devices? Koskinen has a broader objective centering on the impact of these devices on human relationships and society at large. He asks, what do people do with these devices? Is mobile telephony moving toward a more practical direction, or will it simply become a visual chatty channel fit for gossip but not for real news or other practical purposes? What kind of social activities and organizations does it best serve--peer-to-peer networks or institutional ones? Koskinen examines these questions from three unique perspectives: the design elements of mobile multimedia, which considers methods of expression people use in designing multimedia messages; mobile multimedia as interaction, which looks into how people interact with each other using this technology and makes a case for studying multimedia as a naturally occurring activity; and mobile multimedia in society, which searches for answers as to the societal consequences of mobile multimedia usage. A groundbreaking work, "Mobile Multimedia in Action" will be a fascinating read for both multimedia device professionals and everyday users alike. Providing a glimpse into the future, Koskinen asks where mobile multimedia technology is taking mankind and society.

Get ready to take flight as two certified flight instructors guide you through the pilot ratings as it is done in the real world, starting with Sport Pilot training, then Private Pilot, followed by the Instrument Rating, Commercial Pilot, and Air Transport Pilot. They cover the skills of flight, how to master Flight Simulator, and how to use the software as a learning tool towards your pilot's license. More advanced topics demonstrate how Flight Simulator X can be used as a continuing learning tool and how to simulate real-world emergencies.

First published in 2001, this volume demonstrates how computer-based learning has the potential to provide a highly motivating learning experience, that it also has the potential to achieve exactly the opposite, and that the difference between these two extremes is the quality of the learning design. The challenge for the learning designer isn't a simple one. You are being asked to prepare interactive learning for someone you can't see and with whom the only interaction you are likely to have is via limited written communication. Fortunately help is at hand in Alan Clarke's Designing Computer-Based Learning Materials. Dr. Clarke offers a definitive guide to each of the many elements involved in good design. This book explores the principles of adult learning, and relates to the potential, features and impact of computer-based learning. This is not a 'how to...' book, but rather one seeking to help you understand the different elements which go into computer-based learning. If you are commissioning material, it will help you to understand the contractors' constraints. If you are designing materials yourself, it will allow you to avoid many of the errors it is all too easy to make when developing them. Computer-based learning materials are not all the same: their range reflects the variety of learners that use them and purposes they are used for; the different learning environments that are available to people; the different subjects that they wish to learn and the level to which they wish to take them. In the face of such a complex task, involving so many factors and variables, it is essential that the learning designer understands what is involved and uses a rigorous process for envisioning, planning, designing, implementing and testing their solution. This is a book about learning design and not about software production and, as such, it provides any aspiring designers with the fundamentals of producing the highly motivating learning experience, which should be their objective.

The Filmmaker's Guide to Final Cut Pro Workflow is the comprehensive roadmap to affordable postproduction workflow using Final Cut Pro, Cinema Tools, and Pro Tools. Illuminating workflow and the interrelationship of these software applications, it also focuses on cost saving and efficiency, aiding low-budget, independent moviemakers as well as students trying to take their skills to the professional level.
Author Dale Angell offers a practical guide to complete film postproduction workflow, describing low-cost workflow that can be used for 35mm film, High Definition digital video, or DV/Red Camera.
The Filmmaker's Guide to Final Cut Pro Workflow will help the independent filmmaker working on a tight budget:
-Understand capturing picture when shooting on film or digital video
-Finishing the project on either film or video
-Audio edit workflows for both film and video
-Comprehend NTSC and PAL video as well as modern digital video formats
-Understand timecode and the file architecture in Final Cut Pro, Cinema Tools, and Pro Tools
* A practical guide to a complete film postproduction workflow that integrates FCP, Cinema Tools and Pro Tools
* Describes a low-cost workflow that can be used for 35mm film, High Definition digital, or DV/Red Camera
* Appendices detail all current video formats and timecode formats with descriptions and uses, and example workflows from low budget films

The Digital Gaming Handbook covers the state-of-the-art in video and digital game research and development, from traditional to emerging elements of gaming across multiple disciplines. Chapters are presented with applicability across all gaming platforms over a broad range of topics, from game content creation through gameplay at a level accessible for the professional game developer while being deep enough to provide a valuable reference of the state-of-the-art research in this field. Key Features: International experts share their research and experience in game development and design Provides readers with inside perspectives on the cross-disciplinary aspects of the industry Includes retrospective and forward-looking examinations of gaming Editor: Dr. Roberto Dillon is a leading game studies educator with more than 15 years of experience in the field of game design and development.

Software is more than a set of instructions for computers: it enables (and disables) political imperatives and policies. Nowhere is the potential for radical social and political change more apparent than in the practice and movement known as "free software." Free software makes the knowledge and innovation of its creators publicly available. This liberation of code-celebrated in free software's explicatory slogan "Think free speech, not free beer"-is the foundation, for example, of the Linux phenomenon. Decoding Liberation provides a synoptic perspective on the relationships between free software and freedom. Focusing on five main themes-the emancipatory potential of technology, social liberties, the facilitation of creativity, the objectivity of computing as scientific practice, and the role of software in a cyborg world-the authors ask: What are the freedoms of free software, and how are they manifested? This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how free software promises to transform not only technology but society as well.

Developments in Geographic Information Technology have raised the expectations of users. A static map is no longer enough; there is now demand for a dynamic representation. Time is of great importance when operating on real world geographical phenomena, especially when these are dynamic. Researchers in the field of Temporal Geographical Information Systems (TGIS) have been developing methods of incorporating time into geographical information systems. Spatio-temporal analysis embodies spatial modelling, spatio-temporal modelling and spatial reasoning and data mining. Advances in Spatio-Temporal Analysis contributes to the field of spatio-temporal analysis, presenting innovative ideas and examples that reflect current progress and achievements.

Packed with more than 350 techniques, this book delivers what you need to know-on the spot. Its concise presentation of professional techniques is suited to experienced artists whether you are:
*Migrating from another visual effects application
*Upgrading to Houdini 9
*Seeking a handy reference to raise your proficiency with Houdini
Houdini On the Spot presents immediate solutions in an accessible format. It clearly illustrates the essential methods that pros use to get the job done efficiently and creatively. Screenshots and step-by-step instructions show you how to:
*Navigate and manipulate the version 9 interface
*Create procedural models that can be modified quickly and efficiently with Surface Operators (SOPs)
*Use Particle Operators (POPs) to build complex simulations with speed and precision
*Minimize the number of operators in your simulations with Dynamics Operators (DOPs)
*Extend Houdini with customized tools to include data or scripts with Houdini Digital Assets (HDAs)
*Master the version 9 rendering options including Physically Based Rendering (PBR), volume rendering and motion blur
*Quickly modify timing, geometry, space and rotational values of your animations with Channel Operators (CHOPs)
*Create and manipulate elements with Composite Operators (COPs); Houdini's full-blown compositor toolset
*Make your own SOPs, COPs, POPs, CHOPs, and shaders with the Vector Expressions (VEX) shading language
*Configure the Houdini interface with customized environments and hotkeys
*Mine the treasures of the dozens of standalone applications that are bundled with Houdini
-Boost your efficiency and creativity
-Find immediatesolutions in an accessible format
-Unleash the power of Houdini with unpublished techniques

Using Microsoft Excel, the market leading spreadsheet package, this book combines theory with modelling aspects and spreadsheet analysis. Microeconomics Using Excel provides students with the tools with which to better understand microeconomic analysis. It focuses on solving microeconomic problems by integrating economic theory, policy analysis and spreadsheet modelling. This unique approach facilitates a more comprehensive understanding of the link between theory and problem solving. It is divided into four core parts: analysis of price policies analysis of structural policies multi-market models budget policy and priority settings. The theory behind each problem is explained and each model is solved using Excel. Microeconomics using Excel will be of great interest to students studying economics as well as to professionals in economic and policy analysis. Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this book but regrets to inform the customer that previously available online resources are no longer available with this title.

Introduction to Visual Computing: Core Concepts in Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing covers the fundamental concepts of visual computing. Whereas past books have treated these concepts within the context of specific fields such as computer graphics, computer vision or image processing, this book offers a unified view of these core concepts, thereby providing a unified treatment of computational and mathematical methods for creating, capturing, analyzing and manipulating visual data (e.g. 2D images, 3D models). Fundamentals covered in the book include convolution, Fourier transform, filters, geometric transformations, epipolar geometry, 3D reconstruction, color and the image synthesis pipeline. The book is organized in four parts. The first part provides an exposure to different kinds of visual data (e.g. 2D images, videos and 3D geometry) and the core mathematical techniques that are required for their processing (e.g. interpolation and linear regression.) The second part of the book on Image Based Visual Computing deals with several fundamental techniques to process 2D images (e.g. convolution, spectral analysis and feature detection) and corresponds to the low level retinal image processing that happens in the eye in the human visual system pathway. The next part of the book on Geometric Visual Computing deals with the fundamental techniques used to combine the geometric information from multiple eyes creating a 3D interpretation of the object and world around us (e.g. transformations, projective and epipolar geometry, and 3D reconstruction). This corresponds to the higher level processing that happens in the brain combining information from both the eyes thereby helping us to navigate through the 3D world around us. The last two parts of the book cover Radiometric Visual Computing and Visual Content Synthesis. These parts focus on the fundamental techniques for processing information arising from the interaction of light with objects around us, as well as the fundamentals of creating virtual computer generated worlds that mimic all the processing presented in the prior sections. The book is written for a 16 week long semester course and can be used for both undergraduate and graduate teaching, as well as a reference for professionals.

From the Foreword: "While large-scale machine learning and data mining have greatly impacted a range of commercial applications, their use in the field of Earth sciences is still in the early stages. This book, edited by Ashok Srivastava, Ramakrishna Nemani, and Karsten Steinhaeuser, serves as an outstanding resource for anyone interested in the opportunities and challenges for the machine learning community in analyzing these data sets to answer questions of urgent societal interest...I hope that this book will inspire more computer scientists to focus on environmental applications, and Earth scientists to seek collaborations with researchers in machine learning and data mining to advance the frontiers in Earth sciences." --Vipin Kumar, University of Minnesota Large-Scale Machine Learning in the Earth Sciences provides researchers and practitioners with a broad overview of some of the key challenges in the intersection of Earth science, computer science, statistics, and related fields. It explores a wide range of topics and provides a compilation of recent research in the application of machine learning in the field of Earth Science. Making predictions based on observational data is a theme of the book, and the book includes chapters on the use of network science to understand and discover teleconnections in extreme climate and weather events, as well as using structured estimation in high dimensions. The use of ensemble machine learning models to combine predictions of global climate models using information from spatial and temporal patterns is also explored. The second part of the book features a discussion on statistical downscaling in climate with state-of-the-art scalable machine learning, as well as an overview of methods to understand and predict the proliferation of biological species due to changes in environmental conditions. The problem of using large-scale machine learning to study the formation of tornadoes is also explored in depth. The last part of the book covers the use of deep learning algorithms to classify images that have very high resolution, as well as the unmixing of spectral signals in remote sensing images of land cover. The authors also apply long-tail distributions to geoscience resources, in the final chapter of the book.

Software Engineering for Science provides an in-depth collection of peer-reviewed chapters that describe experiences with applying software engineering practices to the development of scientific software. It provides a better understanding of how software engineering is and should be practiced, and which software engineering practices are effective for scientific software. The book starts with a detailed overview of the Scientific Software Lifecycle, and a general overview of the scientific software development process. It highlights key issues commonly arising during scientific software development, as well as solutions to these problems. The second part of the book provides examples of the use of testing in scientific software development, including key issues and challenges. The chapters then describe solutions and case studies aimed at applying testing to scientific software development efforts. The final part of the book provides examples of applying software engineering techniques to scientific software, including not only computational modeling, but also software for data management and analysis. The authors describe their experiences and lessons learned from developing complex scientific software in different domains. About the Editors Jeffrey Carver is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Alabama. He is one of the primary organizers of the workshop series on Software Engineering for Science (http://www.SE4Science.org/workshops). Neil P. Chue Hong is Director of the Software Sustainability Institute at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include barriers and incentives in research software ecosystems and the role of software as a research object. George K. Thiruvathukal is Professor of Computer Science at Loyola University Chicago and Visiting Faculty at Argonne National Laboratory. His current research is focused on software metrics in open source mathematical and scientific software.

Human Capital Systems, Analytics, and Data Mining provides human capital professionals, researchers, and students with a comprehensive and portable guide to human capital systems, analytics and data mining. The main purpose of this book is to provide a rich tool set of methods and tutorials for Human Capital Management Systems (HCMS) database modeling, analytics, interactive dashboards, and data mining that is independent of any human capital software vendor offerings and is equally usable and portable among both commercial and internally developed HCMS. The book begins with an overview of HCMS, including coverage of human resource systems history and current HCMS Computing Environments. It next explores relational and dimensional database management concepts and principles. HCMS Instructional databases developed by the Author for use in Graduate Level HCMS and Compensation Courses are used for database modeling and dashboard design exercises. Exciting knowledge discovery and research Tutorials and Exercises using Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and data mining tools through replication of actual original pay equity research by the author are included. New findings concerning Gender Based Pay Equity Research through the lens Comparable Worth and Occupational Mobility are covered extensively in Human Capital Metrics, Analytics and Data Mining Chapters.

"A stereotype of computer science textbooks is that they are dry, boring, and sometimes even intimidating. As a result, they turn students' interests off from the subject matter instead of enticing them into it. This textbook is the opposite of such a stereotype. The author presents the subject matter in a refreshing story-telling style and aims to bring the Internet-generation of students closer to her stories." --Yingcai Xiao, The University of Akron Introduction to Middleware: Web Services, Object Components, and Cloud Computing provides a comparison of different middleware technologies and the overarching middleware concepts they are based on. The various major paradigms of middleware are introduced and their pros and cons are discussed. This includes modern cloud interfaces, including the utility of Service Oriented Architectures. The text discusses pros and cons of RESTful vs. non-RESTful web services, and also compares these to older but still heavily used distributed object/component middleware. The text guides readers to select an appropriate middleware technology to use for any given task, and to learn new middleware technologies as they appear over time without being greatly overwhelmed by any new concept. The book begins with an introduction to different distributed computing paradigms, and a review of the different kinds of architectures, architectural styles/patterns, and properties that various researchers have used in the past to examine distributed applications and determine the quality of distributed applications. Then it includes appropriate background material in networking and the web, security, and encoding necessary to understand detailed discussion in this area. The major middleware paradigms are compared, and a comparison methodology is developed. Readers will learn how to select a paradigm and technology for a particular task, after reading this text. Detailed middleware technology review sections allow students or industry practitioners working to expand their knowledge to achieve practical skills based on real projects so as to become well-functional in that technology in industry. Major technologies examined include: RESTful web services (RESTful cloud interfaces such as OpenStack, AWS EC2 interface, CloudStack; AJAX, JAX-RS, ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Core), non-RESTful (SOAP and WSDL-based) web services (JAX-WS, Windows Communication Foundation), distributed objects/ components (Enterprise Java Beans, .NET Remoting, CORBA). The book presents two projects that can be used to illustrate the practical use of middleware, and provides implementations of these projects over different technologies. This versatile and class-tested textbook is suitable (depending on chapters selected) for undergraduate or first-year graduate courses on client server architectures, middleware, and cloud computing, web services, and web programming.

Mobile Cloud Computing: Models, Implementation, and Security provides a comprehensive introduction to mobile cloud computing, including key concepts, models, and relevant applications. The book focuses on novel and advanced algorithms, as well as mobile app development. The book begins with an overview of mobile cloud computing concepts, models, and service deployments, as well as specific cloud service models. It continues with the basic mechanisms and principles of mobile computing, as well as virtualization techniques. The book also introduces mobile cloud computing architecture, design, key techniques, and challenges. The second part of the book covers optimizations of data processing and storage in mobile clouds, including performance and green clouds. The crucial optimization algorithm in mobile cloud computing is also explored, along with big data and service computing. Security issues in mobile cloud computing are covered in-depth, including a brief introduction to security and privacy issues and threats, as well as privacy protection techniques in mobile systems. The last part of the book features the integration of service-oriented architecture with mobile cloud computing. It discusses web service specifications related to implementations of mobile cloud computing. The book not only presents critical concepts in mobile cloud systems, but also drives readers to deeper research, through open discussion questions. Practical case studies are also included. Suitable for graduate students and professionals, this book provides a detailed and timely overview of mobile cloud computing for a broad range of readers.

This book presents recent developments on the theoretical, algorithmic, and application aspects of Big Data in Complex and Social Networks. The book consists of four parts, covering a wide range of topics. The first part of the book focuses on data storage and data processing. It explores how the efficient storage of data can fundamentally support intensive data access and queries, which enables sophisticated analysis. It also looks at how data processing and visualization help to communicate information clearly and efficiently. The second part of the book is devoted to the extraction of essential information and the prediction of web content. The book shows how Big Data analysis can be used to understand the interests, location, and search history of users and provide more accurate predictions of User Behavior. The latter two parts of the book cover the protection of privacy and security, and emergent applications of big data and social networks. It analyzes how to model rumor diffusion, identify misinformation from massive data, and design intervention strategies. Applications of big data and social networks in multilayer networks and multiparty systems are also covered in-depth.

Computer simulations based on mathematical models have become ubiquitous across the engineering disciplines and throughout the physical sciences. Successful use of a simulation model, however, requires careful interrogation of the model through systematic computer experiments. While specific theoretical/mathematical examinations of computer experiment design are available, those interested in applying proposed methodologies need a practical presentation and straightforward guidance on analyzing and interpreting experiment results. Written by authors with strong academic reputations and real-world practical experience, Design and Modeling for Computer Experiments is exactly the kind of treatment you need. The authors blend a sound, modern statistical approach with extensive engineering applications and clearly delineate the steps required to successfully model a problem and provide an analysis that will help find the solution. Part I introduces the design and modeling of computer experiments and the basic concepts used throughout the book. Part II focuses on the design of computer experiments. The authors present the most popular space-filling designs - like Latin hypercube sampling and its modifications and uniform design - including their definitions, properties, construction and related generating algorithms. Part III discusses the modeling of data from computer experiments. Here the authors present various modeling techniques and discuss model interpretation, including sensitivity analysis. An appendix reviews the statistics and mathematics concepts needed, and numerous examples clarify the techniques and their implementation. The complexity of real physical systems means that there is usually no simple analytic formula that sufficiently describes the phenomena. Useful both as a textbook and professional reference, this book presents the techniques you need to design and model computer experiments for practical problem solving.