The phrase "information society" is one so ubiquitous it has become passe, but its continued use, even in academic spheres, indicates a shared acknowledgement: that information, in its myriad mercurial forms, has become so integrated into every facet of modern life that it must be considered first and foremost when making any attempt to describe the character of the age. TheHandbook of Research on Cultural and Economic Impacts of the Information Society brings together an international and interdisciplinary forum of scholars and researchers to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role that information plays in all aspects of modern society. Through case-studies and empirical analyses, this volume provides an audience of academics, researchers, students, and professionals with a timely and straightforward reference source on the role that information technology plays in such spheres as law enforcement, democracy, governance, finance, rural development, and more. Featuring empirical research and real-world case studies, this handbook explores concepts including, but not limited to, consumer culture, the impact of information and communication technologies on business innovation, cloud computing services, open and unrestricted data, and the potential value of affective computing.

Diversity in user queries makes it challenging for search engines to effectively return a set of relevant results. Both user intentions to search the web and types of queries are vastly varied; consequently, horizontal and vertical search engines are developed to answer user queries more efficiently. However, these search engines present a variety of problems in web searching. Result Page Generation for Web Searching: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference publication that focuses on taking advantages from text and web mining in order to address the issues of recommendation and visualization in web searching. Highlighting a wide range of topics such as navigational searching, resource identification, and ambiguous queries, this book is ideally designed for computer engineers, web designers, programmers, academicians, researchers, and students.

Network Function Virtualization provides an architectural, vendor-neutral level overview of the issues surrounding the large levels of data storage and transmission requirements needed for today's companies, also enumerating the benefits of NFV for the enterprise. Drawing upon years of practical experience, and using numerous examples and an easy-to-understand framework, authors Tom Nadeau and Ken Gary discuss the relevancy of NFV and how it can be effectively used to create and deploy new services. Readers will learn how to determine if network function virtualization is right for their enterprise network, be able to use hands-on, step-by-step guides to design, deploy, and manage NFV in an enterprise, and learn how to evaluate all relevant NFV standards, including ETSI, IETF, Openstack, and Open Daylight.

Complex Systems and Clouds: A Self-Organization and Self-Management Perspective provides insights into the intricate world of self-organizing systems. Large scale distributed computer systems have evolved into very complex systems and are at the point where they need to borrow self-adapting organizing concepts from nature. The book explores complexity in big distributed systems and in the natural processes in physics and chemistry, building a platform for understanding how self-organization in big distributed systems can be achieved. It goes beyond the theoretical description of self-organization to present principles for designing self-organizing systems, and concludes by showing the need for a paradigm shift in the development of large-scale systems from strictly deterministic to non-deterministic and adaptive.

Multinational organizations have begun to realize that sentiment mining plays an important role for decision making and market strategy. The revolutionary growth of digital marketing not only changes the market game, but also brings forth new opportunities for skilled professionals and expertise. Currently, the technologies are rapidly changing, and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are contributing as game-changing technologies. These are not only trending but are also increasingly popular among data scientists and data analysts. New Opportunities for Sentiment Analysis and Information Processing provides interdisciplinary research in information retrieval and sentiment analysis including studies on extracting sentiments from textual data, sentiment visualization-based dimensionality reduction for multiple features, and deep learning-based multi-domain sentiment extraction. The book also optimizes techniques used for sentiment identification and examines applications of sentiment analysis and emotion detection. Covering such topics as communication networks, natural language processing, and semantic analysis, this book is essential for data scientists, data analysts, IT specialists, scientists, researchers, academicians, and students.

The Data and Analytics Playbook: Proven Methods for Governed Data and Analytic Quality explores the way in which data continues to dominate budgets, along with the varying efforts made across a variety of business enablement projects, including applications, web and mobile computing, big data analytics, and traditional data integration. The book teaches readers how to use proven methods and accelerators to break through data obstacles to provide faster, higher quality delivery of mission critical programs. Drawing upon years of practical experience, and using numerous examples and an easy to understand playbook, Lowell Fryman, Gregory Lampshire, and Dan Meers discuss a simple, proven approach to the execution of multiple data oriented activities. In addition, they present a clear set of methods to provide reliable governance, controls, risk, and exposure management for enterprise data and the programs that rely upon it. In addition, they discuss a cost-effective approach to providing sustainable governance and quality outcomes that enhance project delivery, while also ensuring ongoing controls. Example activities, templates, outputs, resources, and roles are explored, along with different organizational models in common use today and the ways they can be mapped to leverage playbook data governance throughout the organization.

Cyber-Physical Systems: Foundations, Principles and Applications explores the core system science perspective needed to design and build complex cyber-physical systems. Using Systems Science's underlying theories, such as probability theory, decision theory, game theory, organizational sociology, behavioral economics, and cognitive psychology, the book addresses foundational issues central across CPS applications, including System Design -- How to design CPS to be safe, secure, and resilient in rapidly evolving environments, System Verification -- How to develop effective metrics and methods to verify and certify large and complex CPS, Real-time Control and Adaptation -- How to achieve real-time dynamic control and behavior adaptation in a diverse environments, such as clouds and in network-challenged spaces, Manufacturing -- How to harness communication, computation, and control for developing new products, reducing product concepts to realizable designs, and producing integrated software-hardware systems at a pace far exceeding today's timeline. The book is part of the Intelligent Data-Centric Systems: Sensor-Collected Intelligence series edited by Fatos Xhafa, Technical University of Catalonia. Indexing: The books of this series are submitted to EI-Compendex and SCOPUS

Communicable diseases have been an important part of human history. Epidemics afflicted populations, causing many deaths before gradually fading away and emerging again years after. Epidemics of infectious diseases are occurring more often, and spreading faster and further than ever, in many different regions of the world. The scientific community, in addition to its accelerated efforts to develop an effective treatment and vaccination, is also playing an important role in advising policymakers on possible non-pharmacological approaches to limit the catastrophic impact of epidemics using mathematical and machine learning models. Controlling Epidemics With Mathematical and Machine Learning Models provides mathematical and machine learning models for epidemical diseases, with special attention given to the COVID-19 pandemic. It gives mathematical proof of the stability and size of diseases. Covering topics such as compartmental models, reproduction number, and SIR model simulation, this premier reference source is an essential resource for statisticians, government officials, health professionals, epidemiologists, sociologists, students and educators of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

The security of information and communication technology is a high priority for any organization. By examining the current problems and challenges this domain is facing, more efficient strategies can be established to safeguard personal information against invasive pressures. Security and Privacy Management, Techniques, and Protocols is a critical scholarly resource that examines emerging protocols and methods for effective management of information security at organizations. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cryptography, secure routing protocols, and wireless security, this book is geared towards academicians, engineers, IT specialists, researchers, and students seeking current research on security and privacy management.

For any organization, analysis of performance and effectiveness through available data allows for informed decision making. Data envelopment analysis, or DEA, is a popular, effective method that can be used to measure productive efficiency in operations management assessment. Data Envelopment Analysis and Effective Performance Assessment addresses the myriad of practical uses and innovative developments of DEA. Emphasizing the importance of analyzing productivity by measuring inputs, goals, economic growth, and performance, this book covers a wide breadth of innovative knowledge. This book is essential reading for managers, business professionals, students of business and ICT, and computer engineers.

Large-scale interconnected systems have become more prominent in society due to a higher demand for sustainable development. As such, it is imperative to create effective methods and techniques to control such systems. Large-Scale Fuzzy Interconnected Control Systems Design and Analysis is an innovative source of academic research that discusses the latest approaches to control large-scale systems, and the challenges that occur when implementing them. Highlighting a critical range of topics such as system stability, system stabilization, and fuzzy rules, this book is an ideal publication for engineers, researchers, academics, graduate students, and practitioners interested in the design of large-scale interconnected systems.

For Database Systems and Database Design and Application courses offered at the junior, senior and graduate levels in Computer Science departments. Written by well-known computer scientists, this introduction to database systems offers a comprehensive approach, focusing on database design, database use, and implementation of database applications and database management systems. The first half of the book provides in-depth coverage of databases from the point of view of the database designer, user, and application programmer. It covers the latest database standards SQL:1999, SQL/PSM, SQL/CLI, JDBC, ODL, and XML, with broader coverage of SQL than most other texts. The second half of the book provides in-depth coverage of databases from the point of view of the DBMS implementor. It focuses on storage structures, query processing, and transaction management. The book covers the main techniques in these areas with broader coverage of query optimisation than most other texts, along with advanced topics including multidimensional and bitmap indexes, distributed transactions, and information integration techniques.

Usability Testing for Survey Research provides researchers with a guide to the tools necessary to evaluate, test, and modify surveys in an iterative method during the survey pretesting process. It includes examples that apply usability to any type of survey during any stage of development, along with tactics on how to tailor usability testing to meet budget and scheduling constraints. The book's authors distill their experience to provide tips on how usability testing can be applied to paper surveys, mixed-mode surveys, interviewer-administered tools, and additional products. Readers will gain an understanding of usability and usability testing and why it is needed for survey research, along with guidance on how to design and conduct usability tests, analyze and report findings, ideas for how to tailor usability testing to meet budget and schedule constraints, and new knowledge on how to apply usability testing to other survey-related products, such as project websites and interviewer administered tools.

The last half-decade has seen the rapid and expansive development of video game music studies. As with any new area of study, this significant sub-discipline is still tackling fundamental questions concerning how video game music should be approached. In this volume, experts in game music provide their responses to these issues. This book suggests a variety of new approaches to the study of game music. In the course of developing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing game music it explicitly considers other critical issues including the distinction between game play and music play, how notions of diegesis are complicated by video game interactivity, the importance of cinema aesthetics in game music, the technicalities of game music production and the relationships between game music and art music traditions. This collection is accessible, yet theoretically substantial and complex. It draws upon a diverse array of perspectives and presents new research which will have a significant impact upon the way that game music is studied. The volume represents a major development in game musicology and will be indispensable for both academic researchers and students of game music.