This book presents the latest findings and ongoing research in connection with green information systems and green information & communication technology (ICT). It provides valuable insights into a broad range of cross-cutting concerns in ICT and the environmental sciences, and showcases how ICT can be used to effectively address environmental and energy efficiency issues. Offering a selection of extended contributions to the 31st International Conference EnviroInfo 2017, it is essential reading for anyone looking to expand their expertise in the area.

With the advent of the World Wide Web, electronic commerce has revolutionized traditional commerce, boosting sales and facilitating exchanges of merchandise and information. The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application and research area: mobile commerce. Handheld Computing for Mobile Commerce: Applications, Concepts and Technologies offers 22 outstanding chapters from 71 world-renowned scholars and IT professionals covering themes such as handheld computing for mobile commerce, handheld computing research and technologies, wireless networks and handheld/mobile security, and handheld images and video. It includes research and development results of lasting significance in the theory, design, implementation, analysis, and application of handheld computing. This book is essential for IT students, researchers, and professionals seeking to better understand handheld devices and concepts, thereby producing more useful and effective handheld applications and products.

Intelligent prediction and decision support systems are based on signal processing, computer vision (CV), machine learning (ML), software engineering (SE), knowledge based systems (KBS), data mining, artificial intelligence (AI) and include several systems developed from the study of expert systems (ES), genetic algorithms (GA), artificial neural networks (ANN) and fuzzy-logic systems The use of automatic decision support systems in design and manufacturing industry, healthcare and commercial software development systems has the following benifits: Cost savings in companies, due to employment of expert system technology. Fast decision making, completion of projects in time and development of new products. Improvement in decision making capability and quality. Usage of Knowledge database and Preservation of expertise of individuals Eases complex decision problems. Ex: Diagnosis in Healthcare To address the issues and challenges related to development, implementation and application of automatic and intelligent prediction and decision support systems in domains such as manufacturing, healthcare and software product design, development and optimization, this book aims to collect and publish wide ranges of quality articles such as original research contributions, methodological reviews, survey papers, case studies and/or reports covering intelligent systems, expert prediction systems, evaluation models, decision support systems and Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD).

From the Foreword: "...the presentation of real-time scheduling is probably the best in terms of clarity I have ever read in the professional literature. Easy to understand, which is important for busy professionals keen to acquire (or refresh) new knowledge without being bogged down in a convoluted narrative and an excessive detail overload. The authors managed to largely avoid theoretical-only presentation of the subject, which frequently affects books on operating systems. ... an indispensable [resource] to gain a thorough understanding of the real-time systems from the operating systems perspective, and to stay up to date with the recent trends and actual developments of the open-source real-time operating systems." -Richard Zurawski, ISA Group, San Francisco, California, USA Real-time embedded systems are integral to the global technological and social space, but references still rarely offer professionals the sufficient mix of theory and practical examples required to meet intensive economic, safety, and other demands on system development. Similarly, instructors have lacked a resource to help students fully understand the field. The information was out there, though often at the abstract level, fragmented and scattered throughout literature from different engineering disciplines and computing sciences. Accounting for readers' varying practical needs and experience levels, Real Time Embedded Systems: Open-Source Operating Systems Perspective offers a holistic overview from the operating-systems perspective. It provides a long-awaited reference on real-time operating systems and their almost boundless application potential in the embedded system domain. Balancing the already abundant coverage of operating systems with the largely ignored real-time aspects, or "physicality," the authors analyze several realistic case studies to introduce vital theoretical material. They also discuss popular open-source operating systems-Linux and FreRTOS, in particular-to help embedded-system designers identify the benefits and weaknesses in deciding whether or not to adopt more traditional, less powerful, techniques for a project.

Sir Tony Hoare has had an enormous influence on computer science, from the Quicksort algorithm to the science of software development, concurrency and program verification. His contributions have been widely recognised: He was awarded the ACM's Turing Award in 1980, the Kyoto Prize from the Inamori Foundation in 2000, and was knighted for "services to education and computer science" by Queen Elizabeth II of England in 2000. This book presents the essence of his various works-the quest for effective abstractions-both in his own words as well as chapters written by leading experts in the field, including many of his research collaborators. In addition, this volume contains biographical material, his Turing award lecture, the transcript of an interview and some of his seminal papers. Hoare's foundational paper "An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming", presented his approach, commonly known as Hoare Logic, for proving the correctness of programs by using logical assertions. Hoare Logic and subsequent developments have formed the basis of a wide variety of software verification efforts. Hoare was instrumental in proposing the Verified Software Initiative, a cooperative international project directed at the scientific challenges of large-scale software verification, encompassing theories, tools and experiments. Tony Hoare's contributions to the theory and practice of concurrent software systems are equally impressive. The process algebra called Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) has been one of the fundamental paradigms, both as a mathematical theory to reason about concurrent computation as well as the basis for the programming language occam. CSP served as a framework for exploring several ideas in denotational semantics such as powerdomains, as well as notions of abstraction and refinement. It is the basis for a series of industrial-strength tools which have been employed in a wide range of applications. This book also presents Hoare's work in the last few decades. These works include a rigorous approach to specifications in software engineering practice, including procedural and data abstractions, data refinement, and a modular theory of designs. More recently, he has worked with collaborators to develop Unifying Theories of Programming (UTP). Their goal is to identify the common algebraic theories that lie at the core of sequential, concurrent, reactive and cyber-physical computations.

Technology has impacted how many teachers develop methods of instruction in their classroom settings. The Continuous Practice Improvement (CPI) professional development program introduces teachers to infusing computers into the curriculum and classroom activities seamlessly. ""Infusing Technology into the Classroom: Continuous Practice Improvement"" retells compelling stories of a successful computer-related professional development program that was implemented into Kindergarten through eighth grade classrooms of a Philadelphia school. Through an analysis of the study, a theoretical model to guide technology infused professional development for teachers is discovered.

In information technology, unlike many other fields, the need to support the unique perspective of technologically advanced students and deliver technology-rich content presents unique challenges. Today's IT students need the ability to interact with their instructor in near-real time, interact with their peers and project team members, and access and manipulate technology tools in the pursuit of their educational objectives.""Handbook of Distance Learning for Real-Time and Asynchronous Information Technology Education"" delves deep into the construct of real-time, asynchronous education through information technology, pooling experiences from seasoned researchers and educators to detail their past successes and failures, discussing their techniques, hardships, and triumphs in the search for innovative and effective distance learning education for IT programs. This Premier Reference Source answers the increasing demand for a fundamental, decisive source on this cutting-edge issue facing all institutions, covering topics such as asynchronous communication, real-time instruction, multimedia content, content delivery, and distance education technologies.

When researchers in computer-mediated communications discuss digital textuality, they rarely venture beyond the now commonplace notion that computer textuality embodies contemporary post-structuralist theories. Written for students and faculty of contemporary literature and composition theories, this book is the first to move from general to specific considerations. Advancing from general considerations of how computers are changing literacy, Digital Fictions moves on to a specific consideration of how computers are altering one particular set of literature practices: reading and writing fiction. Suffused through the sensibility of a creative writer, this book includes an historical overview of writing stories on computers. In addition, Sloane conducts interviews with the makers of hypertext fictions (including Stuart Moulthrop, Michael Joyce, and Carolyn Guyer) and offers close reading of digital fictions. Making careful analyses of the meaning-making activities of both readers and writers of this emerging genre, this work is embedded in a perspective both feminist and semiotic. Digital Fictions explores and distinguishes among four distinct iterations of text-based digital fictions; text adventures, Carnegie Mellon University Oz Project, hypertext fictions, and MUDs. Ultimately, Sloane revises the rhetorical triangle and proposes a new rhetorical theory, one that attends to the materials, processes, and locations of stories told on-line.

The book provides suggestions on how to start using bionic optimization methods, including pseudo-code examples of each of the important approaches and outlines of how to improve them. The most efficient methods for accelerating the studies are discussed. These include the selection of size and generations of a study's parameters, modification of these driving parameters, switching to gradient methods when approaching local maxima, and the use of parallel working hardware. Bionic Optimization means finding the best solution to a problem using methods found in nature. As Evolutionary Strategies and Particle Swarm Optimization seem to be the most important methods for structural optimization, we primarily focus on them. Other methods such as neural nets or ant colonies are more suited to control or process studies, so their basic ideas are outlined in order to motivate readers to start using them. A set of sample applications shows how Bionic Optimization works in practice. From academic studies on simple frames made of rods to earthquake-resistant buildings, readers follow the lessons learned, difficulties encountered and effective strategies for overcoming them. For the problem of tuned mass dampers, which play an important role in dynamic control, changing the goal and restrictions paves the way for Multi-Objective-Optimization. As most structural designers today use commercial software such as FE-Codes or CAE systems with integrated simulation modules, ways of integrating Bionic Optimization into these software packages are outlined and examples of typical systems and typical optimization approaches are presented. The closing section focuses on an overview and outlook on reliable and robust as well as on Multi-Objective-Optimization, including discussions of current and upcoming research topics in the field concerning a unified theory for handling stochastic design processes.

Ontologies and formal representations of knowledge are extremely powerful tools for modeling and managing large applications in several domains ranging from knowledge engineering, to data mining, to the semantic web. Ontology Theory, Management and Design: Advanced Tools and Models, explores the wide range of applications for ontologies, while providing a complete view of the both the theory behind the design and the problems posed by the practical development and use of ontologies. This reference presents an in-depth and forward looking analysis of current research, illustrating the importance of this field and pointing toward to the future of knowledge engineering, management and information technology.

Nature has long provided the inspiration for a variety of scientific discoveries in engineering, biomedicine, and computing, though only recently have these elements of nature been used directly in computational systems. Natural Computing for Simulation and Knowledge Discovery investigates the latest developments in nature-influenced technologies. Within its pages, readers will find an in-depth analysis of such advances as cryptographic solutions based on cell division, the creation and manipulation of biological computers, and particle swarm optimisation techniques. Scientists, practitioners, and students in fields such as computing, mathematics, and molecular science will make use of this essential reference to explore current trends in natural computation and advance nature-inspired technologies to the next generation.

The concept of innovation management and learning organizations concepts strongly emphasize the high role of human/intellectual capital in the company and the crucial function of knowledge in modern society. However, there is often a paradox between managerial language and actual practice in many organizations: on one hand, knowledge-workers are perceived as the most valued members of organizations while, on the other, they are being manipulated and "engineered"-commonly driven to burn-out, and deprived of family life. All this leads to the emergence of new organizational phenomena that, up to now, have been insufficiently analyzed and described. Management Practices in High-Tech Environments studies this issue thoroughly from an international, comparative, cross-cultural perspective, presenting cutting-edge research on management practices in American, European, Asian and Middle-Eastern high-tech companies, with particular focus on fieldwork-driven, but reflective, contributions.

The aim of cryptography is to design primitives and protocols that withstand adversarial behavior. Information theoretic cryptography, how-so-ever desirable, is extremely restrictive and most non-trivial cryptographic tasks are known to be information theoretically impossible. In order to realize sophisticated cryptographic primitives, we forgo information theoretic security and assume limitations on what can be efficiently computed. In other words we attempt to build secure systems conditioned on some computational intractability assumption such as factoring, discrete log, decisional Diffie-Hellman, learning with errors, and many more. In this work, based on the 2013 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award-winning thesis, we put forth new plausible lattice-based constructions with properties that approximate the sought after multilinear maps. The multilinear analog of the decision Diffie-Hellman problem appears to be hard in our construction, and this allows for their use in cryptography. These constructions open doors to providing solutions to a number of important open problems.

This book shows you 1000 ways to seduce your website's visitor: Make visitors to buyers. Better: Make customers to friends. It explains how to become a successful seller by viral marketing at the web.

Handbook of Research on Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments: Trends and Perspectives covers the cutting-edge aspects of AMI applications, specifically those involving the effective design, realization, and implementation of a comprehensive AmI application. This pertinent publication targets researchers and practitioners in Ambient Intelligence, as well as those in ubiquitous and pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, sensor networks, knowledge representation, automated reasoning and learning, system and software engineering, and man-machine interfaces.

In today's technology-crazed environement, distance learning is touted as a cost-effective option for delivering employee training and higher education programs, such as as bachelor's, master's and even doctroal degrees. Distance Learning Technologies: Issues, Trends and Opportunities provides readers with an in-depth understanding of distance learning and the technologies available for this innovative medium of learning and instruction. It races the development of distance learning from its history and includes suggestions for a solid strategic implementation plan to ensure its successful and effective deployment.

Chapters "Turing and Free Will: A New Take on an Old Debate" and "Turing and the History of Computer Music" are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.