This book is intended for individuals and students learning to program. You may already have done some programming in other languages, but not be familiar with Python. Novice programmers should work through the book sequentially, starting at Chapter 1. It will also be a useful reference book for students on a programming course or anyone working on a programming project. It teaches basic syntax and programming techniques, and introduces three inbuilt Python modules: "> Tkinter, used for building a graphical user interface, which is an option that some users may like to include in their project work. "> SQLite, which enables the creation and processing of a database from within a Python program. This provides an alternative to writing to a text file when data needs to be stored and retrieved "> .pdb, Python's debugging module, which can be used to help find elusive logic errors. Questions and exercises are included in every chapter. Answers to these as well as over 120 Python programs for all the examples and exercises given in the book may be downloaded from www.pgonline.co.uk. These programs enable users of the book to try out the in-text examples and check possible solutions to the exercises.

This book examines how video game mechanics and narratives can teach players skills associated with increased psychological well-being. It integrates research from psychology, education, ludology, media studies, and communication science to demonstrate how game play can teach skills that have long been associated with increased happiness and prolonged life satisfaction, including flexible thinking, openness to experience, self-care, a growth mindset, solution-focused thinking, mindfulness, persistence, self-discovery and resilience. The chapters in this volume are written by leading voices in the field of game studies, including researchers from academia, the video gaming industry, and mental health practitioners paving the way in the field of "geek therapy." This book will advance our understanding of the potential of video games to increase our psychological well-being by helping to mitigate depression, anxiety, and stress and foster persistence, self-care, and resilience.

The Knowledge Grid is an intelligent and sustainable interaction environment that consists of autonomous individuals, self-organized semantic communities, adaptive networking mechanisms, evolving semantic link networks keeping meaningful connection between individuals, flows for dynamic resource sharing, and mechanisms supporting effective resource management and providing appropriate knowledge services for learning, innovation, teamwork, problem solving, and decision making. This book presents its methodology, theory, models and applications systematically for the first time.Its second edition fulfils the ideal of the Knowledge Grid by includingmany new contents, including: (1) The insight of cyber-physical society; (2) The systematic method of semantic link network that supports uncertainty management, discovery of semantic links and semantic communities, autonomous semantic data model, and cyber-physical-socio semantic link network; (3) Semantic peer-to-peer infrastructures for efficient knowledge sharing; (4) A new centrality measure of network; and (5) The Energy-Knowledge Grid. This new edition will undoubtedly provide inspiring materials for researchers, academics, practitioners and students.

If you have ever wondered what quaternions are - then look no further, John Vince will show you how simple and useful they are. This 2nd edition has been completely revised and includes extra detail on the invention of quaternions, a complete review of the text and equations, all figures are in colour, extra worked examples, an expanded index, and a bibliography arranged for each chapter. Quaternions for Computer Graphics includes chapters on number sets and algebra, imaginary and complex numbers, the complex plane, rotation transforms, and a comprehensive description of quaternions in the context of rotation. The book will appeal to students of computer graphics, computer science and mathematics, as well as programmers, researchers, academics and professional practitioners interested in learning about quaternions. John Vince explains in an easy-to-understand language, with the aid of useful figures, how quaternions emerged, gave birth to modern vector analysis, disappeared, and reemerged to be adopted by the flight simulation industry and computer graphics. This book will give you the confidence to use quaternions within your every-day mathematics, and explore more advanced texts.

This edition provides a comprehensively updated and enhanced review of current quality methods and standards. It outlines causes of failure, current practice and standards and suggests an ideal approach to software control at each stage of the design cycle. The emphasis of this new edition has shifted towards safety critical software. This book should be of interest to systems designers, software engineers, and safety and reliability engineers.

The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement demonstrates how labour can self-organise production, and, as is shown by the free operating system GNU/Linux, even compete with some of the worlds largest firms. The book examines the hopes of such thinkers as Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Negri, in the light of the recent achievements of the hacker movement. This book is the first to examine a different kind of political activism that consists in the development of technology from below.

This book introduces the basics in game usability and overall game UX mindset and techniques, as well as looking at current industry best practices and trends. Fully updated for its second edition, it includes practical advice on how to include usability in already tight development timelines, and how to advocate for UX and communicate results to higher-ups effectively. The book begins with an introduction to UX strategy considerations for games, and to UX design, before moving on to cover core user research and usability techniques as well as how to fit UX practices into the business process. It provides considerations of player differences and offers strategies for inclusion as well as chapters that give platform and context specific advice. With a wealth of new interviews with industry leaders and contributions from the very best in game UX, the book also includes brand new chapters on: Accessibility Mobile Game Usability Data Science Virtual and Augmented Reality Esports This book will be vital reading for all professional game developers and game UX advocates, as well as those students aspiring to work in game development and game UX.

This book introduces the basics in game usability and overall game UX mindset and techniques, as well as looking at current industry best practices and trends. Fully updated for its second edition, it includes practical advice on how to include usability in already tight development timelines, and how to advocate for UX and communicate results to higher-ups effectively. The book begins with an introduction to UX strategy considerations for games, and to UX design, before moving on to cover core user research and usability techniques as well as how to fit UX practices into the business process. It provides considerations of player differences and offers strategies for inclusion as well as chapters that give platform and context specific advice. With a wealth of new interviews with industry leaders and contributions from the very best in game UX, the book also includes brand new chapters on: Accessibility Mobile Game Usability Data Science Virtual and Augmented Reality Esports This book will be vital reading for all professional game developers and game UX advocates, as well as those students aspiring to work in game development and game UX.

Description AWS gives users the networking, compute, and security services they need without making them pay for anything they're not actually using. With almost a hundred individual AWS services, putting all the pieces together is not a simple thing. That's where this book can help. Learn Amazon Web Services in a Month of Lunches guides readers through the process of building a robust and secure web application using the core AWS services they really need to know. When they're done, readers will be comfortable with the basics, and know exactly where to look when they're ready for more. Key features * Bite-sized lessons * Step-by-step guide * Thorough introduction * Hands-on examples Audience This book is for developers, system administrators, or anyone looking for an introduction to using AWS cloud. A basic understanding of TCP/IP networking is helpful, but not required. About the Technology Amazon Web Services is, by all metrics, the giant of the cloud computing world. Not only does it dominate in terms of user adoption and market share, but its innovative and highly integrated services have defined the way networked digital services are delivered.

Programming Graphical User Interfaces with R introduces each of the major R packages for GUI programming: RGtk2, qtbase, Tcl/Tk, and gWidgets. With examples woven through the text as well as stand-alone demonstrations of simple yet reasonably complete applications, the book features topics especially relevant to statisticians who aim to provide a practical interface to functionality implemented in R. The book offers: A how-to guide for developing GUIs within R The fundamentals for users with limited knowledge of programming within R and other languages GUI design for specific functions or as learning tools The accompanying package, ProgGUIinR, includes the complete code for all examples as well as functions for browsing the examples from the respective chapters. Accessible to seasoned, novice, and occasional R users, this book shows that for many purposes, adding a graphical interface to one's work is not terribly sophisticated or time consuming.

The demand for SQL information and training continues to grow with the need for a database behind every website capable of offering web-based information queries. SQL is the de facto standard for database retrieval, and if you need to access, update, or utilize data in a modern database management system, youwill need SQL to do it. TheSecond Editionof "Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties" covers two new sets of extensions over three entirelynew chapters and expounds upon the changes that have occurred in SQL standards since the previous edition's publication. Benefit from mastering the challenging aspects of these database applications in SQL as taught by Joe Celko, one of the most-read SQL authors in the world.

*Expert advice from a noted SQL authority and award-winning columnist who has given 10 years of service to the ANSI SQL standards committee

*Teaches scores of advanced techniques that can be used with any product, in any SQL environment

*Offers graph theory and programming techniques for working around deficiencies and gives insight into real-world challenges"

GPU Pro3, the third volume in the GPU Pro book series, offers practical tips and techniques for creating real-time graphics that are useful to beginners and seasoned game and graphics programmers alike. Section editors Wolfgang Engel, Christopher Oat, Carsten Dachsbacher, Wessam Bahnassi, and Sebastien St-Laurent have once again brought together a high-quality collection of cutting-edge techniques for advanced GPU programming. With contributions by more than 50 experts, GPU Pro3: Advanced Rendering Techniques covers battle-tested tips and tricks for creating interesting geometry, realistic shading, real-time global illumination, and high-quality shadows, for optimizing 3D engines, and for taking advantage of the advanced power of the GPGPU. Sample programs and source code are available for download on the book's CRC Press web page.

Graphics Shaders: Theory and Practice is intended for a second course in computer graphics at the undergraduate or graduate level, introducing shader programming in general, but focusing on the GLSL shading language. While teaching how to write programmable shaders, the authors also teach and reinforce the fundamentals of computer graphics. The second edition has been updated to incorporate changes in the OpenGL API (OpenGL 4.x and GLSL 4.x0) and also has a chapter on the new tessellation shaders, including many practical examples.

The book starts with a quick review of the graphics pipeline, emphasizing features that are rarely taught in introductory courses, but are immediately exposed in shader work. It then covers shader-specific theory for vertex, tessellation, geometry, and fragment shaders using the GLSL 4.x0 shading language. The text also introduces the freely available glman tool that enables you to develop, test, and tune shaders separately from the applications that will use them. The authors explore how shaders can be used to support a wide variety of applications and present examples of shaders in 3D geometry, scientific visualization, geometry morphing, algorithmic art, and more.

Features of the Second Edition:

• Written using the most recent specification releases (OpenGL 4.x and GLSL 4.x0) including code examples brought up-to-date with the current standard of the GLSL language.
• More examples and more exercises
• A chapter on tessellation shaders
• An expanded Serious Fun chapter with examples that illustrate using shaders to produce fun effects
• A discussion of how to handle the major changes occurring in the OpenGL standard, and some C++ classes to help you manage that transition

The authors thoroughly explain the concepts, use sample code to describe details of the concepts, and then challenge you to extend the examples. They provide sample source code for many of the book s examples at www.cgeducation.org

- Highly accessible and code-free introduction to game audio, suitable for a wide range of undergraduate courses, such as music production, sound design and composition - Accompanied by eresources, including downloadable projects for each chapter - A great addition to our growing catalogue of game audio titles

- Highly accessible and code-free introduction to game audio, suitable for a wide range of undergraduate courses, such as music production, sound design and composition - Accompanied by eresources, including downloadable projects for each chapter - A great addition to our growing catalogue of game audio titles

Videogames were once made with a vast range of tools and technologies, but in recent years a small number of commercially available 'game engines' have reached an unprecedented level of dominance in the global videogame industry. In particular, the Unity game engine has penetrated all scales of videogame development, from the large studio to the hobbyist bedroom, such that over half of all new videogames are reportedly being made with Unity. This book provides an urgently needed critical analysis of Unity as 'cultural software' that facilitates particular production workflows, design methodologies, and software literacies. Building on long-standing methods in media and cultural studies, and drawing on interviews with a range of videogame developers, Benjamin Nicoll and Brendan Keogh argue that Unity deploys a discourse of democratization to draw users into its 'circuits of cultural software'. For scholars of media production, software culture, and platform studies, this book provides a framework and language to better articulate the increasingly dominant role of software tools in cultural production. For videogame developers, educators, and students, it provides critical and historical grounding for a tool that is widely used yet rarely analysed from a cultural angle.

Understanding Game Scoring explores the unique collaboration between gameplay and composition that defines musical scoring for video games. Using an array of case studies reaching back into the canon of classic video games, this book illuminates the musical flexibility, user interactivity and sound programming that make game scoring so different from traditional modes of composition. Mack Enns explores the collaboration between game scorers and players to produce the final score for a game, through case studies of the Nintendo Entertainment System sound hardware configuration, and game scores, including the canonic scores for Super Mario Bros. (1985) and The Legend of Zelda (1986). This book is recommended reading for students and researchers interested in the composition and production of video game scores, as well as those interested in ludo-musicology.

"In this not-too-long and easy-to-read book, author Celia Hodent presents a clear overview of the challenges, demands, and rewards of becoming a user experience professional. If this field interests you, there’s no better place to start than with the volume you now hold in your hand."

Alan Cooper, Ancestry Thinker, Software Alchemist, Regenerative Rancher, Author of The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

The main objective of What UX is Really About: Introducing a Mindset for Great Experiences is to provide a quick introduction to user experience (UX 101) for students, professionals, or simply curious readers who want to understand this trendy yet commonly misunderstood practice better. Readers will learn that UX is much more than a set of techniques, guidelines, and tools. It is a mindset; a philosophy that takes the perspective of the humans that will use a product. It is about solving their problems, offering them a pleasurable experience, and building a win-win, long-lasting relationship between them and the company developing the product. Above all, it is about improving people’s lives with technology. What UX is Really About is informative, concise, and provides readers with a high-level overview of the science, design, and methodologies of UX.

KEY FEATURES:

• The most approachable and concise introduction book about UX.

• Easy to read and aims to popularize the UX mindset while debunking its main misconceptions.

• Small format size makes it easy to carry around.

• Includes content relatable and meaningful to the readers by taking many examples from everyday life with a conversational and light writing style.

• Tackles the psychology, design, research, process, strategy, and ethics behind offering the best experience with products, systems, or services.

• Includes a glossary.

Celia Hodent holds a PhD in psychology, and is a leading expert in the application of cognitive science and psychology to product development, with over 13 years of experience in the development of UX strategy in video game studios, such as Ubisoft, LucasArts, and Epic Games (Fortnite). She currently leads an independent UX consultancy, working with a wide range of international media and enterprise companies to help ensure their products are engaging, successful, and respectful of users. Celia conducts workshops and provides guidance on the topics of game-based UX, playful learning ("gamification"), ethics, implicit biases, and inclusion in tech. Celia is the author of The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design and The Psychology of Video Games.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 What Is UX?

Chapter 2 What UX Is Not

Chapter 3 The Science behind UX

Chapter 4 The Process and Methodologies of UX

Chapter 5 Ethics and the UX Mindset

Chapter 6 Conclusion

This book introduces the reader with little or no previous computer-programming experience to the Python programming language of interest for a physicist or a natural-sciences student. The book starts with basic interactive Python in order to acquire an introductory familiarity with the language, than tackle Python scripts (programs) of increasing complexity, that the reader is invited to run on her/his computer. All program listings are discussed in detail, and the reader is invited to experiment on what happens if some code lines are modified. The reader is introduced to Matplotlib graphics for the generation of figures representing data and function plots and, for instance, field lines. Animated function plots are also considered. A chapter is dedicated to the numerical solution of algebraic and transcendental equations, the basic mathematical principles are discussed and the available Python tools for the solution are presented. A further chapter is dedicated to the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations. This is of vital importance for the physicist, since differential equations are at the base of both classical physics (Newton's equations) and quantum mechanics (Schroedinger's equation). The shooting method for the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations with boundary conditions at two boundaries is also presented. Python programs for the solution of two quantum-mechanics problems are discussed as examples. Two chapters are dedicated to Tkinter graphics, which gives the user more freedom than Matplotlib, and to Tkinter animation. Programs displaying the animation of physical problems involving the solution of ordinary differential equations (for which in most cases there is no algebraic solution) in real time are presented and discussed. Finally, 3D animation is presented with Vpython.

Disability and New Media examines how digital design is triggering disability when it could be a solution. Video and animation now play a prominent role in the World Wide Web and new types of protocols have been developed to accommodate this increasing complexity. However, as this has happened, the potential for individual users to control how the content is displayed has been diminished. Accessibility choices are often portrayed as merely technical decisions but they are highly political and betray a disturbing trend of ableist assumption that serve to exclude people with disability. It has been argued that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. Kent and Ellis build on this notion using more recent Web 2.0 phenomena, social networking sites, virtual worlds and file sharing. Many of the studies on disability and the web have focused on the early web, prior to the development of social networking applications such as Facebook, YouTube and Second Life. This book discusses an array of such applications that have grown within and alongside Web 2.0, and analyzes how they both prevent and embrace the inclusion of people with disability.

While there are sporadic journal articles on socio-technical networks, there's long been a need for an integrated resource that addresses concrete socio-technical network (STN) design issues from algorithmic and engineering perspectives. Filling this need, Socio-Technical Networks: Science and Engineering Design provides a complete introduction to the fundamentals of one of the hottest research areas across the social sciences, networking, and computer science -- including its definition, historical background, and models. Covering basic STN architecture from a physical/technological perspective, the book considers the system design process in a typical STN, including inputs, processes/actions, and outputs/products. It covers current applications, including transportation networks, energy systems, tele-healthcare, financial networks, and the World Wide Web. A group of STN expert contributors addresses privacy and security topics in the interdependent context of critical infrastructure, which include risk models, trust models, and privacy preserving schemes. * Covers the physical and technological designs in a typical STN * Considers STN applications in popular fields, such as healthcare and the virtual community * Details a method for mapping and measuring complexity, uncertainty, and interactions among STN components The book examines the most important STN models, including graph theory, inferring agent dynamics, decision theory, and information mining. It also explains structural studies, behavioral studies, and agent/actor system studies and policy studies in different STN contexts. Complete with in-depth case studies, this book supplies the practical insight needed to address contemporary STN design issues.

"Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web"provides a unique introduction to identity and reference theories of the World Wide Web, through the academic lens of philosophy of language and data-driven statistical models. The Semantic Web is a natural evolution of the Web, and this book covers the URL-based Web architecture and Semantic Web in detail. It has a robust empirical side which has an impact on industry.

"Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web" discusses how the largest problem facing the Semantic Web is the problem of identity and reference, and how these are the results of a larger general theory of meaning. This book hypothesizes that statistical semantics can solve these problems, illustrated by case studies ranging from a pioneering study of tagging systems to using the Semantic Web to boost the results of commercial search engines. " "

"Social Semantics: The Search for Meaning on the Web"targets practitioners working in the related fields of the semantic web, search engines, information retrieval, philosophers of language and more. Advanced-level students and researchers focusing on computer science will also find this book valuable as a secondary text or reference book."

This book offers the reader a comprehensive view of the design space of wearable computers, cutting across multiple application domains and interaction modalities. Besides providing several examples of wearable technologies, Wearable Interaction illustrates how to create and to assess interactive wearables considering human factors in design decisions related to input entry and output responses. The book also discusses the impacts of form factors and contexts of use in the design of wearable interaction. Miniaturized components, flexible materials, and sewable electronics toolkits exemplify advances in technology that facilitated the design and development of wearable technologies. Despite such advances, creating wearable interfaces that are efficient is still challenging. The new affordances of on-body interfaces require the consideration of new interaction paradigms, so that the design decisions for the user interaction take into account key limitations in the interaction surfaces of wearables concerning input entry, processing power for output responses, and in the time and attention that wearers dedicate to complete their interaction. Under such constraints, creating interfaces with high usability levels is complex. Also, because wearables are worn continuously and in close contact with the human body, on-body interfaces must be carefully designed to neither disturb nor overwhelm wearers. The context of use and the potential of wearable technologies must be both well understood to provide users with relevant information and services using appropriate approaches and without overloading them with notifications. Wearable Interaction explains thoroughly how interactive wearables have been created taking into account the needs of end users as well as the vast potential that wearable technologies offer. Readers from academia, industry or government will learn how wearables can be designed and developed to facilitate human activities and tasks across different sectors.

In Silico methods to predict toxicity have become increasingly important recently, particularly in light of European legislation such as REACH and the Cosmetics Regulation. They are also being used extensively worldwide e.g. in the USA, Canada, Japan and Australia. In assessing the risk that a chemical may pose to human health or to the environment, focus is now being directed towards exploitation of in silico methods to replace in vivo or in vitro techniques. A prediction of potential toxicity requires several stages: 1) Collation and organisation of data available for the compound, or if this is not available, information for related compounds. 2) An assessment of the quality of the data. 3) Generation of additional information about the compound using computational techniques at various levels of complexity - calculation of physico-chemical properties, 2-D, 3-D / MO descriptors and specific receptor modelling / interaction. 4) Use of an appropriate strategy to predict toxicity - ie a statistically valid method which makes best use of all available information (mechanism of action, activity for related compounds, extrapolation across species and endpoints, likely exposure scenario amounts over time etc). 5) Consideration then needs to be given to how this information is used in the real world ie use of expert systems / tools as relevant to assessors (if sufficiently different to previous) - weight of evidence approaches. 6) Finally evidence should be presented from case studies within this area. No other publication brings together information on all of these areas in one book and this publication is unique in that it provides a logical progression through every one of these key stages and defines the use of computational approaches to predict the environmental toxicity and human health effects of organic chemicals. The volume is aimed at the developers and users of in silico toxicology and provides an analysis of all aspects required for in silico prediction of toxicology, including data collation, quality assessment and computational approaches. The contributions from recognised leaders in each of these areas include evidence of the use and applicability of approaches using real world case studies concerning both environmental and human health effects. The book provides a very useful single source reference for people working in this area including academics, professionals, under- and post-graduate students as well as Governmental Regulatory Scientists involved in chemical risk assessment and REACH.