a collection of interviews from renowned author, David L. Craddock

This book will be a key contribution to both Gothic and digital game scholarship as it argues for close proximity between Gothic culture and the videogame medium itself This book explores the many ways Gothic literature and media have informed videogame design The book moves beyond the study of generic influences of horror on digital gaming, and focuses in on the Gothic, a less visceral mode tending towards the unsettling, the uncertain and the uncanny The book will have resonance with scholars and students in both Gothic and digital game scholarship, as well as those interested in Gothic novels, media and popular culture, digital games and interactive fiction

This book explores the impact of a video game's degree of realism or fictionality on its linguistic dimensions, investigating the challenges and strategies for translating realia and irrealia, the interface of the real world and the game world where culture-specificity manifests itself. The volume outlines the key elements in the translation of video games, such as textual non-linearity, multitextuality, and playability, and introduces the theoretical framework used to determine a game's respective degree of realism or fictionality. Pettini applies an interdisciplinary approach drawing on video game research and Descriptive Translation Studies to the linguistic and translational analysis of in-game dialogs in English-Italian and English-Spanish language pairs from a corpus of three war video games. This approach allows for an in-depth look at the localization challenges posed by the varying degree of realism and fictionality across video games and the different strategies translators employ in response to these challenges. A final chapter offers a comparative analysis of the three games and subsequently avenues for further research on the role of culture-specificity in game localization. This book is key reading for students and scholars interested in game localization, audiovisual translation studies, and video game research.

Many-valued logics is becoming increasingly important in many branches of science. This is the second volume of a comprehensive two-volume handbook on many-valued logics by two leading members of the famous Polish school of logic. While the first volume of 1992 was mainly concerned with theoretical foundations, this volume emphasizes automated reasoning, practical applications, and latest developments in closely related fields, such as fuzzy logics and rough set theory. It offers an extensive overview of Gentzen deduction systems and multi-sequential systems in many-valued logics and shows the application of the resolution principle to this logics. It discusses applications in such areas as software specification and electronic circuit verification and presents fuzzy logics and rough set theory in detail.

The so called information society is being shaped by products and services that either contain software as the core element, are themselves software, or have been designed and manufactured with the help of sophisticated software applications. The new global environment in which these systems are being developed and deployed, in addition to other pressing issues, such as time-to-market and dependability, are pushing the skills of software developers and engineers to the limit. With few exceptions, those products and services will influence the social environment where they will be deployed, because people will operate them or be affected by them, or both. So another challenging issue is the ability of these systems to integrate with their social environment in a way that is perceived as beneficial, trustworthy and acceptable. Given these challenges, defining the requirements that establish what a future system should do, and validating that the system has achieved its goals, is an immense task. In this book the reader will find a detailed account of the challenges posed by the elicitation, specification, validation and management of requirements for the definition of this kind of application: from embedded software in cars to internet-based applications, COTS packages, health-care, and others.

Generating Abstraction Hierarchies presents a completely automated approach to generating abstractions for problem solving. The abstractions are generated using a tractable, domain-independent algorithm whose only inputs are the definition of a problem space and the problem to be solved and whose output is an abstraction hierarchy that is tailored to the particular problem. The algorithm generates abstraction hierarchies that satisfy the `ordered monotonicity' property, which guarantees that the structure of an abstract solution is not changed in the process of refining it. An abstraction hierarchy with this property allows a problem to be decomposed such that the solution in an abstract space can be held invariant while the remaining parts of a problem are solved. The algorithm for generating abstractions is implemented in a system called ALPINE, which generates abstractions for a hierarchical version of the PRODIGY problem solver. Generating Abstraction Hierarchies formally defines this hierarchical problem solving method, shows that under certain assumptions this method can reduce the size of a search space from exponential to linear in the solution size, and describes the implementation of this method in PRODIGY. The abstractions generated by ALPINE are tested in multiple domains on large problem sets and are shown to produce shorter solutions with significantly less search than problem solving without using abstraction. Generating Abstraction Hierarchies will be of interest to researchers in machine learning, planning and problem reformation.

Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is becoming one of the great concerns of researchers and practitioners within the academic areas of computer science and the software industry. After the focus on object-oriented programming, design and modelling during the 90's, reuse and reusability of software entities is nowadays slowed down by new factors. The size of components, their deployment capability, their compatibility and interoperability features in order to be incorporated into heterogeneous cooperative environments, their faults tolerance, and above all, their ability to fulfill performance conditions, are critical expectations of software engineers.
Despite the maturity of the component market and some available results coming from academic research, software engineering and as a result CBSE, remain somehow, a backward discipline, since no modern technique of component composition has been recognized as satisfactory. Business Component-Based Software Engineering, an edited volume, aims to complement some other reputable books on CBSE, by stressing how components are built for large-scale applications, within dedicated development processes and for easy and direct combination. This book will emphasize these three facets and will offer a complete overview of some recent progresses. Projects and works explained herein will prompt graduate students, academics, software engineers, project managers and developers to adopt and to apply new component development methods gained from and validated by the authors. The authors of Business Component-Based Software Engineering are academic and professionals, experts in the field, who will introduce the state of the art on CBSE fromtheir shared experience by working on the same projects.
Business Component-Based Software Engineering is designed to meet the needs of practitioners and researchers in industry, and graduate-level students in Computer Science and Engineering.

This book presents different approaches on multi-modality imaging with a focus on biomedical applications. Medical imaging can be divided into two categories: functional (related to physiological body measurements) and anatomical (structural) imaging modalities. In particular, this book covers imaging combinations coming from the usual popular modalities (such as the anatomical modalities, e.g. X-ray, CT and MRI), and it also includes some promising and new imaging modalities that are still being developed and improved (such as infrared thermography (IRT) and photoplethysmography imaging (PPGI)), implying potential approaches for innovative biomedical applications. Moreover, this book includes a variety of tools on computer vision, imaging processing, and computer graphics, which led to the generation and visualization of 3D models, making the most recent advances in this area possible. This is an ideal book for students and biomedical engineering researchers covering the biomedical imaging field.

The last decade has witnessed the rise of big data in game development as the increasing proliferation of Internet-enabled gaming devices has made it easier than ever before to collect large amounts of player-related data. At the same time, the emergence of new business models and the diversification of the player base have exposed a broader potential audience, which attaches great importance to being able to tailor game experiences to a wide range of preferences and skill levels. This, in turn, has led to a growing interest in data mining techniques, as they offer new opportunities for deriving actionable insights to inform game design, to ensure customer satisfaction, to maximize revenues, and to drive technical innovation. By now, data mining and analytics have become vital components of game development. The amount of work being done in this area nowadays makes this an ideal time to put together a book on this subject. Data Analytics Applications in Gaming and Entertainment seeks to provide a cross section of current data analytics applications in game production. It is intended as a companion for practitioners, academic researchers, and students seeking knowledge on the latest practices in game data mining. The chapters have been chosen in such a way as to cover a wide range of topics and to provide readers with a glimpse at the variety of applications of data mining in gaming. A total of 25 authors from industry and academia have contributed 12 chapters covering topics such as player profiling, approaches for analyzing player communities and their social structures, matchmaking, churn prediction and customer lifetime value estimation, communication of analytical results, and visual approaches to game analytics. This book's perspectives and concepts will spark heightened interest in game analytics and foment innovative ideas that will advance the exciting field of online gaming and entertainment.

Provides comprehensive research ideas about Edge-AI technology that can assist doctors in making better data-driven decisions and will provide insights to researchers about healthcare industry, trends and future perspective. Examines how healthcare systems of the future will operate, by augmenting clinical resources and ensuring optimal patient outcomes. Provides insight about how Edge-AI is revolutionizing decision making, early warnings for conditions, and visual inspection in healthcare. Highlight trends, challenges, opportunities and future areas where Healthcare informatics deal with accessing vast data sets of potentially life-saving information.

With PROGRAMMING WITH MICROSOFT VISUAL BASIC 2019/2022 by bestselling technology author Diane Zak, even readers with no prior programming experience can quickly learn how to effectively plan and create interactive Visual Basic 2019/2022 applications. A dynamic visual presentation, timely examples, step-by-step tutorials and practical exercises addressing a variety of learning styles make this the ideal introduction to programming. Through hands-on applications in a real-world setting, you will master the fundamentals of effective programming while working through Visual Basic 2019/2022's latest features. In addition to planning and creating your own Windows applications, you will learn about graphical user interface design skills, object-oriented programming concepts and planning tools such as Planning Charts, pseudocode and flowcharts. Also available: MindTap online learning platform.

Modern life is increasingly relying on digital technology, which in turn runs on mathematics. However, this underlying math is hidden from us. That is mostly a good thing since we do not want to be solving equations and calculating fractions just to get things done in our everyday business. But the mathematical details do matter for anyone who wants to understand how stuff works, or wishes to create something new in the jungle of apps and algorithms. This book takes a look at the mathematical models behind weather forecasting, climate change prediction, artificial intelligence, medical imaging and computer graphics. The reader is expected to have only a curious mind; technical math skills are not needed for enjoying this text.

Automata Theory and its Applications is a uniform treatment of the theory of finite state machines on finite and infinite strings and trees. Many books deal with automata on finite strings, but there are very few expositions that prove the fundamental results of automata on infinite strings and trees. These results have important applications to modeling parallel computation and concurrency, the specification and verification of sequential and concurrent programs, databases, operating systems, computational complexity, and decision methods in logic and algebra. Thus, this textbook fills an important gap in the literature by exposing early fundamental results in automata theory and its applications.

Beginning with coverage of all standard fundamental results regarding finite automata, the book deals in great detail with BA1/4chi and Rabin automata and their applications to various logical theories such as S1S and S2S, and describes game-theoretic models of concurrent operating and communication systems.

The book is self-contained with numerous examples, illustrations, exercises, and is suitable for a two-semester undergraduate course for computer science or mathematics majors, or for a one-semester graduate course/seminar. Since no advanced mathematical background is required, the text is also useful for self-study by computer science professionals who wish to understand the foundations of modern formal approaches to software development, validation, and verification.

Global optimization is one of the fastest developing fields in mathematical optimization. In fact, an increasing number of remarkably efficient deterministic algorithms have been proposed in the last ten years for solving several classes of large scale specially structured problems encountered in such areas as chemical engineering, financial engineering, location and network optimization, production and inventory control, engineering design, computational geometry, and multi-objective and multi-level optimization. These new developments motivated the authors to write a new book devoted to global optimization problems with special structures. Most of these problems, though highly nonconvex, can be characterized by the property that they reduce to convex minimization problems when some of the variables are fixed. A number of recently developed algorithms have been proved surprisingly efficient for handling typical classes of problems exhibiting such structures, namely low rank nonconvex structures. Audience: The book will serve as a fundamental reference book for all those who are interested in mathematical optimization.

Game Audio Fundamentals takes the reader on a journey through game audio design: from analog and digital audio basics, to the art and execution of sound effects, soundtracks, and voice production, as well as learning how to make sense of a truly effective soundscape. Presuming no pre-existing knowledge, this accessible guide is accompanied by online resources - including practical examples and incremental DAW exercises - and presents the theory and practice of game audio in detail, and in a format anyone can understand. This is essential reading for any aspiring game audio designer, as well as students and professionals from a range of backgrounds, including music, audio engineering, and game design.

The contributions in this book survey results on combinations of probabilistic and various other classical, temporal and justification logical systems. Formal languages of these logics are extended with probabilistic operators. The aim is to provide a systematic overview and an accessible presentation of mathematical techniques used to obtain results on formalization, completeness, compactness and decidability. The book will be of value to researchers in logic and it can be used as a supplementary text in graduate courses on non-classical logics.

As Web services (any communication between two computers over a network) continue to evolve, publication and research related to the field must keep up in turn. Innovations, Standards and Practices of Web Services: Emerging Research Topics provides a vital new compendium of the latest research topics in the field of Web services. As a set of tools that can be used in a number of ways, Web services continue to evolve as the Internet expands its capabilities and users. Detailing the functions of service composition, and the most relevant models that modify its construction, this volume serves as a vital reference for practitioners, students, and academics alike.

A definitive guide to contemporary video game studies, this second edition has been fully revised and updated to address the ongoing theoretical and methodological development of game studies. Expertly compiled by well-known video game scholars Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, the Companion includes comprehensive and interdisciplinary models and approaches for analyzing video games, new perspectives on video games both as an art form and cultural phenomenon, explorations of the technical and creative dimensions of video games, and accounts of the political, social, and cultural dynamics of video games. Brand new to this second edition are essays examining topics such as preservation, augmented, mixed and virtual reality, eSports, disability, diversity, and identity, as well as a new section that specifically examines the industrial aspects of video games including digital distribution, game labor, triple-A games, indie games, and globalization. Each essay provides a lively and succinct summary of its target area, quickly bringing the reader up-to-date on the pertinent issues surrounding each aspect of the field, including references for further reading. A comprehensive overview of the present state of video game studies that will undoubtedly prove invaluable to students, scholars, and game designers alike.

It is frequently observed that most decision-making problems involve several objectives, and the aim of the decision makers is to find the best decision by fulfilling the aspiration levels of all the objectives. Multi-objective decision making is especially suitable for the design and planning steps and allows a decision maker to achieve the optimal or aspired goals by considering the various interactions of the given constraints. Multi-Objective Stochastic Programming in Fuzzy Environments discusses optimization problems with fuzzy random variables following several types of probability distributions and different types of fuzzy numbers with different defuzzification processes in probabilistic situations. The content within this publication examines such topics as waste management, agricultural systems, and fuzzy set theory. It is designed for academicians, researchers, and students.

This book presents the proceedings of the 10th International Parallel Tools Workshop, held October 4-5, 2016 in Stuttgart, Germany - a forum to discuss the latest advances in parallel tools. High-performance computing plays an increasingly important role for numerical simulation and modelling in academic and industrial research. At the same time, using large-scale parallel systems efficiently is becoming more difficult. A number of tools addressing parallel program development and analysis have emerged from the high-performance computing community over the last decade, and what may have started as collection of small helper script has now matured to production-grade frameworks. Powerful user interfaces and an extensive body of documentation allow easy usage by non-specialists.

Working with Sound is an exploration of the ever-changing working practices of audio development in the era of hybrid collaboration in the games industry. Through learnings from the pre-pandemic remote and isolated worlds of audio work, sound designers, composers and dialogue designers find themselves equipped uniquely to thrive in the hybrid, remote, and studio-based realms of today's fast-evolving working landscapes. With unique insights into navigating the worlds of isolation and collaboration, this book explores ways of thinking and working in this world, equipping the reader with inspiration to sustainably tackle the many stages of the development process. Working with Sound is an essential guide for professionals working in dynamic audio teams of all sizes, as well as the designers, producers, artists, animators and programmers who collaborate closely with their colleagues working on game audio and sound.

Master core data analysis skills using Julia. Interesting hands-on projects guide you through time series data, predictive models, popularity ranking, and more. In Julia for Data Analysis you will learn how to: Read and write data in various formats Work with tabular data, including subsetting, grouping, and transforming Visualize your data Build predictive models Create data processing pipelines Create web services sharing results of data analysis Write readable and efficient Julia programs Julia was designed for the unique needs of data scientists: it's expressive and easy-to-use whilst also delivering super-fast code execution. Julia for Data Analysis shows you how to take full advantage of this amazing language to read, write, transform, analyze, and visualize data--everything you need for an effective data pipeline. It's written by Bogumil Kaminski, one of the top contributors to Julia, #1 Julia answerer on StackOverflow, and a lead developer of Julia's core data package DataFrames.jl. Its engaging hands-on projects get you into the action quickly. Plus, you'll even be able to turn your new Julia skills to general purpose programming! Foreword by Viral Shah. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Julia is a great language for data analysis. It's easy to learn, fast, and it works well for everything from one-off calculations to full-on data processing pipelines. Whether you're looking for a better way to crunch everyday business data or you're just starting your data science journey, learning Julia will give you a valuable skill. About the book Julia for Data Analysis teaches you how to handle core data analysis tasks with the Julia programming language. You'll start by reviewing language fundamentals as you practice techniques for data transformation, visualizations, and more. Then, you'll master essential data analysis skills through engaging examples like examining currency exchange, interpreting time series data, and even exploring chess puzzles. Along the way, you'll learn to easily transfer existing data pipelines to Julia. What's inside Read and write data in various formats Work with tabular data, including subsetting, grouping, and transforming Create data processing pipelines Create web services sharing results of data analysis Write readable and efficient Julia programs About the reader For data scientists familiar with Python or R. No experience with Julia required. About the author Bogumil Kaminski iis one of the lead developers of DataFrames.jl--the core package for data manipulation in the Julia ecosystem. He has over 20 years of experience delivering data science projects. Table of Contents 1 Introduction PART 1 ESSENTIAL JULIA SKILLS 2 Getting started with Julia 3 Julia's support for scaling projects 4 Working with collections in Julia 5 Advanced topics on handling collections 6 Working with strings 7 Handling time-series data and missing values PART 2 TOOLBOX FOR DATA ANALYSIS 8 First steps with data frames 9 Getting data from a data frame 10 Creating data frame objects 11 Converting and grouping data frames 12 Mutating and transforming data frames 13 Advanced transformations of data frames 14 Creating web services for sharing data analysis results