Navigating Information Literacy captures a range of skills and topics essential for students who intend positioning themselves in academic or workplace environments that are globally connected and competitive.

The clear, well-structured and informative text leads the reader through all aspects of information literacy and provides practical advice and relevant examples from a variety of international contexts.

Ithiel de Sola Pool was a pioneering social scientist, a distinguished scholar of the political process, and one of the most original thinkers in the development of the social sciences. Passionately engaged in politics, he continued his role of leadership throughout his life, building the MIT Political Science Department into an outstanding group. He organized international teams of social scientists and collaborated widely to develop the understanding of social change. He was a frequent adviser to governments as consultant and in-house critic, and a successful advocate of limits on government regulation. "Politics in Wired Nations" presents his writings on the social and political impact of different communication systems and new telecommunications technology. Included in this volume is the first study of trends in a global information society, and the first study of social networks and the "small world" phenomenon that creates new relationships and routes of informal influence and political power, both domestic and international. Pool's essays on the politics of foreign trade, the influence of American businessmen on Congress, and changeable "unnatural" institutions of the modern world (e.g., bureaucracies, mega-cities, and nation-states) are herein contained. Pool describes a nonviolent revolution in freedom and political control that is possible as the world changes from the era of one-way mass communications--targeted to national audiences--to a new era of abundant, high-capacity, low-cost, interactive, and user-controlled communications on a global scale. He discusses policy choices for freedom, the battlegrounds ahead, and the risks of government involvement in the regulation of new telecommunication technologies.

The production and consumption of information and communication technologies (or ICTs) are becoming deeply embedded within our societies. The influence and implications of this have an impact at a macro level, in the way our governments, economies, and businesses operate, andat a micro level in our everyday lives. This handbook is about the many challenges presented by ICTs. It sets out an intellectual agenda that examines the implications of ICTs for individuals, organizations, democracy, and the economy. Explicity interdisciplinary, and combining empirical research with theoretical work, it is organised around four themes covering the knowledge economy; organizational dynamics, strategy, and design; governance and democracy; and culture, community and new media literacies. It provides a comprehensive resource for those working in the social sciences, and in the physical sciences and engineering fields, with leading contemporary research informed principally by the disciplines of anthropology, economics, philosophy, politics, and sociology.

This comprehensive and innovative Research Handbook tackles the pressing issues confronting us at the dawn of the global network society, including freedom of speech, government transparency and the digital divide. Representing a milestone in information policy research, this new volume edited by Alistair Duff brings together leading contributors from a wide range of disciplines to discuss important topics such as genetic information, news and privacy, and provides case studies on cyber harms, freedom of information and national digitization policy. Engaging with controversial problems of public policy including freedom of expression, copyright and information inequality, the Research Handbook on Information Policy offers a well-rounded exploration of the history and future of this vital field. Systematically addressing both general theory and specific issues, as well as providing international perspectives, this Research Handbook will be of particular interest to academics and students in the disciplines of information science, journalism and media studies, politics, sociology, philosophy and law.

Quality assurance is an essential aspect for ensuring the success of corporations worldwide. Consistent quality requirements across organizations of similar types ensure that these requirements can be accurately and easily evaluated. Shaping the Future Through Standardization is an essential scholarly book that examines quality and standardization within diverse organizations globally with a special focus on future perspectives, including how standards and standardization may shape the future. Featuring a wide range of topics such as economics, pedagogy, and management, this book is ideal for academicians, researchers, decision makers, policymakers, managers, corporate professionals, and students.

In recent years, many developing regions across the globe have made rigorous efforts to become integrated into the global information society. The development and implementation of information communication technology (ICT) devices and policies within various fields of service have significantly aided in the infrastructural progression of these countries. Despite these considerable advancements, there remains a lack of research and awareness on this imperative subject. Developing Countries and Technology Inclusion in the 21st Century Information Society is an essential reference source that discusses the adoption and impact of ICT tools in developing areas of the world as well as specific challenges and sustainable uses within various professional fields. Featuring research on topics such as policy development, gender differences, and international business, this book is ideally designed for educators, policymakers, researchers, librarians, practitioners, scientists, government officials, and students seeking coverage on modern applications of ICT services in developing countries.

This book describes concepts and tools needed for water resources management, including methods for modeling, simulation, optimization, big data analysis, data mining, remote sensing, geographical information system, game theory, conflict resolution, System dynamics, agent-based models, multiobjective, multicriteria, and multiattribute decision making and risk and uncertainty analysis, for better and sustainable management of water resources and consumption, thus mitigating the present and future global water shortage crisis. It presents the applications of these tools through case studies which demonstrate its benefits of proper management of water resources systems. This book acts as a reference for students, professors, industrial practitioners, and stakeholders in the field of water resources and hydrology.

This book discusses machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) for agricultural economics. It is written with a view towards bringing the benefits of advanced analytics and prognostics capabilities to small scale farmers worldwide. This volume provides data science and software engineering teams with the skills and tools to fully utilize economic models to develop the software capabilities necessary for creating lifesaving applications. The book introduces essential agricultural economic concepts from the perspective of full-scale software development with the emphasis on creating niche blue ocean products. Chapters detail several agricultural economic and AI reference architectures with a focus on data integration, algorithm development, regression, prognostics model development and mathematical optimization. Upgrading traditional AI software development paradigms to function in dynamic agricultural and economic markets, this volume will be of great use to researchers and students in agricultural economics, data science, engineering, and machine learning as well as engineers and industry professionals in the public and private sectors.

This book provides awareness of methods used for functional encryption in the academic and professional communities. The book covers functional encryption algorithms and its modern applications in developing secure systems via entity authentication, message authentication, software security, cyber security, hardware security, Internet of Thing (IoT), cloud security, smart card technology, CAPTCHA, digital signature, and digital watermarking. This book is organized into fifteen chapters; topics include foundations of functional encryption, impact of group theory in cryptosystems, elliptic curve cryptography, XTR algorithm, pairing based cryptography, NTRU algorithms, ring units, cocks IBE schemes, Boneh-Franklin IBE, Sakai-Kasahara IBE, hierarchical identity based encryption, attribute based Encryption, extensions of IBE and related primitives, and digital signatures. Explains the latest functional encryption algorithms in a simple way with examples; Includes applications of functional encryption in information security, application security, and network security; Relevant to academics, research scholars, software developers, etc.

The discipline of engineering presumes certain foundational truths that are not reducible to mathematical formulas. It presupposes certain things about creativity, beauty, and abstraction in order to operate effectively. In short, engineering relies on philosophy. Conversely, philosophy can draw profound truths from principles derived from engineering experience. Engineering and the Ultimate crosses boundaries between a wide variety of disciplines to find truths both new and old that can be transformative to modern thought and practice.

The regulation and flow of information continues to have a critical impact upon how people live their lives and the way society functions. In recent times, disinformation and privacy violation have become the 'information pollution' of the 21st century. This book explores ways and means of protecting the 'information environment' by drawing upon four theories of contemporary environmentalism: welfare economics, the commons, ecology, and public choice theory. Welfare economics highlights the need to focus on costs (as well as benefits) when evaluating regulatory structures. The commons encourages queries about the validity of propertisation. Ecology speaks to the importance of diversity and resilience. And public choice theory hazards against the regulatory effect of concentrated interests. The lessons from each inspire the proposed information environmental governance framework. By neatly capturing the metaphorical relationship between the physical environment and the information environment, Robert Cunningham explores progressive regulatory pathways for the digital age. This book will be a thought-provoking read for scholars and students with an interest in intellectual property or the regulation of information.

RDF-based knowledge graphs require additional formalisms to be fully context-aware, which is presented in this book. This book also provides a collection of provenance techniques and state-of-the-art metadata-enhanced, provenance-aware, knowledge graph-based representations across multiple application domains, in order to demonstrate how to combine graph-based data models and provenance representations. This is important to make statements authoritative, verifiable, and reproducible, such as in biomedical, pharmaceutical, and cybersecurity applications, where the data source and generator can be just as important as the data itself. Capturing provenance is critical to ensure sound experimental results and rigorously designed research studies for patient and drug safety, pathology reports, and medical evidence generation. Similarly, provenance is needed for cyberthreat intelligence dashboards and attack maps that aggregate and/or fuse heterogeneous data from disparate data sources to differentiate between unimportant online events and dangerous cyberattacks, which is demonstrated in this book. Without provenance, data reliability and trustworthiness might be limited, causing data reuse, trust, reproducibility and accountability issues. This book primarily targets researchers who utilize knowledge graphs in their methods and approaches (this includes researchers from a variety of domains, such as cybersecurity, eHealth, data science, Semantic Web, etc.). This book collects core facts for the state of the art in provenance approaches and techniques, complemented by a critical review of existing approaches. New research directions are also provided that combine data science and knowledge graphs, for an increasingly important research topic.

This volume constitutes the refereed and revised post-conference proceedings of the 5th IFIP WG 5.15 International Conference on Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction, ITDRR 2020, in Sofia, Bulgaria, in December 2020.* The 18 full papers and 6 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The papers focus on various aspects and challenges of coping with disaster risk reduction. The main topics include areas such as natural disasters, remote sensing, big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobile computing, emergency management, disaster information processing, disaster risk assessment and management. *The conference was held virtually.

Across numerous industries in modern society, there is a constant need to gather precise and relevant data efficiently and quickly. As such, it is imperative to research new methods and approaches to increase productivity in these areas. Ontologies and Big Data Considerations for Effective Intelligence is a key source on the latest advancements in multidisciplinary research methods and applications and examines effective techniques for managing and utilizing information resources. Featuring extensive coverage across a range of relevant perspectives and topics, such as visual analytics, spatial databases, retrieval systems, and ontology models, this book is ideally designed for researchers, graduate students, academics, and industry professionals seeking ways to optimize knowledge management processes.

Philosophical paradigms, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies make up the answering and problem solving systems that define current research approaches. While there are multiple research method books, the subject lacks an update and integrated source of reference for graduate courses. Research Methodologies, Innovations and Philosophies in Software Systems Engineering and Information Systems aims to advance scientific knowledge on research approaches used in systems engineering, software engineering, and information systems and to update and integrate disperse and valuable knowledge on research approaches. This aims to be a collection of knowledge for PhD students, research-oriented faculty, and instructors of graduate courses.

Quantum Computation and Quantum Information (QIP) deals with the identification and use of quantum resources for information processing. This includes three main branches of investigation: quantum algorithm design, quantum simulation and
quantum communication, including quantum cryptography. Along the past few years, QIP has become one of the most active area of
research in both, theoretical and experimental physics, attracting students and researchers fascinated, not only by the potential
practical applications of quantum computers, but also by the possibility of studying fundamental physics at the deepest level of quantum phenomena.
NMR Quantum Computation and Quantum Information Processing describes the fundamentals of NMR QIP, and the main developments which can lead to a large-scale quantum processor.
The text starts with a general chapter on
the interesting topic of the physics of computation. The very first ideas which sparkled the development of QIP came from basic considerations of the physical processes underlying computational actions. In Chapter 2 it is made an introduction to NMR, including the hardware and other experimental aspects of the technique. In
Chapter 3 we revise the fundamentals of Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. The chapter is very much based on the extraordinary book of Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang, with
an upgrade containing some of the latest developments, such as QIP in phase space, and telecloning. Chapter 4 describes how NMR
generates quantum logic gates from radiofrequency pulses, upon which quantum protocols are built. It also describes the important technique of Quantum State Tomography for both, quadrupole and spin
1/2 nuclei. Chapter 5 describes some of the main experiments of quantum algorithm implementation by NMR, quantum simulation and QIP in phase space. The important issue of entanglement in NMR QIP
experiments is discussed in Chapter 6. This has been a particularly exciting topic in the literature. The chapter contains a discussion
on the theoretical aspects of NMR entanglement, as well as some of the main experiments where this phenomenon is reported. Finally, Chapter 7 is an attempt to address the future of NMR QIP, based in
very recent developments in nanofabrication and single-spin detection experiments. Each chapter is followed by a number of problems and solutions.
* Presents a large number of problems with solutions, ideal for students
* Brings together topics in different areas: NMR, nanotechnology, quantum computation
* Extensive references

The Haifa 2000 Workshop on "Inherently Parallel Algorithms for Feasibility and Optimization and their Applications" brought together top scientists in this area. The objective of the Workshop was to discuss, analyze and compare the latest developments in this fast growing field of applied mathematics and to identify topics of research which are of special interest for industrial applications and for further theoretical study.

Inherently parallel algorithms, that is, computational methods which are, by their mathematical nature, parallel, have been studied in various contexts for more than fifty years. However, it was only during the last decade that they have mostly proved their practical usefulness because new generations of computers made their implementation possible in order to solve complex feasibility and optimization problems involving huge amounts of data via parallel processing. These led to an accumulation of computational experience and theoretical information and opened new and challenging questions concerning the behavior of inherently parallel algorithms for feasibility and optimization, their convergence in new environments and in circumstances in which they were not considered before their stability and reliability. Several research groups all over the world focused on these questions and it was the general feeling among scientists involved in this effort that the time has come to survey the latest progress and convey a perspective for further development and concerted scientific investigations. Thus, the editors of this volume, with the support of the Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities, took the initiative of organizing a Workshop intended to bring together the leading scientists in the field. The current volume is the Proceedings of the Workshop representing the discussions, debates and communications that took place. Having all that information collected in a single book will provide mathematicians and engineers interested in the theoretical and practical aspects of the inherently parallel algorithms for feasibility and optimization with a tool for determining when, where and which algorithms in this class are fit for solving specific problems, how reliable they are, how they behave and how efficient they were in previous applications. Such a tool will allow software creators to choose ways of better implementing these methods by learning from existing experience.

With word processing and the Internet, computing is much more part and parcel of the everyday life of the humanities scholar, but computers can do much more than assist with writing or Internet searching. This book introduces a range of tools and techniques for manipulating and analysing electronic texts in the humanities. It shows how electronic texts can be used for the literary analysis, linguistic analysis, authorship attribution, and the preparation and publication of electronic scholarly editions. It assesses the ways in which research in corpus and computational linguistics can feed into better electronic tools for humanities research. The tools and techniques discussed in this book will feed into better Internet tools and pave the way for the electronic scholar of the twenty-first century.

After critiquing chaos, catastrophe, and complexity theories, showing their limitations in the contemporary era, Rich furthers the development of crisis theory and applies the crisis theory approach to biological and social evolution. Treating evolution in the context of crisis theory, he shows that as evolution is both genetic and social, social evolution is an extension of biological evolution. As physical evolution results from problem solving, social evolution develops from the solving of historically significant problems, bringing about, for instance, the post-World War II era of knowledge. In this context, Rich discusses the problems of our era, with an emphasis on the paradox of industrialization and its consequences for wealthy and poor nations alike. The paradox of industrialization is approached in terms of crisis theory and resolved.