This book discusses the smooth integration of optical and RF networks in 5G and beyond (5G+) heterogeneous networks (HetNets), covering both planning and operational aspects. The integration of high-frequency air interfaces into 5G+ wireless networks can relieve the congested radio frequency (RF) bands. Visible light communication (VLC) is now emerging as a promising candidate for future generations of HetNets. Heterogeneous RF-optical networks combine the high throughput of visible light and the high reliability of RF. However, when implementing these HetNets in mobile scenarios, several challenges arise from both planning and operational perspectives. Since the mmWave, terahertz, and visible light bands share similar wave propagation characteristics, the concepts presented here can be broadly applied in all such bands. To facilitate the planning of RF-optical HetNets, the authors present an algorithm that specifies the joint optimal densities of the base stations by drawing on stochastic geometry in order to satisfy the users' quality-of-service (QoS) demands with minimum network power consumption. From an operational perspective, the book explores vertical handovers and multi-homing using a cooperative framework. For vertical handovers, it employs a data-driven approach based on deep neural networks to predict abrupt optical outages; and, on the basis of this prediction, proposes a reinforcement learning strategy that ensures minimal network latency during handovers. In terms of multi-homing support, the authors examine the aggregation of the resources from both optical and RF networks, adopting a two-timescale multi-agent reinforcement learning strategy for optimal power allocation. Presenting comprehensive planning and operational strategies, the book allows readers to gain an in-depth grasp of how to integrate future coexisting networks at high-frequency bands in a cooperative manner, yielding reliable and high-speed 5G+ HetNets.

This book provides a practical approach for applying posthumanist insights to qualitative research inquiry. Adams and Thompson invite readers to embrace their inner - and outer - cyborg as they consider how today's professional practices and everyday ways of being are increasingly intertwined with digital technologies. Drawing on posthuman scholarship, the authors offer eight heuristics for "interviewing objects" in an effort to reveal the unique - and sometimes contradictory - contributions the digital is making to work, learning and living. The heuristics are drawn from Actor Network Theory, phenomenology, postphenomenology, critical media studies and related sociomaterial approaches. This text offers a theoretically informed yet practical approach for asking critical questions of digital and non-digital things in professional and personal spaces, and ultimately, for considering the ethical and political implications of a technology mediated world. A thought-provoking and innovative study, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of technology studies, digital learning, and sociology.

Applied data-centric social sciences aim to develop both methodology and practical applications of various fields of sciences and businesses with rich data. Specifically, in the social sciences, a vast amount of data on human activities may be useful for understanding collective human nature. In this book, the author introduces several mathematical techniques for handling a huge volume of data and analyzing collective human behavior. The book is constructed from data-oriented investigation, with mathematical methods and expressions used for dealing with data for several specific problems. The fundamental philosophy underlying the book is that both mathematical and physical concepts are determined by the purposes of data analysis. This philosophy is shown throughout exemplar studies of several fields in socio-economic systems. From a data-centric point of view, the author proposes a concept that may change people s minds and cause them to start thinking from the basis of data. Several goals underlie the chapters of the book. The first is to describe mathematical and statistical methods for data analysis, and toward that end the author delineates methods with actual data in each chapter. The second is to find a cyber-physical link between data and data-generating mechanisms, as data are always provided by some kind of data-generating process in the real world. The third goal is to provide an impetus for the concepts and methodology set forth in this book to be applied to socio-economic systems."

This Open Access book analyses the interplay between governing, evaluation and knowledge with an empirical focus on Swedish higher education. It investigates the origins, logics, and mechanisms of evaluation and quality assurance reforms and their dynamic interactions with institutional, national and European policy contexts. The chapters report findings from extensive empirical studies that offer detailed insight into the work of governing in higher education, by giving voice to actors at various levels and positions including the ministry, national agency and University employees. Central themes include the influence of European policy, changing system designs, media relations and quality assurance enactments in University institutions. The book also explores the ways in which an emerging professional cadre, labelled qualocrats, enacts and mediates evaluation and quality assurance policy and practice. Taken together, the expanding evaluation machinery in Swedish higher education highlights the pivotal role of knowledge as a governing resource, and points to special features of evaluation as a particular form of practice that makes knowledge work for governing.

This volume focuses on the ethics of internet and social networking research exploring the challenges faced by researchers making use of social media and big data in their research. The internet, the world wide web and social media - indeed all forms of online communications - are attractive fields of research across a range of disciplines. They offer opportunities for methodological initiatives and innovations in research and easily accessed, massive amounts of primary and secondary data sources. This collection examines the new challenges posed by data generated online, explores how researchers are addressing those ethical challenges, and provides rich case studies of ethical decision making in the digital age.

Multilevel and Longitudinal Modeling with IBM SPSS, Third Edition, demonstrates how to use the multilevel and longitudinal modeling techniques available in IBM SPSS Versions 25-27. Annotated screenshots with all relevant output provide readers with a step-by-step understanding of each technique as they are shown how to navigate the program. Throughout, diagnostic tools, data management issues, and related graphics are introduced. SPSS commands show the flow of the menu structure and how to facilitate model building, while annotated syntax is also available for those who prefer this approach. Extended examples illustrating the logic of model development and evaluation are included throughout the book, demonstrating the context and rationale of the research questions and the steps around which the analyses are structured. The book opens with the conceptual and methodological issues associated with multilevel and longitudinal modeling, followed by a discussion of SPSS data management techniques that facilitate working with multilevel, longitudinal, or cross-classified data sets. The next few chapters introduce the basics of multilevel modeling, developing a multilevel model, extensions of the basic two-level model (e.g., three-level models, models for binary and ordinal outcomes), and troubleshooting techniques for everyday-use programming and modeling problems along with potential solutions. Models for investigating individual and organizational change are next developed, followed by models with multivariate outcomes and, finally, models with cross-classified and multiple membership data structures. The book concludes with thoughts about ways to expand on the various multilevel and longitudinal modeling techniques introduced and issues (e.g., missing data, sample weights) to keep in mind in conducting multilevel analyses. Key features of the third edition: Thoroughly updated throughout to reflect IBM SPSS Versions 26-27. Introduction to fixed-effects regression for examining change over time where random-effects modeling may not be an optimal choice. Additional treatment of key topics specifically aligned with multilevel modeling (e.g., models with binary and ordinal outcomes). Expanded coverage of models with cross-classified and multiple membership data structures. Added discussion on model checking for improvement (e.g., examining residuals, locating outliers). Further discussion of alternatives for dealing with missing data and the use of sample weights within multilevel data structures. Supported by online data sets, the book's practical approach makes it an essential text for graduate-level courses on multilevel, longitudinal, latent variable modeling, multivariate statistics, or advanced quantitative techniques taught in departments of business, education, health, psychology, and sociology. The book will also prove appealing to researchers in these fields. The book is designed to provide an excellent supplement to Heck and Thomas's An Introduction to Multilevel Modeling Techniques, Fourth Edition; however, it can also be used with any multilevel or longitudinal modeling book or as a stand-alone text.

The crime drop is one of the most important puzzles in contemporary criminology: since the early-1990s many countries appear to exhibit a pronounced decline in crime rates. While there have been many studies on the topic, this book argues that the current crime drop literature relies too heavily on a single methodological approach, and in turn, provides a new method for examining the falling rates of crime, based on ideas from political science and comparative historical social science. Farrall's original new research forwards an understanding of trends in crime and responses to them by questioning the received theoretical assumptions. The book therefore encourages a 'deepening' in the nature of the sorts of studies which have been undertaken so far. Firmly grounded in Political Science, this innovative study is a must read for scholars of Critical Criminology, Criminological Theory, and Politics.

The Counselor as Practitioner-Researcher: A Practical Guide to Research Methods is designed to help readers integrate a researcher's perspective and research methodology into their professional practice. Approaching practice as a practitioner-researcher not only facilitates the gathering of data and the drawing of useful conclusions, but also results in more ethical and effective practice decisions. Section I provides readers with an overview of the need and value of research in support of the counseling profession and as a basis for sound and successful practice decisions. In Section II, the fundamentals of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed designs are reviewed. Section III highlights specific designs and their value to the counselor as practitioner-researcher, including between group, within subject, action research, and case study designs. The text concludes with an extensive case illustration of counselor research and the steps necessary to developing a specific research plan. The Counselor as Practitioner-Researcher assists those in training and those in practice to not only become informed consumers of research, but also "doers" of research as it guides their practice decisions, affords measures of accountability, and supports program evaluation.

This book represents a close engagement with vulnerable populations in the city of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria. Following the traditions of Clifford Geertz' thick description, Elliot Eisner's arts-based research, and Laurel Richardson's poetic inquiry, Learning Calabar weaves prose and poetry in a hybrid form that evokes the everyday lives of gate keepers, grounds keepers, taxi drivers, cooks, and children with whom the author interacted during a Fulbright year. From the stance of a participant-observer, it traces her learning of history and the evolution of her understanding as she lived, along with her neighbors, in the chaos of governmental failure, extended power outages, and dysfunctional systems, aware that her privilege offered protections not afforded to her neighbors. This work opens doors to a long sweep of Nigerian history, while keeping a laser eye on people living now in the aftermath of that history, which is both culturally rich and politically torn. Written from the viewpoint of a learner, this book will be of interest to learners of West African history, cultural anthropology, ethnography, women's studies, cross cultural studies, and poetic inquiry. Its vibrant voice and poetic renderings also make it accessible and engaging for general audiences.

While there is growing interest in participatory research to address issues around environmental sustainability, the focus of analysis tends to be on the results or products of the research rather than the processes involved. Addressing this gap, the authors draw on their experience of specific mapping techniques, based on different systemic concepts and theories, that have helped facilitate, explore and capture different understandings of the relationships, perspectives and boundaries within situations involving environmental sustainability. The development of visual mapping techniques is explained and practical case studies describe their application in environmental sustainability projects, from working with farmers and their networks to using visual mapping with indigenous communities and managing coastal environments. Each case study provides a 'real world' project example from researchers with extensive experience of using these techniques to research different aspects of environmental sustainability over several decades.

This clear, straightforward textbook embraces the practical reality of actually doing fieldwork. It tackles the common problems faced by new researchers head on, offering sensible advice and instructive case studies from the author's own experience.

Barbara Czarniawska takes us on a master class through the research process, encouraging us to revisit the various facets of the fieldwork research and helping us to reframe our own experiences. Combining a conversational style of writing with an impressive range of empirical examples she takes the reader from planning and designing research to collecting and analyzing data all the way to writing up and disseminating findings.

This is a sophisticated introduction to a broad range of research methods and methodologies; it will be of great interest to anyone keen to revisit social research in the company of an expert guide.

This book describes how powerful computing technology, emerging big and open data sources, and theoretical perspectives on spatial synthesis have revolutionized the way in which we investigate social sciences and humanities. It summarizes the principles and applications of human-centered computing and spatial social science and humanities research, thereby providing fundamental information that will help shape future research. The book illustrates how big spatiotemporal socioeconomic data facilitate the modelling of individuals' economic behavior in space and time and how the outcomes of such models can reveal information about economic trends across spatial scales. It describes how spatial social science and humanities research has shifted from a data-scarce to a data-rich environment. The chapters also describe how a powerful analytical framework for identifying space-time research gaps and frontiers is fundamental to comparative study of spatiotemporal phenomena, and how research topics have evolved from structure and function to dynamic and predictive. As such this book provides an interesting read for researchers, students and all those interested in computational and spatial social sciences and humanities.

This book scrutinizes how contemporary practices of security have come to rely on many different translations of security, risk, and danger. Institutions of national security policies are currently undergoing radical conceptual and organisational changes, and this book presents a novel approach for how to study and politically address the new situation. Complex and uncertain threat environments, such as terrorism, climate change, and the global financial crisis, have paved the way for new forms of security governance that have profoundly transformed the ways in which threats are handled today. Crucially, there is a decentralisation of the management of security, which is increasingly handled by a broad set of societal actors that previously were not considered powerful in the conduct of security affairs. This transformation of security knowledge and management changes the meaning of traditional concepts and practices, and calls for investigation into the many meanings of security implied when contemporary societies manage radical dangers, risks, and threats. It is necessary to study both what these meanings are and how they developed from the security practices of the past. Addressing this knowledge gap, the book asks how different ideas about threats, risk, and dangers meet in the current practices of security, broadly understood, and with what political consequences. This book will be of interest to students of critical security studies, anthropology, risk studies, science and technology studies and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at: https://www.routledge.com/Translations-of-Security-A-Framework-for-the-Study-of-Unwanted-Futures/Berling-Gad-Petersen-Waever/p/book/9781032007090 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

This book develops an approach to both method and the socio-political implications of knowledge production that embraces our embeddedness in the world that we study. It seeks to enact the transformative potentials inherent in this relationship in how it engages readers. It presents a creative survey of some of the newest developments in critical research methods and critical pedagogy that together go beyond the aims of knowledge transfer that often structure our practices. Each contribution takes on a different shape, tone and orientation, and discusses a critical method or approach, teasing out the ways in which it can also work as a transformative practice. While the presentation of different methods is both rigorously practice-based and specific, contributors also offer reflections on the stakes of critical engagement and how it may play an important role in expanding and subverting existing regimes of intelligibility. Contributions variously address the following key questions: What makes your research method important? How can others work with it? How has research through this method and/or the way you ended up deploying it transformed you and/or your practice? How did it matter for thinking about community, (academic) collaboration, and sharing 'knowledge'? This volume makes the case for re-politicizing the importance of research and the transformative potentials of research methods not only in 'accessing' the world as an object of study, but as ways of acting and being in the world. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, critical theory, research methods and politics in general.

With today's social and geopolitical order in significant flux this project offers vital insight into the future global order by comparatively charting national media perceptions regarding the future of global competition, through the lens of Ontological Security (OS). The authors employ a mixed-method approach to analyze 620 news articles from 47 Russian, Chinese, Venezuelan, and Iranian news sources over a five-year period (2014-2019), quantitatively comparing the drivers of their visions while providing in-depth qualitative case studies for each nation. Not only do these narratives reveal how these four nations understand the current global order, but also point to their (in)flexibility and agentic capacity for reflection in adapting, even shaping the future order, and their identity-roles within it, around an economic and diplomatic battleground. The authors argue these narratives create trajectories with inertial effects grounded in their OS needs, providing enduring insights into their behavior and interests moving into the future. The Future of Global Coopetition will help readers understand how influential nations typical aligned in opposition to the US, envision the drivers of global competition and the make-up of the future international system. Those engaged in the study of media, global politics, international relations, and communication will find this book to be a critical source.

This book familiarises readers with a new way to treat the subject of gender, foregrounding the real voices of women, their experiences doing ethnographic work, and their courage in sharing their stories publicly for the first time in the context of India. A useful companion to more theory-based anthropological studies, the book connects ethnographic data to what eventually becomes theories formed from the field. Filling a gap in the existing literature of ethnographic research methods, the book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in the fields of Gender Studies, Social Work, Sociology, Anthropology and Asian Studies.

This book stimulates discussions on cultural and educational exchanges between rival states and societies, raises awareness of the potential positive and negative impacts of such exchanges, and serves as a basis for future research and program design. Cultural and educational exchanges in various forms have existed for millennia. Yet it was not until the unprecedented human devastation of two world wars catalyzed a sense of urgency around the world that a new era of cultural and educational exchange programs emerged as a means of easing tensions between rival states and societies. This book is motivated by the need for critical research that can contribute to building a more comprehensive understanding of the issues at stake. It begins with a historical overview of cultural and educational exchanges between rival societies, an assessment of their positive and negative impacts, and a review of some of the most prominent theories in relevant fields. It then presents a diverse set of case studies, in which authors consider not only the real or expected benefits of such exchanges but also the potentially negative impacts, challenges faced along the way, and broader effects on the rival societies at large. The states and societies considered include North Korea and the West, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel and the Palestinian territories, India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, Cuba and the US, and China and the US. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that exchanges have observable impacts on the individuals and institutions involved. Moreover, they reveal that exchanges have the capacity, in some cases, to affect broader social and political change at the family, community, society, or state level, but these impacts are indirect and typically require long-term concerted efforts by those involved.

Over the past decades Europe has witnessed fundamental changes of its population dynamics and population structure. Fertility has fallen below replacement level in almost all European countries, while childbearing behavior and family formation have become more diverse. Life expectancy has increased in Western Europe for both females and males, but has been declining for men in some Eastern European countries. Immigration from non-European countries has increased substantially, as has mobility within Europe. These changes pose major challenges to population studies, as conventional theoretical assumptions regarding demographic behavior and demographic development seem unfit to provide convincing explanations of the recent demographic changes. This book, derived from the symposium on "The Demography of Europe" held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany in November 2007 in honor of Professor Jan M. Hoem, brings together leading population researchers in the area of fertility, family, migration, life-expectancy, and mortality. The contributions present key issues of the new demography of Europe and discuss key research advances to understand the continent's demographic development at the turn of the 21st century.

Semantic Network Analysis in Social Sciences introduces the fundamentals of semantic network analysis and its applications in the social sciences. Readers learn how to easily transform any given text into a visual network of words co-occurring together, a process that allows mapping the main themes appearing in the text and revealing its main narratives and biases. Semantic network analysis is particularly useful today with the increasing volumes of text-based information available. It is one of the developing, cutting-edge methods to organize, identify patterns and structures, and understand the meanings of our information society. The first chapters in this book offer step-by-step guidelines for conducting semantic network analysis, including choosing and preparing the text, selecting desired words, constructing the networks, and interpreting their meanings. Free software tools and code are also presented. The rest of the book displays state-of-the-art studies from around the world that apply this method to explore news, political speeches, social media content, and even to organize interview transcripts and literature reviews. Aimed at scholars with no previous knowledge in the field, this book can be used as a main or a supplementary textbook for general courses on research methods or network analysis courses, as well as a starting point to conduct your own content analysis of large texts.

Originally published in 1930, this title brings to its conclusion a work first published, in part, in the earlier volume The Science and Method of Politics. The work was undertaken at first with a view to discovering the forces at work which form the anatomy and determine the physiology of States. However, it became apparent that not States but Society must be the object of study if any progress were to made, and if the inquiry were to be radical enough to disclose, and indicate the means of controlling, the causes which conduce to such social disorders as war. The subject might very well have been treated from a very different point of view. However, the author felt that the approach to politics from the angle of political philosophy and the humanities was less important for the needs of the time than an approach from the angle of psychology and of statistics.

This book seeks to chart and evaluate the impact of social research on the military itself. By "impact", the authors in this volume simply mean that which has a marked effect or influence on changing military policy, practices, knowledge, skills, behaviour, or living conditions. The book comprises a series of reflective contributions from scholars who have conducted research on the military as external scholars with no formal ties to the armed forces, as "native" researchers formally linked to them, as well as various kinds of contracted social scientists enabled by the military to carry out their investigations. The authors were asked to make the question of the impact of social scientific research on the armed forces an object of study in itself and to situate their reflections in terms of wider analytical questions. As a result, the chapters can be divided, broadly speaking, into two types of orientation: some are centered on theoretical and analytical issues, while others focus on the researchers' lived experiences. This book will be of interest to students of military studies, sociology, organisational studies, psychology and political science.

This textbook introduces graduate students in education and policy research to data and statistical methods in state-level higher education policy analysis. It also serves as a methodological guide to students, practitioners, and researchers who want a clear approach to conducting higher education policy analysis that involves the use of institutional- and state-level secondary data and quantitative methods ranging from descriptive to advanced statistical techniques. This book is unique in that it introduces readers to various types of data sources and quantitative methods utilized in policy research and in that it demonstrates how results of statistical analyses should be presented to higher education policy makers. It helps to bridge the gap between researchers, policy makers, and practitioners both within education policy and between other fields. Coverage includes identifying pertinent data sources, the creation and management of customized data sets, teaching beginning and advanced statistical methods and analyses, and the presentation of analyses for different audiences (including higher education policy makers).