This book shows how neural networks are applied to computational mechanics. Part I presents the fundamentals of neural networks and other machine learning method in computational mechanics. Part II highlights the applications of neural networks to a variety of problems of computational mechanics. The final chapter gives perspectives to the applications of the deep learning to computational mechanics.

Teaches readers to identify and avoid deceit and misinformation online. We are commonly deceived by numbers in our everyday lives. From lotteries, product warranties, and weight loss fads to misleading headlines, numbers are used in manipulative ways to lure us into making decisions about our life. Data Duped will help you avoid common pitfalls and develop a sense of ‘data defense’ by learning what types of questions to ask and how to maintain a healthy level of curiosity and data skepticism. Data Duped gives readers a super power, or at least we hope so. Knowledge is power. With knowledge of how data can be manipulated, how it can influence our decisions and how it can deceive, readers will face data with a new empowered approach. This book purposefully raises more questions than answers and guides readers to seek the differences between the plausible and the ridiculous along a journey of informed critical thinking and data literacy. With historical parallels and both practical and relatable examples, readers will learn how to separate the ‘malarkey’ from the truth, become able to comfortably bring a little more data into their lives, and ultimately avoid being hoodwinked by misinformation.

Although Japanese universities have relied on information technology to resolve numerous problems, their high expectations are undermined by lags in implementing that technology. This innovative edited volume argues that lags in IT implementation in Japanese education are created by contradictory and challenging responses of the social environment. If this dialectic can be visualized as having hands, the right avidly promotes IT, while the left hand simultaneously blocks it. The result, of course, is an impasse. The issues central to this stalemate are significant because they point beyond the schools, to a broader set of problem areas in Japanese society. The contributors to Roadblocks on the Information Highway discover and discuss the contradictions inherent in Japanese society and culture as they are played out in the social contexts of IT service providers, web masters, and classroom teachers who implement IT. They then show how these contradictions indicate broader, structural problems that pervade the dynamic between Japanese education and the state and business sectors. Ultimately, in a reach that goes beyond Japan, this book examines relationships between technology and society, persuasively convincing readers that the modern age has created an inextricable link between the two.

Breaking down the 40-year history of the world’s most popular art form, one video game at a timePong. The Legend of Zelda.Final Fantasy VII. Rock Band.Fortnite. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For each of the 40 years of video game history, there is a defining game, a game that captured the zeitgeist and left a legacy for all games that followed. Through a series of entertaining, informative, and opinionated critical essays, author and tech journalist Jordan Minor investigates, in chronological order, the innovative, genre-bending, and earth-shattering games from 1977 through 2022. Minor explores development stories, critical reception, and legacy, and also looks at how gaming intersects with and eventually influences society at large while reveling in how uniquely and delightfully bizarre even the most famous games tend to be.From portly plumbers to armor-clad space marines and the speedy rodents in between, Video Game of the Year paints individual portraits that, as a whole, give readers a stronger appreciation for the vibrant variety and long-lasting impact of this fresh, exciting, and massively popular art form. Illustrated throughout with retro-inspired imagery and featuring contributions from dozens of leading industry voices, including New York Times bestselling author Jason Schreier (Blood, Sweat, and Pixels; Kotaku), Max Scoville (IGN), Rebekah Valentine (IGN), Blessing Adeoye Jr. (Kinda Funny), and Devindra Hardawar (Engadget), this year-by-year anthology is a loving reflection on the world’s most popular art form. Featured Games: 1977 - Pong; 1978 - Space Invaders; 1979 - Speed Freak; 1980 - Pac-Man; 1981 - Donkey Kong; 1982 - Pitfall!; 1983 - Dragon’s Lair; 1984 - Tetris; 1985 - Super Mario Bros.; 1986 - Dragon Quest; 1987 - The Legend of Zelda; 1988 - Mega Man 2; 1989 - SimCity; 1990 - The Secret of Monkey Island; 1991 - Sonic the Hedgehog; 1992 - Wolfenstein 3D; 1993 - NBA Jam; 1994 - Super Street Fighter II Turbo; 1995 - Donkey Kong Country 2; 1996 - Super Mario 64; 1997 - Final Fantasy VII; 1998 - Metal Gear Solid; 1999 - System Shock 2; 2000 Counter-Strike; 2001 - Halo: Combat Evolved; 2002 - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City; 2003 - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker; 2004 - World of Warcraft; 2005 - Resident Evil 4; 2006 - Wii Sports; 2007 - Rock Band; 2008 - Spore; 2009 - Uncharted 2; 2010 - Super Meat Boy; 2011 - Minecraft; 2012 - Telltale’s The Walking Dead; 2013 - Depression Quest; 2014 - Destiny; 2015 - Witcher 3; 2016 - Pokemon Go; 2017 - Fortnite; 2018 - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; 2019 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice; 2020 - Animal Crossing: New Horizons; 2022 - The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

This edited collection of essays is devoted to the terminology used in the fields of videogame theory and videogame studies. Videogame scholars provide theoretical critiques of existing terminology, mount arguments for the creation of new terminology, articulate terminological gaps in the current literature devoted to videogame studies, and share phenomenological studies of videogames that facilitate terminological theory.

This collection of new essays explores issues of identity, work and play in the virtual world of Second Life (SL). Fourteen women explore their experiences in this virtual environment. Topics include teaching in Second Life, becoming an SL journalist, and using SL as a means to bring human rights to health care; exploring issues of identity and gender such as performing the role of digital geisha, playing with gender crossing, or determining how identity is formed virtually; examining how race is perceived; and investigating creativity such as poetry writing or quilting. The text is unique in that it represents only women and their experiences in a world that is most often viewed as a man's world.

This book analyses the root causes of suicide terrorism at both the elite and rank-and- file levels of the Hamas and also explains why this tactic has disappeared in the post-2006 period. This volume adopts a multi-causal, multi-level approach to analyse the use of suicide bombings by Hamas and its individual operatives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It uses extensive fieldwork and on-the-ground interviews in order to delve beneath the surface and understand why and how suicide operations were adopted as a sustained mechanism of engagement within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Three core factors fuelled Hamas's suicide bombing campaigns. First, Palestinian suicide operations are a complex combination of instrumental and expressive violence adopted by both organisations and individuals to achieve political and/or societal survival, retaliation and competition. In other words, suicide bombings not only serve distinct political and strategic goals for both Hamas and its operatives but they also serve to convey a symbolic message to various audiences, within Israel, the Palestinian territories and around the world. Second, suicide operations perform a crucial role in the formation and consolidation of Palestinian national identity and are also the latest manifestation of the historically entrenched cultural norm of militant heroic martyrdom. Finally, Hamas's use of political Islam also facilitates the articulation, justification and legitimisation of suicide operations as a modern-day jihad against Israel through the means of modern interpretations and fatwas. This approach not only facilitates a much needed, multifaceted, holistic understanding of suicide bombings in this particular region but also yields policy-relevant lessons to address extreme political violence in other parts of the world. This book will be of much interest to students of Hamas, terrorism, Middle East politics and security studies.

Discover everything you want to know about Microsoft's newest version of Windows in this easy-to-use guide; from the most essential tasks that you'll want to perform, to solving the most common problems you'll encounter.

Smart phones, tablets, Facebook, Twitter, and wireless Internet connections are the latest technologies to have quickly become entrenched in our culture. Although traditionalists have argued that computer-mediated communication and cyberspace are incongruent with the study of folklore,Trevor J. Blank sees the digital world as fully capable of generating, transmitting, performing, and archiving vernacular culture. Folk Culture in the Digital Age documents the emergent cultural scenes and expressive folkloric communications that are being made possible by digital "new media" technologies. New media is changing the ways in which people learn, share, participate, and engage with others as they adopt technologies to complement and supplement traditional means of vernacular expression. But behavioral and structural overlap in many folkloric forms exists between on- and offline, and emerging patterns in digital rhetoric mimic the dynamics of previously documented folkloric forms, invoking familiar social or behavior customs, linguistic inflections, and symbolic gestures. Folk Culture in the Digital Age provides insights and perspectives on the myriad ways in which folk culture manifests in the digital age and contributes to our greater understanding of vernacular expression in our ever-changing technological world.

-Written by the authors of key spatial R packages -Makes spatial data analysis more robust -Integrates with the tidyverse and comparable approaches -Includes many easily reproducible examples

Turning an anthropological eye toward cyberspace, Human No More explores how conditions of the online world shape identity, place, culture, and death within virtual communities. Online worlds have recently thrown into question the traditional anthropological conception of place-based ethnography. They break definitions, blur distinctions, and force us to rethink the notion of the "subject." Human No More asks how digital cultures can be integrated and how the ethnography of both the "unhuman" and the "digital" could lead to possible reconfiguring the notion of the "human." This provocative and groundbreaking work challenges fundamental assumptions about the entire field of anthropology. Cross-disciplinary research from well-respected contributors makes this volume vital to the understanding of contemporary human interaction. It will be of interest not only to anthropologists but also to students and scholars of media, communication, popular culture, identity, and technology.

This readable and engaging book will help managers and executives understand the major trends affecting digital technology so they are prepared to make the right decisions for their organisation. With case studies, and practical guidance, it’s split into short sections you can dip into at any time. 

This textbook presents fundamental topics in discrete mathematics introduced from the perspectives of a pure mathematician and an applied computer scientist. The synergy between the two complementary perspectives is seen throughout the book; key concepts are motivated and explained through real-world examples, and yet are still formalized with mathematical rigor. The book is an excellent introduction to discrete mathematics for computer science, software engineering, and mathematics students.The first author is a leading mathematician in the area of logic, computability, and theoretical computer science, with more than 25 years of teaching and research experience. The second author is a computer science PhD student at the University of Washington specializing in database systems. The father-and-daughter team merges two different views to create a unified book for students interested in learning discrete mathematics, the connections between discrete mathematics and computer science, and the mathematical foundations of computer science.Readers will learn how to formally define abstract concepts, reason about objects (such as programs, graphs and numbers), investigate properties of algorithms, and prove their correctness. The textbook studies several well-known algorithmic problems including the path problem for graphs and finding the greatest common divisor, inductive definitions, proofs of correctness of algorithms via loop invariants and induction, the basics of formal methods such as propositional logic, finite state machines, counting, probability, as well as the foundations of databases such as relational calculus.

A comprehensive and cutting-edge introduction to quantitative methods of causal analysis, including new trends in machine learning.

Reasoning about cause and effect—the consequence of doing one thing versus another—is an integral part of our lives as human beings. In an increasingly digital and data-driven economy, the importance of sophisticated causal analysis only deepens. Presenting the most important quantitative methods for evaluating causal effects, this textbook provides graduate students and researchers with a clear and comprehensive introduction to the causal analysis of empirical data. Martin Huber’s accessible approach highlights the intuition and motivation behind various methods while also providing formal discussions of key concepts using statistical notation. Causal Analysis covers several methodological developments not covered in other texts, including new trends in machine learning, the evaluation of interaction or interference effects, and recent research designs such as bunching or kink designs.

• Most complete and cutting-edge introduction to causal analysis, including causal machine learning
• Clean presentation of rigorous material avoids extraneous detail and emphasizes conceptual analogies over statistical notation
• Supplies a range of applications and practical examples using R

1. This book is useful and accessible background reading for those engaged in organized crime and cybercrime. It is written with the general reader in mind, so will be of interest to students and intelligent readers alike. 2. The book draws on a range of case studies from around the world, looking at Italian Mafias, Russian and Georgian criminal groups and drug cartels, and the Asian gangs such as the Yakuza and the Triads.

Did you know the Nintendo Wii had a medical condition named after it? Or that the Sega Saturn almost had the Nintendo 64's graphics chip? Did you realise the Atari Jaguar contained five different processors? Are you aware that a fake website about beekeeping was used to promote an Xbox game? Learn about all of this and more in this unique trivia book about the history of video game consoles that gives you the complete stories in detail! These facts cover a wide range of subjects, such as which console introduced certain technology and features, esoteric hardware oddities, marketing fails and successes, stories behind key games, how certain indispensable people shaped the whole industry, development history, court cases, peculiar events, weird relationships between companies and technical explanations. Plenty of these would be obscure facts that you may not know, but even if you are familiar with them, do you know the full story? 31 video game consoles stretching from 1972 to 2017 are covered, containing more than 235 in-depth facts, numerous other pieces of trivia and over 350 images to create a single package unlike any other that gamers of all ages will find interesting! If you want to fill your head with plenty of knowledge about your favourite video game consoles to amaze your friends with, then this is for you!

This fascinating and timely book traces the emergence and evolution of cybercrime as an increasingly intransigent threat to society. Cybercrime: Criminal Threats from Cyberspace is intended to explain two things: what cybercrime is and why the average citizen should care about it. To accomplish that task, the book offers an overview of cybercrime and an in-depth discussion of the legal and policy issues surrounding it. Enhancing her narrative with real-life stories, author Susan W. Brenner traces the rise of cybercrime from mainframe computer hacking in the 1950s to the organized, professional, and often transnational cybercrime that has become the norm in the 21st century. She explains the many different types of computer-facilitated crime, including identity theft, stalking, extortion, and the use of viruses and worms to damage computers, and outlines and analyzes the challenges cybercrime poses for law enforcement officers at the national and international levels. Finally, she considers the inherent tension between improving law enforcement's ability to pursue cybercriminals and protecting the privacy of U.S. citizens.

This book is a collection of research papers selected for presentation at the International Conference on Smart Computational Methods in Continuum Mechanics 2021, organized by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Institute for Computer Aided Design of Russian Academy of Sciences. The work is presented in two volumes. The primary objective of the book is to report the state-of-the-art on smart computational paradigms in continuum mechanics and explore the use of artificial intelligence paradigms such as neural nets, and machine learning for improving the performance of the designed engineering systems. The book includes up-to-date smart computational methods which are used to solve problems in continuum mechanics, engineering, seismic prospecting, non-destructive testing, and so on. The main features of the book are the research papers on the application of novel smart methods including neural nets and machine learning, computational algorithms, smart software systems, and high-performance computer systems for solving complex engineering problems. The case studies pertaining to the real-world applications in the above fields are included. The book presents a collection of best research papers in English language from some of the world leaders in the field of smart system modelling and design of engineering systems.

You've heard that quantum computing is going to change the world. Now you can check it out for yourself. Learn how quantum computing works, and write programs that run on the IBM Q quantum computer, one of the world's first functioning quantum computers. Learn a simple way to apply quantum mechanics to computer programming. Create algorithms to solve intractable problems for classical computers, and discover how to explore the entire problem space at once to determine the optimal solution. Get your hands on the future of computing today. Quantum computing overhauls computer science. Problems such as designing life-saving drugs and super-large logistics problems that have been difficult or impossible for classical computers to handle can now be solved in moments. Quantum computing makes it possible to explore all possible solutions simultaneously and determine those that work, instead of iterating through each possibility sequentially. Work with quantum computers directly, instead of talking about them theoretically. Work with qubits, the fundamental elements of quantum computing. Discover what makes them different from classical bits. Model complex problems with logic gates specific to quantum computing. Learn how quantum mechanics offers ways to write programs that explore all solutions simultaneously. Create quantum circuits to solve problems that classical computers struggle with. Dive into quantum optimization and cryptography. Use the IBM Q quantum computer to both simulate quantum effects, and actually run your programs on a real quantum machine. Get a head start on the technology that will drive computer science into the future. What You Need: Access to the IBM quantum computer, via any internet connection

Toward a Gameic World bridges the gap between Japanese popular culture studies and game studies by encouraging a dialogue centered around Japanese-designed video games and social issues. It examines four contemporary Japanese video games in terms of how they engage with some of Japan’s biggest social and personal issues, including traumas: natural disasters (Disaster Report), a declining birthrate and aging population (Catherine), nuclear proliferation (Metal Gear Solid V); and youth social withdrawal (The World Ends with You). This book asks what some of the positive benefits are of working through a site of trauma from within a video game, and how games might teach us about Japanese culture and society through new kinds of interactive narratives, different from literature and film. The book proposes four new strategies of engagement with video games to explore the productive tensions that emerge at the boundaries of virtual reality, augmented reality, and gamification in contemporary Japan.

How populism is fueled by the demise of the industrial order and the emergence of a new digital society ruled by algorithms In the revolutionary excitement of the 1960s, young people around the world called for a radical shift away from the old industrial order, imagining a future of technological liberation and unfettered prosperity. Industrial society did collapse, and a digital economy has risen to take its place, yet many have been left feeling marginalized and deprived of the possibility of a better life. The Inglorious Years explores the many ways we have been let down by the rising tide of technology, showing how our new interconnectivity is not fulfilling its promise. In this revelatory book, economist Daniel Cohen describes how today's postindustrial society is transforming us all into sequences of data that can be manipulated by algorithms from anywhere on the planet. As yesterday's assembly line was replaced by working online, the leftist protests of the 1960s have given way to angry protests by the populist right. Cohen demonstrates how the digital economy creates the same mix of promises and disappointments as the old industrial order, and how it revives questions about society that are as relevant to us today as they were to the ancients. Brilliant and provocative, The Inglorious Years discusses what the new digital society holds in store for us, and reveals how can we once again regain control of our lives.

Our most basic relationship with the world is one of technological mediation. Nowadays our available tools are digital, and increasingly what counts in economic, social, and cultural life is what can be digitally stored, distributed, replayed, augmented, and switched. Yet the digital remains very much materially configured, and though it now permeates nearly all human life it has not eclipsed all older technologies. This Handbook is grounded in an understanding that our technologically mediated condition is a condition of organization. It maps and theorizes the largely unchartered territory of media, technology, and organization studies. Written by scholars of organization and theorists of media and technology, the chapters focus on specific, and specifically mediating, objects that shape the practices, processes, and effects of organization. It is in this spirit that each chapter focuses on a specific technological object, such as the Battery, Clock, High Heels, Container, or Smartphone, asking the question, how does this object or process organize? In staying with the object the chapters remain committed to the everyday, empirical world, rather than being confined to established disciplinary concerns and theoretical developments. As the first sustained and systematic interrogation of the relation between technologies, media, and organization, this Handbook consolidates, deepens, and further develops the empirics and concepts required to make sense of the material forces of organization.