The Western cultural trend of self-representation is transcending borders as it permeates the online world. A prime example of this trend is selfies, and how they have evolved into more than just self-portraits. Selfies as a Mode of Social Media and Work Space Research is a comprehensive reference source for the latest research on explicit and implicit messaging of self-portraiture and its indications about individuals, groups, and societies. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics including dating, job hunting, and marketing, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and professionals interested in the current phenomenon of selfies and their impact on society.

This new edition provides step-by-step instruction on modern 3D graphics shader programming in OpenGL with Java, along with its theoretical foundations. It is appropriate both for computer science graphics courses, and for professionals interested in mastering 3D graphics skills. It has been designed in a 4-color, "teach-yourself" format with numerous examples that the reader can run just as presented. Every shader stage is explored, from the basics of modeling, textures, lighting, shadows, etc., through advanced techniques such as tessellation, normal mapping, noise maps, as well as new chapters on simulating water, stereoscopy, and ray tracing. FEATURES Covers modern OpenGL 4.0+ shader programming in Java, with instructions for both PC/Windows and Macintosh Illustrates every technique with running code examples. Everything needed to install the libraries, and complete source code for each example Includes step-by-step instruction for using each GLSL programmable pipeline stage (vertex, tessellation, geometry, and fragment) Explores practical examples for modeling, lighting and shadows (including soft shadows), terrain, water, and 3D materials such as wood and marble Adds new chapters on simulating water, stereoscopy, and ray tracing with compute shaders Explains how to optimize code with tools such as Nvidia's Nsight debugger Includes companion files with code, object models, figures, and more

While transitioning from autocracy to democracy, media in Africa has always played an important role in democratic and non-democratic states; focusing on politicians, diplomats, activists, and others who work towards political transformations. New Media Influence on Social and Political Change in Africa addresses the development of new mass media and communication tools and its influence on social and political change. While analyzing democratic transitions and cultures with a theoretical perspective, this book also presents case studies and national experiences for media, new media, and democracy scholars and practitioners.

With the rapid development of big data, it is necessary to transfer the massive data generated by end devices to the cloud under the traditional cloud computing model. However, the delays caused by massive data transmission no longer meet the requirements of various real-time mobile services. Therefore, the emergence of edge computing has been recently developed as a new computing paradigm that can collect and process data at the edge of the network, which brings significant convenience to solving problems such as delay, bandwidth, and off-loading in the traditional cloud computing paradigm. By extending the functions of the cloud to the edge of the network, edge computing provides effective data access control, computation, processing and storage for end devices. Furthermore, edge computing optimizes the seamless connection from the cloud to devices, which is considered the foundation for realizing the interconnection of everything. However, due to the open features of edge computing, such as content awareness, real-time computing and parallel processing, the existing problems of privacy in the edge computing environment have become more prominent. The access to multiple categories and large numbers of devices in edge computing also creates new privacy issues. In this book, we discuss on the research background and current research process of privacy protection in edge computing. In the first chapter, the state-of-the-art research of edge computing are reviewed. The second chapter discusses the data privacy issue and attack models in edge computing. Three categories of privacy preserving schemes will be further introduced in the following chapters. Chapter three introduces the context-aware privacy preserving scheme. Chapter four further introduces a location-aware differential privacy preserving scheme. Chapter five presents a new blockchain based decentralized privacy preserving in edge computing. Chapter six summarize this monograph and propose future research directions. In summary, this book introduces the following techniques in edge computing: 1) describe an MDP-based privacy-preserving model to solve context-aware data privacy in the hierarchical edge computing paradigm; 2) describe a SDN based clustering methods to solve the location-aware privacy problems in edge computing; 3) describe a novel blockchain based decentralized privacy-preserving scheme in edge computing. These techniques enable the rapid development of privacy-preserving in edge computing.

This book presents novel RIS-Based Smart Radio techniques, targeting at achieving high-quality channel links in cellular communications via design and optimization of the RIS construction. Unlike traditional antenna arrays, three unique characteristics of the RIS will be revealed in this book. First, the built-in programmable configuration of the RIS enables analog beamforming inherently without extra hardware or signal processing. Second, the incident signals can be controlled to partly reflect and partly transmit through the RIS simultaneously, adding more flexibility to signal transmission. Third, the RIS has no digital processing capability to actively send signals nor any radio frequency (RF) components. As such, it is necessary to develop novel channel estimation and communication protocols, design joint digital and RIS-based analog beamforming schemes and perform interference control via mixed reflection and transmission. This book also investigates how to integrate the RIS to legacy communication systems. RIS techniques are further investigated in this book (benefited from its ability to actively shape the propagation environment) to achieve two types of wireless applications, i.e., RF sensing and localization. The influence of the sensing objectives on the wireless signal propagation can be potentially recognized by the receivers, which are then utilized to identify the objectives in RF sensing. Unlike traditional sensing techniques, RIS-aided sensing can actively customize the wireless channels and generate a favorable massive number of independent paths interacting with the sensing objectives. It is desirable to design RIS-based sensing algorithms, and optimize RIS configurations. For the second application, i.e., RIS aided localization, an RIS is deployed between the access point (AP) and users. The AP can then analyze reflected signals from users via different RIS configurations to obtain accurate locations of users. However, this is a challenging task due to the dynamic user topology, as well as the mutual influence between multiple users and the RIS. Therefore, the operations of the RIS, the AP, and multiple users need to be carefully coordinated. A new RIS-based localization protocol for device cooperation and an RIS configuration optimization algorithm are also required. This book targets researchers and graduate-level students focusing on communications and networks. Signal processing engineers, computer and information scientists, applied mathematicians and statisticians, who work in RIS research and development will also find this book useful.

Although virtual worlds continue to grow in popularity, a substantial amount of research is needed to determine best practices in virtual spaces. The artistic community is one field where virtual worlds can be utilized to the greatest effect. New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds provides a coherent account of artistic practices in virtual worlds and considers the contribution the Second Life platform has made in a historical, theoretical, and critical context within the fields of art and technology. This volume is intended for both artists and scholars in the areas of digital art, art and technology, media arts history, virtual worlds, and games studies, as well as a broader academic audience who are interested in the philosophical implications of virtual spaces.

Is Internet software so different from "ordinary" software? This book practically answers this question through the presentation of a software design method based on the State Chart XML W3C standard along with Java. Web enterprise, Internet-of-Things, and Android applications, in particular, are seamlessly specified and implemented from "executable models." Internet software puts forward the idea of event-driven or reactive programming, as pointed out in Boner et al.'s "Reactive Manifesto" (http://www.reactivemanifesto.org). It tells us that reactiveness is a must. However, beyond concepts, software engineers require effective means with which to put reactive programming into practice. This book's purpose is to outline and explain such means. The lack of professional examples in the literature that illustrate how reactive software should be shaped can be quite frustrating. Therefore, this book helps to fill in that gap by providing in-depth professional case studies that contain comprehensive details and meaningful alternatives. Furthermore, these case studies can be downloaded for further investigation. Internet software requires higher adaptation, at run time in particular. After reading Reactive Internet Programming, the reader therefore will be ready to enter the forthcoming Internet era.