This book provides a new multi-method, process-oriented approach towards speech quality assessment, which allows readers to examine the influence of speech transmission quality on a variety of perceptual and cognitive processes in human listeners. Fundamental concepts and methodologies surrounding the topic of process-oriented quality assessment are introduced and discussed. The book further describes a functional process model of human quality perception, which theoretically integrates results obtained in three experimental studies. This book's conceptual ideas, empirical findings, and theoretical interpretations should be of particular interest to researchers working in the fields of Quality and Usability Engineering, Audio Engineering, Psychoacoustics, Audiology, and Psychophysiology.

This volume explores how context has been and can be used in computing to model human behaviors, actions and communications as well as to manage data and knowledge. It addresses context management and exploitation of context for sharing experience across domains. The book serves as a user-centric guide for readers wishing to develop context-based applications, as well as an intellectual reference on the concept of context. It provides a broad yet deep treatment of context in computing and related areas that depend heavily on computing. The coverage is broad because of its cross-disciplinary nature but treats topics at a sufficient depth to permit a reader to implement context in his/her computational endeavors. The volume addresses how context can be integrated in software and systems and how it can be used in a computing environment. Furthermore, the use of context to represent the human dimension, individually as well as collectively is explained. Contributions also include descriptions of how context has been represented in formal as well as non-formal, structured approaches. The last section describes several human behavior representation paradigms based on the concept of context as its central representational element. The depth and breadth of this content is certain to provide useful as well as intellectually enriching information to readers of diverse backgrounds who have an interest in or are intrigued by using context to assist in their representation of the real world.

This book presents a comprehensive collection of case studies on augmented reality and virtual realty (AR/VR) applications in various industries. Augmented reality and virtual reality are changing the business landscape, providing opportunities for businesses to offer unique services and experiences to their customers. The case studies provided in this volume explore business uses of the technology across multiple industries such as healthcare, tourism, hospitality, events, fashion, entertainment, retail, education and video gaming. The book includes solutions of different maturities as well as those from startups to large enterprises thereby providing a thorough view of how augmented reality and virtual reality can be used in business.

This book exemplifies how smart buildings have a crucial role to play for the future of energy. The book investigates what already exists in regards to technologies, approaches and solutions both with a scientific and technological point of view. The authors cover solutions for mirroring and tracing human activities, optimal strategies to configure home settings, and generating explanations and persuasive dashboards to get occupants better committed in their home energy managements. Solutions are adapted from the fields of Internet of Things, physical modeling, optimization, machine learning and applied artificial intelligence. Practical applications are given throughout.

Our world is increasingly driven by sophisticated networks of advanced computing technology, and the basic operation of everyday society is becoming increasingly vulnerable to these networks' shortcomings. The implementation and upkeep of a strong network defense is a substantial challenge, beset not only by economic disincentives but also by an inherent logistical bias that grants advantage to attackers. Research Anthology on Combating Denial-of-Service Attacks examines the latest research on the development of intrusion detection systems and best practices for preventing and combatting cyber-attacks intended to disrupt business and user experience. Highlighting a range of topics such as network administration, application-layer protocols, and malware detection, this publication is an ideal reference source for cybersecurity professionals, IT specialists, policymakers, forensic analysts, technology developers, security administrators, academicians, researchers, and students.

This monograph presents innovative research regarding the body experience of human individuals who are using assistive robotic devices such as wearable robots or teleoperation systems. The focus is set on human-in-the-loop experiments that help to empirically evaluate how users experience devices. Moreover, these experiments allow for further examination of the underlying mechanisms of body experience through extending existing psychological paradigms, e.g., by disentangling tactile feedback from contacts. Besides reporting and discussing psychological examinations, the influence of various aspects of engineering design is investigated, e.g., different implementations of haptic interfaces or robot control. As haptics are of paramount importance in this tight type of human-robot interaction, it is explored with respect to modality as well as temporal and spatial effects. The first part of the book motivates the research topic and gives an in-depth analysis of the experimental requirements. The second and third part present experimental designs and studies of human-robot body experience regarding the upper and lower limbs as well as cognitive models to predict them. The fourth part discusses a multitude of design considerations and provides directions to guide future research on bidirectional human-machine interfaces and non-functional haptic feedback.

This book presents the state of the art of Internet of Things (IoT) from the perspective of healthcare and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). It discusses the emerging technologies in healthcare services used for healthcare professionals and patients for enhanced living environments and public health. The topics covered in this book include emerging eHealth IoT applications, Internet of Medical Things, health sensors, and wearable sensors for pervasive and personalized healthcare, and smart homes applications for enhanced health and well-being. The book also presents various ideas for the design and development of IoT solutions for healthcare and AAL. It will be useful for bioengineers and professionals working in the areas of healthcare as well as health informatics.

This book addresses one of the most overlooked practical, methodological, and moral questions in the journey to secure and handle the massive amount of data being generated from smart devices interactions: the integration of Blockchain with 5G-enabled IoT. After an overview, this book discusses open issues and challenges, which may hinder the growth of Blockchain technology. Then, this book presents a variety of perspectives on the most pressing questions in the field, such as: how IoT can connect billions of objects together; how the access control mechanisms in 5G-enabled industrial environment works; how to address the real-time and quality-of-service requirements for industrial applications; and how to ensure scalability and computing efficiency. Also, it includes a detailed discussions on the complexity of adoption of Blockchain for 5G-Enabled IoT and presents comparative case studies with respect to various performance evaluation metrics such as scalability, data management, standardization, interoperability and regulations, accessibility, human-factors engineering and interfaces, reliability, heterogeneity, and QoS requirements. This book acts as a professional guide for the practitioners in information security and related topics.

This book is a truly comprehensive, timely, and very much needed treatise on the conceptualization of analysis, and design of contactless & multimodal sensor-based human activities, behavior understanding & intervention. From an interaction design perspective, the book provides views and methods that allow for more safe, trustworthy, efficient, and more natural interaction with technology that will be embedded in our daily living environments. The chapters in this book cover sufficient grounds and depth in related challenges and advances in sensing, signal processing, computer vision, and mathematical modeling. It covers multi-domain applications, including surveillance and elderly care that will be an asset to entry-level and practicing engineers and scientists.(See inside for the reviews from top experts)

Emerging as an effective alternative to organization-based information systems, cloud computing has been adopted by many businesses around the world. Despite the increased popularity, there remain concerns about the security of data in the cloud since users have become accustomed to having control over their hardware and software. Security, Trust, and Regulatory Aspects of Cloud Computing in Business Environments compiles the research and views of cloud computing from various individuals around the world. Detailing cloud security, regulatory and industry compliance, and trust building in the cloud, this book is an essential reference source for practitioners, professionals, and researchers worldwide, as well as business managers interested in an assembled collection of solutions provided by a variety of cloud users.

This book is written for software product teams that use AI to add intelligent models to their products or are planning to use it. As AI adoption grows, it is becoming important that all AI driven products can demonstrate they are not introducing any bias to the AI-based decisions they are making, as well as reducing any pre-existing bias or discrimination. The responsibility to ensure that the AI models are ethical and make responsible decisions does not lie with the data scientists alone. The product owners and the business analysts are as important in ensuring bias-free AI as the data scientists on the team. This book addresses the part that these roles play in building a fair, explainable and accountable model, along with ensuring model and data privacy. Each chapter covers the fundamentals for the topic and then goes deep into the subject matter - providing the details that enable the business analysts and the data scientists to implement these fundamentals. AI research is one of the most active and growing areas of computer science and statistics. This book includes an overview of the many techniques that draw from the research or are created by combining different research outputs. Some of the techniques from relevant and popular libraries are covered, but deliberately not drawn very heavily from as they are already well documented, and new research is likely to replace some of it.

With the ongoing evolution of the digital society challenging the boundaries of the law, new questions are arising - and new answers being given - even now, almost three decades on from the digital revolution. Written by a panel of legal specialists and edited by experts on EU Internet law, this book provides an overview of the most recent developments affecting the European Internet legal framework, specifically focusing on four current debates. Firstly, it discusses the changes in online copyright law, especially after the enactment of the new directive on the single digital market. Secondly, it analyzes the increasing significance of artificial intelligence in our daily life. The book then addresses emerging issues in EU digital law, exploring out of the box approaches in Internet law. It also presents the last cyber-criminality law trends (offenses, international instrument, behaviors), and discusses the evolution of personal data protection. Lastly, it evaluates the degree of consumer and corporate protection in the digital environment, demonstrating that now, more than ever, EU Internet law is based on a combination of copyright, civil, administrative, criminal, commercial and banking laws.

Emerging technologies, such as social networks and interactive web applications, have played a vital role in the way we communicate. These technologies are fundamental in reducing the digital gaps among users. Advanced Research and Trends in New Technologies, Software, Human-Computer Interaction, and Communicability presents scientific, theoretical, and practical insight on the software and technology of social networks and the factors that boost communicability. By highlighting different disciplines in the computer and social sciences, this reference is essential for practitioners, researchers, and scholars invested in the current studies, as well as for future generations in the field of ICT.

This book aims to explore and discuss theories and technologies for the development of socially competent and culture-aware embodied conversational agents for elderly care. To tackle the challenges in ageing societies, this book was written by experts who have a background in assistive technologies for elderly care, culture-aware computing, multimodal dialogue, social robotics and synthetic agents. Chapter 1 presents a vision of an intelligent agent to illustrate the current challenges for the design and development of adaptive systems. Chapter 2 examines how notions of trust and empathy may be applied to human-robot interaction and how it can be used to create the next generation of emphatic agents, which address some of the pressing issues in multicultural ageing societies. Chapter 3 discusses multimodal machine learning as an approach to enable more effective and robust modelling technologies and to develop socially competent and culture-aware embodied conversational agents for elderly care. Chapter 4 explores the challenges associated with real-world field tests and deployments. Chapter 5 gives a short introduction to socio-cognitive language processing that describes the idea of coping with everyday language, irony, sarcasm, humor, paralinguistic information such as the physical and mental state and traits of the dialogue partner, and social aspects. This book grew out of the Shonan Meeting seminar entitled "Multimodal Agents for Ageing and Multicultural Societies" held in 2018 in Japan. Researchers and practitioners will be helped to understand the emerging field and the identification of promising approaches from a variety of disciplines such as human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, modelling, and learning.

This book introduces the state-of-the-art algorithms for data and computation privacy. It mainly focuses on searchable symmetric encryption algorithms and privacy preserving multi-party computation algorithms. This book also introduces algorithms for breaking privacy, and gives intuition on how to design algorithm to counter privacy attacks. Some well-designed differential privacy algorithms are also included in this book. Driven by lower cost, higher reliability, better performance, and faster deployment, data and computing services are increasingly outsourced to clouds. In this computing paradigm, one often has to store privacy sensitive data at parties, that cannot fully trust and perform privacy sensitive computation with parties that again cannot fully trust. For both scenarios, preserving data privacy and computation privacy is extremely important. After the Facebook-Cambridge Analytical data scandal and the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation by European Union, users are becoming more privacy aware and more concerned with their privacy in this digital world. This book targets database engineers, cloud computing engineers and researchers working in this field. Advanced-level students studying computer science and electrical engineering will also find this book useful as a reference or secondary text.

Data analysis forms the basis of many forms of research ranging from the scientific to the governmental. With the advent of machine intelligence and neural networks, extracting, modeling, and approaching data has been unimpeachably altered. These changes, seemingly small, affect the way societies organize themselves, deliver services, or interact with each other. Intelligent Techniques for Data Analysis in Diverse Settings addresses the specialized requirements of data analysis in a comprehensive way. This title contains a comprehensive overview of the most innovative recent approaches borne from intelligent techniques such as neural networks, rough sets, fuzzy sets, and metaheuristics. Combining new data analysis technologies, applications, emerging trends, and case studies, this publication reviews the intelligent, technological, and organizational aspects of the field. This book is ideally designed for IT professionals and students, data analysis specialists, healthcare providers, and policy makers.

In this book the author discusses synergies between computers and thought, related to the field of Artificial Intelligence; between people and thought, leading to questions of consciousness and our existence as humans; and between computers and people, leading to the recent remarkable advances in the field of humanoid robots. He then looks toward the implications of intelligent 'conscious' humanoid robots with superior intellects, able to operate in our human environments. After presenting the basic engineering components and supporting logic of computer systems, and giving an overview of the contributions of pioneering scientists in the domains of computing, logic, and robotics, in the core of the book the author examines the meaning of thought and intelligence in the context of specific tasks and successful AI approaches. In the final part of the book he introduces related societal and ethical implications. The book will be a useful accompanying text in courses on artificial intelligence, robotics, intelligent systems, games, and evolutionary computing. It will also be valuable for general readers and historians of technology.

This book covers COVID-19 related research works and focuses on recent advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart healthcare technologies. It includes reviews and original works on COVID-19 in terms of e-healthcare, medicine technology, life support systems, fast detection, diagnoses, developed technologies and innovative solutions, bioinformatics, datasets, apps for diagnosis, solutions for monitoring and control of the spread of COVID-19, among other topics. The book covers comprehensive studies from bioelectronics and biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence, and big data with a prime focus on COVID-19 pandemic.

This book explores total information awareness empowered by social media. At the FBI Citizens Academy in February 2021, I asked the FBI about the January 6 Capitol riot organized on social media that led to the unprecedented ban of a sitting U.S. President by all major social networks. In March 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared before Congress to face criticism about their handling of misinformation and online extremism that culminated in the storming of Capitol Hill. With more than three billion monthly active users, Facebook family of apps is by far the world's largest social network. Facebook as a nation is bigger than the top three most populous countries in the world: China, India, and the United States. Social media has enabled its users to inform and misinform the public, to appease and disrupt Wall Street, to mitigate and exacerbate the COVID-19 pandemic, and to unite and divide a country. Mark Zuckerberg once said, "We exist at the intersection of technology and social issues." He should have heeded his own words. In October 2021, former Facebook manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen testified at the U.S. Senate that Facebook's products "harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy." This book offers discourse and practical advice on information and misinformation, cybersecurity and privacy issues, cryptocurrency and business intelligence, social media marketing and caveats, e-government and e-activism, as well as the pros and cons of total information awareness including the Edward Snowden leaks. "Highly recommended." - T. D. Richardson, Choice Magazine "A great book for social media experts." - Will M., AdWeek "Parents in particular would be well advised to make this book compulsory reading for their teenage children..." - David B. Henderson, ACM Computing Reviews