This encyclopedia aims to provide a ready reference to various aspects of American culture. The time frame is from the colonial period to the end of the 20th century. The areas covered are fine arts (painting, sculpture, photography); performing arts (music, ballet, theatre, film); architecture; literature; and various non-artistic forms of culture (symbolic, material, culinary).

This book addresses selected topics in electrical engineering, electronics and mechatronics that have posed serious challenges for both the scientific and engineering communities in recent years. The topics covered range from mathematical models of electrical and electronic components and systems, to simulation tools implemented for their analysis and further developments; and from multidisciplinary optimization, signal processing methods and numerical results, to control and diagnostic techniques. By bridging theory and practice in the modeling, design and optimization of electrical, electromechanical and electronic systems, and by adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, the book provides researchers and practitioners with timely and extensive information on the state of the art in the field - and a source of new, exciting ideas for further developments and collaborations. The book presents selected results of the XIII Scientific Conference on Selected Issues of Electrical Engineering and Electronics (WZEE 2016), held on May 04-08, 2016, in Rzeszow, Poland. The Conference was organized by the Rzeszow Division of Polish Association of Theoretical and Applied Electrical Engineering (PTETiS) in cooperation with the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Rzeszow University of Technology.