BENCHMARK GAMES is unique as there has been no previous study of an individual Paralympic Games. The book documents and analyses the new benchmarks that were set at the time of the successful Sydney Paralympic Games. BENCHMARK GAMES explores many questions about the appeal of the Games to the community and disability sport and the place of the disability community in Australian life. This book gives a wonderful insight into the background and running of the Sydney Paralympic Games and the legacy it has left (Karen Tighe, Foreword).

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Computers and Games, CG 2004, held in Ramat-Gan, Israel, in July 2004, and co-located with the 12th World Computer Chess Championship and the 9th Computer Olympiad. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 1 keynote article were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement from 37 submissions. The papers cover all aspects of artificial intelligence in computer-game playing. Topics addressed are evaluation and learning, search, combinatorial games and theory opening and endgame databases, single-agent search and planning, and computer Go.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Artificial Life and Intelligent Agents, ALIA 2016, held in Birmingham, UK, in June 2016. The 8 revised full papers and three revised short papers presented together with two demo papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on modelling; robotics; bio-inspired problem solving; human-like systems; applications and games.

The two-volume set LNAI 10245 and LNAI 10246 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, ICAISC 2017, held in Zakopane, Poland in June 2017. The 133 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 274 submissions. The papers included in the second volume are organized in the following five parts: data mining; artificial intelligence in modeling, simulation and control; various problems of artificial intelligence; special session: advances in single-objective continuous parameter optimization with nature-inspired algorithms; special session: stream data mining.

The central purpose of this book is to examine critically the claim that playing games can provide learning that is deep, sustained and transferable to the "real world."

The Olympic Games is unquestionably the greatest sporting event in the world, with billions of viewers across the globe. How did the Olympics evolve into this multi-national phenomenon? How can the Olympics help us to understand the relationship between sport and society? What will be the impact and legacy of the 2016 Olympics in Rio? Now in a fully revised and updated new edition that places Rio 2016 in the foreground, Understanding the Olympics answers all these questions by exploring the social, cultural, political, historical and economic context of the Games. This book presents the latest research on the Olympics, including new material on legacy, sustainability and corruption, and introduces the reader to all of the key themes of contemporary Olympic Studies including: the history of the Olympics Olympic politics access and equity the Olympics and the media festival and spectacle the Olympic economy urban development Olympic futures. The most up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the Olympic Games, this book contains a full Olympic history timeline as well as illustrations, information boxes and ‘Olympic Stories’ in every chapter. Understanding the Olympics is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the Olympics or the wider relationship between sport and society.

This book critically examines the planning, management, and operations of the world’s premier event for Para sport athletes. Noting a lack of research into how these games are planned and managed, the authors of this contributed volume discuss how the Paralympics are essentially different to the Olympics and what this means for their management. Managing the Paralympics explores how the organizers and connected stakeholders effectively organize and deliver the Paralympics, taking into account what has been learned from previous events. Including emergent models of best practice from event management, project management and sport management literature, the book gives an insight into the planning of one of the world’s biggest sporting events that encompasses ten impairment types and multiple sport classes within sports.

The two-volume set CCIS 1516 and 1517 constitutes thoroughly refereed short papers presented at the 28th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, ICONIP 2021, held in Sanur, Bali, Indonesia, in December 2021.* The volume also presents papers from the workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security, held during the ICONIP 2021. The 176 short and workshop papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for publication out of 1093 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections as follows: theory and algorithms; AI and cybersecurity; cognitive neurosciences; human centred computing; advances in deep and shallow machine learning algorithms for biomedical data and imaging; reliable, robust, and secure machine learning algorithms; theory and applications of natural computing paradigms; applications. * The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The book "Simulation and Gaming" discusses the following topics and research areas: game-based methods of problem solution and data processing, analysis, and information mining; educational games and game features, including game characteristics, story, mechanics, and methodology; development of integrated games tasked with helping students in interpreting, translating, and manipulating the field of kinematics through formal presentations; possibility of research integration through real and practical examples and games as well, in the field of physics; analysis of game engines from various aspects such as modularity, performance, and usability; virtual reality (VR) and interaction mechanisms used for three-dimensional (3D) game development; analysis, development, design, implementation, and evaluation of the simulation model in the field of engineering and metallurgy, according to ADDIE model; concept of computational thinking, with an accent on its inclusion in compulsory education; overview of the current prominence of AI simulation based in the gaming leisure industry, mainly for research purposes in the context of gambling and forecasting of online casino patron's churn behavior; innovative modeling and simulation approach using newly proposed advanced game-based mathematical framework, unified game-based acquisition framework, and a set of war-gaming engines to address the challenges for acquisition of future space systems; modification of simulation of a complex system and a physics model through programming, achieved with a block-based programming language.

Do small- and medium-sized sporting events affect the overall wellbeing of people living in the host community? If so, how they do they affect local life? This book specifically addresses the strategic choices that host communities make when hosting non-mega sporting events, and looks at the outcomes of those choices. The contributions to this study assess a variety of tangible and intangible effects, including the economic and social impacts, and the effect on tourism and participation in sport. It contains analysis of a variety of events, including spectator and participant events, single-sport and multi-sport events, and one-day and multi-day events, all hosted in different types of cities and communities around the globe. Overall, this book identifies and extends our understanding of the nature, management, and implications of non-mega sporting events. The impacts and strategic outcomes highlighted here have practical value for sport event management and strategy, and advance our understanding of the economic and social consequences of hosting an event. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Sport Management Quarterly.