Community Informatics is a developing field which brings together understandings about the interaction of communities and information and communication technologies from fields as diverse as Management and Information Systems, Library and Information Sciences, Community Development, Sociology, or Social and Community Welfare. A key assumption of community informatics is that technologies can be used for positive social change and development, particularly with disadvantaged communities or communities that hitherto, have not had a public voice. The volume brings together international perspectives around defining and debating the idea of community memory which, as Alex Byrne, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions observed in his splendid and wide-ranging Introduction: "community memories are multilayered, changeable, conflicting and contested", and the multilayering, changeability and contest between different players provide fertile theoretical and practical ground for Community Informatics and its interdisciplinary cousins. "Community Informatics is an emerging new multi-disciplinary approach to the study of the intersection of communities and Information and Communication Technologies. This volume contains significant contributions from international practitioners and researchers in the fields of archives, record-keeping, community knowledge management, emerging information and communication technologies, history, community development-virtual as well as real-and Community Informatics as a growing discipline. The content of the book is a unique contribution in the field. The volume will be read by researchers, and communities interested in how they communicate their past, present, and future." —Professor Emerita Gunilla Bradley Informatics School of ICT Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm Sweden "Practitioners, researchers and theoreticians in Community Informatics will find a unique array of valuable perspectives in this book. It covers the interaction of communities, memories and technologies in a highly original way, with regard to its breadth and the number of case studies it presents. It incorporates contributions from 13 countries in all parts of our endangered planet, thus providing the international perspective that is critical to understanding how communities can use technology for societal good." —Professor Michel Menou. Les Rosiers sur Loire, France, Associate, Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, TACAS 2014, which took place in Grenoble, France, in April 2014, as part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2014. The total of 42 papers included in this volume, consisting of 26 research papers, 3 case study papers, 6 regular tool papers and 7 tool demonstrations papers, were carefully reviewed and selected from 161 submissions. In addition the book contains one invited contribution. The papers are organized in topical sections named: decision procedures and their application in analysis; complexity and termination analysis; modeling and model checking discrete systems; timed and hybrid systems; monitoring, fault detection and identification; competition on software verification; specifying and checking linear time properties; synthesis and learning; quantum and probabilistic systems; as well as tool demonstrations and case studies.

Human-Machine Shared Contexts considers the foundations, metrics, and applications of human-machine systems. Editors and authors debate whether machines, humans, and systems should speak only to each other, only to humans, or to both and how. The book establishes the meaning and operation of "shared contexts between humans and machines; it also explores how human-machine systems affect targeted audiences (researchers, machines, robots, users) and society, as well as future ecosystems composed of humans and machines. This book explores how user interventions may improve the context for autonomous machines operating in unfamiliar environments or when experiencing unanticipated events; how autonomous machines can be taught to explain contexts by reasoning, inferences, or causality, and decisions to humans relying on intuition; and for mutual context, how these machines may interdependently affect human awareness, teams and society, and how these "machines" may be affected in turn. In short, can context be mutually constructed and shared between machines and humans? The editors are interested in whether shared context follows when machines begin to think, or, like humans, develop subjective states that allow them to monitor and report on their interpretations of reality, forcing scientists to rethink the general model of human social behavior. If dependence on machine learning continues or grows, the public will also be interested in what happens to context shared by users, teams of humans and machines, or society when these machines malfunction. As scientists and engineers "think through this change in human terms," the ultimate goal is for AI to advance the performance of autonomous machines and teams of humans and machines for the betterment of society wherever these machines interact with humans or other machines. This book will be essential reading for professional, industrial, and military computer scientists and engineers; machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) scientists and engineers, especially those engaged in research on autonomy, computational context, and human-machine shared contexts; advanced robotics scientists and engineers; scientists working with or interested in data issues for autonomous systems such as with the use of scarce data for training and operations with and without user interventions; social psychologists, scientists and physical research scientists pursuing models of shared context; modelers of the internet of things (IOT); systems of systems scientists and engineers and economists; scientists and engineers working with agent-based models (ABMs); policy specialists concerned with the impact of AI and ML on society and civilization; network scientists and engineers; applied mathematicians (e.g., holon theory, information theory); computational linguists; and blockchain scientists and engineers. - Discusses the foundations, metrics, and applications of human-machine systems - Considers advances and challenges in the performance of autonomous machines and teams of humans - Debates theoretical human-machine ecosystem models and what happens when machines malfunction

Emerging scientific and industrial applications in today’s world require significant computing power. Modern software tools are available for such platforms but are relatively complex and require the use of innovative programming models. One promising area in modern software design is the development, analysis, and implementation of algorithms and adaptive methods. These advancements in programming are promising but lack relevant research and understanding. Formal and Adaptive Methods for Automation of Parallel Programs Construction: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential reference source that solves the problem of the development of efficient models, methods, and tools for parallel programming automation based on the algebra of algorithms, term rewriting, and auto-tuning paradigms. The results of this book will help to further develop and improve existing research on design, synthesis, and optimization of sequential and parallel algorithms and programs. Featuring research on topics such as auto-tuning methods, graphics processing, and algorithmic language, this book is ideally designed for mathematicians, software engineers, data scientists, researchers, academicians, and students seeking coverage on developing tools for automated design and parallel programs.

Patent Claim Construction is the first comprehensive treatise on claim construction in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. This practical resource helps lawyers of all experience levels gain a firm footing in the rapidly evolving rules of claim construction. This knowledge thereby allows for the systematic and efficient identification of the rules most advantageous to the client's position. Patent Claim Construction offers expert analysis of emerging methodologies, reflected in current case law for interpreting patents as a matter of the law and detailed descriptions of the cases applying the rule, as well as commentary describing the trend toward or away from favoring that particular rule. Additionally, the author includes a complete guide to the evidence, or modes of proof, accepted by the courts in applying claim construction principles and specific guidance on how the courts are likely to interpret certain phrases, terms, or forms of claims.

This proceedings volume examines parameterized systems, model checking, applications, static analysis, concurrent/distributed systems, symbolic execution, abstraction, interpolation, trust, and reputation.

The study was sparked by the absence of literature on transnational masspersonal communication (tmc) of ‘Eritrean’, ‘Ethiopian’, Oromo, and Somali diaspora communities. To bridge this theoretical gap, an empirical study was conducted at meso-level based on three questions: (a) what topics do people in the diaspora communities discuss in relation to their homelands via social media – an alternative for tmc; (b) how do they communicate about their homelands’ issues in relation to their collective identities; and (c) how does this communication enable the construction of their own identity as well as the deconstruction of competing identities. The theoretical analysis from the perspective of these questions led to developing own model, i.e., the Diasporic Identity Construction in Transnational Masspersonal Communication Model (DICTMCM). This model, which connects the theoretical analysis to the empirical study, argues that their communication in relation to their homelands, particularly about their collective identities, consists not only of what they talk but also of how they converse. As a result, the empirical results delivered a comparative analysis of the tmc of these four diaspora communities and how they construct their collective identities via this tmc, which bridged the above stated gap.

Social theory needs to be completely rethought in a world of digital media and social media platforms driven by data processes. Fifty years after Berger and Luckmann published their classic text The Social Construction of Reality, two leading sociologists of media, Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp, revisit the question of how social theory can understand the processes through which an everyday world is constructed in and through media. Drawing on Schütz, Elias and many other social and media theorists, they ask: what are the implications of digital medias profound involvement in those processes? Is the result a social world that is stable and liveable, or one that is increasingly unstable and unliveable?

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Distributed Algorithms, WDAG '95, held in Le Mont-Saint-Michel, France in September 1995. Besides four invited contributions, 18 full revised research papers are presented, selected from a total of 48 submissions during a careful refereeing process. The papers document the progress achieved in the area since the predecessor workshop (LNCS 857); they are organized in sections on asynchronous systems, networks, shared memory, Byzantine failures, self-stabilization, and detection of properties.