"From Programs to Systems - The Systems Perspective in Computing" workshop (FPS 2014) was held in honor of Professor Joseph Sifakis in the framework of the 16th European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS, in Grenoble, April 2014. Joseph Sifakis is an active and visionary researcher in the area of system design. He believes that endowing design with scientific foundations is at least of equal importance as the quest for scientific truth in natural sciences. Previously, he has worked on Petri nets, concurrent systems, program semantics, verification, embedded systems, real-time systems, and formal methods more generally. The book contains 18 papers covering various topics related to the extension of programming theory to systems.

Since interactions may occur between animals, humans, or computational agents, an interdisciplinary approach which investigates foundations of affective communication in a variety of platforms is indispensable. In the field of affective computing, a collection of research, merging decades of research on emotions in psychology, cognition and neuroscience will inspire creative future research projects and contribute to the prosperity of this emerging field. Affective Computing and Interaction: Psychological, Cognitive and Neuroscientific Perspectives examines the current state and the future prospects of affect in computing within the context of interactions. Uniting several aspects of affective interactions and topics in affective computing, this reference reviews basic foundations of emotions, furthers an understanding of the contribution of affect to our lives and concludes by revealing current trends and promising technologies for reducing the emotional gap between humans and machines, all within the context of interactions.

This book contains a collection of thoroughly refereed papers derived from the First IFIP WG 9.7 Conference on Soviet and Russian Computing, held in Petrozavodsk, Russia, in July 2006. The 32 revised papers were carefully selected from numerous submissions; many of them were translated from Russian. They reflect much of the shining history of computing activities within the former Soviet Union from its origins in the 1950s with the first computers used for military decision-making problems up to the modern period where Russian ICT grew substantially, especially in the field of custom-made programming.

The rush to the Information Superhighway and the transition to an Information Age have enormous political, ethical, and religious consequences. The essays collected here develop both interdisciplinary and international perspectives on privacy, critical thinking and literacy, democratization, gender, religion, and the very nature of the revolution promised in cyberspace. These essays are essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand and reflect upon these events and issues.

This book promotes a critical reflection about the research conducted so far in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with older people, whose predominant perspective focuses on decline, health, and help. It introduces a new (or different) perspective, which is grounded in interdisciplinary research on older people and digital technologies. Key elements are to (i) address topics that include, but also go beyond decline, health, and help, such as leisure, fun, creativity and culture, to delve more deeply into the role of digital technologies in multiple facets of older people’s lives; (ii) focus on doing research and designing technologies with and for older adults, and their communities, to avoid and fight against negative social conceptions of ageing; and (iii) examine older people’s life course, strengths, interests, and values, as well as their limitations and needs, to design technologies that not only help but also empower them, extending their abilities and acquiring new knowledge, beyond technology use. This perspective aims to help us better understand, design, and evaluate older people’s interactions with digital technologies in the early 21st century.

In exploring the place of the computer in the human context of the school, this thoughtful, insightful volume probes the effects of the computer's presence on human potential and learning and examines the promise and direction of the computer in the education of children. Researchers and practitioners share very diverse concerns--with a healthy dose of caution--about the computer's impact upon the classroom and student learning. Topics include the computer and the exceptional student, computer games as teaching tools, teaching writing through word processing, as well as evaluating the educational value of microcomputers.

Understanding the many complexities that define gender inequality has been described by researchers as a grand challenge. Novel insights, innovation, a broader community to conduct research and to ascertain effective interventions are essential in the challenge to create organizations that are gender equal. As such, this Research Topic in Frontiers in Psychology addresses the under-representation of women in engineering and computing as a complex, but solvable problem. This Research Topic seeks to inform the global community about advances in understanding the under-representation of women in engineering and computing with a focus on what enables change. Further, this Topic will promote fresh perspectives, innovative methodologies, and mixed method approaches important to accelerating the pace of change.

This textbook is intended as a textbook for one-semester, introductory computer science courses aimed at undergraduate students from all disciplines. Self-contained and with no prerequisites, it focuses on elementary knowledge and thinking models. The content has been tested in university classrooms for over six years, and has been used in summer schools to train university and high-school teachers on teaching introductory computer science courses using computational thinking. This book introduces computer science from a computational thinking perspective. In computer science the way of thinking is characterized by three external and eight internal features, including automatic execution, bit-accuracy and abstraction. The book is divided into chapters on logic thinking, algorithmic thinking, systems thinking, and network thinking. It also covers societal impact and responsible computing material – from ICT industry to digital economy, from the wonder of exponentiation to wonder of cyberspace, and from code of conduct to best practices for independent work. The book’s structure encourages active, hands-on learning using the pedagogic tool Bloom's taxonomy to create computational solutions to over 200 problems of varying difficulty. Students solve problems using a combination of thought experiment, programming, and written methods. Only 300 lines of code in total are required to solve most programming problems in this book.

Agent-centric theories, approaches and technologies are contributing to enrich interactions between users and computers. This book aims at highlighting the influence of the agency perspective in Human-Computer Interaction through a careful selection of research contributions. Split into five sections; Users as Agents, Agents and Accessibility, Agents and Interactions, Agent-centric Paradigms and Approaches, and Collective Agents, the book covers a wealth of novel, original and fully updated material, offering: To provide a coherent, in depth, and timely material on the agency perspective in HCI To offer an authoritative treatment of the subject matter presented by carefully selected authors To offer a balanced and broad coverage of the subject area, including, human, organizational, social, as well as technological concerns. ü To offer a hands-on-experience by covering representative case studies and offering essential design guidelines The book will appeal to a broad audience of researchers and professionals associated to software engineering, interface design, accessibility, as well as agent-based interaction paradigms and technology.

DNA or Deoxyribonucleic Acid computing is an emerging branch of computing that uses DNA sequence, biochemistry, and hardware for encoding genetic information in computers. Here, information is represented by using the four genetic alphabets or DNA bases, namely A (Adenine), G (Guanine), C (Cytosine), and T (Thymine), instead of the binary representation (1 and 0) used by traditional computers. This is achieved because short DNA molecules of any arbitrary sequence of A, G, C, and T can be synthesized to order. DNA computing is mainly popular for three reasons: (i) speed (ii) minimal storage requirements, and (iii) minimal power requirements. There are many applications of DNA computing in the field of computer science. Nowadays, DNA computing is widely used in cryptography for achieving a strong security technique, so that unauthorized users are unable to retrieve the original data content. In DNA-based encryption, data are encrypted by using DNA bases (A, T, G, and C) instead of 0 and 1. As four DNA bases are used in the encryption process, DNA computing supports more randomness and makes it more complex for attackers or malicious users to hack the data. DNA computing is also used for data storage because a large number of data items can be stored inside the condensed volume. One gram of DNA holds approx DNA bases or approx 700 TB. However, it takes approx 233 hard disks to store the same data on 3 TB hard disks, and the weight of all these hard disks can be approx 151 kilos. In a cloud environment, the Data Owner (DO) stores their confidential encrypted data outside of their own domain, which attracts many attackers and hackers. DNA computing can be one of the best solutions to protect the data of a cloud server. Here, the DO can use DNA bases to encrypt the data by generating a long DNA sequence. Another application of DNA computing is in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). Many researchers are trying to improve the security of WSN by using DNA computing. Here, DNA cryptography is used along with Secure Socket Layer (SSL) that supports a secure medium to exchange information. However, recent research shows some limitations of DNA computing. One of the critical issues is that DNA cryptography does not have a strong mathematical background like other cryptographic systems. This edited book is being planned to bring forth all the information of DNA computing. Along with the research gaps in the currently available books/literature, this edited book presents many applications of DNA computing in the fields of computer science. Moreover, research challenges and future work directions in DNA computing are also provided in this edited book. - This edited book gives an overall detail of DNA computing and the fundamentals of cryptography - Many applications of DNA computing in computer science fields, such as cryptography, cloud computing, big data storage, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) security, and many more, are presented in different chapters of this edited book - Research challenges along with many future work directions in DNA computing are presented in this edited book