This original and interdisciplinary volume explores the contemporary semiotic dimensions of the face from both scientific and sociocultural perspectives, putting forward several traditions, aspects, and signs of the human utopia of creating a hybrid face. The book semiotically delves into the multifaceted realm of the digital face, exploring its biological and social functions, the concept of masks, the impact of COVID-19, AI systems, digital portraiture, symbolic faces in films, viral communication, alien depictions, personhood in video games, online intimacy, and digital memorials. The human face is increasingly living a life that is not only that of the biological body but also that of its digital avatar, spread through a myriad of new channels and transformable through filters, post-productions, digital cosmetics, all the way to the creation of deepfakes. The digital face expresses new and largely unknown meanings, which this book explores and analyzes through an interdisciplinary but systematic approach. The volume will interest researchers, scholars, and advanced students who are interested in digital humanities, communication studies, semiotics, visual studies, visual anthropology, cultural studies, and, broadly speaking, innovative approaches about the meaning of the face in present-day digital societies.

The book provides a platform for dealing with the flaws and failings of the soft computing paradigm through different manifestations. The different chapters highlight the necessity of the hybrid soft computing methodology in general with emphasis on several application perspectives in particular. Typical examples include (a) Study of Economic Load Dispatch by Various Hybrid Optimization Techniques, (b) An Application of Color Magnetic Resonance Brain Image Segmentation by Para Optimus LG Activation Function, (c) Hybrid Rough-PSO Approach in Remote Sensing Imagery Analysis, (d) A Study and Analysis of Hybrid Intelligent Techniques for Breast Cancer Detection using Breast Thermograms, and (e) Hybridization of 2D-3D Images for Human Face Recognition. The elaborate findings of the chapters enhance the exhibition of the hybrid soft computing paradigm in the field of intelligent computing.

Hybrid, or blended, classrooms are expanding on campuses across the United States (and internationally). Intentionally combining in-class instruction with online activities not only aids student learning, it also provides more self-directed, technology-mediated learning experiences for students who will incorporate technology into their professional lives post-college. In addition to explaining and defining the phenomenon of hybrid teaching and learning, this volume answers: • What is hybrid teaching and learning? • How does it promote student learning? • Why should faculty and administrators consider it? • How are its components different from traditional classrooms? • What are the best practices of hybrid course design? • How can instructors incorporate accessibility into their hybrid courses? • What models can be used to train faculty as hybrid teachers? • Where is it being practiced? • How can institutions best prepare students for and promote their success in hybrid courses? • Who should be involved in implementing and supporting these initiatives at the institutional level? This is the 149th volume of this Jossey-Bass higher education series. It offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers.

3D Face Processing: Modeling, Analysis and Synthesis introduces the frontiers of 3D face processing techniques. It reviews existing 3D face processing techniques, including techniques for 3D face geometry modeling; 3D face motion modeling; and 3D face motion tracking and animation. Then it discusses a unified framework for face modeling, analysis and synthesis. In this framework, the authors present new methods for modeling complex natural facial motion, as well as face appearance variations due to illumination and subtle motion. Then the authors apply the framework to face tracking, expression recognition and face avatar for HCI interface. They conclude this book with comments on future work in the 3D face processing framework. 3D Face Processing: Modeling, Analysis and Synthesis will interest those working in face processing for intelligent human computer interaction and video surveillance. It contains a comprehensive survey on existing face processing techniques, which can serve as a reference for students and researchers. It also covers in-depth discussion on face motion analysis and synthesis algorithms, which will benefit more advanced graduate students and researchers.

This book is a product of a dissertation project that was completed in December 2006. This project investigated teachers’ experiences in relation to teaching and learning using the hybrid-context instructional model. The dissertation itself has been noted as one of the best in providing practical tips for teachers in this area. The study methodology is included as appendix B. To answer the questions raised during the interviews, the findings of the study have been supplemented and supported with extensive literature review of empirical studies to provide theoretical and practical solutions. The literature review draws from total Internet, blended, and hybrid instruction studies. The literature on the total Internet instruction has relevance in that the Internet piece of the hybrid-context course shares the same course management systems and requires the same approaches and principles as do total Internet instruction. The book discusses the conceptual and descriptive presentations of the hybrid-context model, media, applicable teaching philosophies; strategies best accomplished in each medium; various ways of linking the face-to-face and the Internet activities; the why and how the study participants transitioned into teaching hybrid-context courses, teachers’ expectations, etc. The discussion on ‘labor of love’ is the core of this book as the discussion has captured the surprises the study participants met in a way that is not reflected in the current literature. Built into this discussion are the amounts of things teachers had to learn in order to function well as hybrid-context model teachers. The contents of this book will aide teachers who teach in any way using the Internet. Therefore, any establishment/individual using the Internet for teaching and learning will benefit from the contents of this book. Also, the administrators will find this book a selling point to encourage more participation in the adoption of the hybrid-context instructional model as well as realizing what the teachers would need to successfully implement this phenomenon.

From a barrage of photons, we readily and effortlessly recognize the faces of our friends, and the familiar objects and scenes around us. However, these tasks cannot be simple for our visual systems--faces are all extremely similar as visual patterns, and objects look quite different when viewed from different viewpoints. How do our visual systems solve these problems? The contributors to this volume seek to answer this question by exploring how analytic and holistic processes contribute to our perception of faces, objects, and scenes. The role of parts and wholes in perception has been studied for a century, beginning with the debate between Structuralists, who championed the role of elements, and Gestalt psychologists, who argued that the whole was different from the sum of its parts. This is the first volume to focus on the current state of the debate on parts versus wholes as it exists in the field of visual perception by bringing together the views of the leading researchers. Too frequently, researchers work in only one domain, so they are unaware of the ways in which holistic and analytic processing are defined in different areas. The contributors to this volume ask what analytic and holistic processes are like; whether they contribute differently to the perception of faces, objects, and scenes; whether different cognitive and neural mechanisms code holistic and analytic information; whether a single, universal system can be sufficient for visual-information processing, and whether our subjective experience of holistic perception might be nothing more than a compelling illusion. The result is a snapshot of the current thinking on how the processing of wholes and parts contributes to our remarkable ability to recognize faces, objects, and scenes, and an illustration of the diverse conceptions of analytic and holistic processing that currently coexist, and the variety of approaches that have been brought to bear on the issues.

The two LNAI volumes 6678 and 6679 constitute the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligent Systems, HAIS 2011, held in Wroclaw, Poland, in May 2011. The 114 papers published in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 241 submissions. They are organized in topical sessions on hybrid intelligence systems on logistics and intelligent optimization; metaheuristics for combinatorial optimization and modelling complex systems; hybrid systems for context-based information fusion; methods of classifier fusion; intelligent systems for data mining and applications; systems, man, and cybernetics; hybrid artificial intelligence systems in management of production systems; hybrid artificial intelligent systems for medical applications; and hybrid intelligent approaches in cooperative multi-robot systems.

Adapting to a normal life in the immortal realm, Crystal finds her familial ties in turmoil.As Crystal's son becomes obsessed with a string of recent deaths, his marriage to his witch wife grows weak, forcing her to turn to her sister for guidance.Meanwhile, Crystal's daughter, Jennifer struggles with her immortal hormonal imbalance, attracting two teenage boys, one of whom is not what he seems.With the appearance of her ex-husband, Wayne, she becomes the target of the elite immortal agency, the Underground Secret Service, its affiliates, and its primary targets, including the notorious and dangerous biker gang, The Hells Changelings--her lover's brotherhood.Gaining some of her memory back, she discovers secrets and uncovers the truth behind her captivity, pushing her into the primary focus of annihilation by the hunters and the hunted in this sequel to the dark and edgy novel, Bad Elements: Blood for Blood.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Hybrid Learning, ICHL 2011, held in Hong Kong, China, in August 2011. The 32 contributions presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. In addition two keynote talks are included in this book. The topics covered are practices in borderless education, pedagogical issues and practice, organizational frameworks for hybrid learning, experiences in hybrid learning, computer supported collaborative learning, and interactive hybrid learning systems.