This volume is a material and semiotic study of transnationalsim, analyzed in terms of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The objects of analysis range from the aftermath of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, to science fiction by Pat Cadigan, CJ Cherryh, and Samuel Delaney, to material-semiotic feminist theory by Donna Harraway, to the neo-Marxist historical geography of Mike Davis and David Harvey. The book is centrally concerned with the social and cultural change brought about by the rise of the new social movements in the United States, such as the women's movement and the lesbian, gay, queer, and transgendered movements, and the backlash by the American new right against this change. Ethical and political concerns are central to the arguments, which is framed in terms of Emmanuel Levinas's notion of radical, non-reciprocal responsibility. Laura Chernaik is a free-lance writer.

Dialectics of Space and Place across Virtual and Corporeal Topographies explores the inter- and multi-disciplinary subjects of space and place in two parts. Part 1 Virtual topographies of Space and Place is concerned with themes related to immaterial places, and Part II Corporeal Topographies of Space and Place explores narratives of real and imagined experiences of places. This volume, underpinned by an array of philosophical positions provides a foundation for new and critical dialogues on space and place.

Traditional approaches to understand space tend to view public space mainly as a shell or container, focussing on its morphological structures and functional uses. That way, its ever-changing meanings, contested or challenged uses have been largely ignored, as well as the contextual and on-going dynamics between social actors, their cultures, and struggles. The key role of space in enabling spatial opportunities for social action, the fluidity of its social meaning and the changing degree of "publicness" of a space remain unexplored fields of academic inquiry and professional practice. Public Space and Relational Perspectives offers a different understanding of public spaces in the city. The aim of the book is to (re)introduce the lived experiences in public life into the teaching curricula of those academic disciplines which deal with public space and the built environment, such as architecture, planning and urban design, as well as the social sciences. The book presents conceptual, practical and research challenges and brings together findings from activists, practitioners and theorists. The editors provide eight educational challenges that educators can endorse when training future practitioners and researchers to accept and to engage with the social relations that unfold in and through public space. Cover image: KARO*

The evolution of the Internet has led us to the new era of the information infrastructure. As the information systems operating on the Internet are getting larger and more complicated, it is clear that the traditional approaches based on centralized mechanisms are no longer meaningful. One typical example can be found in the recent growing interest in a P2P (peer-to-peer) computing paradigm. It is quite different from the Web-based client-server systems, which adopt essentially centralized management mechanisms. The P2P computing environment has the potential to overcome bottlenecks in Web computing paradigm, but it introduces another difficulty, a scalability problem in terms of information found, if we use a brute-force flooding mechanism. As such, conventional information systems have been designed in a centralized fashion. As the Internet is deployed on a world scale, however, the information systems have been growing, and it becomes more and more difficult to ensure fau- free operation. This has long been a fundamental research topic in the field. A complex information system is becoming more than we can manage. For these reasons, there has recently been a significant increase in interest in biologically inspired approaches to designing future information systems that can be managed efficiently and correctly.

Selected, peer reviewed papers from the 3rd International Conference on Civil Engineering and Transportation (ICCET 2013), December 14-15, 2013, Kunming, China

This book constitutes late breaking papers from the 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2020, which was held in July 2020. The conference was planned to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, but had to change to a virtual conference mode due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From a total of 6326 submissions, a total of 1439 papers and 238 posters have been accepted for publication in the HCII 2020 proceedings before the conference took place. In addition, a total of 333 papers and 144 posters are included in the volumes of the proceedings published after the conference as “Late Breaking Work” (papers and posters). These contributions address the latest research and development efforts in the field and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The 34 late breaking papers presented in this volume were organized in two topical sections named: Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality Design and Implementation; and User Experience in Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality.

Video game spaces have vastly expanded the built environment, offering new worlds to explore and inhabit. Like buildings, cities, and gardens before them, these virtual environments express meaning and communicate ideas and affects through the spatial experiences they afford. Drawing on the emerging field of embodied cognition, this book explores the dynamic interplay between mind, body, and environment that sits at the heart of spatial communication. To capture the wide diversity of forms that spatial expression can take, the book builds a comparative analysis of twelve video games across four types of space, spanning ones designed for exploration and inhabitation, kinetic enjoyment, enacting a situated role, and enhancing perception. Together, these diverse virtual environments suggest the many ways that video games enhance and extend our embodied lives.

As the world rapidly moves online, sectors from management, industry, government, and education have broadly begun to virtualize the way people interact and learn. Virtual Learning Environments: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications is a three-volume compendium of the latest research, case studies, theories, and methodologies within the field of virtual learning environments. As networks get faster, cheaper, safer, and more reliable, their applications grow at a rate that makes it difficult for the typical practitioner to keep abreast. With a wide range of subjects, spanning from authors across the globe and with applications at different levels of education and higher learning, this reference guide serves academics and practitioners alike, indexed and categorized easily for study and application.

Over the last few decades, the quantum aspects of light have been explored and major progress has been made in understanding the specific quantum aspects of the interaction between light and matter. The domain of classical optics has recently seen many exciting new developments, especially in the areas of nano-optics, nano-antennas, metamaterials, and optical cloaking. Approaches based on single-molecule detection and plasmonics have provided new avenues for exploring light-matter interaction at the nanometre scale. All these topics have in common a trend to consider and use smaller and smaller objects, down to the micrometre, nanometre, and even atomic range. The summer school held in Les Houches in July 2013 treated all these subjects lying at the frontier between nanophotonics and quantum optics, in a series of lectures given by world experts

Screen-based media, such as touch-screens, navigation systems and virtual reality applications merge images and operations. They turn viewing first and foremost into using and reflect the turn towards an active role of the image in guiding a user’s action and perception. From professional environments to everyday life multiple configurations of screens organise working routines, structure interaction, and situate users in space both within and beyond the boundaries of the screen. This volume examines the linking of screen, space, and operation in fields such as remote navigation, architecture, medicine, interface design, and film production asking how the interaction with and through screens structures their users’ action and perception.