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This best-selling textbook returns for an eighth edition with material on the most fundamental issues in sociology today. The authors continue their tradition of focusing on the big picture, with an emphasis on race, class, and gender in every chapter—building on the seventh edition's discussion of reproductive justice after the revocation of Roe v. Wade, social movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, a discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic and Donald Trump and Joe Biden.The text frames sociological debates around the major theoretical perspectives of sociology and focuses on capturing students'imaginations with cutting-edge research and real-world events. The hallmark of the book continues to be clear writing that helps students understand the intricacies of the discipline like no other textbook on the market.New to the eighth editionThinking outside the box (or inside it…)Selected chapters contain thematically linked boxed inserts aimed at bringing analytical and expositional focus to certain issues, as follows: Sociological Insights: These boxes focus on how sociology can help us better understand a variety of issues and how examples from everyday life can help us to understand sociological principles, illustrating how topics are carefully linked to that material. Global Sociology: One of the most pronounced social changes of the past century has been globalization—a transition from the dominance of nation-states and national economies to global interactions. These boxes examine how social change moves around the world. Sociological Surprises: One common criticism of sociologists is that we sometimes expend a great deal of effort to prove things that are obvious. On the contrary, the reality is that what we find often goes against what people commonly believe and even against what sociological researchers expect to find. These boxes focus on such unexpected findings, analyzing why the social reality turns out to be something different from what is expected. Understanding Race, Class, and Gender: These boxes give added emphasis to the book's focus on race, class, and gender inequality. In every issue that sociologists study, race, class, and gender play a key role—and these boxes provide students with clear and concrete examples of how this occurs. Student Life: These boxes, which discuss student life from a sociological viewpoint, show how sociology is relevant to students in their everyday lives, covering race relations to dating to paying for college, and draws out their sociological implications. Putting Sociology to Work: These boxes focus on application: How can sociology be used to solve a social problem or to make an important decision?

Next-Generation Cognitive Radar Systems brings together contributions from leading researchers who are engaged in the research and development of next generation cognitive abilities in radar engineering. It features recent advances in the theory and applications of advanced Cognitive Radar (CR) tools and examines emerging challenges. The chapters include mathematical and computational methods to combat important CR challenges as well as the applications of recent theories and algorithms to various applied CR aspects.

'This book will provide chapters that include applications of artificial intelligence for the optimization of wireless communication systems, including channel models, channel state estimation, beamforming, codebook design, signal processing, etc. It will be extensive work in this particular domain rather than in abstract form. It will explore not just the theoretical aspects but also the practical implementation of this. The main objective of this book is to concise or to actually come up with something that should be a collection of recent research or advances in the research happening in the field. As per the recent advancement, this is one of the most exciting topic'--

This book gives you a comprehensive overview of key optimization tools that can be used to design radar waveforms and adaptive signal processing strategies under practical constraints -- strategies such as power method-like iterations, coordinate descent, and majorization-minimization – that help you to meet the more and more stressing sensing system requirements. The book walks you through how radar waveform synthesis is obtained as the solution to a constrained optimization problem such as finite energy, unimodularity (or being constant-modulus), and finite or discrete-phase (potentially binary) alphabet, which are dictated by the practical limitations of the real systems. Several approaches in each of these broad frameworks are detailed and various applications of these optimization techniques are described. Focusing on a holistic approach rather than a problem-specific approach, the book shows you what you need to effectively formulate waveform design and understand the flexibility of the framework for adapting to your own specific needs. You'll have full access to the tools and knowledge you need to design waveform with optimized correlation/cross-correlation properties for SISO/SIMO and MIMO radars, taking into account spectral constraints for cognitive rads, as well as coexistence with communications and mitigate possible Doppler and quantization errors, and more. The book also includes representative software codes that further help you generate the described solutions. With its unique style of covering mathematical results along with their applications from diverse areas, this is a much-needed, detailed handbook for industry researchers, scientists and designers including medical, marine, defense, and automotive companies. It is also an excellent resource for advanced courses on radar signal processing.

There are many applications of computer animation and simulation where it is necessary to model virtual crowds of autonomous agents. Some of these applications include site planning, education, entertainment, training, and human factors analysis for building evacuation. Other applications include simulations of scenarios where masses of people gather, flow, and disperse, such as transportation centers, sporting events, and concerts. Most crowd simulations include only basic locomotive behaviors possibly coupled with a few stochastic actions. Our goal in this survey is to establish a baseline of techniques and requirements for simulating large-scale virtual human populations. Sometimes, these populations might be mutually engaged in a common activity such as evacuation from a building or area; other times they may be going about their individual and personal agenda of work, play, leisure, travel, or spectator. Computational methods to model one set of requirements may not mesh well with good approaches to another. By including both crowd and individual goals and constraints into a comprehensive computational model, we expect to simulate the visual texture and contextual behaviors of groups of seemingly sentient beings. Table of Contents: Introduction / Crowd Simulation Methodology Survey / Individual Differences in Crowds / Framework (HiDAC + MACES + CAROSA) / HiDAC: Local Motion / MACES: Wayfinding with Communication and Roles / CAROSA: Functional Crowds / Initializing a Scenario / Evaluating Crowds

This book presents the Proceedings of The 7th Brazilian Technology Symposium (BTSym'21). The book discusses current technological issues on Systems Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, such as the Transmission Line, Protein-modified mortars, Electromagnetic Properties, Clock Domains, Chebyshev Polynomials, Satellite Control Systems, Hough Transform, Watershed Transform, Blood Smear Images, Toxoplasma Gondi, Operation System Developments, MIMO Systems, Geothermal-Photovoltaic Energy Systems, Mineral Flotation Application, CMOS Techniques, Frameworks Developments, Physiological Parameters Applications, Brain Computer Interface, Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Vision, Security Applications, FPGA Applications, IoT, Residential Automation, Data Acquisition, Industry 4.0, Cyber-Physical Systems, Digital Image Processing, Patters Recognition, Machine Learning, Photocatalytic Process, Physical-chemical analysis, Smoothing Filters, Frequency Synthesizers, Voltage ControlledRing Oscillator, Difference Amplifier, Photocatalysis, Photodegradation, current technological issues on Human, Smart and Sustainable Future of Cities, such as the Digital Transformation, Data Science, Hydrothermal Dispatch, Project Knowledge Transfer, Immunization Programs, Efficiency and Predictive Methods, PMBOK Applications, Logistics Process, IoT, Data Acquisition, Industry 4.0, Cyber-Physical Systems, Fingerspelling Recognition, Cognitive Ergonomics, Ecosystem services, Environmental, Ecosystem services valuation, Solid Waste and University Extension.

For the last century, the automotive industry has been dominated by internal combustion engines. Their flexibility of application, driving range, performance and sporty characteristics has resulted in several generations of this technology and has formed generations of engineers. But that is not the end of the story. Stricter legislation and increased environmental awareness have resulted in the development of new powertrain technologies in addition and parallel to the highly optimized internal combustion engine. Hybrid powertrains systems, pure battery electric systems and fuel cell systems, in conjunction with a diverse range of applications, have increased the spectrum of powertrain technologies. Furthermore, automated driving together with intelligent and highly connected systems are changing the way to get from A to B. Not only is the interaction of all these new technologies challenging, but also several different disciplines have to collaborate intensively in order for new powertrain systems to be successfully developed. These new technologies and the resulting challenges lead to an increase in system complexity. Approaches such as systems engineering are necessary to manage this complexity. To show how systems engineering manages the increasing complexity of modern powertrain systems, by providing processes, methods, organizational aspects and tools, this book has been structured into five parts. Starting with Challenges for Powertrain Development, which describes automotive-related challenges at different levels of the system hierarchy and from different point of views. The book then continues with the core part, Systems Engineering, in which all the basics of systems engineering, model-based systems engineering, and their related processes, methods, tools, and organizational matters are described. A special focus is placed on important standards and the human factor. The third part, Automotive Powertrain Systems Engineering Approach, puts the fundamentals of systems engineering into practice by adding the automotive context. This part focuses on system development and also considers the interactions to hardware and software development. Several approaches and methods are presented based on systems engineering philosophy. Part four, Powertrain Development Case Studies, adds the practical point of view by providing a range of case studies on powertrain system level and on powertrain element level and discusses the development of hybrid powertrain, internal combustion engines, e-drives, transmissions, batteries and fuel cell systems. Two case studies on a vehicle level are also presented. The final part, Outlook, considers the development of systems engineering itself with particular focus on information communication technologies. Even though this book covers systems engineering from an automotive perspective, many of the challenges, fundamental principles, conclusions and outlooks can be applied to other domains too. Therefore, this book is not only relevant for automotive engineers and students, but also for specialists in scientific and industrial positions in other domains and anyone who has to cope with the challenge of successfully developing complex systems with a large number of collaborating disciplines.

This book provides an overview of radar waveform synthesis obtained as the result of computational optimization processes and covers the most challenging application fields. The book balances a practical point of view with a rigorous mathematical approach corroborated with a wealth of numerical study cases and some real experiments. Additionally, the book has a cross-disciplinary approach because it exploits cross-fertilization with the recent research and discoveries in optimization theory. The material of the book is organized into ten chapters, each one completed with a comprehensive list of references.

This book provides the latest research findings, and discusses, from both theoretical and practical perspectives, innovative research methods and development techniques related to intelligent social networks and collaborative systems, intelligent networking systems, mobile collaborative systems and secure intelligent cloud systems. It also presents the synergies among various paradigms in such a multi-disciplinary field of intelligent collaborative systems. With the rapid development of the Internet, we are experiencing a shift from the traditional sharing of information and applications as the main purpose of the Web to an emergent paradigm, which locates people at the very centre of networks and exploits the value of individuals'connections, relations and collaboration. Social networks are also playing a major role in the dynamics and structure of intelligent Web-based networking and collaborative systems. Virtual campuses, virtual communities and organizations strongly leverage intelligent networking and collaborative systems by means of a great variety of formal and informal electronic relations, such as business-to-business, peer-to-peer and various types of online collaborative learning interactions, including the emerging e-learning systems. This has resulted in entangled systems that need to be managed efficiently and autonomously. In addition, the latest, powerful technologies based on grid and wireless infrastructure as well as cloud computing are currently enhancing collaborative and networking applications significantly, but are also facing new issues and challenges. The principal purpose of the research and development community is to stimulate research that will lead to the creation of responsive environments for networking and, in the longer term, the development of adaptive, secure, mobile, and intuitive intelligent systems for collaborative work and learning.

Systems Modelling Language (SysML) is a tailored version of the unified modelling language (UML) that meets the needs of today's systems engineering professionals and engineers. It supports the specification, analysis, design, verification and validation of a broad range of systems and systems-of-systems, including hardware, software, information, personnel, procedures, and facilities in a graphical notation.

This book presents the latest, innovative research findings on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud, and Internet Computing. It gathers the Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing, held on November 8–10, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. These computing technologies have rapidly established themselves as breakthrough paradigms for solving complex problems by enabling the aggregation and sharing of an increasing variety of distributed computational resources at large scale. Grid Computing originated as a paradigm for high-performance computing, offering an alternative to expensive supercomputers through different forms of large-scale distributed computing, while P2P Computing emerged as a new paradigm after client-server and web-based computing and has shown to be useful in the development of social networking, B2B (Business to Business), B2C (Business to Consumer), B2G (Business to Government), B2E (Business to Employee), and so on. Cloud Computing has been defined as a “computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing are determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits”. Cloud computing has quickly been adopted in a broad range of application domains and provides utility computing at large scale. Lastly, Internet Computing is the basis of any large-scale distributed computing paradigm; it has very rapidly developed into a flourishing field with an enormous impact on today's information societies, serving as a universal platform comprising a large variety of computing forms such as Grid, P2P, Cloud and Mobile computing. The aim of the book “Advances on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing” is to provide the latest findings, methods and development techniques from both theoretical and practical perspectives, and to reveal synergies between these large-scale computing paradigms.

With an emphasis on applications of computational models for solving modern challenging problems in biomedical and life sciences, this book aims to bring collections of articles from biologists, medical/biomedical and health science researchers together with computational scientists to focus on problems at the frontier of biomedical and life sciences. The goals of this book are to build interactions of scientists across several disciplines and to help industrial users apply advanced computational techniques for solving practical biomedical and life science problems. This book is for users in the fields of biomedical and life sciences who wish to keep abreast with the latest techniques in signal and image analysis. The book presents a detailed description to each of the applications. It can be used by those both at graduate and specialist levels.

This timely review volume summarizes the state-of-the-art developments in nature-inspired algorithms and applications with the emphasis on swarm intelligence and bio-inspired computation. Topics include the analysis and overview of swarm intelligence and evolutionary computation, hybrid metaheuristic algorithms, bat algorithm, discrete cuckoo search, firefly algorithm, particle swarm optimization, and harmony search as well as convergent hybridization. Application case studies have focused on the dehydration of fruits and vegetables by the firefly algorithm and goal programming, feature selection by the binary flower pollination algorithm, job shop scheduling, single row facility layout optimization, training of feed-forward neural networks, damage and stiffness identification, synthesis of cross-ambiguity functions by the bat algorithm, web document clustering, truss analysis, water distribution networks, sustainable building designs and others. As a timely review, this book can serve as an ideal reference for graduates, lecturers, engineers and researchers in computer science, evolutionary computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computational intelligence, data mining, engineering optimization and designs.

As its title implies, Advances in Multicriteria Analysis presents the most recent developments in multicriteria analysis and in some of its principal areas of application, including marketing, research and development evaluation, financial planning, and medicine. Special attention is paid to the interaction between multicriteria analysis, decision support systems and preference modeling. The five sections of the book cover: methodology; problem structuring; utility assessment; multi-objective optimisation; real world applications. Audience: Researchers and professionals who are operations researchers, management scientists, computer scientists, statisticians, decision analysts, marketing managers and financial analysts.

Life-like characters is one of the most exciting technologies for human-computer interface applications today. They convincingly take the roles of virtual presenters, synthetic actors and sales personas, teammates and tutors. A common characteristic underlying their life-likeness or believability as virtual conversational partners is computational models that provide them with affective functions such as synthetic emotions and personalities and implement human interactive behavior. The wide dissemination of life-like characters in multimedia systems, however, will greatly depend on the availability of control languages and tools that facilitate scripting of intelligent conversational behaviour. This book presents the first comprehensive collection of the latest developments in scripting and representation languages for life-like characters, rounded off with an in-depth comparison and synopsis of the major approaches. Introducing toolkits for authoring animated characters further supports the ease of use of this new interface technology. Life-like characters being a vibrant research area, various applications have been designed and implemented. This book offers coverage of the most successful and promising applications, ranging from product presentation and student training to knowledge integration and interactive gaming. It also discusses the key challenges in the area and provides design guidelines for employing life-like characters.

This new edition of this popular text has been fully updated to reflect SysML 1.3, the latest version of the standard, and the discussion has been extended to show the power of SysML as a tool for systems engineering in an MBSE context. Beginning with a thorough introduction to the concepts behind MBSE, and the theoretical aspects and syntax of SysML, the book then describes how to implement SysML and MBSE in an organisation, and how to model real projects effectively and efficiently, illustrated using an extensive case study.

With a focus on developing computational algorithms for examining waveform design in diverse active sensing applications, this guide is ideal for researchers and practitioners in the field. The three parts conveniently correspond to the three categories of desirable waveform properties: good aperiodic correlations, good periodic correlations and beampattern matching. The book features various application examples of using the newly designed waveforms, including radar imaging, channel estimation for communications, an ultrasound system for breast cancer treatment and covert underwater communications. In addition to numerical results, the authors present theoretical analyses describing lower bounds or limitations of performance. Focusing on formulating practical problems mathematically and solving the mathematical problems using efficient and effective optimization techniques, the text pays particular attention to developing easy-to-use computational approaches. Most algorithms are accompanied by a table clearly detailing iteration steps and corresponding MATLAB codes are available on the companion website.

A Practical Guide to SysML: The Systems Modeling Language is a comprehensive guide for understanding and applying SysML to model systems. The Object Management Group's OMG SysML is a general-purpose graphical modeling language for representing systems that may include combinations of hardware, software, data, people, facilities, and natural objects. SysML supports the practice of model-based systems engineering (MBSE) used to develop system solutions in response to complex and often technologically challenging problems. The book is organized into four parts. Part I provides an overview of systems engineering, a summary of key MBSE concepts, a chapter on getting started with SysML, and a sample problem highlighting the basic features of SysML. Part II presents a detailed description of the SysML language, while Part III illustrates how SysML can support different model-based methods. Part IV discusses how to transition MBSE with SysML into an organization. This book can serve as an introduction and reference for industry practitioners, and as a text for courses in systems modeling and model-based systems engineering. Because SysML reuses many Unified Modeling Language (UML) concepts, software engineers familiar with UML can use this information as a basis for understanding systems engineering concepts. - Authoritative and comprehensive guide to understanding and implementing SysML - A quick reference guide, including language descriptions and practical examples - Application of model-based methodologies to solve complex system problems - Guidance on transitioning to model-based systems engineering using SysML - Preparation guide for OMG Certified Systems Modeling Professional (OCSMP)

A Practical Guide to SysML: The Systems Modeling Language is a comprehensive guide to SysML for systems and software engineers. It provides an advanced and practical resource for modeling systems with SysML. The source describes the modeling language and offers information about employing SysML in transitioning an organization or project to model-based systems engineering. The book also presents various examples to help readers understand the OMG Systems Modeling Professional (OCSMP) Certification Program. The text is organized into four parts. The first part provides an overview of systems engineering. It explains the model-based approach by comparing it with the document-based approach and providing the modeling principles. The overview of SYsML is also discussed. The second part of the book covers a comprehensive description of the language. It discusses the main concepts of model organization, parametrics, blocks, use cases, interactions, requirements, allocations, and profiles. The third part presents examples that illustrate how SysML supports different model-based procedures. The last part discusses how to transition and deploy SysML into an organization or project. It explains the integration of SysML into a systems development environment. Furthermore, it describes the category of data that are exchanged between a SysML tool and other types of tools, and the types of exchange mechanisms that can be used. It also covers the criteria that must be considered when selecting a SysML. Software and systems engineers, programmers, IT practitioners, experts, and non-experts will find this book useful.•The authoritative guide for understanding and applying SysML•Authored by the foremost experts on the language•Language description, examples, and quick reference guide included

A timely guide to today's high-yield corporate debt markets Leveraged Finance is a comprehensive guide to the instruments and markets that finance much of corporate America. Presented in five sections, this experienced author team covers topics ranging from the basics of bonds and loans to more advanced topics such as valuing CDs, default correlations among CLOs, and hedging strategies across corporate capital structures. Additional topics covered include basic corporate credit, relative value analysis, and various trading strategies used by investors, such as hedging credit risk with the equity derivatives of a different company. Stephen Antczak, Douglas Lucas, and Frank Fabozzi present readers with real-market examples of how investors can identify investment opportunities and how to express their views on the market or specific companies through trading strategies, and examine various underlying assets including loans, corporate bonds, and much more. They also offer readers an overview of synthetic and structured products such as CDS, LCDS, CDX, LCDX, and CLOs. Leveraged Finance has the information you need to succeed in this evolving financial arena.

Systems modelling is an essential enabling technique for any systems engineering enterprise. These modelling techniques, in particular the unified modelling language (UML), have been employed widely in the world of software engineering and very successfully in systems engineering for many years. However, in recent years there has been a perceived need for a tailored version of the UML that meets the needs of today's systems engineering professional. This book provides a pragmatic introduction to the systems engineering modelling language, the SysML, aimed at systems engineering practitioners at any level of ability, ranging from students to experts. The theoretical aspects and syntax of SysML are covered and each concept is explained through a number of example applications. The book also discusses the history of the SysML and shows how it has evolved over a number of years. All aspects of the language are covered and are discussed in an independent and frank manner, based on practical experience of applying the SysML in the real world.

This book provides a comprehensive and practical guide for modeling systems with SysML. It includes a full description of the language along with a quick reference guide, and shows how the language can be applied to specify, analyze, and design systems. It contains examples to help readers understand how SysML can be used in practice. The book also includes guidance on how an organization or project can transition to model based systems engineering using SysML, with considerations for processes, methods, tools, and training. •The authoritative guide for understanding and applying SysML •Authored by the foremost experts on the language •Language description, examples, and quick reference guide included

There are many applications of computer animation and simulation where it is necessary to model virtual crowds of autonomous agents. Some of these applications include site planning, education, entertainment, training, and human factors analysis for building evacuation. Other applications include simulations of scenarios where masses of people gather, flow, and disperse, such as transportation centers, sporting events, and concerts. Most crowd simulations include only basic locomotive behaviors possibly coupled with a few stochastic actions. Our goal in this survey is to establish a baseline of techniques and requirements for simulating large-scale virtual human populations. Sometimes, these populations might be mutually engaged in a common activity such as evacuation from a building or area; other times they may be going about their individual and personal agenda of work, play, leisure, travel, or spectator. Computational methods to model one set of requirements may not mesh well withgood approaches to another. By including both crowd and individual goals and constraints into a comprehensive computational model, we expect to simulate the visual texture and contextual behaviors of groups of seemingly sentient beings. Table of Contents: Introduction / Crowd Simulation Methodology Survey / Individual Differences in Crowds / Framework (HiDAC + MACES + CAROSA) / HiDAC: Local Motion / MACES: Wayfinding with Communication and Roles / CAROSA: Functional Crowds / Initializing a Scenario / Evaluating Crowds