This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2017, held in Malaga, Spain, in April 2017.The 16 revised full papers presented together with 4 short papers and 1 keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. The papers cover topics such as: Enabling technologies, methods and platforms; objectives and approaches of ambient intelligence and internet of things; from information design to interaction...

This book aims to enable parents in trilingual families to consider possible language strategies on the basis of analysing their individual circumstances. It includes a tool for diagnostic self-analysis that will help each reader to identify their situation and learn how parents in similar situations have approached the task of supporting their children’s use of languages. Based on a unique survey of parents in trilingual families in two European countries, the book highlights the challeng...

This comprehensive text/reference examines in depth the synergy between multimedia content analysis, personalization, and next-generation networking. The book demonstrates how this integration can result in robust, personalized services that provide users with an improved multimedia-centric quality of experience. Each chapter offers a practical step-by-step walkthrough for a variety of concepts, components and technologies relating to the development of applications and services. Topics an...

The term “haptics” refers to the science of sensing and manipulation through touch. Multiple disciplines such as biomechanics, psychophysics, robotics, neuroscience, and software engineering converge to support haptics, and generally, haptic research is done by three communities: the robotics community, the human computer interface community, and the virtual reality community.This book is different from any other book that has looked at haptics. The authors treat haptics as a new m...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2015, held in Athens, Greece, in November 2015.The 21 revised full papers presented together with 5 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. Over the past 20 years, the vision of Ambient Intelligence has gradually materialized into a plethora of technologies and devices, which are being introduced into almost every aspect of everyday life, thus a...

In this book, leading authors in the field discuss development of Ambient Assisted Living. The contributions have been chosen and invited at the 6th AAL congress, Berlin. It presents new technological developments which support the autonomy and independence of individuals with special needs. As the technological innovation raises also social issues, the book addresses micro and macro economical aspects of assistive systems and puts an additional emphasis on the ethical and legal discussion...

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Intelligent Human Computer Interaction, IHCI 2016, held in Pilani, India, in December 2016. The 22 regular papers and 3 abstracts of invited talks included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 115 initial submissions. They deal with intelligent interfaces; brain machine interaction; HCI applications and technology; and interface and systems.

How is our language affected by our ethnicity, gender, and region? How are our conversations and other interactions structured? How does society view and regulate language? How do we use language to present ourselves to others? In this revised and updated second edition of the popular What Is Sociolinguistics? Gerard Van Herk explores these and other intriguing questions about language, how we use it, and its relationships to society. Van Herk guides the reader on a tour through t...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence, UCAmI 2015, held in Puerto Varas, Chile, in December 2015.The 36 full papers presented together with 11 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. The papers are grouped in topical sections on adding intelligence for environment adaption; ambient intelligence for transport; human interaction and ambient intelligence; and amb...

Whether in family life, social interactions, or business negotiations, half the people in the world speak more than one language every day. Yet many myths persist about bilingualism and bilinguals. Does being bilingual mean you are equally fluent in two languages, or that you belong to two cultures, or even that you have multiple personalities? Can you become bilingual only as a child? Why do bilinguals switch from one language to another in mid-sentence? Will raising bilingual children co...

Why do we speak the way we do? What are the social factors that influence our choices of expression? This best-selling introduction to the study of language and society encourages students to think about these fundamental questions, asking how and why we select from the vast range of different words, accents, varieties and languages available to us. In this new and updated edition, students are taken step-by-step through the analysis of linguistic expressions, speech varieties and language...

The two-volume set LNICST 150 and 151 constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Internet of Things Summit, IoT360 2014, held in Rome, Italy, in October 2014.This volume contains 74 full papers carefully reviewed and selected from 118 submissions at the following four conferences: the First International Conference on Cognitive Internet of Things Technologies, COIOTE 2014; the First International Conference on Pervasive Games, PERGAME...