Globally, poverty affects millions of people’s lives each day. Children are hungry, many lack the means to receive an education, and many are needlessly ill. It is a common scene to see an impoverished town surrounded by trash and polluted air. There is a need to debunk the myths surrounding the impoverished and for strategies to be crafted to aid their situations. Sociological Perspectives on Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction in Rural Populations is an authored book that seeks to clarify the understanding of poverty reduction in a substantive way and demonstrate the ways that poverty is multifaceted and why studying poverty reduction matters. The 12 chapters in this volume contribute to existing and new areas of knowledge production in the field of development studies, poverty knowledge production, and gender issues in the contemporary African experience. The book utilizes unique examples drawn purposely from select African countries to define, highlight, raise awareness, and clarify the complexity of rural poverty. Covering topics such as indigenous knowledge, sustainable development, and child poverty, this book provides an indispensable resource for sociology students and professors, policymakers, social development officers, advocates for the impoverished, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are some of the most discussed materials of the last decade. Their extraordinary porosity and functionality from metals and organic linkers make them one of the most promising materials for a vast array of applications. The easy tunability of their pore size and shape from the micro- to meso-scale by changing the connectivity of the inorganic moiety and the nature of the organic linkers makes these materials special. Moreover, by combining with other suitable materials, the properties of MOFs can be improved further for enhanced functionality/stability, ease of preparation, and selectivity of operation. Emerging Applications and Implementations of Metal-Organic Frameworks combines the latest empirical research findings with relevant theoretical frameworks in this area in order to improve the reader’s understanding of MOFs and their different applications in areas that include drug delivery, heavy metal removal from water, and gas storage. The design and synthesis of MOFs are also investigated along with the preparation of composites of MOFs. While covering applications that include water defluoridation, rechargeable batteries, and pharmaceutically adapted drug delivery systems, the book’s target audience is comprised of professionals, researchers, academicians, and students working in the field of physical and polymer chemistry, physics, engineering science, and environmental science.

Industry 4.0 and the subsequent automation and digitalization of processes, including the tighter integration of machine-machine and human-machine intercommunication and collaboration, is adding additional complexity to future systems design and the capability to simulate, optimize, and adapt. Current solutions lack the ability to capture knowledge, techniques, and methods to create a sustainable and intelligent nerve system for enterprise systems. With the ability to innovate new designs and solutions, as well as automate processes and decision-making capabilities with heterogenous and holistic views of current and future challenges, there can be an increase in productivity and efficiency through sustainable automation. Therefore, better understandings of the underpinning knowledge and expertise of sustainable automation that can create a sustainable cycle that drives optimal automation and innovation in the field is needed Driving Innovation and Productivity Through Sustainable Automation enhances the understanding and the knowledge for the new ecosystems emerging in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The chapters provide the knowledge and understanding of current challenges and new capabilities and solutions having been researched, developed, and applied within the industry to drive sustainable automation for innovation and productivity. This book is ideally intended for managers, executives, IT specialists, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in the current research on sustainable automation.

Among the wide range of programming tools available, the technical analysis and calculations are realized by MATLAB®, which is recognized as a convenient and effective tool for modern science and technology. Thus, mastering its latest versions and practical solutions is increasingly essential for the creation of new products in mechanics, electronics, chemistry, life sciences, and modern industry. Modern mechanical and tribology sciences specialists widely use computers and some special programs, but need a universal tool for solving, simulating, and modeling specific problems from their area. There is plenty of information available on MATLAB® for the general engineer, but there is a gap in the field for research that applies MATLAB® to two wide, interdisciplinary, and topical areas: tribology and mechanics. MATLAB® With Applications in Mechanics and Tribology explores how MATLAB® is used as a tool for subsequent computer solutions, applying it to both traditional and modern problems of mechanics and materials sciences. The problem solving in this book includes calculations of the mechanical parts, machine elements, production process, quality assurance, fluid mechanics parameters, thermodynamic and rheological properties of the materials as well as the state equations, descriptive statistics, and more. This book is ideal for scientists, students and professors of engineering courses, self-instructing readers, programmers, computer scientists, practitioners, and researchers looking for concise and clear information on learning and applying MATLAB® software to mechanics, tribology, and material physics.

The introduction of contaminants, due to rapid urbanization and anthropogenic activities into the environment, causes distress to the physio-chemical systems including living organisms, which possibly is threatening the dynamics of nature as well as the soil biology by producing certain xenobiotics. Hence, there is an immediate global demand for the diminution of such contaminants and xenobiotics that can otherwise adversely affect the living organisms. Some toxic xenobiotics include synthetic organochlorides such as PAHs and some fractions of crude oil and coal. Over time, microbial remediation processes have been accelerated to produce better, more eco-friendly, and more biodegradable solutions for complete dissemination of these xenobiotic compounds. The advancements in microbiology and biotechnology led to the launch of microbial biotechnology as a separate area of research and contributed dramatically to the development of areas like agriculture, environment, biopharmaceutics, fermented foods, and more. The Handbook of Research on Microbial Remediation and Microbial Biotechnology for Sustainable Soil provides a detailed comprehensive account for microbial treatment technologies, bioremediation strategies, biotechnology, and the important microbial species involved in remediation. The chapters focus on recent developments in microbial biotechnology in the areas of agriculture and environment and the physiology, biochemistry, and the mechanisms of remediation along with a future outlook. This book is ideal for scientists, biologists, academicians, students, and researchers in the fields of life sciences, microbiology, environmental science, environmental engineering, biotechnology, agriculture, and health sciences.

Thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) issues have gained significant interest in the scientific and technical community involved in building performance analysis and other related subjects. In terms of thermal comfort, the achievement and maintenance of a thermally acceptable indoor environment is affected by energy costs, and energy poverty is a widespread problem globally. There is a call for energy-efficient architecture for a developed and sustainable world. However, with the use of renewable energy that increased considerably in recent years, new technical challenges arose for the energy sector. Consumers are key players in this context, as flexibility in demand is crucial to cope with the intermittent nature of most renewable energy sources. Active demand-side participation is particularly important to ensure the efficient use of locally and globally available energy. Sustainability, human comfort, and healthy living environments have become top priorities. Advancements in Sustainable Architecture and Energy Efficiency explores how housing is a key health factor for individuals and looks at factors such as air quality, ventilation, hygrothermal comfort, lighting, physical environment, building efficiency, and other areas as important pieces in healthy architecture. It discusses how the poor application of these parameters can directly affect human health and how sustainable architecture provides a solution. Beyond just labeling the important facets of architecture for healthy living, this book will look at different perspectives of energy consumption and demand to ensure sustainable energy, increased energy efficiency, improved energy policies, and reasonable energy costs for homes. This book is ideal for architects, designers, engineers, energy engineers, environmental scientists, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in architecture that is both conducive to healthy living and energy efficiency.

Public places are places where all citizens, irrespective of their race, age, religion, or class level (social or economic), cannot be excluded. It serves to improve the lifestyle experience of its inhabitants, as well as promote social connections. All citizens are responsible for it and are interested in it, and the intervention for change must be the responsibility of all without exception. As such, bottom-up urban planning is essential for urban environments and for transforming nightlife in public places in order to create more meaningful experiences and instill a greater sense of identity and community. Transforming Urban Nightlife and the Development of Smart Public Spaces analyzes the patterns of transformations of nightlife in public life. The book investigates urban nightlife transformations and the challenge of enhancing the sense of belonging in sensitive areas such as local communities and historical sites. The chapters present new insights to control the chaotic intervention related to the elements of traditional or digital technology, whether from citizens themselves or local authorities. The objective also is to document urban nightlife transformations that enhance the sense of belonging in historical sites. Important topics covered include urban-gamification, digital urban art, urban socio-ecosystems, and reimagining space in the urban nightlife. This book is ideal for urban planners, developers, social scientists, technologists, civil engineers, architects, policymakers, government officials, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in urban nightlife and nightscape and the smart technologies used for transformation.

The inclusion of experts in communicability in the software industry has allowed timeframes to speed up in the commercialization of new technological products worldwide. However, this constant evolution of software in the face of the hardware revolution opens up a host of new horizons to maintain and increase the quality of the interactive systems following a set of standardized norms and rules for the production of interactive software. Currently, we see some efforts towards this goal, but they are still partial solutions, incomplete, and flawed from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. If the quality of the interactive design is analyzed, it is left to professionals to generate systems that are efficient, reliable, user-friendly, and cutting-edge. The Handbook of Research on Software Quality Innovation in Interactive Systems analyzes the quality of the software applied to the interactive systems and considers the constant advances in the software industry. This book reviews the past and present of information and communication technologies with a projection towards the future, along with analyses of software, software design, phrases to use, and the purposes for software applications in interactive systems. This book is ideal for students, professors, researchers, programmers, analysists of systems, computer engineers, interactive designers, managers of software quality, and evaluators of interactive systems.

The advent of the emerging fifth generation (5G) networks has changed the paradigm of how computing, electronics, and electrical (CEE) systems are interconnected. CEE devices and systems, with the help of the 5G technology, can now be seamlessly linked in a way that is rapidly turning the globe into a digital world. Smart cities and internet of things have come to stay but not without some challenges, which must be discussed. The Handbook of Research on 5G Networks and Advancements in Computing, Electronics, and Electrical Engineering focuses on current technological innovations as the world rapidly heads towards becoming a global smart city. It covers important topics such as power systems, electrical engineering, mobile communications, network, security, and more. This book examines vast types of technologies and their roles in society with a focus on how each works, the impacts it has, and the future for developing a global smart city. This book is ideal for both industrial and academic researchers, scientists, engineers, educators, practitioners, developers, policymakers, scholars, and students interested in 5G technology and the future of engineering, computing, and technology in human society.

Over the last two decades, researchers are looking at imbalanced data learning as a prominent research area. Many critical real-world application areas like finance, health, network, news, online advertisement, social network media, and weather have imbalanced data, which emphasizes the research necessity for real-time implications of precise fraud/defaulter detection, rare disease/reaction prediction, network intrusion detection, fake news detection, fraud advertisement detection, cyber bullying identification, disaster events prediction, and more. Machine learning algorithms are based on the heuristic of equally-distributed balanced data and provide the biased result towards the majority data class, which is not acceptable considering imbalanced data is omnipresent in real-life scenarios and is forcing us to learn from imbalanced data for foolproof application design. Imbalanced data is multifaceted and demands a new perception using the novelty at sampling approach of data preprocessing, an active learning approach, and a cost perceptive approach to resolve data imbalance. Data Preprocessing, Active Learning, and Cost Perceptive Approaches for Resolving Data Imbalance offers new aspects for imbalanced data learning by providing the advancements of the traditional methods, with respect to big data, through case studies and research from experts in academia, engineering, and industry. The chapters provide theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings that help to improve the understanding of the impact of imbalanced data and its resolving techniques based on data preprocessing, active learning, and cost perceptive approaches. This book is ideal for data scientists, data analysts, engineers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students looking for more information on imbalanced data characteristics and solutions using varied approaches.