Superconnect

For readers of Outliers or The Wisdom of Crowds — or internationally bestselling author Richard Koch's many followers — this entertaining book draws on the latest in network science research to show how any of us can increase the chances of success in our personal and work lives. What's so special about the rich and famous? Unusually successful people often think they've done well because of their talent or luck — or simple grit and hard work. But individual characteristics matter far less than the social connections we exploit. And counterintuitively, it's our weak links — your neighbour's landscaper or that ad agency guy you happened to meet at your sister's birthday party last year — that matter most of all. Drawing on research from the fields of sociology, math, and physics, internationally bestselling author and entrepreneur Richard Koch and his co-author Greg Lockwood show how networks impact our everyday lives. Rich with entertaining anecdotes and written in Richard Koch's trademark conversational style, Superconnect reveals the hidden patterns behind everyday events. Most importantly, it shows how any of us can increase the chances of happy outcomes in our own lives, careers, or businesses.

What does it mean to live in a superconnected society? Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life, Second Edition brings together the latest research from many relevant fields to examine how contemporary social life is mediated by various digital technologies: the internet, social media, and mobile devices. The book explores such topics as how digital technology led to the modern information age, information sharing and surveillance, how digital media shape socialization and development of the self, digital divides that separate groups in society, and the impact of digital media across social institutions. The author’s clear, nontechnical discussions and interdisciplinary synthesis make Superconnected an essential text for any course that examines how social life is affected when information and communication technology enter the picture. Dr. Mary Chayko is a sociologist, Teaching Professor of Communication and Information, and Director of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies at the School of Communication and Information (SC&I) at Rutgers University. For more on the author and for instructor resources, visit her book blog at http://superconnectedblog.com.

This monograph addresses two significant related questions in complex geometry: the construction of a Chern character on the Grothendieck group of coherent sheaves of a compact complex manifold with values in its Bott-Chern cohomology, and the proof of a corresponding Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck theorem. One main tool used is the equivalence of categories established by Block between the derived category of bounded complexes with coherent cohomology and the homotopy category of antiholomorphic superconnections. Chern-Weil theoretic techniques are then used to construct forms that represent the Chern character. The main theorem is then established using methods of analysis, by combining local index theory with the hypoelliptic Laplacian. Coherent Sheaves, Superconnections, and Riemann-Roch-Grothendieck is an important contribution to both the geometric and analytic study of complex manifolds and, as such, it will be a valuable resource for many researchers in geometry, analysis, and mathematical physics.

What does it mean to live in a superconnected society? Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life brings together insights about digital technology and society from the many literatures in which author Mary Chayko is immersed: sociology, communication, psychology, media and technology studies. The result is a groundbreaking analysis of contemporary social life as it is influenced by the internet, social media, and mobile devices. Individual chapters explore topics such as how digital technology helped to shape the modern information age; information sharing and surveillance; digital socialization and development of the self; digital inequalities; global impacts; and the impact of the internet and digital media across social institutions. The author's interdisciplinary synthesis makes Superconnected an essential text for courses in all departments that examine how social life is affected when information and communication technology enter the picture. Her clear, non-technical prose also makes Superconnected a great choice for general readers who are interested in this topic as well. Dr. Mary Chayko is a sociologist, professor of communication and information, and director of undergraduate interdisciplinary studies at Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information. For more on the author, visit her blog athttp://marychayko.com/

There’s nothing quite like a holiday with your boyfriend... Flora Fielding can’t wait for Barney to join her in San Francisco so they can begin their dream holiday. Until Barney dumps her, leaving her stranded. Luckily, Flora’s cousin Bella lives in San Francisco and, with nowhere else to go, Flora pitches up at her door. As a singer in an Abba tribute band, Bella’s life is a whirlwind of gigs, sparkly jumpsuits and nights on the town. And as Flora gets caught up in the excitement, she doesn’t have time to worry about her broken heart. In fact, she’s so distracted that before she knows it she’s running along a moonlit beach with a very handsome stranger...

In the first edition of this book, simple proofs of the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem for Dirac operators on compact Riemannian manifolds and its generalizations (due to the authors and J.-M. Bismut) were presented, using an explicit geometric construction of the heat kernel of a generalized Dirac operator; the new edition makes this popular book available to students and researchers in an attractive paperback.