As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, and the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National’s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, and overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged and, for our narrator François – misanthropic, middle-aged and alienated – life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic and melancholy by turns, and a profound meditation on faith and meaning in Western society.

Continuous improvements in data analysis and cloud computing have allowed more opportunities to develop systems with user-focused designs. This not only leads to higher success in day-to-day usage, but it increases the overall probability of technology adoption. Advancing Cloud Database Systems and Capacity Planning With Dynamic Applications is a key resource on the latest innovations in cloud database systems and their impact on the daily lives of people in modern society. Highlighting multidisciplinary studies on information storage and retrieval, big data architectures, and artificial intelligence, this publication is an ideal reference source for academicians, researchers, scientists, advanced level students, technology developers and IT officials.

This two-volume set LNAI 12163 and 12164 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, AIED 2020, held in Ifrane, Morocco, in July 2020.* The 49 full papers presented together with 66 short, 4 industry & innovation, 4 doctoral consortium, and 4 workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 214 submissions. The conference provides opportunities for the cross-fertilization of approaches, techniques and ideas from the many fields that comprise AIED, including computer science, cognitive and learning sciences, education, game design, psychology, sociology, linguistics as well as many domain-specific areas. ​*The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This volume constitutes the papers of several workshops which were held in conjunction with the 38th International Conference on High Performance Computing, ISC High Performance 2023, held in Hamburg, Germany, during May 21–25, 2023. The 49 revised full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. ISC High Performance 2023 presents the following workshops: ​2nd International Workshop on Malleability Techniques Applications in High-Performance Computing (HPCMALL) 18th Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cloud Computing (VHPC 23) HPC I/O in the Data Center (HPC IODC) Workshop on Converged Computing of Cloud, HPC, and Edge (WOCC’23) 7th International Workshop on In Situ Visualization (WOIV’23) Workshop on Monitoring and Operational Data Analytics (MODA23) 2nd Workshop on Communication, I/O, and Storage at Scale on Next-Generation Platforms: Scalable Infrastructures First International Workshop on RISC-V for HPC Second Combined Workshop on Interactive and Urgent Supercomputing (CWIUS) HPC on Heterogeneous Hardware (H3)