Search results for ""Springer Verlag, Singapore""

In diesem Buch wird die chinesische Politik theoretisiert, insbesondere Chinas "deliberative Demokratie (xieshang minzhu 协商民主)". In einem vergleichenden Rahmen zwischen China und dem Westen hinterfragt der Autor den Anspruch der chinesischen Regierung, die Bürger zu repräsentieren, und zeigt dem Leser, wie all diese Konzepte innerhalb der chinesischen Ideologie, des demokratischen Diskurses und der Regierungsführung zusammenwirken und in welchem Verhältnis sie zum chinesischen Autoritarismus stehen. Vor allem stellt dieses Buch eine nachhaltige Hybridisierung der politischen Theorie dar, die weder eine einfache demokratisch-autoritäre Dichotomie noch eine Neuinterpretation der offiziellen Propaganda ist. Diese Studie wird für Wissenschaftler der chinesischen Politik und Staatskunst von Interesse sein, da sie Licht auf einen neu entstehenden Staatsdiskurs wirft - das chinesische xieshang minzhu. Noch wichtiger ist, dass dieses Buch über eine einfache rhetorische und sprachliche Verwendung der "deliberativen Demokratie" im westlichen Sinne hinausgeht und vielmehr den beratenden Charakter der chinesischen Politik hervorhebt, der den chinesischen Autoritarismus begünstigt und festigt.

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This edited book provides a comprehensive and a reliable source of information on all major areas of diatom research. It addresses research advances in the key areas of diatom biology, morphology, systematics, phylogeny and ecology along with their interdisciplinary applications. Diatoms are the world’s most diverse group of algae populating the freshwater and marine ecosystems of the world. They are unicellular, photosynthetic, eukaryotes having ornate silicified cell walls. Diatoms contribute around 25% of annual global carbon fixation, which is more than all of the terrestrial rainforests combined. Diatoms underpin major aquatic food webs and drive global biogeochemical cycles and have several ecological and interdisciplinary applications. This book targets a wide range of audience including researchers, academicians, teachers and students of varied disciplines such as biology, environmental sciences, ecology, evolution, nanotechnology and other related disciplines. It is useful read for beginners as well as advanced researchers.

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Having been found in 3%-21% patients with congenital sensorineural deafness, cochlear nerve deficiency (CND) is defined by a small or absent cochlear nerve. This book describes the updated information on the embryology, pre- and post- operative auditory, electrophysiology and vestibular aspects of CND. What’s more, the cochlear implantation (CI) strategy and CI outcomes as well as comparison with normal patients will be discussed in details with selected cases and high resolution illustrations. It will be a valuable reference for otologists, audiologists and practitioners who would like to understand more about CND and choose optimal clinical strategy of CI surgery for CND.

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This open access book is intended for common readers who are interested in the life story of Qian Xuesen (also know as Tsien Hsue-Shen). Based on a large number of original archives and historical materials, this book focuses on Qian Xuesen’s years of seeking knowledge from his birth in 1911 to his return to China in 1955 and describes how he grows into a world-known scientist from the aspect of humanity. This book can be used as reference material for Qian Xuesen’s earlier years.

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This book covers different aspects of biodegradable packaging, such as their sourcing and application in food industries. The book focuses on the production and characterization of biodegradable food packaging derived from plant, animal and microbial sources. Chapters highlight the nano-technological interventions in biodegradable food packaging and the less studied microbial biopolymer-based biodegradable food packaging makes it distinct from other related books. It includes the latest research and development in the areas of food processing, food packaging, material science and polymeric science. It also discusses the standards and regulatory guidelines about the biodegradability testing of these polymers.This book is meant for researchers in food science, food packaging, bioprocess technology, polymer science and biochemical engineering. It is also beneficial for faculty members and students of food microbiology, food technology, dairy technology. The book is also meant for small entrepreneurs and farmers who are interested in bio-plastic usage for food packaging.

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This book presents a comprehensive discussion of sociocultural perspectives on graduate employability and workplace-based learning development. It draws on Vygotsky’s theories such as situated learning and sociocultural perspectives, as well as the constructivist learning theory. This book showcases theoretical and empirical analyses that show how institutions, decision-makers or academics can work together to enhance job employability in this age of uncertainty. It discusses issues such as the development of emerging and employability skills, examines research in higher education and workplace-based learning development, and proposes directions for the changing nature in real-world settings. This book details empirical research in the field using quantitative, qualitative and mixed method approaches, and summarizes the key conclusions pertaining to graduate employability skills as well as workplace learning culture and technology-mediated environment. It includes contributions from experienced international scholars, and offers detailed insights for readers who want a timely understanding of research trends in graduate employability and workplace-based learning development.

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The nanotheranostics sector provides a very promising strategy for monitoring drug biodistribution and pathology longitudinal processes by integrating the imaging and drug delivery functions in one single nanoformulation, providing vital insights into the identification of tumour and predicting the efficacy of nanomedicine. For its unique properties, which include their small size and biocompatibility and ability to permeate the cellular membrane with carrying drugs, nanomaterials have been used for various biomedical applications. This book covers the progress made in hormone-related cancer and their management by nonmedicinal therapy for targeting the hormone regulated cancer with their clinical progress and clinical hurdles.

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This edited book covers all aspects of forest deforestation and degradation in detail and their link to land degradation. Poor natural resource management is often a contributory factor in the depletion of resources particularly like degradation of land which hinders the goals to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN). Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 15.3 states: “By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought, and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.” To achieve the set goals a comprehensive multidirectional approach is required involving policymakers, field functionaries, researchers, and above all educators. The book compiles the field experiences and wisdom of some of the best researchers and authors working in the field of land degradations for quite a long time. The objective of the book is to disseminate the status of land degradation, the importance of achieving land degradation and share success stories of reclaiming Land degradation, and suggests means and ways of achieving land degradation neutrality. This book act as a repository of knowledge on Land degradation neutrality for students, researchers and practitioners, and policy planners.

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​This book presents drug repurposing strategies to combat infectious diseases and cancer. It discusses key experimental and in silico approaches for modern drug repositioning, including signature matching, molecular docking, genome-wide associated studies, and network-based approaches aided by artificial intelligence. Further, the book presents various computational and experimental strategies for better understanding disease mechanisms and identify repurposed drug candidates for personalized pharmacotherapy. It also explores the databases for drug repositioning, summarizes the approaches taken for drug repositioning, and highlights and compares their characteristics and challenges. Towards the end, the book discusses challenges and limitations encountered in computational drug repositioning.

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This book examines the emerging trends in vanishing borders of urban local government finance due to uncertain local tax and expenditure regimes. It analyzes the global developments with illustrations from state budgetary operations of the Indian federation. This trend has gained momentum due to concentration of population in cities and big towns as a consequence of globalization, leading to enhanced environmental vulnerability due to climate change. Expanding expenditure needs have not been corresponded by revenue regimes and transfers. Moreover, involving corporate sector in local area preference initiatives through mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an interesting development. It is expected to work as a local fiscal additionality to supplement locally provided civic and infrastructure services. This additionality may also evolve into public private partnerships at the local level. Such development however has the potential of displacing local government operations. The focus of the book hinges around critically examining setbacks to fiscal decentralization and challenges in improving the status of urban local finances to enhance fiscal autonomy of these governments, particularly in Indian scenario. The book also explores the possibility of an expanded role of local fiscal policy in the context of globalization and climate change, besides addressing the conventional responsibilities with respect to quality of civic services.

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This book is a compilation of the best papers presented at the 2021 edition of the Singapore Conference of Applied Psychology (SCAP) organised and facilitated by East Asia Research in Singapore. The selection of papers addresses the latest innovations, trends, concerns and practical challenges encountered in the field, and poses practical solutions within the field of applied psychology. The theme for 2021 is psychological well-being, and so the collection covers aspects of clinical and non-clinical psychological well-being in different arenas, from education to the workplace. Following a rigorous peer-review process led by the School of Psychology at the University of Derby, this collection is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and practitioners looking to keep themselves up-to-date with recent research in the field. The book is of interest to educators and practitioners in applied psychology focused on well-being.

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This book is first part of the 3 volume set focusing on basic and advanced methods for using microbiology as an entrepreneurial venture. This book deals with the concept of entrepreneurship skills for production, cost-benefit analysis and marketing of button, oyster, milky mushroom, Ganoderma sp, Single cell protein, Breads, Cheese, Yoghurt, Wine, Beer, Probiotics, Prebiotics fermented vegetables, and Fermented Fish etc. Chapters cover the applications of microorganisms in small and large scale production to achieve a sustainable output. This book provides essential knowledge and working business protocols from all related disciplines of food and dairy industry, probiotics industry, mushroom industry, beverage and baking industry, poultry industry, and aquaculture industry etc. This book is useful to graduate students, research scholars and postdoctoral fellows, and teachers who belong to different disciplines via botany, food microbiology, biotechnology, aquaculture microbiology and poultry microbiology. The other two volumes are focused on agriculture and industrial microbiology.

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This book highlights a collection of high-quality peer-reviewed research papers presented at the 7th International Conference on Information System Design and Intelligent Applications (INDIA 2022), held at BVRIT Hyderabad College of Engineering for Women, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, from February 25–26, 2022. It covers a wide range of topics in computer science and information technology, from wireless networks, social networks, wireless sensor networks, information and network security, to web security, Internet of Things, bioinformatics, geoinformatics, and computer networks.

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COVID-19 has changed not only human lives since the beginning of the year 2020, but systems of human society as well. Legal measures have been employed in every country to mandate the state’s control of human behavior in order to stop the pandemic. But the mode of legal control has differed by country, showing different results in terms of constraining the spread of infection. While the behavioral restrictions continue, the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic have been causing another catastrophe, particularly in the most vulnerable sectors of each society. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are typical representatives of such vulnerable groups, compelled to assume the economic burdens of the pandemic that have been shifted from the larger economic actors that hold the advantage in contractual negotiations. Statistical data on infection status have revealed a great gap between countries, such as European nations reaching the level of several thousand deaths per one hundred thousand population, while most Asian countries have maintained a level of one or two digits. Even though COVID-19 affects the whole world, the redistribution of risks in the pandemic is a goal to be pursued in the socio-cultural context of each society. This book explores the law and social changes in Asian countries under the impact of COVID-19, with a particular focus on the social relations surrounding the SMEs. These form the center of contractual relations between various socio-economic actors and at the same time, are a direct counterpart of the governmental SME policies, peculiar to Asian interventionist governments. A comparative approach is taken, using the results of interview surveys based on structured questions conducted via research collaboration between the contributors from Japan as well as other Asian countries. A comparative analysis of the risk redistribution in the pandemic between countries that share similar preconditions is still possible and meaningful. The authors of this book hold the view that Asian countries have sufficient bases for international comparison, particularly on the risk reallocation in the SME sector, given the relatively well-controlled level of infection, presumably due to the similarity of cooperative social culture. Another basis for comparison is the similarity of the laws surrounding the business operation of SMEs since normal times, which makes it feasible to compare the difference in the pandemic. What risks should be reallocated between whom, and how?

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This book describes the current innovative tendencies characteristic of multifaceted scientific research and practical developments in the field of international business development and sustainable management. This book shows how companies are forced to change development strategies and business models, which actualizes new priorities for scientific research in the field of international business and sustainable management. Therefore, completely new subject areas of research are being formed; management guidelines are being transformed; new business development tools are being developed; the very system of academic research is changing. This book “Innovative Trends in International Business and Sustainable Management” is devoted to the discussion of these and other issues related to all major areas of international business development and sustainable management. This book systematically describes multidimensional trends, challenges, and opportunities for the development of international business and sustainable management in the context of a global pandemic. In this sense, it is unique and relevant for both scientific researchers and modern business practitioners. This book uniquely highlights new priorities of scientific and practical research in the field of international business and sustainable management that require a systematic knowledge of the ongoing transformations of trends, challenges, and opportunities for the development. Aimed at scholars and practitioners, the book provides illustrations of international best practice for conducting business beyond borders. The main goals of the book are firstly to provide opinions on current innovative approaches and technologies for solving modern problems of international business, as well as on the formation of a multi-level system of sustainable management of the socioeconomic systems’ development, secondly, to integrate research from academia, as well as practitioners in order to form priorities, approaches and models of company management in the context of globalization, strategies for the development of management systems in the context of the “new reality”, thirdly, to find the most relevant new areas of research, the results of which can be useful to companies for making management decisions, and concludes to analyze new tools for the development of international business, their capabilities, and areas of application

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This is an open access book. Relations between Brazil and Japan progressed dynamically in the 1960s and 1970s, centering on the substantial complementarity between Japan’s needing primary goods to sustain high economic growth and Brazil’s seeking non-hegemonic investment to invigorate its resource potential. Now that this complementarity has lost significance, the two countries are restructuring their relations to protect shared values of democracy, freedom, the rule of law, and the need for maintaining good relations with both China and the United States. Analyzed here is the development of this renewed bilateral relationship in multiple directions: productivity, global environment and health, migration, and triangular cooperation in third countries’ development. Facing the prospect of a declining population, Japan may become more open to international migration, but the experience with Japanese-descent Brazilian workers since the amendment of the migration control law in 1990 presents many lessons and challenges for the symbiosis of multicultural groups. Brazil, for its part, needs to address social inequality. To this end, it is fundamental to improve the quality of work.This book argues that Brazil and Japan can benefit from cooperation in managing those country-specific issues. It also discusses ways that Brazil and Japan can profit from coordinating action on global problems such as greenhouse gas reduction, mitigation of tropical diseases, healthy community building, and high-quality infrastructure for poverty reduction.

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This edited volume focuses on the core aspects of sugarcane production-management under stressful environments as well as innovative strategies for augmenting crop growth & productivity through intrinsic and extrinsic manipulations. The various chapters aim at bringing out comprehensive and advance information on different aspects of sugarcane cultivation under stress environments and impact of climate change on the sustainability of sugarcane production. The book encompasses information about crop production management, physiological & nutritional requirements, ratooning, ripening and post-harvest losses management. It also delineates various technologies that support the continued use and improvement of sugarcane as renewable source of food, fiber and bio-energy. The manipulations at cellular and molecular levels, molecular breeding approaches and post-harvest technologies are also included. The area under sugarcane cultivation is gradually increasing because of its diversification potential. The high productivity and biomass of the cane crop also makes it a key source for use as bio-energy crop and a promising raw material for bio-based agro-industries. However, poor crop & biomass productivity due to abiotic stress is the foremost constraint in its future commercial exploitation as sustainable feed-stock for bio-based industries. It is therefore imperative to understand the cellular-molecular modulation responsible to productivity barrier under specific stress situation(s) for better sugarcane quality and quantum under field condition. Some of these innovative approaches are delineated in this book. This book is of interest to progressive sugarcane growers, millers, industrial entrepreneurs, sugarcane scientists, cane development and extension officers, sugar industry managers and valuable source of reference worldwide.

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This book is based on the topics, questions and results of the international conference "Aesthetics of Transformation - Arts Education Research and the Challenge of Cultural Sustainability". It aims to foster and sharpen the understanding of the potential role of arts education and arts education research for cultural sustainability. In an ever more complex and interconnected world, culture is a valuable resource for sustainable development. Based on the thesis that the change towards sustainability has to be a change that starts with cultural practices of perception and knowledge, this book makes an important contribution to the broad discourse on cultural sustainability, which has begun to emerge in recent years.In this context, the volume first deals with Intangible Cultural Heritage and how aesthetic practices and certain forms of art are changing through cultural transformation processes. Subsequently, it focuses on issues such as arts and cultural education in times of neoliberalism, (post-)migration and post-coloniality as well as on arts and cultural education under conditions of digital transformation. These theoretical and empirical contributions are complemented by insights into field trips to institutions and exemplary places of practice, showing different representations of educational art practices, cultural heritage, and cultural sustainability. Against this background the book finally offers responses and commentaries that can form the starting point for a far reaching interactive dialogical process on the utmost importance of cultural, aesthetic and arts education as part of a global endeavor for sustainable development.

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This book covers all aspects of hybrid breeding technologies applied for crop improvement in major field crops. The different male sterility systems such as genetic male sterility (GMS), cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS), cytoplasmic and genetic male sterility (CGMS), and male sterility induced by the photoperiod (PGMS), temperature (TGMS), and chemicals are discussed in detail. The different chapters in this book provide a timeline of the key breakthroughs witnessed in the field of plant male sterility technologies, their application in hybrid breeding, and the relevance to the current need for food security. In-depth insights into the genetic and regulatory mechanisms of plant male sterility have been presented. This includes discussion on a variety of molecular players that induce male sterility and rescue male fertility in the hybrid plants. To enhance this book’s appeal, more emphasis has been given on the modern emerging approaches such as construction of heterotic pools that could boost hybrid breeding for enhanced crop performance amid climate change and growing population worldwide. This book is a guide for growers and industries related to field and horticultural crops. Further, it is a useful reference for plant breeders, researchers and extension workers, and students. The material can also be used for teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

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This book provides expository derivations for moments of a family of pseudo distributions, which is an extended family of distributions including the pseudo normal (PN) distributions recently proposed by the author. The PN includes the skew normal (SN) derived by A. Azzalini and the closed skew normal (CSN) obtained by A. Domínguez-Molina, G. González-Farías, and A. K. Gupta as special cases. It is known that the CSN includes the SN and other various distributions as special cases, which shows that the PN has a wider variety of distributions. The SN and CSN have symmetric and skewed asymmetric distributions. However, symmetric distributions are restricted to normal ones. On the other hand, symmetric distributions in the PN can be non-normal as well as normal. In this book, for the non-normal symmetric distributions, the term “kurtic normal (KN)” is used, where the coined word “kurtic” indicates “mesokurtic, leptokurtic, or platykurtic” used in statistics. The variety of the PN was made possible using stripe (tigerish) and sectional truncation in univariate and multivariate distributions, respectively. The proofs of the moments and associated results are not omitted and are often given in more than one method with their didactic explanations.

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This book examines how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to legitimise its counter-terrorism strategy in the eyes of its domestic and international audiences. An important element of CCP policy in Xinjiang has been the deployment of ordinary Chinese citizens, or the 'mass line,’ to create new realities on the ground. This book explores how the history of ideological struggle in the PRC has taken on new characteristics, as well as offering insight into how the CCP has maintained legitimacy in the eyes of its population, even as it pursues policies which are internationally controversial, shedding light on the past and future of the behaviour of the Chinese state, a subject of interest to China scholars, scholars of the Belt and Road, and counter-terrorism experts.

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It is estimated that windows in office buildings are responsible for one third of energy used for their heating and cooling. Designing window shading that balances often contradictory goals of preventing excessive heat gains in hot periods, without compromising beneficial heat gains in cold periods or visual comfort in indoor spaces of modern buildings with highly glazed facades, is an interesting multi-objective optimisation problem that represents an active research topic in the field of building energy and daylighting. Window overhangs are the simplest and most traditional shading devices that are easy to install, highly cost-effective, require low or no maintenance and offer unobstructed views outside. This book provides a review of overhang design methods for optimal thermal and daylighting performance. It starts with a historical overview of methods based on solar positions and shading masks. Next it discusses current research methodology, including shading calculation methods, ways of quantifying thermal and daylighting overhang effectiveness and the use of multi-objective optimisation approaches, together with the case studies that employ them. It further covers methods for designing innovative overhang types such as NURBS outlined overhangs and PV integrated dynamic overhangs. The appendix classifies published overhang case studies according to major climate type and latitude of their locations. As such, the book presents a valuable resource for understanding subtle nuances of interaction between solar radiation, shading devices and indoor comfort. The intended target audience are building energy researchers interested in optimisation of window shading devices.​

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This book features research papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Intelligent Sustainable Systems (ICISS 2022), held at SCAD College of Engineering and Technology, Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India, during February 17–18, 2022. The book discusses latest research works that discusses the tools, methodologies, practices, and applications of sustainable systems and computational intelligence methodologies. The book is beneficial for readers from both academia and industry.

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This book gathers selected papers presented at the KES International Symposium on Smart Transportation Systems (KES STS 2022). Modern transportation systems have undergone a rapid transformation in recent years, producing a range of technological innovations such as connected vehicles, self-driving cars, electric vehicles, Hyperloop, and even flying cars, and with them, fundamental changes in transport systems around the world. The book discusses current challenges, innovations, and breakthroughs in smart transportation systems, as well as transport infrastructure modeling, safety analysis, freeway operations, intersection analysis, and other related cutting-edge topics.

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This textbook is a comprehensive volume on sprinklers and drip irrigation and covers all the basic and fundamentals concepts related to these topics. It is the first book to consider relative-flow-ratio as an evaluation criterion for both sprinkler and drip irrigation designs. It also discusses various types of sprinklers (used for irrigation), their complex layouts, design methodologies, selection criteria explained with practical examples, and their operations and maintenance under different conditions. In addition to operation and maintenance of drip irrigation components, the book also explains the drip irrigation hydraulics and various design aspects and the effect of the same on their performance. It also has one important chapter on Rhizosphere modelling which introduces the state-of-the-art technologies in optimal irrigation and fertigation scheduling. Worked out examples and solved problems in the chapters would aid to learning and understanding of the topic among the students. Given the contents, the book will be extremely useful for the undergraduate and postgraduate students of agriculture engineering, irrigation engineering and civil engineering. This textbook will also be useful for researchers, engineers and professionals working in these areas.

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This book focuses on the process of commercialisation and innovation management in small firms. Although commercialisation and new product development (NPD) has been covered quite extensively, relatively little attention has been given to how small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) engage with these issues. The book explores this topic in depth, taking a close look at the reasons why decisions are made and mapping this behaviour against established theories and “best practice” models of NPD and commercialisation.The book uses case studies to analyse the relationship between entrepreneurial decision- making and commercialisation, and investigates how and why NPD and commercialisation decisions are made, which offers valuable insights from both a theoretical and applied perspective.

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This book deals with the importance of ambidexterity in innovation activities and global strategies. Ambidextrous global strategy (AGS) is crucial for global firms in the turbulent twenty-first century. Here, AGS is defined as simultaneous achievements of global integration and local adaptation, or responsiveness, through utilization of a firm’s core facilities and organizational capabilities. To illustrate the specific implementation mechanism, a framework of AGS with global market strategy and organizational capability is shown for the purpose of analysis. There is also a focus on effective ambidextrous business strategies for the digital transformation era. Distinctive features of the book include, first, a framework of ambidextrous innovation and AGS. Second, there are analyses of examples of many industries to implement ambidexterity strategies, including Korean shipbuilding firms, Korean and Japanese steel firms, LCD panel flat-glass manufacturers, Japan’s trucking industry, agricultural corporations, and other Japanese manufacturing firms. Finally, the book focuses on effective ambidextrous business strategies for the digital transformation era with the integration of open and closed innovation. The book presents specific business strategies for survival in the digital transformation era and then suggests an architectural analysis using artificial intelligence (AI) for the realization of AGS. The target readership is made up of academics, students, and practitioners in the areas of global management, organizational theory, and strategic management. Especially for those readers, the book clarifies the critical practices and business strategies of innovative global firms in the era of digital transformation.

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This book investigates the historical evolution, regional differences, and quantitative measurement on street interface, which forms the street space and plays a very important role in urban form. Empirical research reveals the street interface in Chinese cities are much more complicated than European and American cities. This book explores the reason and reveals the relationship between street interface and urban form in morphology. By constructing quantitative measurement method on street interface morphology, quantitative parameters can be used in urban planning guidelines in China. Both researchers and students working in architecture, urban design, urban planning and urban studies can benefit from this book.

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This book begins by analysing the various corporate governance mechanisms explored in the extant literature and determining their effectiveness in enhancing the firm value using multivariate analysis. The findings are of global relevance as the corporate governance regulations of most countries focus on independent directors as the mainstay of good governance. The empirical evidence from the first objective of this study corroborates the claim that independent directors do not strengthen the firms’ governance quality. The book is one of the few works to have analysed the possible reasons behind the ineffectiveness of the independent directors. Also, in view of the famous concept of the bundle of governance mechanisms, it might be possible that the independent directors strengthen the firms’ governance quality indirectly by strengthening other governance mechanisms. This aspect too has little precedence. This study adopts a novel moderation and mediation approach to analyse the monitoring behaviour of independent directors in relation to other governance mechanisms. The work is a must read for corporate players as well as researchers and scholars studying this discipline.

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This open access proceedings includes original, unpublished, peer-reviewed research papers from the International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Applications (WCNA2021), held in Berlin, Germany on December 17-19th, 2021. The topics covered include but are not limited to wireless communications, networking and applications.The papers showcased here share the latest findings on methodologies, algorithms and applications in communication and network, making the book a valuable asset for professors, researchers, engineers, and university students alike.This is an open access book.

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This book tells a story of masculinity through the experiences of one boy, ‘Adam’. From four different studies and time periods, it tracks moments of significance in his life over a period of 20 years. These moments highlight the ways in which Adam is both drawn towards and away from a hegemonic masculinity of physical toughness, domination, competition and an opposition to ‘the feminine’. The book is set against the backdrop of a long history of contentious gender politics in Australia and globally but particularly responds to the renewed attention to the social construction of masculinities in the current #MeToo climate. Against this backdrop, nuanced and longitudinal accounts of boys’ and men’s experiences of masculinity are significant because they can offer insight into the complex bodily, social, economic, and historical forces that configure masculinities. Such understandings are important in our endeavours as those who educate, support and work with boys and men to transform gender inequalities.

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This interdisciplinary book incorporates various aspects of environment, ecology, and natural disaster management including cognitive informatics and computing. It fosters research innovation and discovery on basic science and information technology for addressing various environmental problems, while providing the right solutions in environment, ecology, and disaster management. This book is a unique resource for researchers and practitioners of energy informatics in various scientific, technological, engineering, and social fields to disseminate original research on the application of digital technology and information management theory and practice to facilitate the global transition toward sustainable and resilient energy systems. Cognitive informatics is also the need of the hour and deals with cutting-edge and multidisciplinary research area that tackles the fundamental problems shared by modern informatics, computation, software engineering, AI, cybernetics, cognitive science, neuropsychology, medical science, systems science, philosophy, linguistics, economics, management science, and life sciences, which this book also presents.

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This open access book introduces key concepts in robotics in an easy to understand language using an engaging project-based approach. It covers contemporary topics in robotics, providing an accessible entry point to fundamentals in all the major domains. A section is dedicated to introducing programming concepts using Python, which has become a language of choice in robotics and AI. The book also introduces the reader to the Robot Operating System (ROS), the ubiquitous software and algorithmic framework used by researchers and the industry. The book provides an inspired, up-to-date and multidisciplinary introduction to robotics in its many forms, including emerging topics related to robotics on Machine Learning, ethics, Human-Robot Interaction, and Design Thinking. The book also includes interviews with industry experts, providing an additional layer of insight into the world of robotics. The book is made open access through the generous support from Kinova Robotics. The book is suitable as an undergraduate textbook in a relevant engineering course. It is also suitable for students in art and design, high school students, and self-learners who would like to explore foundational concepts in robotics. “This book provides the ‘foundation’ for understanding how robots work. It is the accessible introduction that artists and engineers have been waiting for.” - Ken Goldberg, William S. Floyd Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering, UC Berkeley.

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This book constructs a non-Bloch band theory and studies physics described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonian in terms of the theory proposed here.In non-Hermitian crystals, the author introduces the non-Bloch band theory which produces an energy spectrum in the limit of a large system size. The energy spectrum is then calculated from a generalized Brillouin zone for a complex Bloch wave number. While a generalized Brillouin zone becomes a unit circle on a complex plane in Hermitian systems, it becomes a circle with cusps in non-Hermitian systems. Such unique features of the generalized Brillouin zone realize remarkable phenomena peculiar in non-Hermitian systems. Further the author reveals rich aspects of non-Hermitian physics in terms of the non-Bloch band theory. First, a topological invariant defined by a generalized Brillouin zone implies the appearance of topological edge states. Second, a topological semimetal phase with exceptional points appears, The topological semimetal phase is unique to non-Hermitian systems because it is caused by the deformation of the generalized Brillouin zone by changes of system parameters. Third, the author reveals a certain relationship between the non-Bloch waves and non-Hermitian topology.

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The book addresses why the Pakistani state is facing persistent challenges in extending and consolidating its governance (authority) throughout its territories, especially in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (ex-FATA)? Even after the de jure merger, the question still remains valid that how Pakistani state could establish its governance in these tribal areas? Through multi-dimensional approaches and multi-pronged analysis of state-centric (top-down), society-centric (bottom-up) and state-in-society (mixed-horizontal) approaches, the book explains factors and dimensions that pose challenges to Pakistani state governance in ex-FATA. The main hypothesis is that societies, where state governance is absent, turn to informal governance and create informal institutions as a substitute for the weak central state governance thereby challenging the domination and control/authority of the state. The book presents policy recommendations for bringing these tribal areas into the mainstream governance system of Pakistan.

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This book focuses on the relationship between urban land redevelopment and traffic systems and discusses the related research. Consisting of three main parts, the first analyzes the interaction between land redevelopment and traffic congestion as well as the mechanisms and causes of traffic congestion. The second part presents strategies for the prevention and control of traffic congestion under urban land redevelopment, proposing a two-stage evaluation system of traffic congestion pre-inspection and traffic impact analysis in the planning and implementation stages of land redevelopment. Lastly, the third section includes an application case analysis of the proposed traffic congestion management strategy.

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This book analyzes the development of medical big data projects in Japan.Japan is experiencing unprecedented population aging, and labor productivity has decreased accordingly. Big data analysis of the Japanese medical real-world database (RWD) has the potential to tackle this issue.To allow readers to gain an understanding of Japanese medical big data analysis, the book discusses the original Japanese system that generates medical RWDs in the hospital medical records system, the nationwide standardized health checkup system, and the public medical insurance system in Japan.After introducing four major big data projects in the healthcare–medical field in Japan, the book explains the importance of creating information standards to maintain data quality and to analyze medical big data. It enables readers to analyze which standards are installed in which RWDs, how the standards are maintained, and which issues are prevalent in Japan.This book also describes the ethical processes involved in big data projects involving medical RWDs in Japan.

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This book presents the select proceedings the 2nd International Conference on Mechanical and Energy Technologies (ICMET 2021). The broad range of topics and issues covered are bulk deformation processes and sheet metal forming, composites, ceramics, and polymers processing, corrosion, heat treatment, microstructure and materials properties, energy materials, failure and fracture mechanics, friction, wear, tribology, and surface engineering, functionally graded materials, cellular materials, low friction and corrosion resistive materials for energy applications, lubricants and lubrication, machinability and formability of materials, material science and engineering, and materials for energy storage. This book will be useful for students, researchers, and professionals working in the areas of mechanical and industrial engineering, energy technologies, and allied fields.

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As a comprehensive textbook in survey sampling, this book discusses the inadequacies of classic, designed-based inferential procedures and provides alternative approaches in the form of model formulations, model-design-based procedures of analysis, inference and interpretation. The book focuses on a wide range of topics which included Bayesian and Empirical Bayesian approaches, complex procedures of stratification, clustering, sampling in multi stages and phases, linear and non-linear estimation of parameters, small area estimation by spatial and chronological modelling, network and adaptive sampling methods and more. The book includes detailed case studies and exercises, making it valuable for students of statistics, specifically survey sampling.

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This book provides both the developers and the users with an awareness of the challenges and opportunities of advancements in healthcare paradigm with the application and availability of advanced hardware, software, tools, technique or algorithm development stemming the Internet of Things. The book helps readers to bridge the gap in their three understanding of three major domains and their interconnections: Hardware tested and software APP development for data collection, intelligent protocols for analysis and knowledge extraction. Medical expertise to interpret extracted knowledge towards disease prediction or diagnosis and support. Security experts to ensure data correctness for precise advice. The book provides state-of-the-art overviews by active researchers, technically elaborating healthcare architectures/frameworks, protocols, algorithms, methodologies followed by experimental results and evaluation. Future direction and scope will be precisely documented for interested readers.

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This book explores the establishment process, mechanism design, and role orientation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) under the new background of global economic governance. After the international financial crisis in 2008, the process of economic globalization and the comparison of international forces have presented a new situation, and the global economic governance system since has entered a period of deep adjustment and transformation. At the same time, the problems and drawbacks of the original multilateral development financial system have become increasingly prominent. This not only provides a historical opportunity for the establishment of the AIIB, but also gives it a new important role in the global multilateral development financial system. The innovation of the AIIB’s governance model, such as organizational structure, equity, and voting rights allocation, makes it more efficient in operation. And in practice, it is playing an increasingly important role in promoting policy connectivity, infrastructure connectivity, trade connectivity, financial connectivity and people-to-people connectivity of Asian region.

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This open access book is a collection of accepted papers from the 8th International Conference on Civil Engineering (ICCE2021). Researchers and engineers have discussed and presented around three major topics, i.e., construction and structural mechanics, building materials, and transportation and traffic. The content provide new ideas and practical experiences for both scientists and professionals.

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The Bay of Bengal is prone to tropical cyclones and storm surges as a result of its location, and many of the mostly poor people living along the coastal regions of South Asia lose their lives almost every year. These disasters have been particularly devastating and have caused serious damage. During the past five decades, the low-lying coastal and offshore islands have experienced a tragic history of 50 severe cyclones and storm surges, with more than one million victims dead or missing. People accepted and waited for the next disaster as they had no alternatives. Members of the poor families who survived the disasters experienced hard times recovering from damage and the loss of their loved ones. After disasters, epidemic diseases arise in the affected areas. Many of the people in distress are also deprived of public services. Providing all sorts of assistance and emergency health preparedness are most essential to overcome such a situation. The causes of these huge casualties have been mainly: (1) the high population density of costal settlements, (2) inadequate cyclone shelters in the disaster risk areas, (3) lack of awareness of the disaster risk by the vulnerable population, (4) deterministic attitudes of people who accept disasters as “fate”, (5) houses that are weakly constructed and (6) underdeveloped central awareness programmes and weather forecast systems. This book is based on an empirical study presenting a timeline analysis of major cyclones and their impacts and consequent losses through the super-cyclones in the disaster-prone coastal regions of India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This study also investigates resilience mechanisms based on early warning systems, technology applications including GIS and remote sensing, best practices, success stories and case studies that can be used for effective cyclone management and development of a resilience mechanism among coastal communities.

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This book presents thirteen chapters which probe the “tales less told” and “pathways less traveled” in refugee camp living. Rohingya camps in Bangladesh since August 2017 supply these “tales” and “pathways”. They dwell upon/reflect camp violence, sexual/gender discrimination, intersectionality, justice, the sudden COVID camp entry, human security, children education, innovation, and relocation plans. Built largely upon field trips, these narratives interestingly interweave with both theoretical threads (hypotheses) and tapestries (net-effects), feeding into the security-driven pulls of political realism, or disseminating from humanitarian-driven socioeconomic pushes, but mostly combining them. Post-ethnic cleansing and post-exodus windows open up a murky future for Rohingya and global refugees. We learn of positive offshoots (of camp innovations exposing civil society relevance) and negative (like human and sex trafficking beyond Bangladeshi and Myanmar borders), as of navigating (a) local–global linkages of every dynamic and (b) fast-moving current circumstances against stoic historical leftovers.

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The book presents high-quality, peer-reviewed papers from the FICR International Conference on Rising Threats in Expert Applications and Solutions 2022 organized by IIS (Deemed to be University), Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, during January 7–8, 2022. The volume is a collection of innovative ideas from researchers, scientists, academicians, industry professionals, and students. The book covers a variety of topics, such as expert applications and artificial intelligence/machine learning; advance web technologies such as IoT, big data, cloud computing in expert applications; information and cyber security threats and solutions, multimedia applications in forensics, security and intelligence; advancements in app development; management practices for expert applications; and social and ethical aspects in expert applications through applied sciences.

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This book presents new computation schemes for the sensitivity of options using the binomial tree and introduces readers to the discrete Malliavin calculus. It also shows that applications of the discrete Malliavin calculus approach to the binomial tree model offer fundamental tools for computing Greeks.The binomial tree approach is one of the most popular methods in option pricing. Although it is a fairly traditional model for option pricing, it is still widely used in financial institutions since it is tractable and easy to understand. However, the book shows that the tree approach also offers a powerful tool for deriving the Greeks for options. Greeks are quantities that represent the sensitivities of the price of derivative securities with respect to changes in the underlying asset price or parameters. The Malliavin calculus, the stochastic methods of variations, is one of the most popular tools used to derive Greeks. However, it is also very difficult to understand for most students and practitioners because it is based on complex mathematics. To help readers more easily understand the Malliavin calculus, the book introduces the discrete Malliavin calculus, a theory of the functional for the Bernoulli random walk. The discrete Malliavin calculus is significantly easier to understand, because the functional space of the Bernoulli random walk is realized in a finite dimensional space. As such, it makes this valuable tool far more accessible for a broad readership.

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This book presents selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, in conjunction with the 14th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology, Applications and Tools, held on 29–31 October 2021 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. It is divided into two volumes and discusses latest research outcomes in the field of information technology (IT) including but not limited to information hiding, multimedia signal processing, big data, data mining, bioinformatics, database, industrial and internet of things, and their applications.

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Among various industries releasing wastewater into the environment, printing, dyeing and textile industries are of great importance as they frequently contain high amounts of colorful compounds having high chemical and biological oxygen demands. Health related effects of colorants are extensively reported; which necessitates the seriousness of dye removal from water and wastewater. The utilization of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) in dye degradation has gained considerable attention recently due to the release of high energetic radicals as oxidants that are capable of removing dye compounds. This Volume 1 presents versatile applications of AOPs in dye removal. Accordingly, processes such as Ozone-based AOPs, UV irradiation, catalytic AOPs, etc are discussed with the aim of dye removal under different operational parameters. The role of different nanoparticles is also investigated. By presenting the fundamentals of AOPs as well as recent advances, this book is useful for environmental engineers and chemists who are concerned with wastewater pollution and treatment.

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