Search results for ""springer verlag, singapore""

Based on the clinical experiences and results of more than 50 years, this book discusses the theory and best practices of using pillows. It focuses on pillow requirements that address the issue with sleeping posture as well as the history and analysis of problems with the usage of pillows that are now on the market.

Read more less

This book shares Chinese scholars’ philosophical views on artificial intelligence. The discussions range from the foundations of AI—the Turing test and creation of machine intelligence—to recent applications of AI, including decisions in games, natural languages, pattern recognition, prediction in economic contexts, autonomous behaviors, and collaborative intelligence, with the examples of AlphaGo, Microsoft’s Xiao Bing, medical robots, etc. The book’s closing chapter focuses on Chinese machines and explores questions on the cultural background of artificial intelligence. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for all members of the general public who are interested in the future development of artificial intelligence, especially from the perspective of respected Chinese scholars.

Read more less

This is a popular science book surrounding astronauts’ life on the space station. The book not only highlights the weightlessness experience of astronauts and the extraordinary phenomena they witness, but also illustrates the physics behind these events, which opens a new window for readers to explore the outer space. This book is especially fun for those who are curious about the life details of astronauts on the space station. The book is based on real events, and features images and cartoons that vividly depict unusual scenes between the outer space and the earth. Physical principles become easier to understand with these visual aids. During the reading, readers can immerse themselves in the enjoyable adventure of space travel and the strange feeling of weightlessness while having their doubts of every oddity solved. The book elaborates on the interesting contrast between the space and the earth, and provides readers with a stunning new perspective with easily comprehensible language and examples.

Read more less

This is the first of its kind book that describes key elements of enterprise data and analytics strategy, and prescribes a pragmatic approach to define the strategy for large enterprises. The book is based on successful digital transformation experience of multiple Fortune 500 and other large enterprises. It is estimated that more than 50% of data and analytics initiatives fail globally because of the inherent complexity of such initiatives. Some of the questions that enterprises struggle with are: How to define enterprise data and analytics strategy? What are the key elements that should be considered while doing so? Why one-size-fits-all approach does not work for all enterprises? How to align data and analytics initiative with the business strategy of the CEO? How to establish a futuristic technology and architecture foundation, given the exponential rate of innovation in data and analytics technologies? How to define the right data and analytics organization model? Why data and analytics organization and processes need to be different from other functions? How to manage organizational change to ensure success of data and analytics initiative? How to define a business value measurement framework and calculate ROI from data and analytics initiative? What are the key skills required in a data and analytics leader to wade through political and other challenges of a large enterprise? This book will help executives, chief digital/analytics officers, data and analytics professionals, and consultants, in answering the above questions. It will help them in addressing various dilemmas that they face every day and making their enterprises data-driven.

Read more less

This book examines the evolving concept of national security and how human systems could be governed in an ever turbulent and dynamic world. It takes a revised look at the concept of national security, previously researched and identified by the author, based on the present context but with a futuristic appreciation of governance, primarily national but extended to global perspectives, in the modern and dynamically shifting world. The book emphasises the need for governments to maximise national security for the well-being of their people. The concept of national security is taken as the key subject of national governance which is extendable to global governance wherein national security is not only the physical or military security alone but also the overall well-being of the people of a nation. This book explores how national security can be achieved by balancing its various elements in different terrains where the game of governance is played in national as well as global perspective. It also presents additional findings and observations to show that the approach is transformative, redefining the key knowledge paradigms. This book is relevant for policy makers, students, researchers and academics who wish to explore and rethink their approach towards governing the human systems, whose well-being is the responsibility of governments.

Read more less

COVID-19 forced a dramatic change to customer behavior that resulted in an economic crisis not witnessed by anyone alive. Businesses can no longer operate as before because their customers are no longer operating as before. This book provides customer-centric based guidance for how businesses should adapt to this new reality, deriving insights from academic research, case studies, interviews, and best practice examples from around the world. As validated by hundreds of top-level executives, its readers will gain a better understanding of why customer behavior has changed so they can use the book’s solutions to navigate through and succeed in the post COVID-19 future.

Read more less

This book includes the impact, compression, vibration studies, and destructive and nondestructive techniques for bruise measurement. It is essential to detect bruises in the early stages of their formation and conduct a quantitative analysis of the degree of bruising, to ensure the accurate grading of bruised fruits and vegetables and reduce unnecessary economic losses. Bruise damage occurring between the point of harvest and consumption contributes the most to the decrease in fruit quality, reducing the market value and ultimately leading to significant reductions in potential revenue. SDG 12.3 aims to “by 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.” This book presents recent technological developments in bruise measurement, detection, and analysis of fresh horticultural produce. Given the rising demand for rapid and accurate methods of quality measurement in the horticultural produce industry, this book covers destructive and nondestructive techniques for bruise measurement. Selected applications of different nondestructive methods for various fresh produce commodities are also included. This book will interest graduate and undergraduate students, researchers, academics and engineers working in different aspects of the mechanical damage affected by postharvest handling practices, professionals working in the governments, and other authorities related to fresh horticultural produce quality, regulations, and safety.

Read more less

This book introduces readers to the ethical and goal-oriented functions of touch in professional practice. Touch is both an increasingly visible topic today and a core skill in many professions, especially in health, education and social work. This book combines helpful theoretical discussions and practical information, offering a balanced and culturally-informed introduction to an issue that both students and professionals often find difficult to navigate. Chapters discuss the various functions of touch and its uses, giving readers a deeper understanding of the potential of tactile work practices. The authors offer clear legal and ethical guidance to empower learners. They discuss key issues such as harmful touch and the increasing digitisation of patient work. Activities, case studies and further readings promote learning and help readers reflect on their own relationship to touch. This book is an invaluable resource for students in undergraduate and graduate courses in healthcare, nursing, education and social work, and to practitioners looking for guidance on this topic.

Read more less

This book provides a comprehensive and systematic introduction to the principal machine learning methods, covering both supervised and unsupervised learning methods. It discusses essential methods of classification and regression in supervised learning, such as decision trees, perceptrons, support vector machines, maximum entropy models, logistic regression models and multiclass classification, as well as methods applied in supervised learning, like the hidden Markov model and conditional random fields. In the context of unsupervised learning, it examines clustering and other problems as well as methods such as singular value decomposition, principal component analysis and latent semantic analysis. As a fundamental book on machine learning, it addresses the needs of researchers and students who apply machine learning as an important tool in their research, especially those in fields such as information retrieval, natural language processing and text data mining. In order to understand the concepts and methods discussed, readers are expected to have an elementary knowledge of advanced mathematics, linear algebra and probability statistics. The detailed explanations of basic principles, underlying concepts and algorithms enable readers to grasp basic techniques, while the rigorous mathematical derivations and specific examples included offer valuable insights into machine learning.

Read more less

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly gaining significance in the business world. With more and more organizations adopt AI technologies, there is a growing demand for business leaders, managers, and practitioners who can harness AI’s potential to improve operations, increase efficiency, and drive innovation. This book aims to help management professionals exploit the predictive powers of AI and demonstrate to AI practitioners how to apply their expertise in fundamental business operations. It showcases how AI technology innovations can enhance various aspects of business management, such as business strategy, finance, and marketing. Readers interested in AI for business management will find several topics of particular interest, including how AI can improve decision-making in business strategy, streamline operational processes, and enhance customer satisfaction. As AI becomes an increasingly important tool in the business world, this book offers valuable insights into how it can be applied to various industries and business settings. Through this book, readers will gain a better understanding of how AI can be applied to improve business management practices and practical guidance on how to implement AI projects in a business context. This book also provides practical guides on how to implement AI projects in a business context using Python programming. By reading this book, readers will be better equipped to make informed decisions about how to leverage AI for business success.

Read more less

This book is a comprehensive and practical introduction of clinical epidemiology for students and practitioners. It covers both the basic principles and concepts of clinical epidemiology as well as its applications in various medical disciplines.It covers how to design, conduct, and interpret clinical studies using methods such as bias analysis, confounding control, causality assessment, diagnosis evaluation, prognosis prediction treatment comparison, and meta-analysis in this book. It also introduces how to apply these skills to real-world scenarios through case studies and examples that provide a fresh perspective on familiar topics. This book is a useful textbook for graduate and undergraduate students in medical schools, including MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) student.

Read more less

This open access book explores the environmental, social, and financial challenges of housing provision, and the urgent need for a sustainable housing transition. The authors explore how market failures have impacted the scaling up of sustainable housing and the various policy attempts to address this. Going beyond an environmental focus, the book explores a range of housing-related challenges including social justice and equity issues. Sustainability transitions theory is presented as a framework to help facilitate a sustainable housing transition and a range of contemporary case studies are explored on issues including high performing housing, small housing, shared housing, neighbourhood-scale housing, circular housing, and innovative financing for housing. It is an important new resource that challenges policy makers, planners, housing construction industry stakeholders, and researchers to rethink what housing is, how we design and construct it, and how we can better integrate impacts on households to wider policy development.

Read more less

This book describes the use of stem cells and cancer stem cell generation in the inflammatory microenvironment (cancer-inducing niche) using induced pluripotent stem cells. It provides step-by-step techniques and manuals for studying stem cell and cancer stem cell generation with different applications in cancer research. The development of induced pluripotent stem cells has provided a new approach to studying cancer initiation by producing cancer stem cells without introducing mutations or foreign genes. The book features the research of the authors’ group, which was the first to generate cancer stem cells from stem cells in the presence of inflammatory conditions. The 20 chapters of this book cover topics such as generating pluripotent stem cells, converting normal stem cells to cancer stem cells, enriching, isolating and evaluating cancer stem cells. Methods for evaluating the characteristics of cancer stem cells and possible therapies against them are also discussed. The book provides easy-to-follow protocols that help researchers in the study of cancer stem cells. Illustrations help readers understand how the method of cancer stem cell generation can be applied as an essential method for assessing the carcinogenic potential of various non-mutagenic compounds. It will be a useful resource for graduate students, researchers, technicians, and physicians working in academic, hospital, and pharmaceutical settings.

Read more less

The Artefacts of Digital Mental Health focuses on smartphone apps, wearables devices, and ingestible sensors, which are at the centre of research, development, and investment in mental health and digitalisation. The book aims to examine digital mental health through three artefacts that are defined by their ubiquity, everydayness, popularity, innovation and hype, and emergent qualities. It engages with theoretical approaches to technology, mental health, and wellbeing informed by Science and Technology Studies, sociological studies of health and mental health, and sociomaterialism. The book brings together different theories of mental health, subjectivity, the body, care, and digitalisation alongside biodigital artefacts as exemplars of transformations in digital mental health.

Read more less

This book presents state-of-the-art blockchain and AI advances in health care. Healthcare service is increasingly creating the scope for blockchain and AI applications to enter the biomedical and healthcare world. Today, blockchain, AI, ML, and deep learning are affecting every domain. Through its cutting-edge applications, AI and ML are helping transform the healthcare industry for the better. Blockchain is a decentralization communication platform that has the potential to decentralize the way we store data and manage information. Blockchain technology has potential to reduce the role of middleman, one of the most important regulatory actors in our society. Transactions are simultaneously secure and trustworthy due to the use of cryptographic principles. In recent years, blockchain technology has become very trendy and has penetrated different domains, mostly due to the popularity of cryptocurrencies. One field where blockchain technology has tremendous potential is health care, due to the need for a more patient-centric approach in healthcare systems to connect disparate systems and to increase the accuracy of electronic healthcare records (EHRs).

Read more less

This is the first in a series of three volumes of proceedings of the 23rd Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (PBNC 2022) which was held by Chinese Nuclear Society. As one in the most important and influential conference series of nuclear science and technology, the 23rd PBNC was held in Beijing and Chengdu, China in 2022 with the theme “Nuclear Innovation for Zero-carbon Future”. For taking solid steps toward the goals of achieving peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality, future-oriented nuclear energy should be developed in an innovative way for meeting global energy demands and coordinating the deployment mechanism. It brought together outstanding nuclear scientists and technical experts, senior industry executives, senior government officials and international energy organization leaders from all across the world. The proceedings highlight the latest scientific, technological and industrial advances in Nuclear Safety and Security, Operations and Maintenance, New Builds, Waste Management, Spent Fuel, Decommissioning, Supply Capability and Quality Management, Fuel Cycles, Digital Reactor and New Technology, Innovative Reactors and New Applications, Irradiation Effects, Public Acceptance and Education, Economics, Medical and Biological Applications, and also the student program that intends to raise students’ awareness in fully engaging in this career and keep them updated on the current situation and future trends.These proceedings are not only a good summary of the new developments in the field, but also a useful guideline for the researchers, engineers and graduate students.This is an open access book.

Read more less

This book intends to report the new progress of pseudotyped viruses, including the construction of pseudotyped viruses with different strategies or vectors for most important viruses. Especially for emerging viruses, optimization of the condition and parameters for assay development based on the pseudotyped viruses and widely application as surrogate of authentic virus to study the biological functions of virus, detection of neutralizing antibody, screening viral entry inhibiters, and others. It includes most pseudotyped viruses that have the protein of the target virus on the surface of the parent virus with incomplete genome. The book is likely to be of interest to all researchers in the field of virology, vaccine, and anti-viral drug development and evaluation.

Read more less

This book includes original, peer-reviewed research papers from the 7th PURPLE MOUNTAIN FORUM on Smart Grid Protection and Control（PMF2022), held in Nanjing, China， on August 14-15, 2022. The accepted papers cover the following topics: 1. Advanced power transmission technology2. AC/DC hybrid power grid technology3. Power Internet of Things Technology and Application4. Operation, control and protection of smart grid5. Active distribution network technology6. Power electronic technology and application7. New technology of substation automation8. Energy storage technology and application9. Application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and big data10. Application of Information and Communication Technology11. Low-carbon energy planning and security12. Low-carbon operation of the power system13. Low-carbon energy comprehensive utilization technology14. Carbon trading and power market15. Carbon emission stream and carbon capture technology16. Energy saving and smart energy technology17. Analysis and evaluation of low-carbon efficiency of power system18. Carbon flow modelling in power system operationThe papers included in this proceeding share the latest research results and practical application examples on the methodologies and algorithms in these areas, which makes the book a valuable reference for researchers, engineers, and university students.

Read more less

This open access book provides a clear holistic conceptual framework of CISS-F (competitiveness, inclusiveness, sustainability, scalability and access to finance) to analyse the efficiency of value chains of high value agricultural commodities in India. It is based on the understanding that agriculture is an integrated system that connects farming with logistics, processing and marketing. Farmer’s welfare being central to any agricultural policy makes it very pertinent to study how a value chain works and can be strengthened further to realize this policy goal. This book adds value to the existing research by studying the value chains end-to-end across a wide spectrum of agricultural commodities with the holistic lens of CISS-F. It is not enough that a value chain is competitive but not inclusive or it is competitive and inclusive but not sustainable. The issue of scalability is very critical to achieve macro gains in terms of greater farmer outreach and sectoral growth. The research undertaken here brings out some very useful insights for policymaking in terms of what needs to be done better to steer the agricultural value chains towards being more competitive, inclusive, sustainable and scalable. The value chain specific research findings help draw very nuanced policy recommendations as well as present a big picture of the future direction of policy making in agriculture.

Read more less

This open access book outlines the intersections between social work and the methods of sociometry and psychodrama. Different sections offer essential practice wisdom for both trauma-focused and trauma-informed experiential work for individuals, groups, organizations, and communities. This text enriches the understanding of various action-based approaches and highlights how to enliven social work practice. The chapters include clinical vignettes and examples of structured sociometric prompts with diverse populations, topics, and social work settings to enhance the understanding of group practice, individual practice, and community practice. It provides social workers and other professionals with dynamic tools to improve assessment, intervention, activism, and leadership. Strength-based practical tools are offered to readers, along with guidance for theoretical conceptualizations. This integrative book is an essential read for students, practitioners, leaders, and scholars within the fields of social work, psychodrama, the creative art therapies, group therapy, community organizing, and social activism.

Read more less

This book presents a bio-inspired hierarchical control scheme step by step toward developing limbless robots capable of 3D locomotion, fast reflex response, as well as sophisticated reaction to environmental stimuli. This interdisciplinary book introduces how to combine biological concept with locomotion control of limbless robots. The special features of the book include limbless locomotion classification and control, design of biological locomotor and the integration of sensory information into the locomotor using artificial intelligence methods, and on-site demonstrations of limbless locomotion in different scenarios. The book is suitable for readers with engineering background, especially for researchers focused on bio-inspired robots.

Read more less

This book is a compilation of selected papers from the 10th PIANC Smart Rivers Conference (Smart Rivers 2022). The work focuses on novel techniques for inland waterways and navigation structures. The contents make valuable contributions to academic researchers, engineers in the industry, and regulators of aviation authorities. As well, readers will encounter new ideas for realizing Green Waterways and Sustainable Navigations. This is an open access book.

Read more less

This book draws on theories of aesthetics, post-colonialism, multiculturalism and transnationalism to explore salient aspects of perpetuating traditional dance customs in diaspora. It is the first book to present a broad-ranging analysis of cultural dance in Australia. Topics include adaptation of dance customs within a post-migration context, multicultural festivals, prominent performers, historiographies and archives, and the relative positionings of cultural and Western theatrical dance genres. The book offers a decolonized appraisal of dance in Australia, critiquing past and present praxes and offering suggestions for the future. Overall, it underscores the highly variegated nature of the Australian dance landscape and advocates for greater recognition of amateur community dance practices. Cultural Dance in Australia makes a substantial contribution to the catalogue of work about immigrants and cultural dance styles that continue to be preserved in Australia. This book will be of interest to scholars of dance, performance studies, migration studies and transnationalism.

Read more less

This book provides a detailed coverage of how the circular economy aims to change the paradigm in relation to the linear economy, by limiting the environmental impact and waste of resources, as well as increasing efficiency at all stages of the product economy. It serves as the sole comprehensive overview of the role of biofuels in the circular economy. It contains updated information on the latest trends of techno-economic analysis of biofuels, economic transitions, low-carbon economies, green circular societies, and life cycle assessment of biofuels. This book delves deep into the economic security of the poor as well as the nexus between biofuel industry and global trade bodies, making it one of the few introductory books without bias toward the contribution of biofuels in circular economy. With its diverse contributions on themes such as biofuels as potential alternatives to fossil fuels, biofuel economics and policies; biofuel standards, blending, and future insecurities; economic transitions from biomass to biofuels; and biofuel economy, development, and food security, the book would be a great resource for a wide and multi-disciplinary readership base ranging from researchers to academics, policy makers, innovators, corporates, and non-profit organizations working in this area.

Read more less

This book examines the childhood education policy development in China. It involves investigating the holistic landscape of China’s childhood development from a policy perspective. It also offers a specific lens to examine the migrant childhood education policy in China, the left-behind childhood education policy in China, the ethnic childhood education policy development in China, the special childhood education policy in China, and the boarding schools’ childhood education policy in China. The intended readers are scholars and researchers who are interested and work in research on China’s childhood education reform/pre-K-12 in China. The administrators and stakeholders in Chinese education system and graduate students are majoring and minoring in the field of educational policy.

Read more less

This book provides a compendium of cutting-edge knowledge for an efficacious retailing strategy, with lessons from the organized retailing sector in India. It explores customer needs and their impact on developing successful retailing strategies and organized retailing in emerging economies with changing consumer behavior. It discusses the importance of developing appropriate retailing strategies in the context of an emerging economy, being agile and forward-thinking to implement a customer-centric approach across the retail value chain's upstream and downstream actions, and the requirement of clarity on the exact tools and techniques that will allow the retailers to move from their present product-centric state to the looked-for customer-centric state.This book aids the practitioners in developing and adopting a culture of customer-centricity and focuses on various retail strategy concepts and their implementation. It aims to present the multifaceted and multifarious questions of retail marketing in two studies, where each study provides a comprehensive solution.

Read more less

This book describes basic information and current applications of flexible ureteroscopy in diagnosis and treatment of renal stones, covering topics on history, anatomy, preoperative preparation, clinical operation, and training for beginners. Basic as well as advanced techniques of flexible ureteroscopy for large renal stones, pediatric patients, and in special situations are presented in details with representative cases and high-resolution illustrations. In addition, disposable, wireless, and robotic flexible ureteroscopy are introduced in details to help readers to learn advanced techniques. It will be a useful reference for urologists, especially for those who are interested in improving their flexible ureteroscopy skills in clinical practice.

Read more less

This book offers a practical guide to Chinese ecommerce markets for businesspeople and scholars. China represents a $5.6 trillion retail market, with the highest ecommerce penetration rate in the world. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, brands are investing more in growing online sales. Written from the heart of the world’s largest e-commerce platform, Ecommerce Reimagined: Retail and Ecommerce in China is a book that aims to satisfy the growing need of entrepreneurs and businesses hoping to tap into China’s market and provide context to students and academics who post an interest in learning about how ecommerce has shaped the Chinese retail space.

Read more less

This introductory textbook on social choice theory makes the social choice theoretic framework and its main results, that have a direct bearing on the discourses on electoral rules and policy evaluation, accessible to a larger audience. The text is essentially self-contained. No previous knowledge of mathematical logic or relational algebra is assumed. Whatever technical prerequisites are needed, are developed in the text itself. Although the text is at an introductory level, there has been no compromise on rigor. Unlike most introductory books, the relevant proofs are not omitted; rather, they have been explained in detail. The text has a large number of examples so that the concepts and results become clear to the reader. There is a large number of exercises with full solutions provided at the end of the text, so that the reader can check her/his understanding of the material.

Read more less

Deep reinforcement learning has attracted considerable attention recently. Impressive results have been achieved in such diverse fields as autonomous driving, game playing, molecular recombination, and robotics. In all these fields, computer programs have taught themselves to understand problems that were previously considered to be very difficult. In the game of Go, the program AlphaGo has even learned to outmatch three of the world’s leading players.Deep reinforcement learning takes its inspiration from the fields of biology and psychology. Biology has inspired the creation of artificial neural networks and deep learning, while psychology studies how animals and humans learn, and how subjects’ desired behavior can be reinforced with positive and negative stimuli. When we see how reinforcement learning teaches a simulated robot to walk, we are reminded of how children learn, through playful exploration. Techniques that are inspired by biology and psychology work amazingly well in computers: animal behavior and the structure of the brain as new blueprints for science and engineering. In fact, computers truly seem to possess aspects of human behavior; as such, this field goes to the heart of the dream of artificial intelligence. These research advances have not gone unnoticed by educators. Many universities have begun offering courses on the subject of deep reinforcement learning. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the field, at the proper level of detail for a graduate course in artificial intelligence. It covers the complete field, from the basic algorithms of Deep Q-learning, to advanced topics such as multi-agent reinforcement learning and meta learning.

Read more less

This book focuses on relatively neglected areas of simulation and gaming (S&G), i.e., cultural aspects and ethical issues, in addition to giving readers a basic knowledge of S&G. Although the educational effects of S&G, and related methods such as gamification, as well as serious games have been studied and are gaining recognition, their downsides are often overlooked. For example, there is always a risk of manipulation by games if maliciously designed and facilitated. Ethical codes of game designers, facilitators, and educators must be established on the basis of academic research. Considerations of the ethics of games are essential not only for S&G researchers and educators but also for the general public, because games have sometimes been used for propaganda purposes in the past and could be again, in the present and future. Looking at the cultural aspect, as the S&G community has accumulated research over 50 years, the book includes the knowledge of the pioneers, i.e., archival interview data. This is the first book that includes extensive interviews of researchers and commercial game designers and critics. It also contains diverse topics from the perspective of gender and Japanese culture. Japan has been attracting attention in the field of board games as there are many independent game designers and an expanding market. Although women in S&G have gained some recognition, the topic has been rather ignored and was first officially discussed in 2019 at the international conference of the International Simulation and Gaming Association held in Warsaw. In summary, by focusing on comparatively overlooked or neglected aspects of S&G, this book expands future opportunities in the field for researchers and educators, with increased awareness by the general public.

Read more less

< div="">This volume covers all aspects of furniture manufacturing from a production engineering perspective. It takes a step-by-step pedagogical approach, dwelling on details which must be understood at every process, as the furniture makes its way through the factory shop floor. The content highlights the global industry, and discusses furniture design and manufacturing systems. The chapters also discuss every stage of the manufacturing process until the finished product is packaged. There is also emphasis on strength design of furniture, furniture testing, environmental compliance, and automation. The contents also discuss the optimization of furniture manufacturing through a mathematical approach and highlights the current global trends impacting the furniture manufacturing industry, especially the circular economy and Industry 4.0. This volume will a useful resource to those in academia and industry.^

Read more less

Recycling is the need of the hour and it is an inevitable destination at the end of the life of any product. Today, recycling can happen at postindustrial and post-consumer states and the importance of recycled products in the market has gained significant importance. Recycled products dominate the array of sustainable products in today’s context. Even though there are commercial implications for recycling, one of the very important and obvious reasons to go for recycling and to have recycled products is to have the benefits on environmental sustainability. It is highly important to assess the environmental footprints of recycled products and further improve the environmental benefits of such recycled products. This book presents five interesting chapters pertaining to the environmental footprints of various recycled products.

Read more less

This book discusses the impact of fuels characteristics and their effects on the combustion processes in internal combustion engines. It includes the analysis of a variety of biofuels (alcohol fuels and biodiesel) and biogases (natural gas, hydrogen, etc.), providing valuable information related to consequent effects on performance and emissions. The contents focus on recent results and current trends of fuel utilization in the transport sector. State-of-the-art of clean fuels application are also discussed. Thighs book will be of interest to those in academia and industry involved in fuels, IC engines, engine instrumentation, and environmental research.

Read more less

This book introduces how to improve the accuracy and robustness of model predictive control. Firstly, the disturbance observation- and compensation-based method is developed. Secondly, direct parameter identification methods are developed. Thirdly, the seldom-focused-on issues such as sampling and delay problems are solved in this book. Overall, this book solves the problems in a systematic and innovative way. Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

Read more less

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.The increasing capacity of digital networks and computing power, together with the resulting connectivity and availability of “big data”, are impacting financial systems worldwide with rapidly advancing deep-learning algorithms and distributed ledger technologies. They transform the structure and performance of financial markets, the service proposition of financial products, the organization of payment systems, the business models of banks, insurance companies and other financial service providers, as well as the design of money supply regimes and central banking.This book, The Future of Financial Systems in the Digital Age: Perspectives from Europe and Japan, brings together leading scholars, policymakers, and regulators from Japan and Europe, all with a profound and long professional background in the field of finance, to analyze the digital transformation of the financial system. The authors analyze the impact of digitalization on the financial system from different perspectives such as transaction costs and with regard to specific topics like the potential of digital and blockchain-based currency systems, the role of algorithmic trading, obstacles in the use of cashless payments, the challenges of regulatory oversight, and the transformation of banking business models. The collection of chapters offers insights from Japanese and European discourses, approaches, and experiences on a topic otherwise dominated by studies about developments in the USA and China.

Read more less

This book sheds light on religiously motivated extremism and violence in South Asia, a phenomenon which ostensibly poses critical and unique challenges to the peace, security and governance not only of the region, but also of the world at large. The book is distinctive in-so-far as it reexamines conventional wisdom held about religious extremism in South Asia and departs from the literature which centres its analyses on Islamic militancy based on the questions and assumptions of the West’s ‘war on terror’. This volume also offers a comprehensive analysis of new extremist movements and how their emergence and success places existing theoretical frameworks in the study of religious extremism into question. It further examines topical issues including the study of social media and its impact on the evolution and operation of violent extremism. The book also analyses grassroots and innovative non-state initiatives aimed to counter extremist ideologies. Through case studies focusing on Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, this collection examines extremist materials, methods of political mobilisation and recruitment processes and maps the interconnected nature of sociological change with the ideological transformations of extremist movements.

Read more less

This book A Guide to Graph Algorithms offers high-quality content in the research area of graph algorithms and explores the latest developments in graph algorithmics. The reader will gain a comprehensive understanding of how to use algorithms to explore graphs. It is a collection of texts that have proved to be trend setters and good examples of that. The book aims at providing the reader with a deep understanding of the structural properties of graphs that are useful for the design of efficient algorithms. These algorithms have applications in finite state machine modelling, social network theory, biology, and mathematics. The book contains many exercises, some up at present-day research-level. The exercises encourage the reader to discover new techniques by putting things in a clear perspective. A study of this book will provide the reader with many powerful tools to model and tackle problems in real-world scenarios.

Read more less

This open access book offers unique in-depth, comprehensive, and comparative analyses of the motivations, context, and outcomes of recent land reforms in Africa. Whereas a considerable number of land reforms have been carried out by African governments since the 1990s, no systematic analysis on their meaning has so far been conducted. In the age of land reform, Africa has seen drastic rural changes. Analysing the relationship between those reforms and change, the chapters in this book reveal not only their socio-economic outcomes, such as accelerated marketisation of land, but also their political outcomes, which have often been contrasting. Countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique have utilised land reform to strengthen state control over land, but other countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, have seen the rise in power of traditional chiefs in managing the land. The comparative perspective of this book clarifies new features of African social changes, which are carefully investigated by area experts. Providing new perspectives on recent land reform, this book will have a considerable impact on scholars as well as policymakers.

Read more less

This book documents the practice-led research of painting as a peripatetic art practice through travel and transient life in Australia, India, and Pakistan. Crossing disciplines of Art, Applied Anthropology, and Cultural Geography, painting is explored as a way of negotiating the uncertainties inherent in cross-cultural journeys, and the possibility of connecting with others in their lifeworlds. The ways of navigating and of making that support creativity in the field are identified, as are the multifarious conditions of the field in view of how these shaped painting, and ultimately, the consciousness of the artist through possibilities for empathy, advocacy, and activism. The book includes many images that illustrate the form which painting took in the field and the techniques employed to create these. Interactive links in the eBook edition enable the reader to view documentary films about subjects with whom the artist worked, and that illustrate the field and conditions of making. Throughout the book the reader may also engage with virtual tours of the Australindopak Archive as the art work generated by this research.

Read more less

The book covers the recent developments in various aspects of minimal access surgery (laparoscopic and robotic surgery), which is fairly a new branch of surgery that has advanced tremendously in last few years. This is the first volume of the set of books on recent concepts in minimal access surgery. It provides step-by-step descriptions accompanied by numerous helpful photographs and anatomical drawings. It also includes the controversies and gives a cumulative opinion on the recent changes developing in minimal access surgery (MAS). It includes system wise topics and separate chapters on the different topics within the system with the meta-analysis of recent topic or their controversies.The book is useful for practitioners and young faculties as well as residents, trainees and fellows of surgery and minimal access surgery.

Read more less

This book explores the unique contribution that critical communication studies can bring to our understanding of health. It covers several broad themes: representing and mediating health; marketing and promoting health, co-producing health; and managing health crises and risks. Chapters speak to moral and social regulation through health communication, technologies of health, healthism and governmentality. They engage with historical and contemporary issues, offering readers theoretically grounded perspectives. At base, the book explores what a critical communication approach to health might look like, revealing in important—and sometimes surprising—ways how communication sits at the centre of understanding how health is constructed, contested, and made meaningful.

Read more less

This book outlines risk management theory systematically and comprehensively while distinguishing it from academic fields such as insurance theory. In addition, the book builds a risk financing theory that is independent of insurance theory.Until now, risk management (RM) theory has been discussed while the framework of the theory has remained unclear. However, this book, unlike previous books of this type, provides risk management theory after presenting a framework for it. Enterprise risk management (ERM) is seen differently depending on one’s position. For accountants, it is a means for internal control to prevent accounting fraud, whereas for financial institutions, it quantifies the risk that administrators can take to meet supervisory standards. Therefore, most of the ERM outlines are written to suit the intended uses or topics, with no systematic RM overviews. This book discusses a systematic RM theory linked to the framework of it, unlike previous books that were written according to topic.After the Enron scandal in December 2001 and WorldCom accounting fraud in June 2002, several laws were enacted or revised throughout the world, such as the SOX Act(Sarbanes-Oxley Act) in the United States and the Financial Instruments and Exchange Law and Companies Act in Japan. In this process, the COSO(Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of Treadway Commission) published their ERM framework, while the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) published their RM framework. The author believes that the competition between these frameworks was an opportunity to systematize RM theory and greatly develop it as an independent discipline from insurance. On the other hand, the Great East Japan Earthquake that occurred on March 11, 2011, caused enormous losses. Also, because pandemics and cyber risks are increasing, businesses must have a comprehensive and systematic ERM for these risks associated with their business activities

Read more less

This second of the three-volume book is targeted as a basic course in topology for undergraduate and graduate students of mathematics. It focuses on many variants of topology and its applications in modern analysis, geometry, algebra, and the theory of numbers. Offering a proper background on topology, analysis, and algebra, this volume discusses the topological groups and topological vector spaces that provide many interesting geometrical objects which relate algebra with geometry and analysis. This volume follows a systematic and comprehensive elementary approach to the topology related to manifolds, emphasizing differential topology. It further communicates the history of the emergence of the concepts leading to the development of topological groups, manifolds, and also Lie groups as mathematical topics with their motivations. This book will promote the scope, power, and active learning of the subject while covering a wide range of theories and applications in a balanced unified way.

Read more less

This book presents fundamental and practical information on food chemistry. Using 2-D barcodes, it illustrates the specific reactions and potential transformation mechanisms of food constituents during various manufacturing and storage processes, and each chapter features teaching activities, such as questions and answers, and discussions. Further, it describes various local practices and improvements in Asia. Divided into 12 chapters covering individual nutrients and components, including water, proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, pigments, flavoring substances, additives, and harmful constituents, it addresses their food chemistry, as well as their transformations during manufacturing processes, and typical or advanced treatments to improve food quality and safety. This book helps college students to gain a basic understanding of nutrients and food components, to discover and implement the practical industrial guidelines, and also to learn the latest developments in food chemistry.

Read more less

This Open Access book presents practical approaches to managing patients affected by various rheumatological diseases, allowing readers to gain a better understanding of the various clinical expressions and problems experienced by these patients. Discussing rheumatology from an organ systems perspective, it highlights the importance ofdetailed musculoskeletal examinations when treating patients affected by rheumatological diseases. The book first explores the latest diagnostic approaches and offers key tips for accurate musculoskeletal examinations before addressing the various treatment modalities, with a particular focus on the most common joints involved in rheumatoid arthritis: the wrists and the metacarpophalangeal joints (2nd and 3rd). Featuring easy-to-understand flow diagrams and explaining the common medical problems associated with rheumatic disease, such as shortness of breath and anemia, it is not only a valuable resource to rheumatologists, but will also appeal to medical students, junior residents, and primary healthcare physicians.

Read more less

This edited volume presents the results of a three-year comparative study on Chinese cultural diplomacy (CD) across Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, which contributes to the broader theoretical debate on China`s increasing soft power in international relations. The study, ‘China's Cultural Diplomacy and the Role of Non-State Actors’ was conducted by a research team at the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic from 2015 to 2018. This book pays special attention to China’s localized forms of CD, focusing on the regional variations and involvement of non-state actors, especially local actors outside China. Local actors involved in Chinese CD diplomacy are characterized by their intermediary status as working for the aims of two states, while trying to bridge conflicts and enhance mutual understanding. This book will be of interest to scholars, diplomats, and China watchers.

Read more less

This book addresses sample size and power in the context of research, offering valuable insights for graduate and doctoral students as well as researchers in any discipline where data is generated to investigate research questions. It explains how to enhance the authenticity of research by estimating the sample size and reporting the power of the tests used. Further, it discusses the issue of sample size determination in survey studies as well as in hypothesis testing experiments so that readers can grasp the concept of statistical errors, minimum detectable difference, effect size, one-tail and two-tail tests and the power of the test. The book also highlights the importance of fixing these boundary conditions in enhancing the authenticity of research findings and improving the chances of research papers being accepted by respected journals. Further, it explores the significance of sample size by showing the power achieved in selected doctoral studies. Procedure has been discussed to fix power in the hypothesis testing experiment. One should usually have power at least 0.8 in the study because having power less than this will have the issue of practical significance of findings. If the power in any study is less than 0.5 then it would be better to test the hypothesis by tossing a coin instead of organizing the experiment. It also discusses determining sample size and power using the freeware G*Power software, based on twenty-one examples using different analyses, like t-test, parametric and non-parametric correlations, multivariate regression, logistic regression, independent and repeated measures ANOVA, mixed design, MANOVA and chi-square.

Read more less