Bøger af Fan Zhang

This book sheds light on the structure of ¿a unity with diversity¿ developed in the Qing imperial formation (1636-1912) by a case study of the Qing-Tibetan encounters in the eighteenth century.

Born in a beautiful coastal town in Northern China, naive and warm-hearted Jiang Fan leaves the comforts of her hometown behind in search of her childhood friend, Xue Ning, who mysteriously disappeared and traveled to Hong Kong. Despite Jiang's best efforts, Xue is nowhere to be found. Jiang becomes acquainted with local law-enforcement officers who, touched by Jiang and Xue's childhood stories, offer their assistance. Yet they soon discover a terrifying fact; Xue's fate lies in the hands of Hong Kong's elite criminal society, the Gang. Meanwhile, Jiang's emergence as a business prodigy attracts the attention of the criminals. Using Xue as bait, the Gang lures Jiang to the dark side, and her friends soon become targets of assassination. With no choice, Jiang must toe a fine line between good and evil to save those she holds dear. She alone must stare down the barrel of the gun. (Chinese Language Novel)

This paper studies the design of optimal, privately-stipulated damages when breach of contract is possible at more than one point in time. It offers an intuitive explanation for why cancellation fees for some services (e.g., hotel reservations) increase as the time for performance approaches. If the seller makes investments over time to improve her value from trade, she will protect the value of her investments by demanding a higher compensation when the buyer breaches their contract at a time closer to when contract performance is due.

This textbook characterizes the economics of telecommunication services from an engineering perspective. The authors bring out the fundamental drivers of the industry and characterize networks from a graph theoretic perspective, including random, small world, and scale free networks.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of recently developed space multi-tethers, such as maneuverable space tethered nets and space tethered formation.

Electricity shortages are among the biggest barriers to South Asia's development. Some 255 million people--more than a quarter of the world's off-grid population--live in South Asia, and millions of households and firms that are connected experience frequent and long hours of blackouts. Inefficiencies originating in every link of the electricity supply chain contribute significantly to the power deficit. Three types of distortions lead to most of the inefficiencies: institutional distortions caused by state ownership and weak governance; regulatory distortions resulting from price regulation, subsidies, and cross-subsidies; and social distortions (externalities) causing excessive environmental and health damages from energy use. Using a common analytical framework and covering all stages of power supply, In the Dark identifies and estimates how policy-induced distortions have affected South Asian economies. The book introduces two innovations. First, it goes beyond fiscal costs, evaluating the impact of distortions from a welfare perspective by measuring the impact on consumer wellbeing, producer surplus, and environmental costs. And second, the book adopts a broader definition of the sector that covers the entire power supply chain, including upstream fuel supply and downstream access and reliability. The book finds that the full cost of distortions in the power sector is far greater than previously estimated based on fiscal cost alone: The estimated total economic cost is 4-7 percent of the gross domestic product in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Some of the largest costs are upstream and downstream. Few other reforms could quickly yield the huge economic gains that power sector reform would produce. By expanding access to electricity and improving the quality of supply, power sector reform would also directly benefit poor households. The highest payoffs are likely to come from institutional reforms, expansion of reliable access, and the appropriate pricing of carbon and local air pollution emissions.

This book introduces the latest advances made in both fundamental studies and potential applications of upconversion nanomaterials, particularly in the field of high-resolution in vitro bioanalysis and in vivo imaging.

Presenting results from real prototype systems, this volume provides an overview of ultra low-power integrated circuits and systems for neural signal processing and wireless communication. Topics include analog, radio, and signal processing theory and design for ultra low-power circuits.