Bøger udgivet af Springer Nature Singapore

The scope of this book is to map Chinäs city clusters and their individual directions for the national-level strategies in line with the 2060 carbon neutrality plan. Since China announced the carbon neutrality plan in autumn 2020, no study has looked at the role of city clusters in achieving this long-term plan. Hence, this study is believed to be the first attempt to explore this important topic from the city cluster perspective. It explores the challenges, opportunities, and directions of all 19 city clusters, allowing readers to have a clear picture of Chinäs historical and ongoing progress, as well as the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. In a short time, Chinäs city clusters have helped boost regional economic development, infrastructure development, trade and business, and better urban¿rural integration. With enhanced coordination of connection and transport networks in and between the city clusters, we see a growing number of initiatives beyond just the initial economic strategies. The dual approach of top-down policies and infrastructure systems and bottom-up governance and investments has helped China consider urban¿rural development strategies and regional sustainable development. These factors are essential to be explored from the city cluster perspective and in line with Chinäs sustainable development and carbon neutrality directions. Hence, the book covers these points holistically, ensuring that regional planning and development are favored in the face of uneven urbanization trends.We anticipate this book to be a valuable resource for local governments and authorities, urban planners and practitioners, developers, and urban researchers. While the focus is on Chinäs city clusters, we believe there are similar examples elsewhere. Hence, lessons learnt from this book could apply to other countries, regions, and subregions. Lastly, the book aims to put regional sustainable development at the heart of longer-term strategies and plans, such as the case of Chinäs carbon neutrality plan.

This book reviews the potential of next-generation point-of-care diagnosis in healthcare. It also discusses the printed chip-based assay (Lab-on-a-Chip, Lab-on-a-PCB) for rapid, inexpensive biomarkers detection. The book presents the development of sensory systems based on the use of nanomaterials. It examines different biosensors for medical diagnosis using surface modification strategies of transducers. It presents electrochemical concepts based on different nanobiomaterials and nanocomposites for cancer theranostics. Notably, the book examines the recent advances in wearable, cost-effective hemodynamic sensors to detect diseases at an early stage. It further explores the combination of redox cycling and electrochemical detection to develop ultrasensitive and reproducible biosensors for point-of-care testing. Finally, the book summarizes the significant challenges in the point of care diagnostics and its future opportunities in healthcare. 

This book successfully represents the indispensable interdisciplinarity of viewpoints by its authors combining legal perspectives with architectural and anthropological approaches. With the observation and analysis presented here, this book is the first to demonstrate research-based governance solutions for cultural heritage within the process of recovering from traumatic events. Its opening statement is that universal international standards are not effective enough for the specific situations of disaster-struck places.A major objective of this monograph is to allow its readers to go through a learning experience, from plural cases where reconstruction of cultural heritage became central to rebuilding a post-disaster society. This book introduces Japan as the most disaster-prone country, with a long history of confronting and overcoming the power of nature, resulting in its unique solutions for cultural heritage resilience and sustainability. But how do leadership and decision making become efficient in times of recovery? Bearing in mind what may be lacking in Japanese practices, this work also presents comparable governance models from other countries which indicate alternative solutions.While a traumatic event may occur within one night, the process of recovery could last for decades. Such disasters also tend to recur. In order that directly affected communities can sustain resilience throughout the long recovery period, and that equally severe social trauma will not be repeated, a continuous, well-maintained governance response is required, whether grounded in local knowledge or national policy frameworks. At the heart of this book is the matter of the reconstruction process involving networks of small and large communities. Each of those has a role that becomes operational through linkages of contacts, the interchange of knowledge and skills, and above all through the sharing of common goals.

This book investigates the disagreement behavior analysis problems for signed networks in the presence of both cooperative and antagonistic interactions among agents. Owing to the existing antagonistic interactions, signed networks exhibit a variety of disagreement behaviors subject to different topology conditions, especially in comparison with commonly considered unsigned networks involving only cooperative interactions among agents. Since signed networks are generally adopted to describe the dynamics of some practical network systems, they have attracted much attention in many areas, such as biology, sociology, economics, and politics. By focusing on agents with the first-order linear dynamics, the book establishes the systematic behavior analysis frameworks for signed networks, under which diverse disagreement behaviors have been disclosed, including both convergence and fluctuation behaviors, regardless of static or dynamic network topologies. In particular, a class of dynamic signed networks has been introduced, together with the associated dynamic distributed controller design and disagreement behavior analysis of agents. This book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students, engineers, and researchers who are interested in control of network systems, multi-agent systems, social networks, and so on.

This book addresses the transfer of rhetorical knowledge from a first language (L1) to a second language (L1-to-L2 rhetorical transfer), a common cognitive phenomenon in the L2 writing of students in foreign language learning environments. It investigates L1-to-L2 rhetorical transfer from a cognitive perspective and examines a specific component of L2 writers¿ agency in this transfer, namely metacognition. The book¿s ultimate goal is to enhance our understanding of the cognitive mechanism of rhetorical transfer across languages. This goal is in turn connected to the need to determine how L1 rhetorical knowledge can be steered and oriented toward successful L2 writing.To this end, this book proposes a theoretical framework for transfer studies, encompassing the dimensions of text, transfer agency, and L2 essay raters. It facilitates an in-depth exploration of the intricacies involved in L1-to-L2 rhetorical transfer. It then presents empirical studies on this transfer. Embracing a dynamic perspective, this book furthers our understanding of interlingual rhetorical transfer as a conscious or intuitive process for making meaning, one that can be monitored and steered. Moreover, it discusses the pedagogical implications for L2 writing instruction that guides students to use metacognition to transfer L1 rhetorical knowledge during L2 writing.

This book examines educational resource allocation in Beijing, the allocation of educational resources in student resource optimization analysis in Tianjin, educational resource allocation in Hebei Province, and the optimal allocation of vocational education resources in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. It also offers a holistic landscape of exploring coordinated education development historically. This book has interdisciplinary appeal and is of interest to all studying and researching Chinese educational policy.

This book tells us from a professional perspective how to deal with stress response in the family, effectively address family problems in the epidemic, and handle the infectious emotions. This book is a profound explanation of the new stress, conflicts, and problems arising at home amid the epidemic. It provides people with a psychological self-help scale to effectively distinguish the normal and abnormal states of psychological response. Besides, it also provides professional psychological assistance and suggestions for special groups, including children, the elderly, the quarantined, and the bereaved, in order to help all families actively respond to the epidemic with the power of psychology.

This book is about retirement income security. This income security is provided by national public pensions, corporate pensions, and individual and reverse mortgages. However, these systems vary greatly from country to country and, in many countries, do not provide sufficient coverage. Ensuring income security in old age is an important issue that must be resolved in the rapidly aging environment of the world.From the perspective of financial consumers, this book cross-sectionally surveys public pensions, corporate pensions, individual pensions and reverse mortgages and compares them among many important nations. This gives many implications from the perspective of designing an overall income security for each individual. In addition, it presents many of the issues needed for these sustainable and comprehensive income security.

This book comprises a collection of papers presented at the International Workshop on New Approaches for Multidimensional Signal Processing (NAMSP 2021), held at Technical University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria, during 08-10 July 2021. The book covers research papers in the field of N-dimensional multicomponent image processing, multidimensional image representation and super-resolution, 3D image processing and reconstruction, MD computer vision systems, multidimensional multimedia systems, neural networks for MD image processing, data-based MD image retrieval and knowledge data mining, watermarking, hiding and encryption of MD images, MD image processing in robot systems, tensor-based data processing, 3D and multi-view visualization, forensic analysis systems for MD images and many more.

This book examines the inclusive development experiences and impacts of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). It discusses the theoretical assumptions underlying the inclusive development of Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), and draws conclusions based on robust data and real-world experiences with the MGNREGS - which has attracted global attention as India's most ambitious, rights-based development initiative and most expansive work-based social security measure, the world's largest public works programme, and people-centric approach to development. The book argues that the Scheme holds vast potential, and, in fact, has made significant contribution to the promotion of livelihoods of the poorest of the poor, but that the weak institutions of local-self-governance, entrusted for implementation of the Scheme, are incapable of exploiting them to the full. It ends with a concrete policy suggestion: the inclusive development experiences gathered with the EGS and presented here could offer a source of policy change in many developing Afro-Asian countries whose situations are similar to India's, provided the local conditions in the respective country are taken into consideration when designing the EGS. Its significance as a social security measure has increased in post-COVID loss of jobs and livelihoods of the poor.

This book uncovers the crucial issues in learning technologies in this digital transformation moment, specifically within the COVID-19 umbrella effects. Remote learning, educational technologies, or distance learning are usually used topics by teachers, students, and researchers because the educational context should be transformed and even reinvented itself drastically. Technologies have been used more intensively in the last year than during the last decade. However, what is the effect of these "e;new"e; technologies on the teaching and learning methodologies? Are teachers and students fully digital competent to integrate these technologies in their teaching and learning activities? In this book, the authors claim to go forward that the online teaching conception to replicate the face-to-face teaching through a camera. They propose adapting the active methodologies to the online or hybrid context, which is a challenge that must be corroborated with rigorous educational research.

This book provides a valuable collection of contributions by distinguished scholars presenting the state of the art and some of the most significant latest developments and future challenges in the field of dispersive partial differential equations. The material covers four major lines: (1) Long time behaviour of NLS-type equations, (2) probabilistic and nonstandard methods in the study of NLS equation, (3) dispersive properties for heat-, Schrodinger-, and Dirac-type flows, (4) wave and KdV-type equations. Across a variety of applications an amount of crucial mathematical tools are discussed, whose applicability and versatility goes beyond the specific models presented here. Furthermore, all contributions include updated and comparative literature.

This book explores in depth the latest enabling technologies for regenerative medicine. The opening section examines advances in 3D bioprinting and the fabrication of electrospun and electrosprayed scaffolds. The potential applications of intelligent nanocomposites are then considered, covering, for example, graphene-based nanocomposites, intrinsically conductive polymer nanocomposites, and smart diagnostic contact lens systems. The third section is devoted to various drug delivery systems and strategies for regenerative medicine. Finally, a wide range of future enabling technologies are discussed. Examples include temperature-responsive cell culture surfaces, nanopatterned scaffolds for neural tissue engineering, and process system engineering methodologies for application in tissue development. This is one of two books to be based on contributions from leading experts that were delivered at the 2018 Asia University Symposium on Biomedical Engineering in Seoul, Korea - the companion book examines in depth novel biomaterials for regenerative medicine.

This book introduces readers to the latest technological advances in the emerging field of intelligent orthopaedics. Artificial intelligence and smart instrumentation techniques are now revolutionizing every area of our lives, including medicine. The applications of these techniques in orthopaedic interventions offer a number of potential benefits, e.g. reduced incision size and scarring, minimized soft tissue damage, and decreased risk of misalignment. Consequently, these techniques have become indispensable for various orthopaedic interventions, which has led to the emerging field of intelligent orthopaedics. Addressing key technologies and applications, this book offers a valuable guide for all researchers and clinicians who need an update on both the principles and practice of intelligent orthopaedics, and for graduate students embarking on a career in this field.¿

This book offers an in-depth and comprehensive review on current understanding of regulatory ncRNAs in complex diseases from a view of bioinformatics. It conveys state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools and methods for ncRNAs from computational detection, functional prediction, to their roles in diseases. Computational methods used to investigate uncharacterised ncRNAs in diseases are mainly summarized in seven aspects: DNA variation of ncRNAs in diseases, prioritization of disease-related ncRNAs, dysregulation epigenetic factors that regulate ncRNA misexpression (DNA methylation and histone-modification), complex crosstalk across ncRNAs, ncRNAs acted as competing regulators to mediate the expression of protein-coding genes, non-coding RNAs mediated risk pathways,and their contributions to drug target predictions. The generally used data resources of ncRNAs are also listed in the end. This book provides important information on the current progress in the fast-moving fields of bioinformatics for regulatory ncRNAs. It provides a timely and useful reference for computational biologists, specifically with RNA interests, and other related areas.Prof. Xia Li is a Professor and the Dean of College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, China. Dr. Yun Xiao, Dr. Juan Xu, Dr. Shangwei Ning and Dr. Yunpeng Zhang are from College of Bioinformatics Science and Technology, Harbin Medical University, China.

The book is about the economic practices of traders and businesspeople from the Caucasus and China who work in local bazaars in Tbilisi and Beijing. It describes their activities, their motivations, their socio-cultural backgrounds, their work environments, and their interactions with one another. Contributing to a broader debate on the nature and role of informal economic practices in the post-Soviet periphery and processes of "e;globalization from below"e;, the book aims at providing a thick description of the embeddedness of bazaar traders' economic behaviors and strategies in local and global political, economic, and cultural contexts, markets and supply chains.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 17th Chinese Conference, CCBR 2023, held in Xuzhou, China, during December 1¿3, 2023.The 41 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions. The volume is divided in topical sections named: Fingerprint, Palmprint and Vein Recognition; Face Detection, Recognition and Tracking; Affective Computing and Human-Computer Interface; Trustworthy, Privacy and Personal Data Security; Medical and Other Applications.

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.

This book provides insights into recent developments in the use of mulching in agroecosystems with emphasis on the major pros and cons. Increase in human population, climatic changes and agricultural intensification have put enormous pressure on soil and water resources. As a result, we are confronted with challenges to enhance nutrient and water use efficiencies and conserve soil organic matter without compromising crop yields and food security. Increasing the soil organic matter (SOM) via residue return increased nutrient availability and soil physical and biological properties. Management practices, such as straw mulching or incorporation, have significant effects on soil health. Straw addition also increases functionality related to carbon and N metabolism via increasing the microbes and thus greatly contributes to CO2 and N2O emissions. However, the co-use of organic and inorganic fertilizer reduces the N2O emission without compromising crop yield. Mulching has long been advocated to conserve soil moisture and increase the efficiency of macro- and micro-nutrients by improving soil physical, chemical, and biological properties. These effects of mulch are translated into better crop yields while improving soil health and quality in the long run. Therefore, the use of mulching techniques is on the rise in organic as well as conventional agriculture. The book is of great interest for researchers, academics, agriculture extensionists, soil and plant scientist, fertilizer industry, farmers, agro-industrial workers, farm managers, NGOs, and climate and civil society activists.

This book presents diverse processes of crafting that bring humans, more-than-humans and the environment closer to one another and, by doing so, addresses personal and educational developments towards ecological sustainability. It discusses the human-material relationship, introduces posthuman theoretical entry points and reflects on the implementation of such theoretical perspectives in education. The practical examples of crafting-with the environment, the material practices and reflections posed in the book, provide insights into possible ways of levelling out human and material hierarchies.  The chapters of this book give examples of artists' and craftspeople's processes of thinking through materials and with materials, but also their reflections on how more-than-humans (animals and plants) craft from available materials, and how the environment and landscapes re-craft themselves through tedious processes of transformation. These case examples are founded on the authors' own experiences with phenomena they are trying to understand and critically explore.This book is of interest to professional creative practitioners, art and craft educators, art teacher educators or researchers in the field of creative practices. It has power to inspire rethinking of present educational practices, to ignite critical reflections about materials and more-than-humans, and, hopefully, motivate transformations toward more ecologically sustainable ways of life. 

This book presents the selected papers presented at the 2nd World Conference on Byproducts of Palms and their Applications (ByPalma 2021), held as a virtual conference on September 28-30, 2021. The conference focused on the byproducts of palm plantations around the globe and their current and potential applications. It provided an interdisciplinary platform for leading academic scientists, researchers, artisans, entrepreneurs and industry professionals as well as palm growers to exchange recent developments, technologies, innovations, trends, concerns, challenges, and opportunities, related to palm by-products R&D, manufacturing, and crafts. As a reference, it will be of interest to students, scientists, engineers, government officials, and industrial practitioners.