Books published by Springer Nature Singapore

This book is a collection of the papers accepted by the ICIVIS 2022¿The International Conference on Image, Vision and Intelligent Systems, held on August 15¿17, 2022, in Jinan, China. The topics focus but are not limited to image, vision and intelligent systems. Each part can be used as an excellent reference by industry practitioners, university faculties, research fellows and undergraduates as well as graduate students who need to build a knowledge base of the most current advances and state of practice in the topics covered by this conference proceedings.

The contents of this book was created by the authors as a simultaneous generalization of Witten zeta-functions, Mordell¿Tornheim multiple zeta-functions, and Euler¿Zagier multiple zeta-functions. Zeta-functions of root systems are defined by certain multiple series, given in terms of root systems. Therefore, they intrinsically have the action of associated Weyl groups. The exposition begins with a brief introduction to the theory of Lie algebras and root systems and then provides the definition of zeta-functions of root systems, explicit examples associated with various simple Lie algebras, meromorphic continuation and recursive analytic structure described by Dynkin diagrams, special values at integer points, functional relations, and the background given by the action of Weyl groups. In particular, an explicit form of Witten¿s volume formula is provided. It is shown that various relations among special values of Euler¿Zagier multiple zeta-functions¿which usually are called multiple zeta values (MZVs) and are quite important in connection with Zagier¿s conjecture¿are just special cases of various functional relations among zeta-functions of root systems. The authors further provide other applications to the theory of MZVs and also introduce generalizations with Dirichlet characters, and with certain congruence conditions. The book concludes with a brief description of other relevant topics.

This book comprises the select proceedings of the International Conference in Power, Energy, Control, Signals and Systems (IPECS) 2022. The book focuses on intelligent solutions for smart grids and smart cities. The content of this book is designed to develop many innovative ideas for an energy-efficient and sustainable future. It focuses on recent technological advances and challenges in the field of grid integration of renewable energy resources, AI/ML in power and energy systems, security enhancement of power systems/electronics using advanced ML techniques for integration of renewable energies, electric vehicle-energy storage, and battery charging technologies, etc. The book also covers the latest advances especially in instrumentation and control in smart grid applications ¿Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems, power semiconductor device technology leading to improvements in power losses for power electronic systems, economic and sustainable design of smart cities-security and data privacy in smart cities, lighting, and illumination. This book proves to be a valuable resource for those in academia and industry.

This book is a companion to Political Debasement: Incivility, Contempt, and Humiliation in Parliamentary and Public Discourse. It brings together interdisciplinary contributions to provide a comprehensive and detailed exploration of the nature, function, and effect of debasement language used by selected political leaders in Western and non-Western countries. Among them are Donald Trump (in the USA), Recep Tayyip Erdöan (Turkey), Rodrigo Roa Duterte (Philippines), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Abe Shinzô (Japan), Pauline Hanson (Australia), Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Greece), Geert Wilders (the Netherlands), Beppe Grillo (Italy), and Santiago Abascal (Spain). Chapters focus specifically on the language of these leaders while examining debasement discourse from narrow and broad perspectives. The former includes the use of crude or abusive language (e.g., curses, obscenity, and swearing) to demean, humiliate, mock, insult, or belittle, based on the actual or perceived object or entity (e.g., race, religion, national, gender identity, or sexual orientation); the latter includes the use of devious or indirect irony, sarcasm, cynicism, ridicule, subtlety, and understatement to degrade and discredit other individuals or groups. The book represents the collective wisdom of scholars and researchers, experts in fields such as communication, political science, international relations, and social and political psychology. Cumulatively, the authors develop a global analysis of debasement discourse in societies from West to East and offer a cutting-edge approach to expand a framework assessing the role and effect of such rhetoric in contemporary politics.

Higher education has undergone a massive transformation in teaching and learning in a very short period of time since the onset of Covid-19. Students, teachers and universities have had to adopt online and blended learning, often with little or no experience or models of good practice to draw upon. It is clear that blended and online learning are here to stay. This book draws on research from universities that have adopted online and blended learning to facilitate the expansion and diversification of their intake; which resulted in considerable experience and expertise in online and blended teaching. The book describes a model, tested with qualitative and quantitative data, which shows how teachers can support the retention and success of online and blended learners with four high-quality pedagogical elements: bite-sized videos of interest and relevance; learning materials that are well organised and provide a clear learning roadmap; discussion forums which are set up and moderatedso as to result in lively student-student and student-teacher interaction; and, online teachers being approachable and responsive to communication with individual students through email, phone and online communication platforms. This model is explained and profusely illustrated with examples from the teaching of award-winning teachers. This book introduces the concept of a spectrum from traditional to contemporary models of admission and course delivery in higher education. It explains how universities which have adopted a contemporary model, with high levels of blended and online learning, have been able to expand their intake and markedly diversify the student body. It discusses how to support the retention and success of online and blended learners. Student support services are examined from the perspectives of service providers and online and blended learners and the case is made for support services being aligned with student needs. The book has a discussion of university management systems which utilise feedback at all levels to improve alignment between support service provision and student needs.

This book is intended for researchers interested in using computational methods and tools to engage with music, dance and theatre. The chapters have evolved out of presentations and deliberations at an international workshop entitled Computer Assisted Music and Dramatics: Possibilities and Challenges organized by University of Mumbai in honour of Professor Hari Sahasrabuddhe, a renowned educator and a pioneering computational musicologist (CM) of Indian classical music.The workshop included contributions from CM as well as musicians with a special focus on South Asian arts. The case studies and reflective essays here are based on analyses of genres, practices and theoretical constructs modelled computationally. They offer a balanced and complementary perspective to help innovation in the synthesis of music by extracting information from recorded performances. This material would be of interest to scholars of the sciences and humanities and facilitate exchanges and generation of ideas.

This book investigates in detail cutting-edge technologies of underactuated manipulator control, which is a frontier topic in robotics that possesses great significance in energy conservation as well as fault tolerance for industrial applications. It is also the crucial technology associated with systems in special environments, including underwater or aerospace environments. So far, the topic of underactuated manipulator control has attracted engineers and scientists from various disciplines, such as applied physics, material, automation and robotics. Pursuing a holistic approach, the book establishes a fundamental framework for this topic, while emphasizing the importance of design and optimization in the control of underactuated manipulators. Chapters of the book cover a wide variety of manipulator systems, including vertical underactuated manipulator, planar underactuated manipulator with first-order nonholonomic constraint, planar underactuated manipulator with second-order nonholonomic constraint and flexible underactuated manipulator. The book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students that are interested in underactuated manipulators, researchers that investigate the design and optimization for controllers of underactuated manipulators and engineers working with underactuated systems.

This book aims to interpret Chinäs property-rights reform since 1978 on theory level. Property-rights reform is no doubt the essential for economic system reform, which led to Chinäs economic miracle in the past 40 years. Neither modern property-rights theory nor Marxism can explain all issues around Chinese complex economic system reform. The book sheds light on the theory development through comparative study and China-focused research.

This book gathers a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the 4th Big Data Analytics for Cyber-Physical System in Smart City (BDCPS 2022) conference, held in Bangkok, Thailand, on December 16¿17. The contributions, prepared by an international team of scientists and engineers, cover the latest advances and challenges made in the field of big data analytics methods and approaches for the data-driven co-design of communication, computing, and control for smart cities. Given its scope, it offers a valuable resource for all researchers and professionals interested in big data, smart cities, and cyber-physical systems.

This book presents peer-reviewed articles from the 1st International Conference on New Energy (ICNE 2022), held on 1¿2 December at Sarawak in Malaysia. This book highlights the current trends/studies on fundamental of hydrogen technologies and the application of hydrogen as the new sustainable renewable energy. Topics included but not limited to are: hydrogen production, its storage and transportation, and hydrogen utilization. This book contributes in making green hydrogen competitive and ready for a scale up in the 2030s, towards the objective of reaching net zero emissions by 2050

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Forum on Digital Multimedia Communication, IFTC 2022, held in Shanghai, China, December 8¿9, 2022.The 40 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 112 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Computer Vision; Image Analysis; Quality Assessment; Video Processing; Machine Learning; and Big data.

This book helps us to understand the importance of the microbiome associated with finfish and shellfish inhabiting different locations and varied environmental and biological situations. It covers modern molecular tools for identifying microbiome composition and their precise identification at the species level. The book also covers the molecular structural composition of individual microbes, metabolite resources from microbiome species, their functional properties, and production aspects. Notable, the book covers the microbiome applications in the gut systems of finfish and shellfish to the digestion, nutrition, growth, reproduction, immune system, and vulnerability of the host to diseases. It also reviews diversity and functional properties, relationships with diseases, health status, data on species-specific metagenomics, and probiotic research. It highlights the relevance of microbial communities for the development of new and innovative bio-products to build bio and pharmaceuticalindustries, including aquaculture. This book is an invaluable source for researchers and professionals involved in fishery science, fisheries and aquaculture, fish biotechnology, and fish microbiology and pathology

This book is a survey of the field of development studies from a political economy perspective. It first reviews the academic literature on development and highlights the fundamental importance of institutions and social values, over and above other alternative theories, as determinants in long-run development. In this context, the book draws from the works of Nobel Laureates Douglass North, F.A. Hayek and Elinor Ostrom, and argues that the ingredients of property rights, the rule of law, and market freedoms are essential in generating socio-economic progress. Successful reforms however are not simply a function of constructing formal institutions, but must cohere with the social values, norms, and cultural commitments of local communities. It is in this spirit that the book theorises on the oft-neglected role that political entrepreneurs play in driving endogenous institutional change. Specifically, this book integrates the theoretical discussion on market-driven development with a range of case studies from around the world, featuring the bottom-up efforts of local change agents to pursue institutional reforms and changes in social opinion.

This book gathers high-quality papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on Smart Trends in Computing and Communications (SmartCom 2022), organized by Global Knowledge Research Foundation (GR Foundation) in partnership with IFIP InterYIT during January 11-12, 2022. It covers the state of the art and emerging topics in information, computer communications, and effective strategies for their use in engineering and managerial applications. It also explores and discusses the latest technological advances in, and future directions for, information and knowledge computing and its applications.

This book gathers selected high-quality research papers presented at International Conference on Mobile Computing and Sustainable Informatics (ICMCSI 2022) organized by Pulchowk Campus, Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Nepal, during 27-28 January 2022. The book discusses recent developments in mobile communication technologies ranging from mobile edge computing devices, to personalized, embedded and sustainable applications. The book covers vital topics like mobile networks, computing models, algorithms, sustainable models and advanced informatics that supports the symbiosis of mobile computing and sustainable informatics.

This book is the first volume of the bioacoustics series published by the Society for Bioacoustics. This volume provides an overview of the advances and recent topics in acoustic communication in various animals. Most animals produce vibrations and sounds by moving their body parts, including vocal organs. These sounds can be research targets of bioacoustics studies. How animals use these sounds, especially in inter-individual relationships, is the focus of this volume, ¿Acoustic Communication in Animals¿. The authors¿ expertise varies from molecular biology, neurobiology to psychology, and human brain imaging. Their research subjects range from invertebrates to humans. Despite the variety of topics, chapters are developed under the consideration of ethology and evolution. Readers will recognize the profundity of the topics in each chapter. In addition, the view and understanding of natural sound sequences produced by animals can vary among different cultures. Research fromJapan and regions that have been underrepresented in previous literature can offer new ideas and unique perspectives in the study of bioacoustics.Readers can grasp the progress of this research field in a broad range of species in one book. The book presents multi- and interdisciplinary topics and appeals to researchers and students in fields including psychology, physiology, zoology, ethology, and neurosciences.

This book presents the select proceedings of the International conference of Sustainability in Environmental Engineering and Science (SEES) 2021. It presents the latest developments in civil engineering that cover all aspects and challenges in civil engineering, environmental engineering and environmental science. Various topics covered in this book include construction and structural mechanics, building materials, concrete, steel and timber structures, geotechnical engineering, earthquake engineering, and coastal engineering. The volume will be useful for beginners, researchers, and professionals working in the areas of sustainable civil engineering and related fields.

This textbook provides an overview of the fundamental concepts in continuum mechanics for application in real material behavior analysis. The contents cover basic topics such as Kinematics¿the motion of any material point representing a material body using the Lagrangian and Eulerian approaches; stress tensors¿stress analysis of material bodies experiencing small deformations; mathematical modeling of material properties in continuum mechanics; balance principles¿transfer of specific mechanical properties from a system to its environment or vice-versa through the system boundary. The textbook also contains pedagogical elements such as worked examples and end-of-chapter exercises which are derived from typical engineering problems, and the solution manual so that students can solve computational problems by running simulations on Matlab or Python on their own. This benefits engineering students understand the concept of continuum mechanics for future analysis using finite-element analysis, boundary element method or any other computational methods.

This book draws together international scholarship on school-university partnerships challenging thinking about purpose and sustainability as well as the power of collaboration in transcending organisational and contextual boundaries. Moving beyond transactional arrangements, the book showcase various models of school-university partnerships, and explores the role of policy, research, and practice, across the life cycle of partnerships. This edited collection presents a strong body of evidence with global significance, providing valuable insights into catalysts for partnerships, the drivers for transformational change, and generative growth resulting from authentic collaboration. An important reference for all teacher education providers, schools, and educational stakeholders, this book showcases global examples of the power of partnerships in an era necessitating cross sectoral collaboration to address contemporary societal challenges.

With the increasing penetration of renewable energy and distributed energy resources, smart grid is facing great challenges, which could be divided into two categories. On the one hand, the endogenous uncertainties of renewable energy and electricity load lead to great difficulties in smart grid forecast. On the other hand, massive electric devices as well as their complex constraint relationships bring about significant difficulties in smart grid dispatch. Owe to the rapid development of artificial intelligence in recent years, several artificial intelligence enabled computational methods have been successfully applied in the smart grid and achieved good performances. Therefore, this book is concerned with the research on the key issues of artificial intelligence enabled computational methods for smart grid forecast and dispatch, which consist of three main parts. (1) Introduction for smart grid forecast and dispatch, in inclusion of reviewing previous contribution of various research methods as well as their drawbacks to analyze characteristics of smart grid forecast and dispatch.(2) Artificial intelligence enabled computational methods for smart grid forecast problems, which are devoted to present the recent approaches of deep learning and machine learning as well as their successful applications in smart grid forecast.(3) Artificial intelligence enabled computational methods for smart grid dispatch problems, consisting of edge-cutting intelligent decision-making approaches, which help determine the optimal solution of smart grid dispatch. The book is useful for university researchers, engineers, and graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science who wish to learn the core principles, methods, algorithms, and applications of artificial intelligence enabled computational methods.

This book highlights different domains of functional polymers from membranes and coatings to composite materials. It includes their synthesis routes and techniques, characterization, properties, and applications. The book also provides the basics and advances about different functional polymers and composites with an up-to-date progress in the field of research and their application on a domestic and industrial scale. The main topics to be covered include polymeric membranes, paints and coatings, smart polymers, self-healing elastomers, biodegradable polymers, food packaging, and functional composite materials.

This book explores the various ramifications and consequences of the violent civil protests that affected Kazakhstan in January 2022. In this compelling study, the authors examine the underlying social and political tensions that have affected this biggest country of Central Asia, especially since its political transition of 2019 and how the state has managed to justify its actions that led to a return to peace. It also puts in perspective this event in the wider transition affecting Eurasia with the war in Ukraine and how this shift of world politics may impact Kazakhstan that required the support of Russia and the other members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization during these protests. This book will be of value for scholars, journalists and NGOs working on authoritarianism and on Central Asia.

The book introduces the comprehensive analysis methodology regarding progressive collapse, and the critical issues may happen in concrete structures. Main topics include: the influential parameters of the development of the main load-resisting mechanisms; the dynamic effects with sudden column removal scenarios; the contribution of non-structural components to improve the resilience of concrete structures; uncertainties in progressive collapse analysis. Based on the empirical research of the author and his team, the book provides valuable knowledge in the field of progressive collapse and bridges the gap between academic research and practice.

This book provides a new way of understanding Japanese management by focusing on the relationship between Japanese companies and their social practices. Whereas previous studies have often concentrated on the uniqueness of Japanese companies' systems (e.g., lifetime employment, the seniority system, company-specific unions) or methods (e.g., bottom-up management, Toyota production methods), this book explains the uniqueness of Japanese companies¿ activities and practices. It especially highlights the day-to-day cleaning activities that many companies have practiced for numbers of years, regardless of their size or industry. Activities that continue beyond a certain period of time are called social practices, and the book clarifies how this particular social practice has historically been formed in Japanese companies and then shows what it means to keep cherishing those cleaning practices.This study consists of two parts: historical research and theoretical research. The historical research sheds light on the relationship between Japanese companies and cleaning activities from a historical point of view. On the basis of old literature and in-house documents, the reader can understand how Japanese companies have positioned cleaning practices in the process of increasing their growth potential and competitiveness and in maintaining their businesses.The second part explains theoretically the relationship between cleaning and management with quantitative and qualitative data from Japanese companies today. Using survey results from Japanese companies, the book shows what kinds of organizations will be formed and human resources will be developed if companies have been focusing for many years on 5S activities¿Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain¿ that include cleaning. This part of the book presents the distinctive problem-solving and strategy-creation processes of Japanese companies in contrast to the activities of European and Americancompanies.

This book presents full history of the origin of Orwell¿s Animal Farm, as well as a translation of the Russuian/Ukranian source work. Has George Orwell lost his saintly luster? In The Never End, rabble-rouser, dogged investigator, and consummate literary stylist John Reed collects two decades of subject-Orwell findings previously published in Pank, Guernica, Literary Hub, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, The New York Press, The Believer, Harper¿s Magazine and The Paris Review. Reed¿s treatment of Orwell is corrective and peerlessly contemporary; he views Orwell in a twenty-first century global context, considering Orwell¿s collaboration with Cold War intelligence operations¿US and UK¿with unfaltering objectivity. It¿s hard to imagine that Orwell¿in our own moment of global doublethink¿wouldn¿t have wanted his devotion to contrariety applied to the literary legacy he left behind. The Never End is atonce a hatchet job and a celebration. Animal Farm, based on a previously unknown Russian short story? Animal Farm, deployed by the CIA, MI6 and the Congress for Cultural Freedom? Orwell, turning over blacklists in a McCarthy-esque act of betrayal? The Cold War? Does it last forever? Russia, the ¿Axis of Evil,¿ and now China? But. Orwell. Course syllabi. Literary laurels. Snitch. Why do we keep coming back? For the wrong reasons? Or because we know Old Benjamin would want us to know the truth?