Books published by Springer Nature Singapore

This book contains selected articles from the third International Conference on Geotechnical Engineering-Iraq 2022 (3ICGE-2022) held on May 29-31, 2022, at the University of Baghdad/Baghdad/Iraq. This proceeding discusses the latest research and studies in geotechnical engineering and all related topics in different fields such as civil engineering, environmental engineering, and architectural engineering. This book gives participants from both academics and industry a great chance to learn about recent developments in Geotechnical engineering fields.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Security and Privacy in Social Networks and Big Data, SocialSec 2022, which took place in Xi'an, China, in October 2022.The 23 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 103 submissions. The papers were evaluated on the basis of their significance, novelty, technical quality, as well as on their practical impact or their level of advancement of the field's foundations. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Cryptography and its applications; Network security and privacy protection; Data detection; Blockchain and its applications.

Incomplete big data are frequently encountered in many industrial applications, such as recommender systems, the Internet of Things, intelligent transportation, cloud computing, and so on. It is of great significance to analyze them for mining rich and valuable knowledge and patterns. Latent feature analysis (LFA) is one of the most popular representation learning methods tailored for incomplete big data due to its high accuracy, computational efficiency, and ease of scalability. The crux of analyzing incomplete big data lies in addressing the uncertainty problem caused by their incomplete characteristics. However, existing LFA methods do not fully consider such uncertainty.In this book, the author introduces several robust latent feature learning methods to address such uncertainty for effectively and efficiently analyzing incomplete big data, including robust latent feature learning based on smooth L1-norm, improving robustness of latent feature learning using L1-norm, improving robustness of latent feature learning using double-space, data-characteristic-aware latent feature learning, posterior-neighborhood-regularized latent feature learning, and generalized deep latent feature learning. Readers can obtain an overview of the challenges of analyzing incomplete big data and how to employ latent feature learning to build a robust model to analyze incomplete big data. In addition, this book provides several algorithms and real application cases, which can help students, researchers, and professionals easily build their models to analyze incomplete big data.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Human Brain and Artificial Intelligence, HBAI 2022, held in conjunction with IJCAI-ECAI 2022, Vienna, Austria, on July 23, 2022. The 19 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers present most recent research in the fields of brain-inspired computing, brain-machine interfaces, computational neuroscience, brain-related health, neuroimaging, cognition and behavior, learning, and memory, neuron modulation, and closed-loop brain stimulation.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems, ACIIDS 2022, held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in November 2022.  This volume contains 60 peer-reviewed papers selected for poster presentation from 406 submissions. Papers included in this volume cover the following topics: data mining and machine learning methods, advanced data mining techniques and applications, intelligent and contextual systems, natural language processing, network systems and applications, computational imaging and vision, decision support and control systems, and data modeling and processing for industry 4.0.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th China Conference on Knowledge Graph and Semantic Computing Evaluations, CCKS 2022, which took place in Qinhuangdao, China, in August 2022. The 25 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 42 submissions. CCKS technology evaluation track aims to provide researchers with platforms and resources for testing knowledge and semantic computing technologies, algorithms and systems, promote the technical development in the field of domestic knowledge, and the integration of academic achievements and industrial needs.

Life imprisonment is the punishment most often imposed worldwide for what societies regard as the most serious offences. Yet, in Asia the phenomenon has never been studied systematically. Life Imprisonment in Asia fills this major gap. It brings together thirteen new essays on life imprisonment in key jurisdictions in the region. Each chapter consolidates what is known about the law and practice of life imprisonment in the jurisdiction and then explores aspects of the imposition or implementation of life sentences that the authors regard as particularly problematic. In some instances, the main issue is the imposition of life sentences by the courts and their relationship to the death penalty. In others, the focus is on the treatment of life sentenced prisoners. In many instances, the most prominent question is whether life sentenced prisoners should be released and, if so, according to what processes. In the overview chapter, the editors place the complex picture that emerges of life imprisonment in Asia in a global context and point to reforms urgently required to ensure that Asian life sentences meet international human rights standards.Life Imprisonment in Asia should be read by everyone who has an interest in just punishments for serious offences, not only in Asia, but throughout the world. It will be an invaluable tool for lawyers, criminologists, policy makers and penal reform advocates in the region and beyond.    

The book presents selected papers at the 9th Conference on Sound and Music Technology (CSMT) held virtually in June 2022, organized by Zhejiang University, China. CSMT is a multidisciplinary conference focusing on audio processing and understanding with bias on music and acoustic signals. The primary aim of the conference is to promote the collaboration between art society and technical society in China. In this book, the paper included covers a wide range topic from speech, signal processing, music understanding, machine learning, and signal processing for advanced medical diagnosis and treatment applications, which demonstrates the target of CSMT merging arts and science research together. Its content caters to scholars, researchers, engineers, artists, and education practitioners not only from academia but also industry, who are interested in audio/acoustics analysis signal processing, music, sound, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The book reviews and reports the recent progress and knowledge on the specific impact of current and projected urban overheating as well as of the urban mitigation technologies on mortality and morbidity and urban vulnerability. It presents recent data and developments on the topic reported by some of the more distinguished researchers in this area. In parallel, it discusses new findings related to the characteristics and the magnitude of urban overheating and reports and analyzes the recent knowledge on the synergies between urban heat island and heatwaves. This book helps to advance our understanding on the interaction between Urban Heat Island (UHI) and overheating as well as their impact on energy demand and public health globally. Exploring the interaction between UHI and energy consumption requires the understanding on the dynamics of UHI intensity and air pollution index in different land use and how such interactions may vary in different cities in the world.  Moreover, this book focuses on different cities in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Asia, Spain, UK, and USA.

This book focuses on China's fast-growing outward foreign direct investment (ODI) and discusses the underlying causes and profound effects of Chinese enterprises' "e;going global."e; The book includes eight chapters to analyze the basic characteristics of China's ODI manufacturing enterprises, examine the relationship between enterprise productivity and ODI, investigate the differences between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises in factor market, enterprise ownership and investment, analyze the overall effect of the foreign direct investment (FDI) and thereby the China-US bilateral investment treaties (BIT) on Chinese manufacturing sector in terms of productivity and profitability of the firms. The last chapter provides an overview of China's three stages of economic reform and opening-up policy in the past four decades, and analyzes the reasons for China's realization of the splendid economic achievements within such a short time and the main driving forces of China's incremental international trade in different stages, and discusses the future tasks that would promote the country into a new stage of all-round opening-up.The book aims to illustrate the evolution of China's opening-up design during the past decades and discuss several most important measures to build an all-around opening-up strategy. Based on these profound analyses, the book provides further policy implication for the sustainable development of China's opening-up.

This book contains compilation of emerging discourses on responsible leadership for sustainability in uncertain times. Uncertainty is looming large at global level due to COVID, climatic disruptions and persisting social discriminations, especially since the pandemic, which have disrupted economies at both local and global levels. Technology was a boon to mitigate hardships emerging from such disruptions. The book documents the leadership roles, welfare issues, best practices and innovations that help organizations to sustain in a VUCA world. Economic, social and environmental concerns and their mitigation as documented in this book will be relevant for future planning and execution for sustainable existence.  A blend of research by practitioners and academicians, capturing  organizational experiences through case studies makes it attractive  for a wide range of readership. Business leaders will find this book extremely helpful to understand the nuances and insights for responsible leadership and innovative strategies for stakeholder management and engagement for sustained businesses. Practitioners would get insights into responsible leadership for improving existing sustainable practices and speed up the transition which is necessitated due to disruptions. Prospective entrepreneurs may find that book helpful for creating responsible organizations which are sustainable due to responsible management of resources, employees and environment. Students and researchers can learn from the cases and documentation on responsible leadership, social and environmental concerns and sustainability in this book.

The book examines, linking two key variables - 'political leadership' and 'foreign policy' - the role of Deng Xiaoping in China's foreign policy shift after Mao in politico-strategic and economic domains. The book finds out that guided by his own personality, worldview, experience, pragmatism, belief and style Deng attempted to resolve the long-standing domestic and foreign policy issues.  Most importantly, Deng moved from the primacy of politics to economic modernisation which resulted in far-reaching changes in China's external engagement. The book's central inquiry is to assess the contemporary relevance of Deng's foreign policy paradigm. It establishes that the relevance of Deng's policy continues in the present context except for China's pro-activeness towards issues pertaining to its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Using China's case, the study advances the framework of understanding pertaining to the role of political leadership in foreign policy. 

The book mainly deals with basic concepts and examples about integral calculus such as indefinite integral, definite integral, improper integrals, integrals dependent on parameters, lines integrals, double and triple integrals, and surface integrals. These basic elements of integral calculus are well presented in this book, and they are indispensable for students in higher technical education to successfully approach other theoretical or technical disciplines.

The book compiles the latest advances in food chemistry. It gives a detailed account of the changes in food components during food processing and storage. It analyses and describes different food components such as water, protein, fat, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, pigments, flavors, chemistry of plant tissues and animal tissues, milk, etc. The book also discusses the effect of different food processing operations on the food components. The book brings forth chapters authored by eminent researchers working in the area of Food Science and Technology. The book is an up-to-date compilation of recent advances in food chemistry and is useful for students, researchers, and faculty as well as to industry experts in food sciences.

The book presents a collection of peer-reviewed articles from the International Conference on Advances and Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning-ICAAAIML 2021. The book covers research in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning applications in health care, agriculture, business, and security. This book contains research papers from academicians, researchers as well as students. There are also papers on core concepts of computer networks, intelligent system design and deployment, real-time systems, wireless sensor networks, sensors and sensor nodes, software engineering, and image processing. This book is a valuable resource for students, academics, and practitioners in the industry working on AI applications.

This book presents a collection of high-quality, peer-reviewed research papers from the 7th International Conference on Information System Design and Intelligent Applications (India 2022), held at BVRIT Hyderabad College of Engineering for Women, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, from February 25 to 26, 2022. It covers a wide range of topics in computer science and information technology, including data mining and data warehousing, high-performance computing, parallel and distributed computing, computational intelligence, soft computing, big data, cloud computing, grid computing and cognitive computing.

This edited book focuses on processing, properties, and applications of bast fiber and its composites written by renowned researchers and academicians. The contents focus on properties such as rheological and dielectric of bast fiber composites. It also discusses its dynamic mechanical analysis, thermal stability of polymer composites reinforced with bast fibers, and water absorption behavior of bast fiber incorporated polymer composites. This book will be beneficial to both the industry and academia as it highlights possible avenues of future research.

Emerging machine learning techniques bring new opportunities to flexible network control and management. This book focuses on using state-of-the-art machine learning-based approaches to improve the performance of Software-Defined Networking (SDN). It will apply several innovative machine learning methods (e.g., Deep Reinforcement Learning, Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning, and Graph Neural Network) to traffic engineering and controller load balancing in software-defined wide area networks, as well as flow scheduling, coflow scheduling, and flow migration for network function virtualization in software-defined data center networks. It helps readers reflect on several practical problems of deploying SDN and learn how to solve the problems by taking advantage of existing machine learning techniques. The book elaborates on the formulation of each problem, explains design details for each scheme, and provides solutions by running mathematical optimization processes, conducting simulated experiments, and analyzing the experimental results.

This book covers broader application of biotechnology for the protection of environment through different bioremediation and biodegradation techniques developed for removal of environmental contaminants including the recently discovered contaminants. The book offers a comprehensive overview of environmental pollutants including their fate, behavior, environmental and associated health risks. It is useful reading material for postgraduate and graduate students of environmental biotechnology, environmental microbiology and ecology. Young researchers also find the chapters useful understanding the latest developments.

This book highlights the role of point-of-care (POC) testing in the effective management of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic with an in-depth focus on the recent developments in the field, existing gaps, and future directions. POC tests are of utmost importance as they facilitate rapid and decentralized testing without much instrumentation and technical expertise. The book describes the current status of POC COVID-19 testing in three broad categories: Molecular, antigen, and antibody. The advantages, limitations, and adaption of each of the POC tests are reviewed while highlighting their clinical impact in real-world settings. The role of POC testing for COVID-19 screening, diagnosis, and surveillance has been emphasized. The subtle difference between POC and at-home tests is discussed while elaborating on the necessity for the latter for enhancing clinical impacts. A spotlight on the influence of variants on the performance of POC-COVID-19 tests is provided. The consideration of clinical implications of POC testing in hospitals with regards to improving therapeutic options, patient flow, enhancing the infection control measures, and early recruitment of patients into clinical trials is explained. Finally, the future perspectives that will aid the research community in the development of POC tests for COVID-19 or any infectious disease, in general, are presented. Overall, we believe this book can benefit the research community as it (i) presents a comprehensive understanding of current COVID-19 POC testing methods (ii) highlights features required to transform the current tests developed during the past year as POC diagnostics, and (iii) provides insights to address the unmet challenges in the field. 

In a context in which explicit attention to the curriculum has been sidelined in universities' strategy, this book makes an argument for why curriculum matters, both in understanding the effects of unbundled online learning and more broadly. It takes up two particular curriculum issues which are amplified in an unbundled context: differences in the formulation of curriculum between disciplines and professional fields, and the extent these are recognised in university strategy; and the push for constructivist pedagogies, and its effects on curriculum construction. Since the onslaught of MOOCs in 2012, unbundled forms of online learning offered via partnerships with external online program management and MOOC providers have grown significantly across the university sector. There has been much debate about the implications of these partnerships but the focus has predominantly been on the engagement of students and their learning. This book takes a different and novel approach, looking instead at the effects on curriculum and knowledge.Drawing on selected case studies, the book reflects on how university leaders and academics engaged with MOOCs and other forms of unbundled online learning in the early 2010s, and the effects of these reforms on curriculum practice. It captures in detail the complex and difficult work involved in university curriculum making in a way rarely seen in discussions of higher education. And it generates new in-sights about some of the critical problems manifest in the ongoing moves to embrace unbundled online learning today.

This book provides essential information on the role of phytonanotechnology in the removal of environmental pollutants and covers recent advances in experimental and theoretical studies on plant-derived nanoparticles. It also discusses their current and potential applications and challenges.The combination of nanotechnology and phytoremediation, which is called phytonanotechnology, have the potential to remove contaminants from the environment or degrade them. The efficiency of contaminant removal can be improved by combining both methods as they are complementary to each other.Phytonanotechnology offers the advantages of increased bioavailability, prolongation of heavy metal absorption time, and multiple metal removal, all contributing to improved efficacy and decreased toxicity in plants and surroundings. Therefore, there is immense scope for nature-derived molecules to be formulated into nanotechnology-based phytoremediation approaches targeting the specific heavy metal removal from effluents and surroundings. This encourages research initiatives to synthesize more phytonanotechnology based uptake plant systems with high efficiency. Efficient formulation targeting strategies and the evaluation of targeting efficiency of phytonanotechnology, conforming to international standards of their toxicology and biocompatibility, could pave the way for heavy metal uptake and removal by plant-based systems.This book serves as a valuable resource for postgraduate students, environmental scientists and materials scientists in academia and corporate research. 

This book focuses on development of blockchain-based new-generation financial infrastructures, in which a systematic, complete theoretical framework is proposed to explore blockchain-based securities trading platform, central securities depository (CSD), securities settlement system (SSS), central counterparty (CCP), payment system (PS) and trade repository (TR). The blockchain-based new FMI has attracted much attention in the securities industry. At present, the cross-border depository receipt (DR) business faces a dilemma between efficiency and security. In this book, the author proposes a blockchain-based new DR solution, manifesting the potential for using blockchain technology in the FMI field. In addition, using Hashed Timelock Contract (HTLC) as the underlying technology in the DR scenario, specific process and operations are proposed for delivery versus payment (DvP), delivery versus delivery (DvD) or payment versus payment (PvP) and other exchange-of-value methods. This book further studies how to carry out opening positions, end-of-day settlement of margin, forced liquidation and settlement at maturity, for exchange-traded derivatives, such as futures and options, under the blockchain-based technological framework. Blockchain technology not only naturally fits into the decentralized or non-centralized characteristic of the OTC market but also can effectively address the pain points and difficulties of the OTC market. This book provides an in-depth analysis of existing specific issues in China's bond market, regional equity markets and asset management market, among other OTC markets, and proposes relevant blockchain-based solutions. Blockchain technology does not change the public policy objectives for FMI. Theblockchain-based new FMIs are still subject to compliance, safety and efficiency requirements. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the applicability of the Principles for Financial MarketInfrastructures (PFMI) to them, in particular, analyzes their legal basis, off-chain governance and system security.

The book comprehensively reviews the role of nutrition in psychiatric disorders. It provides mechanistic insights into the effects of nutrition on metabolic pathways, mitochondrial nutrients, neurodegeneration and CNS disorders, cell signaling, and neuronal functions.  The book further highlights the role of diet in preventing and treating mental health and modifying drug treatment effects. Further, it explores the relationship between nutrition and psychiatric disorders, including depression, autism, anxiety, Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder, and OCD. The book further explores the recent advancements in understanding the important role of nutrients as therapeutics in various psychiatric disorders. Lastly, it presents an overview of nutrients as neuroprotective agents along with the main principles of nutrigenomics. The book is essential reading for neuroscientists interested interest in food therapeutic strategies.

This book explores the linkages among economic development, energy, and environment. An increase in economic activity is correlated with a higher level of energy consumption, which in turn leads to an increase in environmental pollution. Due to the influence of greenhouse gases, the higher the concentration of pollutants in the atmosphere, the higher the temperature, which ultimately leads to climate change. Under these imminent dangers, the role of economic and energy efficiency policies becomes important for ecological sustainability. The present policies, however, in various instances, have failed to address these issues. Hence, this book embarks not only to suggest modifications to improve the efficacy of the current policies but also to recommend to the policymakers, new and more effective policies for their respective countries. The book is bifurcated into two sections: The Economics and Policy of Sustainable Energy section discusses renewable energy policy responses to observed Impact of climate change using DPSIR Framework; the energy utilization strategies for transportation and commercial activities of Charland Bangladesh; the relationship of market globalization with the Indian energy sector; the socioecological effects of globalization from an energy perspective brought to a local standpoint; the seasonal disaster-induced energy consumption strategies of the char-dwellers of Bangladesh with respect to their domestic chores and agricultural activities; trends in GDP growth and energy usage in India; cross-border trade of electricity; and the events that the oil and gas industry has already faced and possible strategies it can adopt to overcome the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Economics and Policy of Environmental Sustainability section analyses topics such as the role of hyper-globalization in spreading the pandemic across countries as threat to human ecology; the current scenario of environmental consequences, and future prospects of plastic pollution; the surface air temperature anomalies over selected countries of Africa; the impaired roles of the female gender in community natural resource exploitation in Ndop; the operational expansion strategies for garnering better output in terms of livelihood and conservation; opportunity for environmental justice and rethinking global community; linking indigenous traditional knowledge and sustainable development goals in the North-Western Himalayas; and recommendations to manage dry forest carbon stock. This book is a rich resource for policymakers, guiding them through untraveled pathways. Moreover, it is an extremely helpful resource for researchers, practitioners, industry professionals as well as students in the fields of energy, environment, and sustainable development with flavour of economics and policy.

This book provides key insights into conceptualizing and contextualizing the education policy discourse model from the perspective of the internationalization of education development in China. It discusses the education policy discourse of international education with Chinese characteristics. It comprehensively covers the internationalization of education development, including the macro-perspective on the internationalization of education development in China, the quest for internationalization at home post-COVID-19, international education development in China, and mapping study abroad policy development in China. This book also explores the strategies regarding advancing the internationalization of education development in China contextually and systematically. This is a highly informative and carefully presented book, providing academic insight for readers with an interest in international education policy in China.  

The book focuses on analysis and design for positive stochastic jump systems. By using multiple linear co-positive Lyapunov function method and linear programming technique, a basic theoretical framework is formed toward the issues of analysis and design for positive stochastic jump systems. This is achieved by providing an in-depth study on several major topics such as stability, time delay, finite-time control, observer design, filter design, and fault detection for positive stochastic jump systems. The comprehensive and systematic treatment of positive systems is one of the major features of the book, which is particularly suited for readers who are interested to learn non-negative theory. By reading this book, the reader can obtain the most advanced analysis and design techniques for positive stochastic jump systems.

This book presents research on Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI). BLI is an aircraft-engine integration technique that aims at integrating the aircraft and the propulsion system such that the overall aircraft fuel consumption can be reduced. In this research, theoretical analysis suggests that the minimization of total power consumption should be used as a design criterion for aircraft utilizing BLI rather than focusing on the minimization of drag. Numerical simulations are performed, and the simulation results are processed using the PBM to support the theoretical analysis. Furthermore, an experimental study is carried out with a focus on the power conversion processes involved for a propulsor operating in the wake. Stereoscopic PIV is employed in order to visualize the flow and understand the physics. The so-called Power-based Method is used to quantify the power conversion mechanisms. The results prove that the dominant mechanism responsible for the efficiency enhancement is due to the utilization of body wake energy by the wake ingesting propeller. In short, the importance of wake energy flow rate in understanding the BLI phenomenon is highlighted. This book will be useful for researchers in the field of aircraft propulsion, aircraft aerodynamics, and airframe propulsion integration.

This book presents the evolution of the science technology paradigm in Japan and analyzes the critical community and local governance issues from the perspectives of the changing risk landscape, Society 5.0, and digital transformation. It also provides suggestions for the future development of a resilient society and community, by drawing lessons from other countries.Advancements in science technology in recent decades in Japan and the world might have increased our capacity to tackle the adverse human consequences of various kinds of disasters and environmental issues. However, the accompanied and interlinking phenomena of urbanization, climate change, rural to urban migration, population decreases, and aged population have posed new challenges, especially in the small, medium-sized cities, and in rural areas of Japan. This is also enhanced by the risk of cascading, complex and systemic risk, which is defining a new normal as "e;living with uncertainties"e;.Society 5.0 is defined as "e;A human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space."e; Society 5.0 was proposed in the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan as a future society that Japan should aspire to. Society 5.0 achieves a high degree of convergence between cyberspace (virtual space) and physical space (real space), compared with the past information society (Society 4.0) that people would access a cloud service (databases) in cyberspace via the Internet and search for, retrieve, and analyze information or data.In Japan, in the initial stage, a great deal of confusion about the number of people infected with coronavirus occurred. Not only made it inefficient, but it did not produce the accurate data needed for critical decisions.Japan may have unique disadvantages compared with other countries. Trying to drive digitization without thoroughly understanding these disadvantages and addressing them head-on will only lead to failed digital transformations.With these three pillars of changing risk landscape, Society 5.0, and Digital transformation drive, the book will analyze the evolution of the science technology paradigm in Japan, will go deeper into the critical community and local governance issues, and will provide suggestions for future development of resilient society and community, by drawing lessons from overseas disaster risk reduction.

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.