Books published by Springer Nature Singapore

This book provides updated, full-picture analysis of the laws and practices of cross-border debt finance in the PRC. It is featured by the first-handed experiences of the author's academic research and legal practice in this field over two decades. The author discusses legal and regulatory issues, transaction structures and documentation in relation to two debt finance products: loan and bond, covering the inbound structure (Chinese debtors' raising funds from the international market) and the outbound structure (Chinese creditors' supplying funds to the international market). For cross-border loans, this book thoroughly illustrates the foreign debt regulatory regime in the PRC and approaches the lending by Chinese banks to support exports and overseas investments under the "e;Belt and Road Initiative"e; (BRI). For cross-border bonds, it discusses how Chinese issuers, by designing various transaction structures, enter into the international bond market, and then researches the "e;opening-up"e; of Chinese bond market to both international issuers (for issuing "e;Panda Bonds"e;) and investors (for purchasing Chinese bonds). This book is used as an authoritative source for not only students and researchers, but also bankers and legal practitioners, who are interested in the Chinese debt finance market.

The proceedings present selected research papers from the CIAC2021, held in Zhanjiang, China on Nov 5-7, 2021. It covers a wide range of topics including intelligent control, robotics, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, unmanned systems, IoT and machine learning. It includes original research and the latest advances in the field of intelligent automation. Engineers and researchers from academia, industry, and government can gain valuable insights into solutions combining ideas from multiple disciplines in this field.

This book discusses gerontological issues and challenges impacting the quality of life of older people in India. The chapters provide different disciplinary insights ranging from sociology, anthropology, psychology, health sciences, social work, demography, gender, and legal perspectives. The chapters are written by experts and practitioners in the field bringing focus to new gerontological insights from an academic and an empirical perspective. It engages the reader with the growth of different branches of gerontology along with concerns faced by older people. It brings attention to concerns related to ageing of the population in different parts of the country, such as among the tribes, the LGBT community, and conflict zones. It highlights gender aspects related to health care and discusses policy responses, strategies to empower older persons, the role of voluntary organizations, issues related to caregiving and family bonding, and aspects of social protection for the older people. It offers a valuable resource for researchers, academics, practitioners, and policymakers in the areas of gerontology, demography, and sociology, as well as all those interested in the study of ageing populations.

This book opens up a critical dimension to the field of industrial ecology. The book discusses the post COVID-19 trends in the field of industrial ecology and evolving practices adopted by firms for betterment of environment and society. The authors identify valuable lessons to be learned and present conceptual frameworks to guide future industrial ecology applications. Transforming industrial systems into closed-loop industrial ecosystems dramatically reduces the negative impact of industrial activities on the environment. Therefore, this book is important not only for operation management scholars but also those who are interested in ensuring an environmentally sustainable future.

This book deals with the dynamics of local-level politics in China and India. China introduced new policies to restructure local politics in 1978. In place of communes, civil society organizations and cooperatives were introduced in villages. More changes came about with the introduction of the Organic Law of the Villagers' Committees of the People's Republic of China in 1998. The new local power structure includes state-sponsored institutions like Villagers Committees and the traditional civil society organizations (CSOs) and non-government organizations (NGOs). As in China, local politics in India undergoes considerable changes during the last few decades. Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) were reformed in 1992 with a constitutional amendment act. CSOs and NGOs were allowed to function. Against this background, the present book is undertaken with the objectives first, to present two different models of local politics and second, to compare the two, finally to focus on the two different models of development. This book will interest scholars of rural governance, rural transformation, and the role of the grassroots CSOs and NGOs in shaping development program and growth in the two large countries in Asia.

This book meets the present and future needs for the interaction between various science and technology/engineering areas on the one hand and different branches of soft computing on the other. Soft computing is the recent development about the computing methods which include fuzzy set theory/logic, evolutionary computation (EC), probabilistic reasoning, artificial neural networks, machine learning, expert systems, etc. Soft computing refers to a partnership of computational techniques in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and some other engineering disciplines, which attempt to study, model, and analyze complex problems from different interdisciplinary problems. This, as opposed to traditional computing, deals with approximate models and gives solutions to complex real-life problems. Unlike hard computing, soft computing is tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximations. Interdisciplinary sciences include various challenging problems of science and engineering. Recent developments in soft computing are the bridge to handle different interdisciplinary science and engineering problems. In recent years, the correspondingly increased dialog between these disciplines has led to this new book. This is done, firstly, by encouraging the ways that soft computing may be applied in traditional areas, as well as point towards new and innovative areas of applications and secondly, by encouraging other scientific disciplines to engage in a dialog with the above computation algorithms outlining their problems to both access new methods as well as to suggest innovative developments within itself.

This book investigates in detail some new spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) structures and their applications to antenna. It introduces the working principle and radiation characteristics of directional antenna, omnidirectional antenna, reconfigurable antenna and phase-mode antenna based on SSPPs structure. Especially, the irregular SSPPs structure, such as T-shaped and m-shaped SSPPs structures, is introduced to low-profile end-fire antenna with vertical polarization; the rotated SSPPs structure is applied to CP end-fire antenna and omnidirectional antenna; PIN circuit combining with SSPPs structure is used to pattern reconfigurable antenna; the novel phase-mode SSPPs antennas with multi-modes are performed too.This book proposes a continuous method to develop the potentialities of the SSPPs antenna. And the readers can study the method or ideas of the SSPPs antenna, even graft the methods to other SSPPs antenna.The book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in SSPPs antenna technology, researchers investigating high-performance antenna, and antenna design engineers working on multi-function antenna applications.

Ankylosing Spondylitis is a chronic autoimmune disease that affects about 1-3% of the world population. This debilitating disease affecting primarily young males exerts considerable socio-economic consequences. The exact pathogenesis of AS has not yet been fully understood; therefore, novel, detailed information sources are required. This book offers cutting-edge knowledge about the molecular basic and immunological mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of Ankylosing Spondylitis. It is one of the scarce scientific resources discussing the environmental factors triggering the disease, along with the clinical manifestations, diagnostic methods, and treatments. This book covers the most recent and reliable researches and developments about spondyloarthropathies in order to provide elaborated, integrated guidance on the molecular mechanisms of Spondyloarthropathies. It will prove helpful for rheumatologists, immunologists, biologists, geneticists, and medical science students who wish to learn more about SpAs.

This book highlights recent findings of membrane - based dye removal methods along with the application of photocatalytic, nanofiltration and ultrafiltration membrane including membrane - based fibers, metal-organic frameworks, polyethersulfone, ceramic, etc.  Among water and wastewater pollutants, dyes have been normally observed and detected in various aquatic solutions, including rivers and lakes. Aesthetic pollution, toxicity, persistent, and carcinogenicity are some of the adverse effects of dyes entering the ecosystem. Although dyes have brought a colourful world, their presence in the environment are responsible for adverse effects on the planet. Diverse physical, chemical and biological methods are available to treat dye contaminated water. This book presents membrane separation technology that has been developed in the past decade to treat different wastewaters, and owning to its effective performance, has garnered the attention of academia and industry alike.

This book attempts to introduce the theory of system science and engineering technology into the geographic research of urban-rural transformation, reveals the level-structure-function of urban-rural transformation, and promotes the scientific research on urban-rural transformation. Focusing on the systematic diagnosis of new-type urbanization, urban-rural land use, industrial structure transformation and public facilities allocation, this book explores the long-term mechanism, innovative model, and scientific way of urban-rural land optimal allocation and spatial reconstruction and develops urban-rural transformation geography. In terms of the contents, the book constructs the theory and method system of urban-rural transformation geography, analyzes the process, pattern, mechanism, and response of urban-rural transformation, reveals the evolution characteristics, types, and regional differences of urban-rural regional system, and finally puts forward the optimal decision-making of urban-rural transformation.This book not only provides references for graduate and researchers in geography, regional development, urban and rural planning, resource science, environmental science, human-earth system science, sustainability science, and other related fields but also guides the decision-making of planners and government officials.

The book is a study of the cooperation of Brazil and India on renewable energy. It is based on a research project on the energy sector of both the countries. It discusses the agreements in the energy sector between the two countries and the renewable energy policies developed in four decades. A scientific and technological mapping, a brief study of competitiveness and a primary research were carried out in order to find out the weaknesses and the opportunities for cooperation in renewable energies.This Publication will undoubtedly provoke the reader to reflect on the importance of cooperation given the growing protectionism not only in terms of energy security, but also in terms of investments in new technologies considering energy transition scenario. For Brazil and India, intensifying the dialogue is more than a strategy of visibility and the search for greater space in worldwide geopolitics. 

This book reviews the applications of polyphenols in cancer treatment. The initial chapter of the book classifies different polyphenols and discusses their biological and chemical properties. The subsequent chapters then explore the diverse role of polyphenols in modulating signal transduction pathways in cancer including, cellular proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, inflammation, angiogenesis, and metastasis. This book highlights the usefulness of polyphenol enriched seafood in modulating the anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory cytokine IFN-y. The book also presents nanoformulation of polyphenol as a promising strategy for their enhanced bioavailability and targeted delivery. Lastly, the book examines the toxicity and safety evaluations of polyphenols as anticancer agents.

This book offers a systematic and comprehensive introduction to the visual simultaneous localization and mapping (vSLAM) technology, which is a fundamental and essential component for many applications in robotics, wearable devices, and autonomous driving vehicles. The book starts from very basic mathematic background knowledge such as 3D rigid body geometry, the pinhole camera projection model, and nonlinear optimization techniques, before introducing readers to traditional computer vision topics like feature matching, optical flow, and bundle adjustment. The book employs a light writing style, instead of the rigorous yet dry approach that is common in academic literature. In addition, it includes a wealth of executable source code with increasing difficulty to help readers understand and use the practical techniques. The book can be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate or graduate students, or as reference material for researchers and engineers in related areas.

This book provides readers with fresh new theoretical tools to better understand how sociopolitical actors (from governmental institutions to ecological NGOs; from local residents to multinational companies) clash about transport initiatives. It questions both the dominant understanding of what is geopolitics and conventional conceptions in transport geography used by transport planners. Drawing on a structuralist approach and addressing the capital notion of 'political control of mobility', it demonstrates how transport geopolitics, by being more inclusive of all modes of transport and all scales of analysis, may help prepare transport diplomacy in a time of critical global and local turbulences. It offers a valuable resource for research and teaching in the fields of transport studies, land-use planning, conflict studies, human geography and politics, presenting insightful theoretical material and concrete transport conflict examples to support teaching about territorial conflicts, political governance and transport political geography. 

This book studies the pathways and policies of regional coordinated low carbon development from the perspective of regional spillover-feedback effects. How do regional economies interact with carbon emission? This phenomena, also known as spillover-feedback effects, is explained in depth with reference to datasets and real examples. As China adopts zero-carbon emissions policies within the context of regional disparities, this theoretical construct is gaining utility, and in this book, climate science researchers and political scientists will find it explicated as never before.

This book focuses on the PRC's cross-border data transfer legislation in recent years, as well as the implications for international trade law. The book addresses the convergence of industries and technologies notably caused by digitization; the issue of conflicts between goods and services; and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as well as the difficulty of classifying service sectors under WTO members' commitments. The book also examines the FTAs that entered into force after 2012 that regulate digital trade beyond the venue of the WTO and analyzes their rules of relevance for cross-border data flows and international trade. It asks whether and how these FTAs have deliberately reacted to the increasing importance of data flows as well as to the trouble of governing them in the context of global governance

This book is a unique and original contribution to the knowledge of transcultural engagement between the 'East' and the 'West'; notably between China and Australia.The collection explores how the global system universally interrelates East and West, showing how this interrelatedness offers the promise of progress but can evoke the counteracting trend of tribal nationalism. The book addresses the connectedness of human progress by exploring how globalization creates new dynamic interfaces between East and West and how rather than clashes of culture there are growing forms of reciprocity between civilizations and a shared awareness of how humanity is connected through knowledge and international mobility.

This book will delve into how new ICTs, represented by 5G, collectively empower industries from the perspective of theories and practices. 5G is integrating with cloud, intelligence, big data, and applications to push the boundaries of industries and diversify industrial services. Starting from the background and value of industry digitalization, Section I introduces the new ICT infrastructure for industry digitalization, as well as a new support system based on this infrastructure to enable 5GtoB to bring new value to industries. Section II summarizes the success factors and four key capabilities for achieving 5GtoB success from methodological perspective. Abundant application cases are provided in Section III to explore the adoption of 5GtoB in key enterprises across industries, as well as the benefits brought to these enterprises. The final section analyzes the future evolution and applications of 5GtoB.5G enables a plethora of possibilities. We believe that this book will inspire everyone in the 5GtoB industry chain to embrace 5GtoB and take the digital transformation of industries to new heights.

This book offers a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach to understand the trends and issues of development, governance, and dynamics of gender in the South Asian region. It familiarizes the reader with the quantitative as well as qualitative aspects of governance and development. Contributing authors pay close attention to the socio-political and economic developments in South Asia in their respective chapters. The book is divided into four parts. The first part analyzes the social and economic development of South Asia in the context of human development, state apparatus, and migration. The second part focuses on issues of good governance and human rights. Issues related to minorities and corporate governance are also discussed specifically. The third part deals with the role of media and literature in the development narratives of South Asia. The last part highlights the inter-linkages between gender narratives and development. It is a must-read for those interested in understanding the socio-economic fabrics, political dynamics, and trajectory of development in South Asia.

This book presents state of the art knowledge on diabetes in stroke, covering both basic and clinical aspects in detail. The focus is in particular on two major areas: general knowledge of diabetes and diabetes from a stroke neurologist's perspective. Readers will find up-to-date information on glucose metabolism, the pathophysiology of diabetes, the clinical significance of diabetes in stroke, the differential influence of diabetes on stroke mechanisms, principles of diabetes care, advances in treatment options, and clinical practice in the real world. The individual components of pathophysiology, management, and key issues are fully addressed with the aid of complementary illustrations that facilitate understanding of practical aspects and enable the reader to retrieve fundamental information quickly. The book is timely in bringing together within one volume the most important current knowledge on diabetes in stroke. It will be invaluable for stroke physicians, epidemiologists, and students seeking to acquire up-to-date knowledge.

This book is one-stop shop which offers essential information one must know and can implement in real-time business expansions to solve engineering problems in various disciplines. It will also help us to make future predictions and decisions using AI algorithms for engineering problems. Machine learning and optimizing techniques provide strong insights into novice users. In the era of big data, there is a need to deal with data science problems in multidisciplinary perspective. In the real world, data comes from various use cases, and there is a need of source specific data science models. Information is drawn from various platforms, channels, and sectors including web-based media, online business locales, medical services studies, and Internet. To understand the trends in the market, data science can take us through various scenarios. It takes help of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to design and optimize the algorithms. Big data modelling and visualization techniques of collected data play a vital role in the field of data science. This book targets the researchers from areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and big data analytics to look for new techniques in business analytics and applications of artificial intelligence in recent businesses.

In this timely and expansive book, Wakefield-Rann investigates how emerging disease ecologies are undermining definitions of health and immunity that have persisted since the 19th century, and had a formative influence over the design of not only homes, but entire cities. This wide-ranging account traces the links between the history of medicine, modernist design and architecture, the rise of inflammatory disease, the microbiomes of buildings and humans, antimicrobial resistance, and novel chemical pollutants, to show how indoor environments have made us as we have made them. In highlighting the processes that have been missed in designing perfectly controlled interior habitats, Life Indoors shows the limitations of dominant practices, classifications and philosophies to apprehend current indoor pathogen ecologies.

This book offers a new Modular Petri Net as a solution to the vast Petri net models. It presents some approaches centering around modules (known as "e;Petri modules"e;). The goal of this book is to introduce a methodology in which Petri nets are moved to a new level. In this new level, large Petri net models are made of Petri modules, which are independent and run on different computers. This book also contains the literature study on modular Petri nets and definitions for the newer Petri modules. Also, algorithms for extracting Petri modules, and algorithms for connecting Petri modules, and applications are given in this book. Besides, the ideas and algorithms given in this book are implemented in the software General-purpose Petri Net Simulator (GPenSIM). Hence, with the use of this book the readers/users would be able to know that real-life discrete event systems could be modeled, analyzed, and performance-optimized with GPenSIM.

This book addresses questions about theories of heritage, its methodologies of research, and where its boundaries lie with tourism, urban development, post-disaster recovery, collective identities, memory, or conflict. This book is a collection of heritage studies from a critical perspective as a product of the 2018 ACHS (Association of Critical Heritage Studies) Conference in Hangzhou, the largest conference of its kind in Asia. The contributors cover a wide spectrum of issues in heritage studies, such as heritage management, accessibility to heritage, heritage conservation and heritage policy, and heritage representation. It also examines the various contexts within which heritage emerges and how heritage is constructed within that context. Analyses are based on not only representations of heritage but also on the performativity. Explorations touch upon community involvement, landscape history, children's literature, endangered food, architecture, advertisement, allotment garden, and gender and visual art. As heritage has always been a locus of contested verities, the book offers a variegated approach to heritage studies. It provides students and scholars new perspectives on heritage study. 

The volume on China: The Bankable State rejects neoliberal consensus and focuses on crucial contributions of the Chinese state in shaping Chinese economy. This book makes crucial theoretical contributions to the study of local political economy of China. This book engages with Chinese state responses to challenges China faces in the processes of reform, transition and development of both commercial and non-commercial banks.This book explores Chinese economic growth and development policy processes and its uniqueness in the wider world economy. The book examines Chinese financial policy praxis and offers an insightful account of its successes for the wider resurgence of alternative political economy of local development. Additionally, this book also showcases state led entrepreneurship in China.

This book presents the select proceedings of the International Conference on Evolution in Manufacturing (ICEM 2020), and examines a range of areas including evolution in manufacturing, intelligent networks, bio-Inspired models and algorithms, internet-of-things, and cyber manufacturing. This book intends to provide a contribution to the domain of collaborative and intelligent networks and systems to fill the gap in theories and practical applications through suitable methods and solutions applicable to a wide range of instances. Various topics covered include broad range of research challenges in the fields of artificial intelligence and addressing current and future trends in industry 4.0 oriented scenario, data analytics and big data, operation and manufacturing management. The book will be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers and professionals interested in artificial intelligence in engineering and production management and allied fields.

This book introduces the research background and significance of carbon emissions in the tunnel industry and systematically reviewed the research progresses of carbon emission researches for tunnels, LCA (life cycle assessment) research framework, and uncertainty research progress. The authors propose a novel modular carbon emission calculation method for highway tunnel construction and expounds on the modular LCA system boundary theory of tunnel construction. This method does not require abundant knowledge of LCA modeling, which is convenient for general engineering and technical personnel to calculate the carbon emission level of tunnel construction. The calculation formulas for input and carbon emissions of each module are provided. It also analyzes the parameter uncertainty, model uncertainty, and scenario uncertainty of the carbon emissions from tunnel construction by the Monte Carlo method. Further, this book proposes the fitting model of carbon emissions of unit engineering quantity in tunnel construction, which benefits to simplify the calculation of carbon emissions.This book is mainly aimed at engineering and technical personnel in the construction industry, especially tunnel and underground engineering, including tunnel design engineers; tunnel construction engineers, experts, and scholars; tunnel owners; management departments.

This book presents the progress, changes, and evolvement for apple mechanical harvest during the past decades, which include, but not limited to, bulky harvest method, harvest platform, apple infield sorting, and harvest robotics. Though there are significant progresses in apple harvest robotics, there still is a long way ahead before its practical applications, with existing and potential bottlenecks described in this book. Hence, other researchers would take advantage of this book to have a hint of the apple mechanical harvest history and state-of-the-art progress, so that they can find the room for their new research. This book targets senior undergraduates and more importantly graduate students in the field of agricultural engineering, sensing, automatic, and robotics.

This book discusses recent advances in wearable technologies and personal monitoring devices, covering topics such as skin contact-based wearables (electrodes), non-contact wearables, the Internet of things (IoT), and signal processing for wearable devices. Although it chiefly focuses on wearable devices and provides comprehensive descriptions of all the core principles of personal monitoring devices, the book also features a section on devices that are embedded in smart appliances/furniture, e.g. chairs, which, despite their limitations, have taken the concept of unobtrusiveness to the next level. Wearable and personal devices are the key to precision medicine, and the medical community is finally exploring the opportunities offered by long-term monitoring of physiological parameters that are collected during day-to-day life without the bias imposed by the clinical environment. Such data offers a prime view of individuals' physical condition, as well as the efficacy of therapy and occurrence of events. Offering an in-depth analysis of the latest advances in smart and pervasive wearable devices, particularly those that are unobtrusive and invisible, and addressing topics not covered elsewhere, the book will appeal to medical practitioners and engineers alike.

This book comprehensively outlines synchrotron-based X-ray imaging technologies and their associated applications in gaining fundamental insights into the physical and chemical properties as well as reaction mechanisms of energy materials. In this book the major X-ray imaging technologies utilised, depending on research goals and sample specifications, are discussed. With X-ray imaging techniques, the morphology, phase, lattice and strain information of energy materials in both 2D and 3D can be obtained in an intuitive way. In addition, due to the high penetration of X-rays, operando/in situ experiments can be designed to track the qualitative and quantitative changes of the samples during operation. This book will broader the reader's view on X-ray imaging techniques and inspire new ideas and possibilities in energy materials research.