Books published by Springer Nature Singapore

This book is a monograph on contemporary utilitarianism, focusing on its evolving path and logic. It describes the evolution of utilitarianism from the classical model to the contemporary model and then summarizes the characteristics of contemporary utilitarianism, revealing its advantages and disadvantages. This book points out that the best characteristic of contemporary utilitarianism is to give up traditional view of individualism and take balanced attitude to the relationship between individual and community. The change makes the goal of contemporary utilitarianism from the pursuit of maximizing the sum of individual utilities to optimal social utility. Therefore, the contemporary utilitarianism gradually evolves a public philosophy with multiple interests structure, which provides a new way to solve the contradiction between personal interest and public interest.Utilitarianism is still an important political philosophy in western society, but its existing defects actually make it difficult to have a transformative impact on western institutional structure and system. The target audience of this book are students and researchers majoring in politics and ethics.

This volume LNCS 14252 constitutes the refereed proceedings of 25th International Conference on Information and Communications Security, ICICS 2023, held in Tianjin, China, during November 18¿20, 2023. The 38 full papers presented together with 6 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 181 submissions. The conference focuses on: Symmetric-Key Cryptography; Public-Key Cryptography; Applied Cryptography; Authentication and Authorization; Privacy and Anonymity; Security and Privacy of AI; Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies; and System and Network Security.

This book provides an overview of the Theory of Practice Architectures (TPA), and the associated Theory of Ecology of Practices, in a manner accessible for a broader audience. The authors are part of the authorial team that developed the Theory of Practice Architectures from a strong empirical base, with its initial publication in 'Changing Practices, Changing Education' (Kemmis et al., Springer, 2014). This book follows on from that publication with a singluar focus on the Theory of Practice Architectures, and shows how it can be used as a theoretical framework for a range of empirical research projects. It first outlines and describes both the Theory of Practice Architectures and the Theory of Ecology of Practices, illustrating them with a range of relevant practical examples. Then, it focuses explicitly on designing and undertaking empirical research, analyzing data and reporting findings using the Theory of Practice Architectures. In this way, this book shows specifically and overtly explicate ways that research can be designed, and how data can be collected and analyzed, drawing on the Theory of Practice Architectures as a foundational framework. It also showcases a range of specific examples to allow readers to see the ideas as they have been employed in practice.

This book presents selected articles from the 3rd International Conference on Nanomaterials and Advanced Composites (NAC 2022) held at Tokushima University in Japan. This event brought together leading researchers and professionals from academia and industry to present their latest findings and served as a platform for the exchange of ideas aiming for further collaborations. Participants from over six countries shared their most up-to-date knowledge in their respective fields covering nanotechnology, nanomaterials, and advanced composites. Even though this conference had both on-site and remotely connected attendees, the main purpose to promote the networking among academics, engineers, and students was fully achieved. This book is part of the effort to disseminate the knowledge gathered during this meeting.The collection of articles covers topics on advanced composites, nanomaterials, ecological materials, energy, microfluidics, crystal growth, and photocatalysis. This representative account of the conference is intended to provide new and useful insights for prospective studies in materials science and engineering.

This book includes peer-reviewed high-quality articles presented at the 6th International Conference on Communications and Cyber-Physical Engineering (ICCCE 2023), held on April 28 and 29, 2023, at CMR Engineering College, Hyderabad, India. ICCCE is one of the most prestigious conferences conceptualized in the field of networking and communication technology offering in-depth information on the latest developments in voice, data, image, and multimedia. Discussing the latest developments in voice and data communication engineering, cyber-physical systems, network science, communication software, image, and multimedia processing research and applications, as well as communication technologies and other related technologies, it includes contributions from both academia and industry. This book is a valuable resource for scientists, research scholars, and PG students working to formulate their research ideas and find the future directions in these areas. Further, it serves asa reference work to understand the latest engineering and technologies used by practicing engineers in the field of communication engineering.

This book describes the fundamentals and applicability of the atmospheric-pressure non-thermal plasma surface modification of materials. Non-thermal plasma modification is an effective procedure for chemical activation. In this book, the principles of non-thermal plasma surface modification and its application to various machine parts are described. By reading this book, technologists from a variety of fields can learn about plasma generation and surface treatment technology, which will assist them in performing advanced procedures.This book also explains the basics of atmospheric-pressure plasma and the principle of plasma treatment in an easy-to-understand manner and also provides examples of the application of atmospheric-pressure plasma surface modification technologies to plastics, glass, polymers, and metals. After reading this book, readers can get the knowledge that researchers need to apply the methodology to meet their own research goals.The book is self-contained in the sense that it spans the divide between the fundamentals and more advanced content regarding applications. Many engineers and graduate students working in this field get many helps.

This book presents a systematic study on the air balancing technologies in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Several modern air balancing methods, including advanced control-based air balancing, data-driven-based air balancing, and energy-saving-oriented air balancing, are introduced in this book to balance the air duct system. Furthermore, this book provides clear instructions for both HVAC designers and engineers, as well as researchers, on how to design and balance duct systems for improved performance and energy efficiency.

This book addresses challenges for the development of a point-of-care-test platform. The book describes printed chip-based assay (Lab-on-a-Chip, Lab-on-a-PCB) for rapid, inexpensive biomarkers detection in real samples. The main challenges of point-of-care testing require implementing complex analytical methods into low-cost technologies. This is particularly true for countries with less developed healthcare infrastructure. Washing-free, Lab-on-Chip, and Lab-on-PCB techniques are very simple and innovative for point-of-care device development. The redox cycling technology detects several interesting targets at the same time on a printed chip. The proposed areas are inherently cross-disciplinary, combining expertise in biosensing, electrochemistry, electronics and electrical engineering, health care, and manufacturing. This book focuses on recent advances and different research issues in the nanobiotechnology-enabled biosensor technology and also seeks out theoretical, methodological, well-established, and validated empirical work dealing with these different topics.

This book highlights sustainable methods with photocatalytic activities to remediate environment and for energy conversion. The related photocatalytic materials are discussed in detail. Some significant photocatalytic applications in degrading industrial pollutants that include different organic dyes, purifying the polluted air, converting CO2 to alcohol fuels, storing energy from sunlight as ammonia by converting N2 to NH3, and splitting water by optimizing the oxygen evolution process are thoroughly elucidated. The chapters introduce the necessary materials and results, leading to a better conceptualization in order to work in the field of photocatalysis. Some related perspectives and outlooks are discussed in the last chapter for possible future developments.

System protection is laid between the defenses for power system protective relaying and the emergency control. Under the premise of ensuring the safety of electrical equipment, it strives to ensure the safety of the system, block the chain of occurrence and growth of cascading faults, and effectively avoid the occurrence of large-scale blackout catastrophes. This book systematically elaborates on the dealing technology of a special type of fault, the "e;cascading fault"e;, in the AC-DC hybrid large-scale power grid. The main contents include immunization distance protection for accident overload; distance protection that is immune to oscillation; inverter control technology to prevent long-term or continuous commutation failure; DC participation emergency power flow control technology used to share the accident transfer overload caused by inverter lockout; and overhead transmission line adaptive overload protection.The basis of English translation of this book from its Chinese original manuscript was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service provider DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision of the content was done by the author.

This book analyzes various properties and structures of ice from the point of view to solve problems in civil aviation. The Arctic zone of the Russian Federation, together with large territories of Siberia and the Far East, is a zone, that is insufficiently provided with ground navigation facilities, as well as platforms and airfields for landing aircraft, including in the event of unpredictable situations. However, most of this area, especially in winter, is covered with ice, which can be used to solve this problem. The possibility of using ice sheets for the construction of airfields or the location of ground-based flight support facilities requires careful study and analysis. This book is devoted to the study of the properties and structure of ice, with a view for use in civil aviation to construct ice airfields and the placement of ground-based flight support facilities. 

This edited book discusses how effective soil carbon management plans and policies will ultimately make agriculture more secure against climate change and soil degradation. It is focused on initiatives to enhance soil organic carbon (SOC) and sequestration by launching different schemes and programs. An approach based on practical aspects of managing SOC in agriculture is provided with clear and concise descriptions. It has more attention to successfully implement plans and policies to meet the required level of SOC restoration. The book is covering the urgent needs of plans and policies for soil management and C restoration in agricultural ecosystems which can be beneficial to food, nutrition, environment, and economy security. There is also providing a roadmap on SOC policies to encourage the use of best management practices (BMPs) for soil health and C stock restoration, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. The book is suitable for teachers, researchers, government planners and policymakers, undergraduate and graduate students of soil science, soil microbiology, agronomy, ecology, and environmental sciences.

This book highlights the capabilities and limitations of radar and air navigation. It discusses issues related to the physical principles of an electromagnetic field, the structure of radar information, and ways to transmit it. Attention is paid to the classification of radio waves used for transmitting radar information, as well as to the physical description of their propagation media. The third part of the book addresses issues related to the current state of navigation systems used in civil aviation and the prospects for their development in the future, as well as the history of satellite radio navigation systems. The book may be useful for schoolchildren, interested in the problems of radar and air navigation.

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive illustration of principle, process and equipment regarding novel hydroforming technology for tube, sheet and shell structures. More than 100 industrial cases were used to aid the discussions enabling a vivid and thorough understanding to be delivered to readers. Readers with different professional levels cannot only get a preliminary while systematic overview to know hydroforming but also obtain practical guides for process designs.

This book provides a systematic overview of China's achievements in eliminating absolute poverty by 2020 under current standards. The book is divided into three parts: The first part is a study of major policy practices with distinctive characteristics in China's poverty alleviation practices; the second part is a study of China's international cooperation in poverty alleviation; the third part is a study of China's poverty alleviation by international scholars from the perspective of international cooperation and international comparison. These reports pay attention to China's achievements and experiences in poverty alleviation and reflect on how to strengthen cooperation with China in poverty alleviation. 

This book provides a systematic review of the development, function, and patho-physiologic role of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) in humans. The chapters of the book discuss the origin and discovery, hematopoietic development as well as molecular regulation of pDCs in the context of immune activation as well as immune tolerance. It also discusses the role of pDCs in human diseases, including infections, autoimmune/inflammatory diseases, cancers and metabolic disorders, and opportunities for pDCtargeting therapies in these varied clinical contexts. 

The book covers several entity and relation extraction techniques starting from the traditional feature-based techniques to the recent techniques using deep neural models. Two important focus areas of the book are - i) joint extraction techniques where the tasks of entity and relation extraction are jointly solved, and ii) extraction of complex relations where relation types can be N-ary and cross-sentence. The first part of the book introduces the entity and relation extraction tasks and explains the motivation in detail. It covers all the background machine learning concepts necessary to understand the entity and relation extraction techniques explained later. The second part of the book provides a detailed survey of the traditional entity and relation extraction problems covering several techniques proposed in the last two decades. The third part of the book focuses on joint extraction techniques which attempt to address both the tasks of entity and relation extraction jointly. Several joint extraction techniques are surveyed and summarized in the book. It also covers two joint extraction techniques in detail which are based on the authors' work. The fourth and the last part of the book focus on complex relation extraction, where the relation types may be N-ary (having more than two entity arguments) and cross-sentence (entity arguments may span multiple sentences). The book highlights several challenges and some recent techniques developed for the extraction of such complex relations including the authors' technique. The book also covers a few domain-specific applications where the techniques for joint extraction as well as complex relation extraction are applied. 

This book examines the emerging trends in vanishing borders of urban local government finance due to uncertain local tax and expenditure regimes. It analyzes the global developments with illustrations from state budgetary operations of the Indian federation. This trend has gained momentum due to concentration of population in cities and big towns as a consequence of globalization, leading to enhanced environmental vulnerability due to climate change. Expanding expenditure needs have not been corresponded by revenue regimes and transfers. Moreover, involving corporate sector in local area preference initiatives through mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an interesting development. It is expected to work as a local fiscal additionality to supplement locally provided civic and infrastructure services. This additionality may also evolve into public private partnerships at the local level. Such development however has the potential of displacing local government operations.The focus of the book hinges around critically examining setbacks to fiscal decentralization and challenges in improving the status of urban local finances to enhance fiscal autonomy of these governments, particularly in Indian scenario. The book also explores the possibility of an expanded role of local fiscal policy in the context of globalization and climate change, besides addressing the conventional responsibilities with respect to quality of civic services.

The ocean is a major source of income for many coastal nations, particularly in the developing world. Economic benefits from the ocean in the long-term depend on its wise science and technology-based management. The intersection of science, technology, and economy are most obvious in nations' coastal zones. This book highlights the need for the application of ocean science and technology for best economic outcomes. It gives examples of ocean resources and the threats to them from climate change and other human interventions, as well as provides information on the available ocean research and observation tools to monitor their impact as well as on the related internationally available opportunities for capacity development.

The book covers various aspects of the management of keratoconus, which is a leading cause of visual impairment in young adults. It focuses on the epidemiology and risk factors of keratoconus with a special focus on Southeast Asia. Keratoconus affects the quality of vision, thereby affecting the quality of life. While most patients present with defective vision, many are diagnosed accidentally during screening for refractive surgery. The book covers the varied epidemiology of keratoconus across different parts of the world. It discusses many systemic and ocular diseases associated with keratoconus.The book covers the newer diagnostic techniques and various treatment procedures for keratoconus, helping in diagnosing keratoconus in the early stages and closely watching the progression. It discusses various contact lenses to improve vision quality; widely used collagen crosslinking, and its various modifications for halting the progression. It also explains the surgical approach for keratoconus, such as penetrating keratoplasty, lamellar keratoplasty and other lens-assisted procedures.The book is relevant for general ophthalmologists and cornea specialists.

This book examines the current status of mHealth development, regulations and the social background in Japan, South Korea and China, comparing it to the situation in the United States and the European Union and consider solutions to issues surrounding mHealth.The recent progress in mobile technology, represented by smartphones and smart watches, has been remarkable. A service called mobile health (mHealth), which uses such mobile technology to manage health, is also becoming a reality. Although the accuracy of medical devices is not as accurate as those used in medicine, the biometric information such as heart rate and SpO2 can already be monitored over a long period of time. Although the technology is maturing to the point where it can be implemented in society, it remains an unapproved service of medical care in most countries. The development and social implementation of mHealth is most active in the US, but social implementation is gradually progressing in other countries as well. In this book, we will first discuss what kind of global and harmonized regulations are desirable by comparing the regulatory reforms necessary for social implementation of mHealth. In addition, mHealth raises privacy concerns in the US because the usual behavior and biometric information of subjects is utilized by private companies. In addition, it is important to note that the behavior and biometric information of subjects collected by smart devices is automatically analyzed by AI technology, mainly machine learning, which makes the analysis a black box.

This Edited book introduces the concept of complex disasters and considers both disaster risks and impacts across the disaster management spectrum ¿ Prevention ¿ Preparation ¿ Response and Recovery. Three types of complex disasters are analysed ¿ ¿Compound¿, ¿Cascading¿ and ¿Protracted¿. Case studies include hazards from fires, through to floods, sea level rise and typhoons are explored through case studies from Australia and the Asia Pacific region. Each is written by scholars and/or practitioners with acknowledged expertise in the field and most chapters are based on detailed case studies of ongoing or recent research projects. The book will be useful to researchers in climate, disaster, or environmental and economic policy, disaster risk reduction, and climate change studies, and practitioners and policy makers applying disaster theory and knowledge into policy and decision-making.

This book presents systematic overviews and bright insights into big data-driven intelligent fault diagnosis and prognosis for mechanical systems. The recent research results on deep transfer learning-based fault diagnosis, data-model fusion remaining useful life (RUL) prediction, etc., are focused on in the book. The contents are valuable and interesting to attract academic researchers, practitioners, and students in the field of prognostics and health management (PHM). Essential guidelines are provided for readers to understand, explore, and implement the presented methodologies, which promote further development of PHM in the big data era.Features:Addresses the critical challenges in the field of PHM at presentPresents both fundamental and cutting-edge research theories on intelligent fault diagnosis and prognosisProvides abundant experimental validations and engineering cases of the presented methodologies

This book initiatively and systematically presents the latest discoveries in the context of shipwreck archaeology in China, telling the exciting story of the wrecks' distribution, connotation and the research advances and empirically reconstructing the development of overseas trade and maritime cultures along the Maritime Silk Road, which flourished for more than 2000 years. The book features numerous high-quality images and comprehensively describes and reviews the development of the methodologies and technologies used in China's underwater archaeology and underwater cultural heritage administration in recent decades.

The 9-volume set LNAI 14267-14275 constitutes the proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2023, which took place in Hangzhou, China, during July 5-7, 2023.The 413 papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 630 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows:Part I: Human-Centric Technologies for Seamless Human-Robot Collaboration; Multimodal Collaborative Perception and Fusion; Intelligent Robot Perception in Unknown Environments; Vision-Based Human Robot Interaction and Application.Part II: Vision-Based Human Robot Interaction and Application; Reliable AI on Machine Human Reactions; Wearable Sensors and Robots; Wearable Robots for Assistance, Augmentation and Rehabilitation of Human Movements; Perception and Manipulation of Dexterous Hand for Humanoid Robot.Part III: Perception and Manipulation of Dexterous Hand for Humanoid Robot; Medical Imaging for Biomedical Robotics; Advanced Underwater Robot Technologies; Innovative Design and Performance Evaluation of Robot Mechanisms; Evaluation of Wearable Robots for Assistance and Rehabilitation; 3D Printing Soft Robots.Part IV: 3D Printing Soft Robots; Dielectric Elastomer Actuators for Soft Robotics; Human-like Locomotion and Manipulation; Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning for Smart Robots.Part V: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning for Smart Robots; Robotic Tactile Sensation, Perception, and Applications; Advanced Sensing and Control Technology for Human-Robot Interaction; Knowledge-Based Robot Decision-Making and Manipulation; Design and Control of Legged Robots.Part VI: Design and Control of Legged Robots; Robots in Tunnelling and Underground Space; Robotic Machining of Complex Components; Clinically Oriented Design in Robotic Surgery and Rehabilitation; Visual and Visual-Tactile Perception for Robotics.Part VII: Visual and Visual-Tactile Perception for Robotics; Perception, Interaction, and Control of Wearable Robots; Marine Robotics and Applications; Multi-Robot Systems for Real World Applications; Physical and Neurological Human-Robot Interaction.Part VIII: Physical and Neurological Human-Robot Interaction; Advanced Motion Control Technologies for Mobile Robots; Intelligent Inspection Robotics; Robotics in Sustainable Manufacturing for Carbon Neutrality; Innovative Design and Performance Evaluation of Robot Mechanisms.Part IX: Innovative Design and Performance Evaluation of Robot Mechanisms; Cutting-Edge Research in Robotics.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 19th Chinese Intelligent Systems Conference, CISC 2023, which was held during October 14¿15, 2023, in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China. The book focuses on new theoretical results and techniques in the field of intelligent systems and control. This is achieved by providing in-depth studies of a number of important topics such as multi-agent systems, complex networks, intelligent robots, complex systems theory and swarm behavior, event-driven and data-driven control, robust and adaptive control, big data and brain science, process control, intelligent sensors and detection technology, deep learning and learning control, navigation and control of aerial vehicles, and so on. The book is particularly suitable for readers interested in learning intelligent systems and control and artificial intelligence. The book can benefit researchers, engineers and graduate students.

This book is about where to go and what to do in Chinäs reform. Its comprehensive overview and economic analysis of Chinäs reform offers a coverage not found in other English language text. It provides an overview of Chinäs development and reform practice, an economic analysis of Chinäs market-oriented reform and a brief introduction to the theoretical origin, practices, and defects of the planned economy. In so doing, this book demonstrates that the key to the success of Chinäs reform lies in drawing reasonable governance boundaries between government and the market and between government and society. It further discusses the basic elements required for modernizing Chinäs state governance system and conducts an analysis of Chinäs reform and development in 13 key fields. The analysis is based on three dimensions¿theoretical logic, practical knowledge, and a historical perspective. This book proposes three elements of comprehensive state governance¿inclusive economic institutions; the state capacity to plan and implement policies and laws; and an inclusive and transparent civil society with democracy, the rule of law, fairness, and justice. Its analysis also features the novel application of mechanism design theory by employing the two core ideas of information and incentives and a new research methodology consisting of ¿three dimensions and six natures¿. This book reviews and grasps Chinäs reform through a qualitative analysis of economic theories and an empirical analysis of statistics from a historical perspective spanning over 180 years. It is proposed to be an important reference for understanding the past, present, and future of Chinäs reform and teaching about the potential economic superpower. It can also serve as an essential resource for those who are interested in China's economic reform and development.