Books published by Springer Verlag, Singapore

The book starts off by giving a quick overview of the main phases within the history of philosophy in the Western tradition. It then homes in on the "modern" phase and proceeds to select key thinkers that represent that slice from the rich intellectual heritage of the West. The main chapters have these thinkers' names as heading. The work is meant to be expository and discursive, suited to introduce the neophyte in philosophy to some of the big questions asked by philosophers and their methods of addressing these questions as well as their unique proposed answers. The coverage is selective rather than extensive; and hence, only a small portion of the philosopher's corpus of writings will be hand-picked and considered.Peter Chong-Beng Gan's interest in philosophy encompasses several fields, but his favourite is philosophy of religion. Apart from research and writing, teaching a philosophy class with enthusiastic students ever eager to engage their teacher and challenge him and their classmates with difficult and mind-blowing questions never fails to affirm him in why he's doing what he's doing.

Data is a core asset in the current development of information technology and needs to be stored efficiently and reliably to serve many important real-world applications such as the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing. Generations of researchers and practitioners have continued to innovate the design of storage systems to achieve the goals of high performance, ease of use, and high reliability.This textbook provides a thorough and comprehensive introduction to the field of data storage. With 14 chapters, the book not only covers the basics of storage devices, storage arrays, storage protocols, key-value stores, file systems, network storage architecture, distributed storage systems, storage reliability, storage security, and data protection, but also provides in-depth discussions on advanced topics such as storage maintenance, storage solutions, and storage technology trends and developments (e.g., in-storage computing, persistent memory system, blockchain storage, and in-network storage system). For each section, the authors have attempted to provide the latest current academic and industry research progress that will help readers deepen their understanding and application of basic data storage concepts.This textbook is ideal for storage courses targeting upper-level undergraduate or graduate students in computer science and related disciplines. It also serves as a valuable reference for technical professionals.

This textbook comprehensively explores the foundational principles, algorithms, and applications of intelligent optimization, making it an ideal resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate artificial intelligence courses. It remains equally valuable for active researchers and individuals engaged in self-study. Serving as a significant reference, it delves into advanced topics within the evolutionary computation field, including multi-objective optimization, dynamic optimization, constrained optimization, robust optimization, expensive optimization, and other pivotal scientific studies related to optimization. Designed to be approachable and inclusive, this textbook equips readers with the essential mathematical background necessary for understanding intelligent optimization. It employs an accessible writing style, complemented by extensive pseudo-code and diagrams that vividly illustrate the mechanisms, principles, and algorithms of optimization. With a focus on practicality, this textbook provides diverse real-world application examples spanning engineering, games, logistics, and other domains, enabling readers to confidently apply intelligent techniques to actual optimization problems. Recognizing the importance of hands-on experience, the textbook introduces the Open-source Framework for Evolutionary Computation platform (OFEC) as a user-friendly tool. This platform serves as a comprehensive toolkit for implementing, evaluating, visualizing, and benchmarking various optimization algorithms. The book guides readers on maximizing the utility of OFEC for conducting experiments and analyses in the field of evolutionary computation, facilitating a deeper understanding of intelligent optimization through practical application.

This open access book thoroughly investigates the domain of policy design tailored specifically for micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with a central emphasis on harmonizing these policies with the preexisting social capital inherent to these enterprises, consistent with the mandate of Bank Indonesia to guard price stability and to promote financial stability, inclusive, and sustainable growth."Professor Iwan Jaya Azis has made yet another substantial and original contribution to the literature on economic development ... This study, on micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), is a continuation of his life-long professional career, to focus on key development and policy issues. ... advocates an approach to listen, that is, to talk to the actors in a variety of economic and ecological settings, and to design policies accordingly. All too often, this seemingly obvious methodology has been ignored in favor of a top-down approach." (Hal Hill, H.W. Arndt Professor Emeritus of the Southeast Asian Economies, Crawford School, Australian National University)"Iwan Azis's "Listen and Design" is another great new book of his ... building on its predecessor "Periphery and Small Ones Matter", it shows that the success of policy programs requires understanding the prevailing social capital ... To do this requires listening to MSMEs so as to "align the preferences of enterprises and policy makers." ... This is the third, great contribution of Iwan Azis book for all development economists and policy makers." (Ludger Schuknecht, Former German Federal Ministry of Finance, ex-OECD Deputy Secretary-General, and currently Vice President and Corporate Secretary of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB))"The role of micro, small, and medium enterprises is crucial in contributing to the development process. Early in the structural transformation, these enterprises are in the informal sector and gradually move into the formal sector as they learn more efficient business practices. The important contribution of this book is that it successfully searches for policies that can speed up this process and make these enterprises more efficient and productive. The methodology used by the author is original. ... This book deserves to be read by researchers and policymakers interested in micro enterprises." (Erik Thorbecke, H.E. Babcock Professor of Economics (Emeritus), Cornell University)"There have been many analyses and studies on MSMEs, but Iwan Azis' book tops them all in terms of evidence base, innovative approach with the AHP and ANP methodology something the author has worked for decades, and most of all written with the heart by recognizing that people are at the center of development and the importance of social capital ... This is an incredible reference for all stakeholders from governments, networks of MSMEs, facilitators, and all those who care about people and community centered development." (Mari E Pangestu, Former Trade Minister of Indonesia and Managing Director of Development Policy and Partnerships, World Bank)

This book elaborates on the project of continuing education and training (CET), its purposes, practices and prospects for future models and approaches. As such, it also seeks to elaborate the needs for a means by which this important educational sector can achieve its goals both now, and in the near future. Often seen as a supplementary or additional educational sector, CET is gaining increased relevance and importance given the need for individuals to remain employable across lengthening working lives, enterprises needing to maintain their viability and nation states requiring skilled workforces to deliver the goods and services they require. Drawing upon an extensive review of literature and grounded in a national multi-phased investigation of how CET is currently provided, might be enhanced and envisaged for the future, this book provides both clear premises for proceeding with this important educational sector in an era of growing concerns about the currency of workforce capacities, and sustaining employability across lengthening working lives. It also provides advice on how its goals can be achieved drawing upon evidence from this investigation, and associated literature from the broader field.

This book presents contemporary STEM education research conducted by mathematics education researchers and their collaborators which highlights the important and pivotal role of mathematics in school STEM education. It showcases evidence of the types of integrated curriculum approaches to STEM education which highlight mathematics as a key component and where mathematical concepts can be learnt through integrated tasks. These examples challenge the idea that mathematics is just an application or ¿servant¿ to the other STEM subjects and highlight the contribution that mathematics can make to the understanding and practices of the other STEM subjects. This book fills a void in the current research literature on the role of mathematics in STEM education, provides evidence of the possibilities for designing integrated STEM curriculum and highlights current understandings of the role of mathematics in school STEM education. For researchers, it identifies and elaborates gaps to encourage further exploration in this field.

This textbook provides insights from Asian contexts into how reflective practice is nurtured on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and English Language Teaching (ELT) teacher education programmes. There is increasing recognition worldwide that, given the centrality of reflective practice to teachers¿ ongoing professional development, supporting teachers to become reflective practitioners should be integral to teacher education programmes. Consequently, tertiary-level courses in areas such as TESOL and ELT tend to promote reflective practice, supported by theoretical input from the burgeoning literatureon reflection, much of which is produced in the West. Relatively under-represented in the literature are global perspectives on reflective practice; there are consequently relatively few accounts as to how reflective practice is embedded in teacher education programmes in different parts of the world, including Asia. Hence, this book addresses a gap.Contributing authors from fourteen countries provide insights into the ways in which teachers are helped to grow as reflective practitioners on their teacher education programmes in their unique contexts. This textbook showcases how reflective teaching practices are developed, supported by frameworks for critical reflection and in interaction with local educational policies. These distinctive accounts aid readersin reflecting on the ways in which reflective practice is supported in their own teacher education contexts and in considering ways of enhancing the reflective dimension of their programmes. This textbook showcases innovative reflective activities and can be used as a principal text or as supplemental reading on a range of TESOL and ELT teacher education courses.

This open access book introduces readers to the craft of writing iconographic research poetry in a way that is scholarly, yet playful. By tracing the historical foundations of concrete and iconographic poetry, as well as the development of research poetry and poetic inquiry, the book examines the intellectual roots that inform this unique methodological approach.  The book offers a detailed description of the methods that can be used to design iconographic research poetry. It includes step-by-step description of strategies that researchers can use to create iconographic research poetry from qualitative data. By explicating the processes by which data can be represented in the form of iconographic research poetry and offering exemplars, readers will find specific hands-on strategies for creating their own iconographic research poems. The book contains writing exercises designed to help aspiring iconographic research poets exercise their poetic imagination. It also providesqualitative research instructors with suggestions for integrating iconographic research poetry into the classroom.

This book highlights the numerous potentials and concerns involved with using the metaverse. Furthermore, the project discusses countermeasures to protect any firm from these risks. Insights into practical solutions may assist organizations in using this new business model by raising awareness and preparing them to improve. The book helps readers get insights into technology's future, i.e., the metaverse. The application areas of the metaverse is quite vast, but it also includes security and privacy issues. Addressing the security issues is the need of the hour. Developers are designing the applications, and users are ready to use them, but on the other side, many security issues need to be focused on. Hence, along with the applications, this book helps the reader understand these hidden security and privacy issues.