Books published by Springer Verlag, Singapore

This book is a work that focuses on the forest environmental tax. Forest resources have played a major role in preventing global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide and supplying oxygen. However, global economic growth has adversely affected the global environment and has exacerbated global warming due to excessive consumption of forest resources. The functions or ¿services¿ of forests are diverse, but the interest of the citizenry in forest cultivation is scarce since forests are public goods. Concurrently, Japanese forestry, which has played an important role in forest conservation, is steadily declining, and it is no longer possible for private forest operators to maintain the forest environment. Therefore, in order to realize sustainable economic growth, it is necessary to formulate policies for the conservation of appropriate forest environments. Forest conservation is an especially important policy issue for Japan, where two-thirds of the country is forested. In Japan, a forest environmental tax is being introduced as a forest conservation policy. As of 2021, the forest environmental tax has already been introduced in about two-thirds of the prefectures and soon will be introduced as a national tax. In this book, the significance and issues of the forest environmental tax will be sorted out, and the status of the introduction of the forest environmental tax in Japan will be compared with that of other countries. In addition, there is additional material regarding the water source conservation fund in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, a system similar to the forest environmental tax.

This book presents the select proceedings of the Virtual Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (VCDRR 2021). This book discusses various relevant topics such as Disaster resilience and Infrastructure, Risk reduction and structural measures, Evidence based approach for DRR Case studies, Numerical modelling and Constructions methods, Prevention Methods and Safety Engineering, Cross cutting issue in DRR and Infrastructure etc. The book is also a comprehensive volume on multi-hazards and their management for a sustainable built environment. This book will be useful for academicians, research scholars and industry professionals working in the area of civil engineering and disaster management.

This book covers the use and dynamics of potassium fertilizers in agriculture. It explores potassium dynamics in soil, phytoavailability, uptake and translocation in crop plants, impact of potassium fertilizers on quality of agricultural produce. Potassium is an essential plant nutrient that has long been overlooked in agriculture of many developing countries. In most of the agro-ecosystems of such countries, potassium balance is negative because its application seldom matches with crop removal. Agro-technicians lack enough skills and resources to promote the right source of fertilizer at the right rate, time and place to facilitate profitable farming. There is a need for farmers to update their farming practices so as to improve the crop yield and quality under unfavorable climatic conditions. Correct application of potassium fertilizers is directly linked with increased crop yield per unit land area in most of the developing countries. Therefore this book fills the gap in the information and provide the readers with latest updates on use of potassium fertilizers. This book contains latest information relevant for graduate students, progressive farmers, extension worker, early career researchers, and policy makers.

This book discusses synthesis of Gm-C filter for modern radio frequency systems. Analogue filters are an inevitable part of the chain of signal processing in modern radio and telecommunication systems. Among the technologies implemented for these purposes are the so-called Gm-C filters which are built of operational transconductance amplifiers and capacitors. This technology allows for integration of the filter into a CMOS system-on-chip so making it very attractive for application in low-power (battery operated) devices. The objective of this book is to achieve three goals: (1) to fully describe the circuit synthesis procedures for parallel, cascade, and a realization based on LC prototypes; (2) to make a thorough evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of these methods and to recommend the ¿preferable¿ one; and (3) to create an extensive table of element values of cascaded Gm-C filters realizing the best-known low-pass filter functions. The book will influence the design community to embrace this technology even for non-communication applications.

This book is to provide readers with up-to-date advances in applied and interdisciplinary engineering science and technologies related to nonlinear dynamics, vibration, control, robotics, and their engineering applications, developed in the most recent years. All the contributed chapters come from active scholars in the area, which cover advanced theory & methods, innovative technologies, benchmark experimental validations and engineering practices. Readers would benefit from this state-of-the-art collection of applied nonlinear dynamics, in-depth vibration engineering theory, cutting-edge control methods and technologies, and definitely find stimulating ideas for their on-going R&D work. This book is intended for graduate students, research staff and scholars in academics, and also provides useful hand-up guidance for professional and engineers in practical engineering missions.

This book presents the results of a novel investigation into building deterioration and defects in Malaysiäs public schools. It sets forth an in-depth theoretical and empirical underpinning the maintenance management of public schools with the view to develop a building deterioration prediction model of building condition based on factors contributing to building defects for school buildings. The approach adopted is mixed method encompassing archived documentation, questionnaire survey and interview of sampled schools in Malaysia. It presents a number of useful tables, graphs and statistical analysis which are useful in understanding the factors contributing to building defects under reference. The prediction model assists the decision making of maintenance management to be more efficient with comprehensive budgeting as well as optimal maintenance and repair work. The book is of relevance to school managers, maintenance management practitioners and academics towards measuring and improving the building condition in schools.

¿This book examines contexts and possibilities in Aotearoa New Zealand education contexts arising from the international trend for open, flexible, innovative learning environments (ILE), specifically on the pedagogical load. The book responds to questions such as: What does it mean to teach, learn or lead in an innovative learning environment? What happens when teachers move form single cell learning spaces to open, collaborative ones?The chapters provide examples of how teaching in new spaces can be an exciting challenge for teachers and students where they try new ways of teaching and learning, and rethink the purposes of learning and the implications of societal change for learning and what is valued. Examples are drawn from pre-service teachers working in primary and secondary schools and in-service teachers learning to become professionals.The book offers insights into a variety of educational contexts where teachers and students learn and adapt to new learning spaces, and also how different teaching and learning partnerships may be conceived, and flourish. It focuses attention on a range of aspects that teachers, school leaders, and other educators, and researchers may find valuable when they embark on similar initiatives to consider issues pivotal to productive and effective innovative learning environment design, development and implementation.

This book, through a bunch of systematic and analytical notes and scientific commentaries, acquaints the readers with the innovative methods of regional development, measurement of the development in regional scale, regional development models, and policy prescriptions. Conceptualizing development as a regional process is a geographer's brainchild, and the sense of region has long been rooted deeply in the fundamental research practices that geographers are accustomed to. The geographical perspective of regions entails conceptualizing them nested horizontally as the formal region and hierarchical relationships in space with spatial flows or interactions as the functional region. In geographical research, the region works as a tool by serving as a statistical unit of analysis. More importantly, however, regions serve as the fundamental spatial units of management and planning by specifying a territory or a part of it for which a certain spatial development or regulatory plan is sought.This book addresses the complex processes in different regions of the world, particularly South Asia, to perceive the regional development planning involved and the sustainable management practiced there. The book is a useful resource for socio-economic planners, policymakers, and policy researchers.

This book explores how entrepreneurial networks provide the basis for individuals and firms to compete based on knowledge asymmetries. This book states that this is crucial in the increasingly interdependent world where social capital influences potential market performance. This edited book focuses on future trends regarding entrepreneurial networks in terms of social, cultural and market connections thereby bridging the entrepreneurship, strategy and network literature. This book provides a practical way to capture market changes as networks evolve to a more digital format. The impact of innovation and strategy on these market developments will be discussed in each chapter as a way to understand performance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the face of international and domestic tourism and sharply focused attention on the importance of tourist health, safety and wellbeing like never before. This book offers a unique perspective on the challenges facing the world¿s largest service industry to protect and care for customers in a rapidly evolving environment where borders have closed, social distancing rules apply and personal hygiene has become a key focus in everyday life. Yet tourism is a very resilient industry and history shows there is always an immediate surge toward recovery after a crisis has passed. Humans want to travel and see the world. While we appreciate that the pandemic is far from over, already there are reports of pent-up demand for travel as restrictions ease at some destinations and borders begin to open. As we move hopefully toward the recovery phase and people begin to move around for business and pleasure, this book presents the reader with key information and insights in both traditional and emerging areas of tourist health, safety and wellbeing, recognising that the world is now shaped by this pandemic, bringing change, potentially enduring benefits and lasting legacies.

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 introduces remotely sensed image processing for urban areas using optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and assists students, researchers, and remote sensing practitioners who are interested in land cover mapping using such data. There are many introductory and advanced books on optical and SAR remote sensing image processing, but most of them do not serve as good practical guides. However, this book is designed as a practical guide and a hands-on workbook, where users can explore data and methods to improve their land cover mapping skills for urban areas. Although there are many freely available earth observation data, the focus is on land cover mapping using Sentinel-1 C-band SAR and Sentinel-2 data. All remotely sensed image processing and classification procedures are based on open-source software applications such QGIS and R as well as cloud-based platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE).The book is organized into six chapters. Chapter 1 introduces geospatial machine learning, and Chapter 2 covers exploratory image analysis and transformation. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on mapping urban land cover using multi-seasonal Sentinel-2 imagery and multi-seasonal Sentinel-1 imagery, respectively. Chapter 5 discusses mapping urban land cover using multi-seasonal Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery as well as other derived data such as spectral and texture indices. Chapter 6 concludes the book with land cover classification accuracy assessment.

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-¿. 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.