Böcker utgivna av Springer Nature Singapore

This volume brings together theoretical, experiential, and creative perspectives on the phenomenon of urban foraging. In a rapidly urbanising world, foraging is (re)raining popularity as a way to connect with nature and cope with uncertainty. Authors from various disciplines and geographies make sense of what this means for humanity.Urban foraging represents a multifaceted movement that provides people with avenues for sustenance, socialising, and spirituality. Motivations and implications of urban foraging vary across the socioeconomic spectrum, as do barriers and enablers. Urban foraging can help people adapt to change, and build resilience to shocks, but its spontaneous and unregulated nature makes it attractive to many. Recognising and promoting sustainable urban foraging therefore is a delicate balancing act. This collection discusses the philosophical and practical considerations towards this aim.The book is of interest to researchers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, and creatives, inviting readers to envisage scenarios that are desirable and achievable. It is of special interest to those working in urban and landscape planning, social-ecological systems, non-government organisations, municipal and development corporations, and the environment.

This book focuses on worldwide historical experiences of monetary reforms and the reformist minds behind them: the money doctors. The process of doctoring is the process of listening to many pieces of information and sorting them in order to correctly diagnose the causes of the problem and derive the appropriate cure, if it exists. A money doctor is ¿a person who, helped by theoretical and practical knowledge, advises and/or proposes to act on how to build a stable monetary and financial system or to repair ongoing monetary turbulences.¿ Economists and policy makers are money doctors when their involvement includes the observation and diagnostic of the monetary and financial troubles and the proposition for a cure. Each contribution highlights the theoretical underpinning of the doctors, and the key factors for the success or failures of the reform they have promoted. We collect cases from Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania from the 16th to the 20th century anddiscuss their aims, strategies, and consequences to draw implications for today.

This book analyzes the wealth management of mid-high net worth individuals and families. As China's economy develops and people's living standards improve, more and more families are becoming well-off and the middle-income group continues to expand. After creating wealth and becoming rich, better guarding, spreading and enjoying wealth is not only an urgent challenge faced by more and more micro-families, but also an inevitable need to enrich and energize people's livelihood and the connotation of a good life.Mid-high net worth people are an organic part of China's middle-income group, as well as the future coordinates of many families that have just crossed into the middle-income group. An accurate portrait of this group and an in-depth study of the needs, habits, ways and effects of their family wealth management and distribution are conducive to better responding to the demands of affluent families to "keep, pass on and enjoy wealth," as well as exploring the path of solidly promoting common prosperity at the micro-family level. From this perspective, Institute of Social Science Survey of Peking University has conducted a panoramic analysis on mid-high net worth people from panel survey with more 16,000 households in China after 10 years of tracking and investigation, from six aspects: behavioral patterns, financial asset allocation, non-financial asset allocation, commercial insurance allocation, children's commercial medical insurance allocation and pension insurance allocation, the importance of which is self-evident. As the first systematic work on asset allocation and insurance protection of Chinese middle and high net worth families, although part of the purpose is to explore the demand for insurance protection and develop the commercial insurance market, there is no doubt that this study is an important reference for the government to formulate social security policies and for financial institutions to optimize the supply of family wealth services.

This book highlights the dynamical behavior of self-similar waves in graded-index waveguides in (1+1)-dimensions and (2+1)-dimensions. The mechanism to control these optical similaritons by tailoring the tapering profile is presented. Various nonlinear waves like rogons, butterfly-shaped, and dromion-like waves and their controllable behavior are discussed in detail. The phenomenon of unbreakable Parity-Time symmetry of some of these waves has been delineated for different variety of solvable potentials. Compression of these exotic waves has been demonstrated for dispersion decreasing fiber and periodic management of dispersion and nonlinearity parameters. Competing cubic-quintic nonlinearity scenario and its potential implication on the dynamics of these similaritons has been described in detail. Symbiotic self-similar rogue waves have been discussed in (2+1)-dimensional garded-index waveguide. The book also includes numerical simulations that complement these analytical insights.

This book investigates the DeGroot model in social network contexts, and proposes the social network DeGroot (SNDG) model. Specifically, this book focuses on two core research problems in the SNDG model: (i) Social network structures to reach a stable state (consensus, polarization, or fragmentation); and (ii) the convergence rate to reach a stable state. Furthermore, the authors generalize the SNDG model in an uncertain context, showing the effects of interval opinions on the SNDG model. In this book, the authors also discuss the applications of the SNDG model to support group decision making, including consensus reaching through adding minimum interactions, trust relationships manipulations, and risk control issues in the social network. Apart from theoretical analysis, detailed experimental simulations with real and random data will be applied to validate our research.This book is the first to connect opinion dynamics, social network and group decision making. The resultsreported can help us understand the evolution of public opinions in social network contexts and provide new tools to support consensus reaching in group decision making.

This book summarizes and explores the development model and path of rural education in China, while also describing how small-scale schools can replicate this low-cost local experience. As the ¿nerve endings¿ of Chinese education system, rural small-scale schools have unique important values in guaranteeing equity in education and serving the compulsory education in rural areas. This book presents ten vivid stories of the transforming path of rural small-scale schools in China. It shows how the rural small-scale schools acted according to circumstances to enhance education quality, how they broke through the difficult situation and improved, and how they achieved the status of ¿small and beautiful¿ and ¿small and good¿. It explores a new path for rural education reform and aims to provide some inspirations on rural and urban education development.

The book explains basic ideas behind several kinds of applied multi-objective optimization and shows how it will be applied in practical contexts in the domain of healthcare, engineering design, and manufacturing. The book discusses how meta-heuristic algorithms are successful in resolving challenging, multi-objective optimization issues in various disciplines, including engineering, economics, medical and environmental management. The topic is useful for graduates, researchers and lecturers in optimization, engineering, management science and computer science.

This book gathers the proceedings of the 9th International Conference and Exhibition on Sustainable Energy and Advanced Materials (ICE-SEAM 2023), held on 14 September 2023, in Putrajaya, Malaysia. It focuses on a diverse range of subtopics: Additive Manufacturing¿Advanced Materials and Processes¿Design and Optimization¿Energy Efficiency, Energy Engineering and Management¿Modelling and Simulation¿Surface Engineering and Tribology¿Thermal and Fluids¿Vibration and Control. The content caters to academicians, researchers, students, practitioners working in the field of sustainable energy systems and advanced materials.

This book presents the select proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Structural Health Monitoring & Engineering Structures (SHM&ES 2023). It covers the recent advances in the fields related to structural health monitoring, damage detection and assessment, non-destructive testing, inverse problems, optimization, artificial neural networks, and evaluation. This book is useful for researchers and professionals working in the field of health monitoring of engineering structures.

This volume approaches marcomm (marketing communication) from the phenomenology of markets in the context of the Global South and its postcolonial experiences. It provides a fresh perspective to the current paradigm and offers a fresh discourse on the current theories of marketing communication. The book demonstrates how marketing communication, an essentially Global North discourse reinforcing hegemony, can be critiqued and deconstructed when subjected to postcolonial critical analysis. Recognizing as commonplace, the Global South has either willingly embraced or been ideologically coerced into adopting a Western marketing communication system. This system is evident in its theories and practices, mirroring Western themes, symbols, stories, and knowledge frameworks, consequently fostering subjectivities that lack critical self-reflection and are dependent on Western influences. But what remains more interesting is how such an ideological system, mediated through a quintessential Global South modernity, generates a new habitation of modernity at the margin. Essentially a reaction from the Global South perspective, the book thoroughly examines the realities around marketing communication discourses. The book even engenders alternatives to hegemonic marketing communication discourses and a set of ¿other¿ epistemologies of alternate modernities of equity and justice. From African to Turkish, from Indian to Canadian first nations, Australian Aborigines to Polynesian-American, postcolonial subjectivities through marcomm across the globe get a voice in the volume. The collection in this volume is a decolonizing attempt that thwarts cultural globalization, examines colonial discourses, cuts across essentialized identities, mobilizes resistance, interrogates power structures and mechanisms of knowledge production, dissemination, and legitimization, and celebrates the new-formed cultural identity of the Third/Fourth World. The book is essential read for researchers, students and practitioners of Marketing who wish to gain a deeper understanding of an oft ignored aspect of marcomm.

This book contains best selected research papers presented at ICTCS 2023: Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Competitive Strategies. The conference will be held in Jaipur, India during 8 ¿ 9 December 2023. The book covers state-of-the-art as well as emerging topics pertaining to ICT and effective strategies for its implementation for engineering and managerial applications. This book contains papers mainly focused on ICT for computation, algorithms and data analytics and IT security. The work is presented in five volumes

This book aims to understand biological evolution through a physical approach, focusing on the macroscopic aspects of the biological genome. Readers will discover the connection between genomic information and the harmony of biological systems, a relationship that remains elusive to many researchers in biological sciences.The most common approach to understanding living organisms with physics is to begin with a single molecule of an organism. In contrast to this bottom-up approach, building from each molecule to the whole, this book takes a coarse-grained approach at the amino acid level to physically understand the macroscopic aspects of the organism. The book presents a system developed by the authors to predict membrane proteins with high accuracy using only physical parameters. Another distinctive perspective of this book is that it proposes the idea of a physical mechanism, other than natural selection, that orchestrates the emergence of order from random processes.The study of macroscopic aspects of living organisms based on this concept has parallels with thermostatistical mechanics for states of matter. Just as random processes create order in matter, there are physical random processes that form order in living organisms. This analogy is the central theme of the book.Using terms and analogies familiar to physicists, the book bridges the gap between biological and physical sciences. The book focuses on simple principles and is aimed primarily at researchers. While the content of this book is at the boundary area of biophysics, soft matter physics and bioinformatics, it will also be of interest to researchers and graduate students working on any biological topics.

This book reveals the essence of endogenous or internal contradictions in cyberspace security issues, systematically expounds the principle of cyberspace endogenous security and safety, introduces the author-invented dynamic heterogeneous redundant (DHR) architecture with endogenous security and safety features, and theoretically answers why DHR endogenous security and safety architecture can enable network resilience engineering; the enabling role of DHR architecture solves the problem that network resilience cannot cope with unknown damage, lacks structural gain, and cannot quantify design measures. This book analyses the systematic security gains that DHR architecture enabling network resilience engineering can bring in the four purpose dimensions of prevention, defense, recovery and adaptation; gives an application example of DHR endogenous security and safety architecture enabling network resilience engineering; introduces the research and exploration of endogenous security and safety theory in wireless communication security, artificial intelligence security and other derivative application fields; and uses rich application examples. It shows that the endogenous security and safety architecture enabling network resilience engineering not only is very necessary but also has universal application significance. This book is suitable for postgraduate teaching materials or reference books of related disciplines, such as cybersecurity, network resilience engineering, confidential computing/trusted computing, information physical systems/industrial control, etc.

This book provides an overview of the futuristic healthcare ecosystem, covering numerous beneficial medical devices such as tele healthcare kiosks 101 and 201, JEE-1 (Automatic ambu-bag), medical rambler, surgical snorkel masks, metallo surfactants, etc., to improve the healthcare sector. It aids medical practitioners in understanding the advantages of accessible, affordable, and sustainable healthcare innovations, offering insights into groundbreaking technologies that can revolutionize healthcare. Each chapter addresses significant challenges in healthcare, also discussing the integration of technology and its potential benefits. The book also provides a deeper understanding of these transformative devices, exploring accessibility to ensure care for all, regardless of geographic or economic constraints. Additionally, it explains how sustainable devices can reduce environmental impact and cut long-term costs for healthcare institutions, providers and seekers.The book is relevant for medical practitioners, engineers, healthcare institutes, researchers, scientists, industry partners, students, and common people to understand the power of innovative devices for efficient patient care.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the performance evaluation of UAV communication systems, using stochastic geometry to explore the impact of the random positions of UAVs on transmission performance. The book focuses on engineering practice, with both modeling and analysis of UAV communication systems. It offers an in-depth study of several important UAV communication application scenarios, including UAV-terrestrial communication, UAV-to-UAV communication, satellite-UAV communication, and UAV relay communication.One of the key features of the book is its systematic approach to addressing UAV communication issues and providing practical insights. The book is especially useful for readers interested in learning how to model and analyze the performance of UAV communications systems. It will benefit researchers, engineers, and graduate students in the fields of wireless communications, signal processing, and related areas.

This book discusses various aspects of bioinspired technologies but with an additional emphasis on the medical science, starting from the popular article on neurobiology to pure biophysics that ends with the superintelligence of biological systems that could be reverse engineered. It covers eight different aspects of natural intelligence, starting from the fundamental electromagnetic properties of a protein to the vibrations and the resonance of the entire biomaterial system. It also covers a wide spectrum of hierarchical communication among different biological systems for intelligence and then medical science is applied.

This book provides a systematic study on the security of deep learning. With its powerful learning ability, deep learning is widely used in CV, FL, GNN, RL, and other scenarios. However, during the process of application, researchers have revealed that deep learning is vulnerable to malicious attacks, which will lead to unpredictable consequences. Take autonomous driving as an example, there were more than 12 serious autonomous driving accidents in the world in 2018, including Uber, Tesla and other high technological enterprises. Drawing on the reviewed literature, we need to discover vulnerabilities in deep learning through attacks, reinforce its defense, and test model performance to ensure its robustness. Attacks can be divided into adversarial attacks and poisoning attacks. Adversarial attacks occur during the model testing phase, where the attacker obtains adversarial examples by adding small perturbations. Poisoning attacks occur during the model training phase, wherethe attacker injects poisoned examples into the training dataset, embedding a backdoor trigger in the trained deep learning model. An effective defense method is an important guarantee for the application of deep learning. The existing defense methods are divided into three types, including the data modification defense method, model modification defense method, and network add-on method. The data modification defense method performs adversarial defense by fine-tuning the input data. The model modification defense method adjusts the model framework to achieve the effect of defending against attacks. The network add-on method prevents the adversarial examples by training the adversarial example detector.Testing deep neural networks is an effective method to measure the security and robustness of deep learning models. Through test evaluation, security vulnerabilities and weaknesses in deep neural networks can be identified. By identifying and fixing these vulnerabilities, the security and robustness of the model can be improved. Our audience includes researchers in the field of deep learning security, as well as software development engineers specializing in deep learning.

This book reviews the potential of metallodrugs against different cancer. It summarizes the classification of metal-based anti-cancer drugs, their plausible biochemical and mechanistic pathways, combining drug strategies for hitting multiple therapeutic targets at the intracellular level, and advanced drug delivery strategies. The book covers the metallodrugs for the efficacious treatment of diverse cancerous strains and recent advances in drug delivery strategies that are used for developing these metal-based therapeutics as potent anticancer agents in vitro and in vivo. The book also covers different biophysical and analytical techniques for studying metal-ligand and metal-macromolecular interactions. The book further presents the recent examples of metallomics studies on the different types of cell death induced by metal-based anticancer drugs, especially on the three major forms of programmed cell death (PCD) in mammalian cells: apoptosis, autophagy, and regulated necrosis, alsocalled necroptosis. Lastly, the book explores the modulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by metallodrugs.

This book presents peer-reviewed articles from the 8th International Conference on Space Science and Communication (IConSpace 2023), held at Penang in Malaysia. It addresses complications of ground-breaking initiatives and solutions for space science and communications research, telecommunications, and meteorology. With the theme Advanced Space Technology: Accelerating Global Agenda will provide valid information to understand trends, evaluate needs, and create global development policies and programs in the best interest of all. It brings together researchers, engineers, geospatialist, meteorologists, astronomers, and practitioners in order to present the latest applications in space science, telecommunications, meteorology, remote sensing, and related fields.

This book provides the reader with the latest research on vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy including its useful features and applications to many fields. The book starts from an unresolved question in gel chemistry of how component molecules are organized in the flexible fibrils of gels. VCD spectroscopy was successful in giving a clear answer to this mystery. The book also describes a key aspect of this technique lay in the fact that VCD signals were remarkably enhanced when chiral molecules formed a stereoregular molecular array over a few hundred nanometers. VCD spectroscopy was also applied to other topics involving chiral molecules such as the chiral discrimination mechanism in heterogeneous asymmetric catalysis and the build-up of supramolecular chirality in molecular crystals. Furthermore, the book covers the recent instrument developments leading to multi-dimensional VCD measurements with the coordinates of wavenumber, space and time. This progress has opened up new biological and medical applications such as the heterogenous distributions of protein domains in insect wings and the quality control of chiral drugs. The last part of the book presents the possibility of medical diagnosis of Alzheimer¿s disease through multi-dimensional VCD analyses. This book appeals not only to researchers and students who study spectroscopy but also to ones in catalysis, biology and medicine as users of the VCD methods.

This book covers the merits and demerits of advanced composite materials with regard to their applications for earthquake-resistant applications. The chapters in the book are divided into the following main topics: (a) the processing and fabrication of fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials, (b) the mechanical characteristics of materials, (c) the design of strengthening and reinforcing systems for earthquake resistance of the deficient structural system, and (d) design of new earthquake-resistant structures using advanced composite materials. The chapters present experimental tests and numerical modeling of responses of various kinds of structural elements for predicting the load versus deflection response, energy absorption capacity, ductility index, energy ratios, failure modes, and load capacity. It also looks at different kinds of composite systems and their hybrid or functionally graded composites using advanced composite materials, such as carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP), glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP), aramid fiber-reinforced polymer (AFRP), basalt fiber-reinforced polymer (BFRP), and natural fiber-reinforced polymer (NFRP). The results presented in this book will be of high interest to scientists, researchers, students, and engineers working in the fields of advanced composite materials such as FRPs and other forms of composites for seismic retrofitting and strengthening of deficient structures. This book is helpful for teachers and (undergraduate, Master, and Ph.D.) students to develop a fundamental understanding of the design of earthquake-resistant design of structures (such as buildings, bridges, and industrial structures) using lightweight, durable, and sustainable FRP materials.

Kolmogorov equations are a fundamental bridge between the theory of partial differential equations and that of stochastic differential equations that arise in several research fields.This volume collects a selection of the talks given at the Cortona meeting by experts in both fields, who presented the most recent developments of the theory. Particular emphasis has been given to degenerate partial differential equations, Itô processes, applications to kinetic theory and to finance.

This book aims at bringing out comprehensive information on cropping systems modelling in the world. The major focus of this book is to address the integration of soil, plant and environmental interactions for climate smart agriculture. This book covers aspects of application of Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) for climate smart agriculture. Step-by-step details of application of modelling approaches used for various cropping systems under changing climate are provided which are being adopted by farmers in the world. The book is enriched with figures or diagrams to show the various mechanisms involved to support the decision making for climate change adaptations. Essential information is given regarding crop models calibration, evaluation and application and every individual chapter is comprised of a specific cropping system. Further contents include integration of climate models and crop models for refining the decisions for sustaining the production of various cropping systems for climate smart agriculture. This book assists the agricultural scientists involved in research regarding climate smart agriculture for improving the standards of agricultural research for ensuring food security under changing climate. This is also equally useful for policy makers being involved in future planning.

This book gathers selected research papers presented at the 5th International Conference on Energy Systems, Drives, and Automation (ESDA 2022). It covers a broad range of topics in the fields of renewable energy, power management, drive systems for electrical machines, and automation. This book also comprehensively discusses related tools and techniques and is a valuable resource for researchers, professionals, and students in electrical and mechanical engineering disciplines.

The book presents latest results pertaining to challenges faced by researchers in space data management. There are large number of highly important applications that currently rely upon data from satellites and space missions, ranging from weather prediction to monitoring of environmental pollution, climate change, marine traffic, agriculture, and urban planning, etc. The quality and quantity of space data poses new and specific challenges to the scientific community, covering the entire life cycle of space data management and with a need for an interdisciplinary approach. The chapters written by experts discusses impacts of these challenges, and report activities that can stimulate new research.

This edited volume elucidates state-of-the-art information and provides new paradigms of soil health-based pathways for sustaining plantation crops and diversified systems. The book covers soil characteristics, soil fertility constraints, issues of soil contamination, the impact of climate change on plantation soils, indicators of soil health and soil health assessment, fertility management for healthy soils, soil amendments, soil biodiversity, and biological functions and micro-biome as well as meta-genomic approach.Plantation crops are perennials, cultivated in tropical and sub-tropical agroecosystems in a contiguous area, and comprise estate crops which include tea, coffee, and rubber and small holders¿ plantation crops such as coconut, areca nut, oil palm, cashew, cocoa, and spices. These are high-value crops with considerable significance in livelihood security, commerce, and trade, and are grown in ecologically vulnerable regions such as coastal belts, hilly areas, andregions with high rainfall and high humidity, which makes maintenance of soil health a major challenge. Sustainable agricultural production depends on the health, quality, and functionality of the soil. The book includes technological options to achieve sustainable production encompassing soil health improvement through multi-strata, multi-species cropping systems, integrated farming systems, conservation agriculture practices, cover cropping and green manuring, crop residue recycling, bio-fertilizer and bio-stimulant technologies and organic farming systems.This book is an essential resource for researchers, plantation professionals, educators, and policymakers. It provides valuable insights and practical solutions for addressing emerging issues in soil health management and is a must-read for students of agriculture, forestry, ecology, microbiology, soil science, and environmental sciences.

This book presents select proceedings of the conference on "High Voltage-Energy Storage Capacitors and Applications (HV-ESCA 2023)" that was jointly organized by Beam Technology Development Group (BTDG) and Electronics & Instrumentation Group (E&IG), BARC at DAE Convention Centre, Anushakti Nagar from 22nd to 24th June 2023. The book includes papers on topics, such as energy storage technologies (capacitor & battery), HV insulation & dielectric material, electromagnetic accelerators (rail and coil gun), electron beam accelerators, generation of fast rising voltage pulses, topologies & control schemes in power modules, pulsed nuclear radiation generators, electromagnetic welding, EMI & EMC, HV transmission lines, insulation material, and plasma generators. Papers included in this book impart better understanding of phenomena and intricacies of high voltage-energy storage capacitors and its applications to practicing engineers and researchers and update the latest information on interdisciplinary trending techniques. The book can be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers, and professionals interested in energy storage, pulsed power, and allied fields.

This book is a collection of academic articles selected from papers published in the Chinese journal Educational Research in 2021¿2022. Educational Research was first published in 1979 and is a national, comprehensive, and theoretical journal of education research. It is sponsored by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China and the China National Academy of Educational Sciences (CNAES). This book presents 20 important educational research articles and covers topics such as educational policies, education technologies, teacher education, and moral education. This book showcases a curated selection of education research outcomes in China and aids readers in developing a comprehensive understanding of China's education reform and development.