Böcker utgivna av Springer Nature Singapore

This book uses an economic approach to analyze the socioeconomic causes and consequences of mental health disorders in China, with a special focus on mental depression. Based on a nationally representative dataset, we first investigate the prevalence and distribution of depression and depressive symptoms among Chinäs adult population, and then use several econometric methods to estimate the multi-dimensional disease burden of the mental disorder, such as its direct medical costs, its indirect economic costs, and its hidden costs on social trust and life satisfaction. In addition, we specifically address the socioeconomic determinants of mental health by examining how the relative and absolute economic status may determine people¿s mental depression. Lastly, we propose an analytical framework to evaluate the four major hurdles that cause the treatment gaps of mental health care, and discuss the policy options to overcome such hurdles and to address the unmet mental healthcare needs inChina and other developing countries. The book may facilitate our understanding on the complex determinants and implications of the rising prevalence of mental health disorders in developing countries like China. In addition to the students, teachers, and researchers in the fields of health economics and public health, the book may also be of interest to health policy makers and non-government agencies who are concerned with addressing the global mental healthcare challenges using economic policy tools.

Living in urban areas has long been recognized as a risk factor for mental illness despite the advantages of cities over villages. The impact of urbanization on mental health and stress is significant and is likely to increase over the next few years. Thus, considering the stress difference in the world cities and its increase, urban planners, urban managers, and urban designers should urgently consider it an essential principle in their plans and designs to reduce its side effects.This book is a comprehensive guide for urban planners who seek to reduce urban stress in the urban environment but lack proper training and texts. Urban designers will have a unified vision to reduce urban stress caused by the appearance of the city environment. It will be useful for city managers and policymakers since this book identifies urban policies which reduce urban stress and stressful urban factors. Also, it will help urban psychologists, sociologists, architects, and social science researchers to better understand the relationship between their field and stress relief urban planning.

The book is a collection of best selected research papers presented at the 6th International Conference on Inventive Material Science Applications (ICIMA 2023) organized by PPG Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India, during May 11-12, 2023. The book includes original research by material science researchers toward developing a compact and efficient functional elements and structures for micro-, nano-, and optoelectronic applications. The book covers important topics like nanomaterials and devices, optoelectronics, sustainable electronic materials, nanocomposites and nanostructures, hybrid electronic materials, medical electronics, computational material science, wearable electronic devices and models, and optical/nanosensors.

This book focuses on the real-world application of the Philosophy for/with Children (P4wC) pedagogy to cultivate reasonableness in individuals through communities of philosophical inquiry. It presents a collection not only of theories but, more importantly, of experiences, discoveries, and innovations on P4wC by scholars, trainers, advocates, and practitioners around the world. Each chapter provides readers with insights and lessons that have resulted from the continuous application, exploration, and enrichment of the concepts, principles, and practices that were developed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp into what P4wC is today - a dialogic pedagogical approach that may just be what is needed at a time when reasonableness and dialogue are essential to maintaining global stability and progress. In this light, this book also looks into how the P4wC approach can be practiced with adults such as when it is employed in various settings or contexts such as in business consulting, textbook writing, peace education, and extremism prevention, among others. Furthermore, this book also features chapters that discuss how the P4wC pedagogy can be beneficial once integrated into processes such as classroom teaching, teacher education, bioethics, and employee education. This book provides valuable insights about how reasonableness that is cultivated through building communities of philosophical inquiry in education can be a powerful tool for nation-building and social transformation.

The book presents the select proceedings of 9th National Conference on Wind Engineering. It covers the latest technology and research in the areas of wind engineering and wind energy technologies. Various topics covered in this book are wind-resistant design of structures, climate modeling, applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in fluid mechanics, novel ways to increase the efficiency of wind energy harnessing, characterization of airfoils, modern wind turbine designs and computational wind engineering studies. This book is useful for researchers and professionals in the areas of structural design, wind energy, wind engineering, renewable energy and fluid mechanics.

This book comprises the select proceedings of the national-level conference on Sustainable Waste Management Practices (SWMP 2023). The content focuses on industrial wastewater treatment, solid and hazardous waste management, municipal/plastic/biomedical/construction and demolition waste management, e-waste management, leachate treatment, case studies on best practices, among others for waste management. This book is of immense interest to researchers in academia and industry working in the fields of environmental and civil engineering.

This book has explored in depth the beliefs and practices of foreign language teachers regarding global awareness in the context of a Chinese senior high school. This book defines global awareness as a combination of global knowledge, global attitudes, and global skills for a global citizen to act from the local community to the global community. By analysing qualitative data such as classroom observations, interviews and focus groups with language teachers and linking these findings to language education policy and practice in China, this book has explored how English language teachers teach English language, intercultural communicative competence and global awareness in China. This book will be of interest to researchers, language teachers and students in the fields of language education and intercultural communication. It also provides a readable overview for those new to the field of ICC and global citizenship education.

Since the first works on Higher Education Administration in the 1970s no comprehensive work in terms of purpose and scope of Higher Education has been published. There have been important changes in people¿s aspirations vis-à-vis higher education globally. In parallel, the higher education systems, worldwide, have been undergoing constant transformation in response to these aspirations. From governments, employers and prospective students and their parents, the stakeholders in higher education system are now extremely varied paying close attention to the various aspects of higher education - from infrastructure, on-campus safety and security to administration, faculty and curricula. The present series attempts to take into account the issues of importance to all the stakeholders. Hence the series not only pays attention to the purpose and outcomes of higher education but also the economics surrounding higher education vis a vis marketization. The nitty gritty of running and maintaining a university infrastructure, impact of globalization and internationalization on delivery and demand of higher education, the commoditization of research, and changing paradigms of teaching and learning fall within the purview of the series. The increasing competition from other entities to provide degrees, certificates or other forms of credentials makes it important to have a work that brings all of the elements together to see how they actually interact and inter-relate from a systems perspective. The present series attempts to comprehensively attend to these issues and provide a complete reference resource to all those involved and interested in setting up of a Higher Education institution and its administration.

This book contains selected papers presented at the First International Symposium on Sustainable Energy and Technological Advancements (ISSETA 2021), which was organized by the Department of Electrical Engineering, NIT Meghalaya, Shillong, India, during September 24¿25, 2021. The topics covered in the book mainly focuses on the cutting-edge research domain with respect to sustainable energy technologies, smart building, integration, and application of multiple energy sources; advanced power converter topologies and their modulation techniques; and information and communication technologies for smart microgrids.

This book highlights the novel photoelectric detection technique on derived attributes of targets. Photoelectric detection on derived attributes of targets is a new target detection and monitoring method. It is achieved by acquiring three types of attributes of the target, including those that reflect the essential features of parts of the target, those directly generated from the target, and those synthesized by the target features. The book introduces the classification of derived attributes of targets and describes typical detection methods. Emphases are put on laser detection of aerial moving targets, using derived attributes such as the disturbance of atmospheric wind fields, trailing vortexes, and the disturbance of atmospheric components. The authors also elaborate on visible light imaging detection using derived attributes such as retroreflection and the identification of target carriers. Besides, the synthetic attributes processing of integrated aerospace images is introducedfor the detection of targets on the ground and sea surfaces. This book can be used as a good reference for researchers engaged in the fields of photoelectric detection, target detection and image processing, and as a reference book for senior undergraduates and postgraduates in relevant majors.

This book discusses the growing interest in realism in social sciences of the twenty-first century. The first part of this book provides recent discussions on realism in philosophy. The second part describes specific problems that have returned to realism in various fields of the social sciences, such as economics, cultural anthropology, management science, and statistics. This book clarifies what kinds of movements are taking place and consequently the direction in which the social sciences are heading in the future. Readers would also find that there is great diversity in the way realism and reality are perceived and understood, depending on the objectives and circumstances of each field of social science. This suggests that rather than having a unified view (stance) of realism and reality, it may be more meaningful to value the differences, diversity, and range itself. Therefore, this book does not present a unified view of realism, reality, and actuality. Although the definitions of realism and reality may differ from chapter to chapter, this represents a corner of the current state of the social sciences. This book is unique in that it examines how the issues of realism and reality are viewed, understood, and dealt with in the various fields of social science, instead of examining them by philosophers and philosophers of science. This would clarify how philosophical discussions have been translated into the various fields of social science.

This book explores the role and effect of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) with different dimensions. It is being supported with strong empirical evidence into various parameters of MFIs directed towards inclusive finance and the transformation journey of livelihoods of its beneficiaries.It also incorporates empirical evidence with the perception of both beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Starting its journey toward the path of comprehending how MFIs make their footprint among the excluded population in the selected areas, it incorporates the different outcomes of MFI lending like credit utilisation patterns, income generation, and employability. As financial stability helps to break out the vicious cycle of poverty, this book emphasises the self-dependent element for the beneficiaries and their households. It addresses the important issue of the female counterparts in society. It shows how the MFIs work actively to generate female empowerment from multiple dimensions among the selected communities. It addresses key issues to consider for inclusive policy formulation, especially for backward communities in the backward areas and gives a realistic scenario of the MFI activities, their interactions with the respondents, the various outcomes, and areas for further developments, etc. This book is beneficial for academicians, researchers, and policymakers.

The task of signal detection is deciding whether signals of interest exist by using their observed data. Furthermore, signals are reconstructed or their key parameters are estimated from the observations in the task of signal recovery. Sparsity is a natural characteristic of most of signals in practice. The fact that multiple sparse signals share the common locations of dominant coefficients is called by joint sparsity. In the context of signal processing, joint sparsity model results in higher performance of signal detection and recovery. This book focuses on the task of detecting and reconstructing signals with joint sparsity. The main contents include key methods for detection of joint sparse signals and their corresponding theoretical performance analysis, and methods for joint sparse signal recovery and their application in the context of radar imaging.

This book highlights processes, impacts and management practices of bamboo expansion occurring in areas where it is distributed around the world. Although not conceptually plant invasions, bamboo expansion has been considered an ¿invasion¿ based on its characteristics and the impacts it caused on adjacent ecosystems it expanded into, including altered element cycling, transformed soil microbial community compositions, decreased biodiversity, fluctuated primary productions, etc. However, the processes and impacts during or after complete expansion and the underlying mechanisms of successful expansion, are still unclear. The ecological effects of bamboo expansion are not given full consideration and are not thoroughly understood. Based on the latest studies, this book synthesizes research progress of bamboo expansion effects on the soil abiotic environment, soil microbial community compositions, plant characteristics, ecosystem biodiversity, element cycling process, and ecological effects of primary management practice, etc. This book will provide a thorough understanding of ecological changes following bamboo expansions, benefit the effective control of expanding bamboo with respect to decreased biodiversity and mitigation of global change, and accurate prediction and evaluation of bamboo expansion impacts currently and in the future occur around the world. This book presents critical points that need further investigation based on the latest findings, which will be helpful for ecological researchers, policymakers, forestry workers, or graduate and PhD students.

This book provides a comprehensive summary of the recent advances in the biofortification of plants under climate change and how it affects food security globally. The need for mineral biofortification to eradicate or alleviate malnutrition through sustainable agriculture is also discussed.Biofortification of edible plants is considered the most appropriate approach to alleviate nutritional problems and nutrient deficiencies. In contrast, biofortification focuses on improving the nutritional content of the region's current agricultural biodiversity while preserving its habits and customs. Emphasis is also placed on recent advances and developments in omics, particularly metabolomics and related techniques, to unravel the potential alterations in plants caused by biofortification. The book brings together eminent scientists to present the latest developments in the field.This timely publication addresses practical scenarios of bio-fortified food production and climate change. The book focuses on the methods, techniques, and environmental changes used to enhance and improve agricultural products. This book is one of the first to provide information on the use of modern biotechnologies to modify crops for health benefits. It also examines the mechanisms of the plant responses to genetically induced biofortification, the production and responses of fortified plants under climate change, and their effects on food security.The book will be useful for students and researchers, especially crop scientists, environmental scientists, biotechnologists, botanists, and agronomists, to understand the techniques and mechanisms of biofortification, and responses of biofortified plants under climate change.

This book addresses how to mitigate regional tensions and enhance cooperative opportunities through well-designed regional institutions and organizations among countries in geographical proximity. We use the case of Central Asia (i.e., Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) to employ our conceptual framework of ¿externally guided regionalism.¿ The following questions guide the study: How and by what forces has Central Asian regionalism evolved, and what are the main characteristics and political implications of the continuously evolving regional institutions? We discuss not only the extra-regional influential actors (i.e., Russia, the United States, the European Union, and China), but also intra-regional initiatives, strategies, and struggles in securing stability and sovereignty. Extra-regional actors¿ growing competition over molding their own kind of multilateralism involving this region has contributed to the current direction of Central Asiäs regionalization. Concurrently, Central Asiäs political conditions and constraints interactively contribute to ever-increasing institutional sprawl.

This book presents new global research on transmedia storytelling as a form of brand communication. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of transmedia storytelling and its practical application through survey and interview data from creatives, marketing, advertising and public relations practitioners. The final section analyzes contemporary campaigns from various countries and proposes a Transmedia Brand Storytelling Model for Practice, based on primary and secondary research data. The book aims to better understand and communicate the real-world opportunities and barriers to producing transmedia brand storytelling campaigns for practitioners.

This book reviews the potential therapeutic and reproductive applications of mesenchymal stem cells in veterinary regenerative and reproductive medicine. The systemic approach focuses on musculoskeletal structures like cartilage, bone, muscle, tendon, ligaments and nervous tissues. It also focuses on other body systems like gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, urogenital, respiratory and integumentary system. Besides, the special glands or organs like endocrine glands and eye and its adnexa are also focused. The book chapters discusses the problems and the need for regenerative medicine employing MSCs. It provides an ex vivo basis of MSCs therapeutics and reproductive potential followed by their in vivo applications. The book further provides an understanding on the behavior and mechanisms of action of mesenchymal stem cells. The book also abridges challenges and provides future prospects of mesenchymal stem cells in clinical and reproductive applications. As such, the book offers a valuable resource for students, veterinarians, and scientists working in the regenerative and reproductive sciences in human and veterinary medicine.

This book written by Professor Chi Yen of Sichuan Agricultural University in Chinese was published by China Agriculture Press (ISBN 978-7-109-22791-0). It describes a new theory on the constitution of organs of the higher plants based on experimental evidence, the multiple secondary axis theory. This theory states that all organs of the higher plants are the constitution of multiple secondary axes. The primary axis extends bipolarly to initiate the above- and the below-ground parts of a plant, from which secondary axes develop. Leaves are split, expanded upper ends of terminal secondary axes. Stems are merged lower ends of the secondary axes, Vascular bundles are secondary structures developed within the axes which interconnect with each other to form the central core of the stem and branches and the veins in the leaves. Roots form through the downward extension of the lower ends of the axes toward or within the underground and branch roots are unsplit secondary axes. All new axes emerge from the inner side of existing, split axes. All floral organs including fruits, seeds and vegetative reproduction organs such as bulbils and plantlets, are deformed axes. This theory is significant in guiding the scientific design of the ideotype of crops to optimize the development of the economically important organ(s) of a crop.

This book first provides a comprehensive guideline for future disaster-resistant city planning in large cities in disaster-prone countries such as Japan. It is a compilation of knowledge and know-how obtained through the author's work in the national government for one and half years in the Earthquake Reconstruction Headquarters, right after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake on 17 January 1995. The author has carefully examined the various ad hoc measures taken just after the earthquake, which were criticized because they did not work as well as expected. Additionally, he has examined the later revisions in disaster and risk management systems made at the levels of local and national governments through experience in the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, to which the author had long been committed. The author argues that the rescue activities, rehabilitation, and reconstruction plans for disaster countermeasures implemented once a disaster has occurred and the city planning established in ordinary times should be extremely tightly connected with each other. City planning that subsumes rescue activities, rehabilitation, and reconstruction plans against what ought to have happened would critically improve the capability of crisis management and, consequently, protect life and property once a disaster has occurred. Such city planning eventually creates disaster-resistant cities. This book assumes readers to be graduate students who study city planning. It is also beneficial for practitioners and policy makers who are in charge of the construction of disaster-resistant cities at the national and local levels of governments, especially in disaster-prone countries. 

This book compiles the relevant information related to genome editing tools and their roles in crop improvement. The book contains a brief introduction about various genome editing tools and their application in major crops. It discusses the genome editing approaches and the strategies used for genome editing in different crops. Some of the chapters cover the detailed methodology of sgRNA design, vector construction and transformation in different crops followed by data analysis. A few chapters focus on the applications of genome editing tools towards crop improvement. This book will be of particular interest to plant biologists working in the field of genome editing and crop breeders. It will provide valuable information and useful material for our readers' experimental work.

This book highlights contemporary state of research in multidisciplinary areas in computer science, computer engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, physics, biomedical sciences, life sciences, medicine, and health care. The accepted submissions to the 7th IRC Conference on Science, Engineering and Technology (IRC-SET 2021) that were presented on August 7, 2021, are published in this conference proceedings. The papers presented here were shortlisted after extensive rounds of rigorous reviews by a panel of esteemed individuals who are pioneers and experts in their respective domains.

This book describes the mineralization process of barite-fluorite deposits in southeastern Sichuan, Yangtze Block, China. Mainly through systematic field geological surveys and detailed indoor research work, the typical barite-fluorite deposits in this area were analyzed using a variety of analysis methods such as single fluid inclusion LA-ICP-MS composition analysis, trace rare earth element analysis, H-O-S-Sr isotope analysis, F element content analysis, and Sm-Nd geochronological analysis. By in-depth analysis of the ore-forming environment, mineralization process and geological characteristics of barite-fluorite deposits, the following were determined: (1) the source of ore-forming fluids of barite-fluorite deposits and (2) the migration, concentration, enrichment, and evolution of ore-forming sources, exploring the formation mechanism of barite-fluorite deposits. Summarizing the mineralization regularity of the deposit in this area of China provides a new insight and basis for the study of similar types of deposits in the world.

This book provides a perspective on the research, development, and manufacturing aspects of structural materials in India. The contents highlight materials to strengthen technology advancements in sectors like aerospace, defense, automotive, energy, health, and ICT.With the momentum of the 'Make in India' initiative, India has seen an increase in manufacturing of advanced components for these sectors. The vast field of materials covers a whole gamut including structural materials such as metals like steel, aluminum, titanium, polymers, glass, cement and composites; functional materials such photovoltaics, and smart materials are also discussed.This anthology focuses on structural materials and studies, in particular, the Indian landscape of manufacturing capability, R&D capability and status of advanced structural materials compared to the rest of the world. This study highlights the gaps and suggests necessary actions in the national landscape of structural materials, given the pull that will come from the burgeoning advanced components manufacturing over the next 10-15 years. The scope of this study is limited to structural materials covering metals and alloys, structural polymers, cement, glass, composites and high temperature ceramics. The contents of this book will be useful to researchers, industry professionals, and policy makers alike.

This book provides a blended approach in outlining the properties of grammatical knowledge that have been causing difficulty to Chinese speaking learners, including tense and aspect, articles, passives, unaccusatives, plurality and motion verbs. It explains from different linguistics perspectives how these constraints/difficulties might be dealt with. It also offers readers a comprehensive account of these problems, and outlines the possible pedagogical solutions teachers can try in the classroom. These topics are selected because they bring substantial challenges and difficulties to Chinese English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. This book bridges the gap between acquisition theory and language pedagogy research, benefiting not just language learners but language teachers around the world, and all those who would like to witness collaboration between second language acquisition theory and second language teaching practice in general. It initiates future work in which researchers from different fields with diverging theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches will be able to develop studies that are compatible with each other. This overall can facilitate our understanding of second language acquisition, and how instruction might help.  

This book summarizes the recent advancements for biomechanics of injury and prevention in mechanism, application and developing frontiers. Biomechanics plays an important role in achieving safety, health, comfort, and a high quality of life by revealing injury mechanism and providing prevention methods. The book covers injury and prevention to the entire human body, from head to toe, including injury and prevention in sports, traffic, accident, clinic and so on. In addition, bionics prevention method inspired by woodpecker is also introduced. The book provides the reader with not only the mechanism of injury but also the advanced injury diagnosis, treatment, and prevention devices based on biomechanics.

This book investigates in detail long-term health state estimation technology of energy storage systems, assessing its potential use to replace common filtering methods that constructs by equivalent circuit model with a data-driven method combined with electrochemical modeling, which can reflect the battery internal characteristics, the battery degradation modes, and the battery pack health state. Studies on long-term health state estimation have attracted engineers and scientists from various disciplines, such as electrical engineering, materials, automation, energy, and chemical engineering. Pursuing a holistic approach, the book establishes a fundamental framework for this topic, while emphasizing the importance of extraction for health indicators and the significant influence of electrochemical modeling and data-driven issues in the design and optimization of health state estimation in energy storage systems. The book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in new energy measurement and control technology, researchers investigating energy storage systems, and structure/circuit design engineers working on energy storage cell and pack.

This book examines how women journalists in Malaysia negotiated male power structures, in particular structures determined by the keystone party of the ruling coalition, the United Malays National Organisation. Through both oral histories and content analysis, it looks at how women journalists in the women's pages of the newspapers found spaces to advocate for their readers. It is thus the first work to look at the importance of the women's pages in the Malay-language newspapers, and how apparently monolithic institutions of the authoritarian state hid diverse contests for resources and prestige. In this contest, the concept of news values, the perception of the reader and the ways in which women constructed themselves as journalists all come into play, and are examined here. The book contributes to the field of feminist media studies by examining how gendered newsroom practices paradoxically allowed women journalists in the women's pages more editorial freedom than those in the malestream press.

This book focuses on various psycho-social and socio-physical aspects of climate change and includes a wide range of case studies. Included topics are notable climate-related social thinking; climate vulnerability; transformation in socio-ecological subsystems; bioclimatological, urban bioclimatological and socio-bioclimatic ideas; disasters; policy instruments; climate justice; human rights; and sustainability. The book distinguishes itself from similar works by including a wide variety of topics and assists policy management in the current and upcoming climate crisis era. This book also addresses the Sustainable Development Goals 13 (Take Urgent Action to Combat Climate Change and Its Impacts), highlighting resilience, recovery potential and adaptive capacity, climate change measures integrated into policies and planning, and knowledge and capacity to mitigate climate change.The ideas covered in this book evolved in response to the current climate crisis, ideas that the authors believe will aid in societal management and development in the present and future. The book is a useful source for planners, geographers, professionals, academics, government officials, laypeople, and others interested in climate change.