Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Nature Singapore

This book presents mercury toxicity with respect to remediation and health issues. It covers sources of mercury contamination, its impact on human health, and prospective remediation by both bioremediation and phytoremediation with the application of recent advanced techniques such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology.Both anthropogenic activities and natural processes cause the release of mercury into different spheres of the environment resulting in severe adverse impacts. Increased anthropogenic discharge of mercury leads to disturbance in its natural biogeochemical cycle, which results in unenviable diseases and hazardous health effects. Mercury pollution is responsible for causing neurobehavioral, kidney, heart, gastrointestinal, liver, and other diseases. Many published works about the impact of mercury on health are also available worldwide; however, there is no complete understanding available on toxicological studies of mercury that covers the broader spectrum of findings ranging from sources of exposure to mercury toxicity to its remediation strategies.This book brings together a diverse group of environmental science, sustainability, and health researchers to address the challenges posed by global mass poisoning caused by mercury contamination. The book also proposes solutions to contamination through multi-disciplinary approaches.The book contains three sections. The first part describes the different sources and distribution of mercury in soil and plant ecosystems. The second part explains the health risks linked to mercury toxicity. The third part addresses sustainable mercury toxicity mitigation strategies and the potential applications of recent technology in providing solutions. This book is a valuable resource to students, academics, researchers, and environmental professionals working in the field of mercury contamination.

This book explores the relationship between pedestrians/cyclists¿ mode and route choice to/from metro/railway stations and the micro-level (street-scale) built environment in a second-tier city in China. More specifically, it investigates how the street-scale built environment influences pedestrians/cyclists¿ mode choice and route choice behavior and examines user preferences for the micro-level built environment around metro stations. The focus on a second-tier city is motivated primarily to expand the set of Chinese cities where the effects of the built environment on pedestrian/cyclist mode and route choice have been studied. Results demonstrate the effects of the street-scale built environment on pedestrian flows. The effects are higher for the main road, which is directly connected with the metro station. The findings of this book are expected to support the design of preferred walking/biking built environments around a metro station. This book appeals to urbanists, planners, engineers, policy makers, and those interested in a wide-ranging overview of slow/green transportation and built environment promotion. These methods not only help to understand the quantitative relationship between built environment design and travel behavior but also support the evaluation and assessment of built environment design in urban planning projects. It reduces the gap in our understanding of the quantitative relationship between the micro-level built environment and pedestrians/cyclists¿ transportation mode and route choice around the metro station. Both stated choice data and revealed choice data were used. An extended set of micro-level built environment attributes was developed. Besides the widely studied transportation-related factors, street-level built environment factors were studied using quantitative methods.

This book proposes a wealth-additive scheme of managing and maximizing (win¿win and sharing) the marginal value (eco-entropy) of artifacts by humanizing the artifacts¿ enterprise and their economics with nature. This type of clockwork would be achieved on a base of the science of nature versus artifacts and the body of science in my Springer books since 2008. My books are advancing factory science, economics, and the science of artifacts and play their role in the sandwich theory and its pair-map microcosm of the 3D-type, toward the development of body science. Then, the wealth-additive goal of the ¿body¿ is not only similar to the marginal profit, GDP, and value in economics, but also means the marginal diversity (eco-entropy) and its wealth of economics versus reliability (sustainability) in the body of the world. The modern world, for example, is faced with deadlocked negotiations over the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) bodies at the United Nations. Thus, the forthcoming world of SDGs would be much better and more constructive at transforming traditional bodies of the 3M&I class (human, material, money, and information) as some nano (gene/therblig)-transformation toward eco-entropy(marginal value/diversity) on earth. This semi-visible world is traditionally limited to a molecular size and is too rough at the practical rig-level. Thus, any unsolved and invisible contradictions left behind on earth are subject to SDGs in the practical world. This approach proposes a visible method that could find and solve these contradictions (angles) by transforming the artifact's body, consisting of the 3M&I gene. The pair-map microcosm and its Matsui's M-equation have been designed mainly based on nature and science books on artifacts (in 2016 and 2019). Following these visible methods, our well-being subject might be able to make a breakthrough or make such unsolved contradictions or stalemates subside as any SDGs society of individuals in the near future.Finally, the book will explore and construct a new academic discipline involving 3M&I body science versus cybernetics. And, the study introduces validation cases of convenience stores, self-driving cars, and robotization (individualization) of artificial objects as the realization of the supply¿demand system and the ideal form of artificial and natural bodies. Based on this perspective, the dialogue is conducted according to a creative structure of six parts, twelve chapters, and two appendices.

This book describes general glycobiology in emphasizing the structures, biosynthesis, glycosylation and distribution of the glycans and xenogenic glycoantigens in eukaryotic cells of mammals including mouse, swine, chimpanzee and human. In the middle, I have focused on topics in xenotransplantation glycobiology and expand descriptions of allogenic and xenoantigenic transplantation to open the dawn in insights into the origin of life. One of the biological diversity, named species diversity, is a phenomenon environmentally adapted from the evolutionary process for long period. The distinct structures of glycans discriminate each organism and are the essential molecular basis of the discrimination and difference between the organisms, giving an incompatibility between the different species. Diversity and variations in carbohydrate chain structures between family, species, kingdoms and domains mark the global pattern and signs of immune self- and non-self recognition. In human, diversity in ABH blood group antigens is observed in human family and this type pattern distinguishes individuals from a pan-family to non-dividable unit of the family. Blood transfusion and organ transplantation are impossible even in the allogenic cross between humans if carbohydrates are ignored. This explains how and how human beings are a lonely existence. ABH-related antibodies induce hemolysis or hyperacute or allograft rejection due to incompatible graft property even between the same species. The incompatibility is an immunologic rejection when the recipient host receives the tissues or organs from the different species of donors, as well-known in pig-to-human xenotransplantation. The immunologic incompatibility between the donor pigs and the recipient human are based on the evolutionary distance between pigs and humans. This distance allows a xenograft rejection between the 2 mammals. Modification or deletion of the specific gene locus for immune rejection on genome of donor animalsdisrupts the immunological recognition ligands of the donor organs, consequently preventing the immune rejection of the human recipient and xenograft rejection. This book helps undergraduate and graduate students, researcher and professors who are involved in the glycobiology and xenoantigenic biology with recent advances in the xenotransplantation basic and clinic.

This book describes the progress and prominent theories of regional development research in the past decades, especially in the past decade, discusses the industrial structure, spatial structure, resources, and environment, as well as a series of practical issues, and reveals the general characteristics of spatial structure evolution in the process of regional development. The research on the issues of regional development has become the frontier of relevant disciplines since the 1950s, and much progress has been made in the process of solving practical problems in social and economic development. This book provides an in-depth and systematic demonstration of the "point-axis system" theory of regional exploitation and development as well as the T-shaped structure of China's regional economic action in theory and practice and discusses the impact of location differential rent, restricted accessibility, technological innovation, etc., on regional development theoretically. This book is used as a reference for planning, scientific research, and teaching personnel in territorial expansion, regional economy, human geography, etc.

The book in hand, namely ¿Metal and Metal-Oxide Based Nanomaterials (Synthesis, Agricultural, Biomedical and Environmental Interventions¿, focuses on the synthesis methods, characterization techniques, and diverse interventions utilizing these nanomaterials in the fields of agriculture, biomedicine, and environmental remediation. The specific applications discussed include food packaging, post-harvest disease management, crop production, drug delivery systems, other biomedical applications, photocatalytic degradation of environmental pollutants, and wastewater treatment. Additionally, it also addresses the potential risks associated with zinc nanoparticles in aquatic ecosystems and emphasizes the importance of further research and regulation in this field. Overall, the book provides valuable insights and serves as a comprehensive resource for researchers and scientists across various interdisciplinary subjects. It serves as a valuable resource for scientists, researchers, and students in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, environmental science, plant science, agriculture, chemistry, biotechnology, pharmacognosy, pharmaceuticals, industrial chemistry, and other interdisciplinary subjects. Moreover, this also inspires further research, innovation, and the development of sustainable solutions for a better future.

The book is a comprehensive guide that explores the concept of data economy and its implications in today's world. The book discusses the principles and components of the ecosystem, the challenges and opportunities presented by data monetization, and the potential risks related to data privacy. Real-life examples and case studies are included to understand the concepts better. The book is suitable for individuals in data science, economics, business, and technology and for students, academics, and policymakers. It is an excellent read for anyone interested in the data economy.

This book focuses on the fault-tolerant cooperative control (FTCC) of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (multi-UAVs). It provides systematic and comprehensive descriptions of FTCC issues in multi-UAVs concerning faults, external disturbances, strongly unknown nonlinearities, and input saturation. Further, it addresses FTCC design from longitudinal motions to attitude motions, and outer-loop position motions of multi-UAVs. The book¿s detailed control schemes can be used to enhance the flight safety of multi-UAVs. As such, the book offers readers an in-depth understanding of UAV safety in cooperative/formation flight and corresponding design methods. The FTCC methods presented here can also provide guidelines for engineers to improve the safety of aerospace engineering systems. The book offers a valuable asset for scientists and researchers, aerospace engineers, control engineers, lecturers and teachers, and graduates and undergraduates in the system and control community, especially those working in the field of UAV cooperation and multi-agent systems.

In both the database and machine learning communities, data quality has become a serious issue which cannot be ignored. In this context, we refer to data with quality problems as ¿dirty data.¿ Clearly, for a given data mining or machine learning task, dirty data in both training and test datasets can affect the accuracy of results. Accordingly, this book analyzes the impacts of dirty data and explores effective methods for dirty data processing.Although existing data cleaning methods improve data quality dramatically, the cleaning costs are still high. If we knew how dirty data affected the accuracy of machine learning models, we could clean data selectively according to the accuracy requirements instead of cleaning all dirty data, which entails substantial costs. However, no book to date has studied the impacts of dirty data on machine learning models in terms of data quality. Filling precisely this gap, the book is intended for a broad audience ranging from researchers inthe database and machine learning communities to industry practitioners.Readers will find valuable takeaway suggestions on: model selection and data cleaning; incomplete data classification with view-based decision trees; density-based clustering for incomplete data; the feature selection method, which reduces the time costs and guarantees the accuracy of machine learning models; and cost-sensitive decision tree induction approaches under different scenarios. Further, the book opens many promising avenues for the further study of dirty data processing, such as data cleaning on demand, constructing a model to predict dirty-data impacts, and integrating data quality issues into other machine learning models. Readers will be introduced to state-of-the-art dirty data processing techniques, and the latest research advances, while also finding new inspirations in this field.

The book delves into the intricate interplay of stress and adaptive responses, and their multifaceted dynamics influenced by stress type, exposure duration, genetic factors, and lifestyle elements. It unveils the complexity of stress management, unveiling how adaptive strategies evolve in response to stressors. By harnessing scientific breakthroughs in stress response comprehension, the book navigates the path to effective stress mitigation. Through avenues such as pharmacological interventions, dietary adjustments, psychological enhancement, and more, the book advocates for achieving adaptive resilience¿a state where the system effectively copes with stress. The text encapsulates an array of stressors, including extreme stress, oxidative stress, and genotoxic stress, dissecting their impact on systemic equilibrium and health. The book's focal point rests on adaptive mechanisms that vary with stressor types, while also spotlighting how these mechanisms can be calibrated through pharmacological and alternative means. This is an invaluable resource for understanding, mitigating, and harnessing the power of adaptation in the face of stress-induced challenges.

This book is a history reader and cultural primer for students and aspiring scholars of past and contemporary interactions among civilizations over the Eurasian landmass. Tracing a human journey that spans several million years, this general survey of civilizations comprises seven sections: Studies on Civilization, Silk Road, Survey of Greater Central Asia, Portrait of India, Persian Cultural Sphere, Caucasus, and Turkish March. The first section introduces methodologies and perspectives for civilization studies. The second focuses on the concept and connotations of the ancient Silk Road as well as China's 21st-century strategic Belt & Road Initiative. In the remaining five sections, the trilingual, peripatetic author, based on his experiences and reflections, provides introductions to and comments on the history, literature, art, social tensions, and future development of five key areas along the Silk Road, i.e., Central Asia, India, Iran, Caucasus, and Turkey.

Nanomedicine biotechnology is applied to and used to study drug development, working mechanisms, diagnosis, and therapies. This textbook particularly written for biomedical applications of nanomedicine covers the whole range of disease treatments related to nanomedicine. This book serves the purpose of highlighting the current advancements of nanomedicines-based regimens which may be employed in disease treatment while it also contains the fundamental knowledge for biomedical researchers from all levels. Each chapter starts with an introduction/theory into the specified approaches for various disease states followed by detailed discussions for a comprehensive understanding. This book best suits advanced level students, but also provides an excellent updated material for researchers and healthcare workers related to nanomedicine and diseases treatment.

This book presents select proceedings of the International Conference on Cement and Building Koncrete infrastructure for sustainability and Resilience (CBKR-2023). It discusses the latest technologies and innovative and non-conventional materials for sustainable built environment. The topics covered include alternate, sustainable, cost-effective, and smart materials and technologies. It also covers applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning in construction, MCDM techniques, performance-based design, and 3D printing technologies. The book is useful for researchers and professionals in the area of civil engineering and materials science.

This book is a must-read for those interested in the aging phenomenon of materials used in new energy systems, such as photovoltaic and electric vehicles. It provides a fundamental framework for this topic and important basic data and references for insulation materials used in these systems. It covers the aging of photovoltaic systems installed in different environments, including space, as well as the aging of the discharge present in the drive motors of electric vehicles. This book is suitable for researchers and students interested in green energy systems and can be used for teaching, research, and science popularization.

This book aims to provide a collection of state-of-the-art scientific and technical research papers related to machine learning-based algorithms in the field of optimization and engineering design. The theoretical and practical development for numerous engineering applications such as smart homes, ICT-based irrigation systems, academic success prediction, future agro-industry for crop production, disease classification in plants, dental problems and solutions, loan eligibility processing, etc., and their implementation with several case studies and literature reviews are included as self-contained chapters. Additionally, the book intends to highlight the importance of study and effectiveness in addressing the time and space complexity of problems and enhancing accuracy, analysis, and validations for different practical applications by acknowledging the state-of-the-art literature survey. The book targets a larger audience by exploring multidisciplinary research directions such as computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence, modified/newly developed machine learning algorithms, etc., to enhance engineering design applications for society. State-of-the-art research work with illustrations and exercises along with pseudo-code has been provided here.

The book presents a collection of the high-quality research articles in the field of power engineering, grid integration, energy management, soft computing, artificial intelligence, signal and image processing, data science techniques, and their real-world applications. The papers are presented at International Conference on Power Engineering and Intelligent Systems (PEIS 2023), held during June 24 ¿ ¿25, 2023, at National Institute of Technology, Delhi, India.

This book aims to provide an association of the major redox-sensitive pathways and networks involved in cancer. The initial chapter of the book discusses basic information about oxidative stress, its generation, and regulation (redox regulation or redox homeostasis) via cell signaling in normal and cancer cells. The book also explores antioxidants and metabolic events in cancer cells compared to normal cells. It further covers the application of nanoparticles in redox regulation in cancer cells. The role of redox regulation in cancer therapy, its influence, and its involvement in programmed cell death (PCD), metastasis, immune system, p53, and cell cycle/DNA damage repair pathways have been discussed in separate chapters. It further reviews the importance of dietary phytochemicals in redox regulation in normal and cancer pathophysiology. Towards the end, the book focuses on the role of redox balance, especially in ROS-dependent cellular processes in cancer stem cells.

This book explores how China's industrial transformation and development depend on technology and innovation and how considerations about issues associated with technology and innovation may affect China's development strategies. Market-oriented reforms initiated four decades ago have constantly fueled a high speed of development in China. The country's industrial structure has experienced rapid evolution. In the meantime, especially in the general context of globalization, the country has also opened to foreign trade and foreign direct investment, transforming itself from a virtually completely closed economy into a major trading nation and the largest developing country destination for foreign direct investment in the world. Technology is thought to be one of the key driving forces that shape the transformation of the Chinese economy. Owing to different speeds of innovation and technology diffusion, uneven development is one major issue in the process of China's industrial transformation under new trends of globalization. Substantial disparities across different Chinese regions, e.g., the gaps in regional industrial development and those in incomes and living standards, have been one prominent feature of China and are (needless to say) closely related to different speeds of innovation and technology diffusion. The relationship between technology diffusion, innovation, and industrial development is an important yet complicated issue that deserves careful study. Considerations related to technology and innovation play a crucial role in leading and shaping China's development strategies and routes. Sustainable development of China creates strong pressures for continuous transforming, upgrading, and restructuring of the Chinese economy, and in all of these processes, innovation and technology diffusion play a fundamental role. The book presents to the interested reader facts, thoughts, models, empirical results, and discussions that shed light on those issues.

This book argues that large corporations need to implement governance practices and processes that make them better innovators and that the challenge is to identify organizational principles and practices that provide the best chance of delivering innovative products to create a meaningful consumer experience. In this context, it is important to recognize that when we address organizational forms, we are not thinking of corporate governance in the sense of managing agency costs and ensuring regulatory compliance, but the more pressing business task of putting in place organizational systems and processes that facilitate value creation through continued and sustained innovation. The book examines how the contemporary concept and discourse of corporate governance may be obsolete or, at least, is increasingly disconnected from the needs and realities of the most innovative firms today. The concept of organizing for innovation-identifying process and practices that deliver the best opportunities for innovation-needs to take centre stage. This book aims to contribute to the nascent debate in this area by bringing together a series of chapters that examine various issues related to organizing for innovation.

This book starts from the design requirements of variable geometry turbines for marine gas turbines. It systematically and comprehensively introduces the flow mechanism and characteristics of variable geometry turbines, aerodynamic design methods, variable vane turning design methods, structural design technology of the variable vane system, aerodynamic characteristics and reliability test technology for variable geometry turbines, and so on.

The book focuses the openness of Chinese copyright law and patent law, namely the right limitation and exception rules (as the IP-internal balancing mechanism) and the right enforcement and protection (as the IP-external balancing mechanism). It examines the highlights of the 3rd and 4th amendments to the Chinese copyright law, patent law and the trademark law, addressing the most debated questions during these amendments. This book also takes a comparative approach to study the legislations and case laws in the USA, EU and China. The comparison covers the legislation, case decisions, which could offer useful clues for legislators to revise the current law, for judges to decide the cases about relevant topics and lay down their market plans. Moreover, this study also provides several recommendations for the right holders who are currently operating or planning to operate in China, regarding the de facto protection levels of their IP rights, the risks of right infringement and litigation costs as well as the trend of the goalsetting in their intellectual property strategy.

This book explores the reconstruction after the 2015 Gorkha Nepal earthquake, on the basis of the author's first-hand experience that has been validated with empirical evidence. Unlike other advocacy and academic literature, the book takes readers close to the ground where the activities took place. This book describes Nepal's efforts to rebuild private housing from the preparatory to the concluding stages, and the obstacles faced and overcome along the way. It assesses the consequences of the policy level decisions and also examines the relevance, utility and future use of damage assessment surveys that were carried out in the country. In addition, lessons from the housing grant payment through the banking system, impending reasons for housing non-compliance to building standards, experimentation with resilient resettlements and unresolved issue of urban regeneration have been also delved in. The ground realities revealed that the aid architecture requires further carving out. The last three chapters have attempted to capture the macro level picture of the reconstruction and recovery endeavors: contribution to national economy, structural resilience and comparative overview of Nepal's delivery in global context. As an intimately involved professional with the 2015 Nepal Earthquake, Dr Shrestha is the authority from whom a holistic understanding can be attained regarding the response of Nepal's state and society to the Earthquake. His study will have ramification at national and global scale in handling with inescapable natural calamities.                                                                                            Kanak M. Dixit, Journalist and Heritage ConservationistDr. Shrestha's book provides rare insight and perspective on the issues and challenges of governance during the complex journey to reconstruction and future resilience, reflecting his long and intense engagement in the post disaster recovery and reconstruction.                                                                                    Vivek Rawal, Director, People-in-Centre, Ahmedabad, India     This collection of balanced insightful essays methodically explores topics such as government decisions and aid during the earthquake recovery combining lived experience and a research approach to reveal lessons and future considerations.                                                                                                                                                          Loren Lockwood,                                                                                                                                      Former National Coordinator,                                                                                                Housing Recovery and Reconstruction Platform Nepal

This book investigates in detail model-based fault diagnosis methods, including observer-based residual generation, residual evaluation based on threshold computation, observer-based fault isolation strategies, observer-based fault estimation, Kalman filter-based fault diagnosis methods, and parity space approach. Studies on model-based fault diagnosis have attracted engineers and scientists from various disciplines, such as electrical, aerospace, mechanical, and chemical engineering. Pursuing a holistic approach, the book establishes a fundamental framework for this topic, while emphasizing the importance of state-space approach. The methods introduced in the book are systemic and easy to follow. The book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in fault diagnosis and state estimation, researchers investigating fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control, and control system design engineers working on safety-critical systems.

This book starts from the premise that honest and constructive dialogue between scholars and educators of interculturality, especially from different geopolitical spheres, is needed more than ever. The book is about the important and yet contested notion of interculturality-a notion used in different fields of research. It was co-written by two scholars who have never met before and who got to know each other intellectually and personally in the process of writing this book, using interculturality as a looking-glass. (Re-)negotiating meanings, ideologies and their own identities in writing the chapters together, the authors enter into multifaceted dialogues and intercommunicate, sharing while accepting disagreements. The co-authors' different profiles in terms of geography, generation, status, preferred paradigms and multilingual identity (amongst others) are put forward, confronted, and mirrored in the different chapters, leading to the joint negotiation of aspirations concerning interculturality in communication and education. While describing their current takes on interculturality they also conduct autocritiques of their past and present engagement with the notion. The following questions are also addressed: Who is talking the most about interculturality in the world today? Whose voices are not heard? How to disrupt current hegemonies around the notion for real? And how to promote epistemological plurality in the discourses and narratives shaping our understandings of the notion? Autocritiquing is proposed as a way of unthinking and rethinking interculturality ad infinitum. This book argues that engaging with the notion requires constant self-reflection, examining one's positionality and intersectionality, listening to the voices that one projects onto the world of, e.g., research and education, and operating transformations in one's thinking, trying out new paradigms, ideologies and methods. 

To understand phenomena in nature, it is important to focus not only on properties of stationary states, but also their changes in time, that is, the dynamics between bistable states. This book reviews the mechanics of first-order phase transitions and discusses relaxation and collapses of metastable states from various viewpoints, including Kramers' method for the lifetime of metastability, Langer's analysis on the singularity, effects of thermal fluctuation studied by Neel and Brown, and eigenvalue structures of the transfer-matrix for the phase transitions. The book also goes into the mechanics of metastability in quantum systems from the viewpoints of the eigenvalue problem of the Hamiltonian and the Liouvillian for a dynamical process and discusses relations between quantum tunneling processes and metastability therein. Lastly, the coercivity of magnets consisting of an ensemble of grains is reviewed.The book is beneficial for those new in the field as a primer on first-order phase transition from modern perspectives. The comprehensive content offers overviews of related topics and allows readers to quickly catch up with developments in the field.

This book is the result of an elaborate project initiated by the Joint Technical Committee (JTC-1) of 1) the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, 2) the International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment, 3) the International Society for Rock Mechanics, and 4) the International Geotextile Society, with the focus on natural slopes and landslides. The framework of the book sets out the steps, based on recent disaster experiences in the twenty-first century, leading to the assessment of earthquake-induced landslide hazards. It contains: 1) important cases of landslides triggered by earthquakes around the world; 2) investigation into the characteristics of ground motion site response; 3) methods to determine landslide susceptibility and triggering thresholds and their comparative study; and 4) commentary on the production of earthquake-induced landslide hazard maps. All the contents are the result of the latest research on related areas. The book is a valuable resource for researchers, designers, consultants, academicians, government officials, and all others who are involved in the mitigation of coseismic landslides. The book contributes toward the development of a new chapter in disaster prevention and mitigation of landslides induced by earthquakes. 

This book aims at providing cases with inspiring findings for global researchers in capacity allocation and reservation. Capacity allocation mechanisms are introduced in the book, as well as the measures to build models and the ways to achieve supply chain coordination. In addition, it illustrates the capacity reservation contract and quantity flexible contract with comparisons and some numerical studies. The book is divided into 7 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the background and the latest development of the research. Chapter 2 introduces how to manage downstream competition through capacity allocation in symmetric market, including proportional mechanism and lexicographic mechanism. Demand competition is introduced in Chapter 3 as well as the uniform allocation mechanism and the comparisons among three different mechanisms. In Chapter 4, we give information about demand competition with fixed factor allocation, and the comparison with other allocations. Chapter 5 provides the optimal strategies under fixed allocation with multiple retailers and the impacts of fixed proportions. Chapter 6 illustrates how to achieve supply chain coordination through capacity reservation contract and its comparison with the quantity flexibility contract, and in Chapter 7 we describe outsourcing decisions and order policies in different systems with some numerical studies. We sincerely hope that this book can provide some useful suggestions and inspirations for scholars around the world who have the same interests in this field. 

This book deals with several types of multi-dimensional control problems in the face of data uncertainty for vector cases-multi-dimensional multi-objective control problem with uncertain objective functionals, uncertain constraint functionals, and uncertain objective as well as constraint functionals, uncertain multi-dimensional multi-objective control problem with semi-infinite constraints, uncertain dual multi-dimensional multi-objective variational control problem, and second-order PDE&PDI constrained robust optimization problem. The book provides the solution approaches-an exact l1 penalty function approach, modified objective approach, robust approach-in the simplest way to solve the recent developing optimization problems in the sense of uncertainty. 

This book presents applications of blockchain technologies to foster sustainable development in the textile and clothing supply chain. The concept of Textiles and Fashion Sustainability has grown to a wider extent today. Among the list of items to achieve Sustainability in Textiles and Fashion, the key element is the traceability of supply chains in terms of mapping and tracing the entire supply chain to ensure sustainable supply chain management. Reliable and transparent, efficient data is one of the crucial requirements for Textiles and Fashion Sustainability in today's advanced industrial context and this is possible in this advanced era by various technological advancements such as Block chain technologies. These days one can see a widespread application of blockchain technology in the Textiles and Clothing sector.  The core competencies of blockchain technology namely transparency, data auditability, privacy, value transfer, and process efficiency and automation are very much essential for achieving the multifold objectives under the theme Textiles and Fashion Sustainability.