Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Nature Singapore

This open access book uncovers the historical context and entrenched beliefs that have perpetuated exclusionary urban landscapes and disadvantage for marginalized groups. It offers an in-depth exploration of the intricate interplay of geographical space, recognizing its pivotal role in shaping our cities and exacerbating spatial injustice. The construction industry, a vital agent in forging accessible environments, often falls short in accommodating persons with disabilities and older individuals. This important book underscores the urgent need for integrated approaches woven into the fabric of cities, companies, and the construction industry itself, to ensure universal accessibility. Drawing upon practical strategies and compelling case studies, the book presents actionable frameworks such as the DisCo Policy Framework and the Iceberg of Inequality Model, facilitating the assessment of progress towards achieving radical inclusion. Inviting readers to embark on a journey into the cities of tomorrow, where inclusion and belonging are the norm, it concludes with a simple idea: the future is accessible.

This book explores the therapeutic approaches of stem cells and stem cell-derived exosomes against neurodegenerative disorders (NDDs). The initial chapters introduce different neurodegenerative diseases and discuss the mechanistic aspects of their progression. The subsequent chapters cover strategies for the isolation, characterization, and differentiation of stem cells. In turn, the book reviews the protective role of stem cells against neurological disorders and examines regenerative approaches to treat neurological diseases using mesenchymal stem cells. The book also presents induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology for cellular therapy, drug screening, and in-vitro modeling of neurodegenerative diseases. Lastly, the book discusses the role of stem cells and derived exosomes as a novel therapeutic agent against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and in associated signaling molecules involved in neuroprotection. This book is an invaluable source for researchers working towards understanding the potential of stem cell therapy in neurodegenerative disorders.

This book presents select proceedings of the International Conference on Science, Technology and Engineering (ICSTE 2023) related to materials science. It covers new developments in processing and fabrication technologies of different materials such as electronic materials, energy materials, biomaterials, and composite materials. It also covers innovation in manufacturing processes that reduce waste, enhance component performance and biodegradation, and ensure environmental sustainability. The book is useful for researchers and professionals who are interested in materials science.

Master the art of machine learning and data science by diving into the essence of mathematical logic with this comprehensive textbook. This book focuses on the widely applicable information criterion (WAIC), also described as the Watanabe-Akaike information criterion, and the widely applicable Bayesian information criterion (WBIC), also described as the Watanabe Bayesian information criterion. The book expertly guides you through relevant mathematical problems while also providing hands-on experience with programming in Python and Stan. Whether yoüre a data scientist looking to refine your model selection process or a researcher who wants to explore the latest developments in Bayesian statistics, this accessible guide will give you a firm grasp of Watanabe Bayesian Theory.The key features of this indispensable book include:A clear and self-contained writing style, ensuring ease of understanding for readers at various levels of expertise.100 carefully selected exercises accompanied by solutions in the main text, enabling readers to effectively gauge their progress and comprehension.A comprehensive guide to Sumio Watanabe¿s groundbreaking Bayes theory, demystifying a subject once considered too challenging even for seasoned statisticians.Detailed source programs and Stan codes that will enhance readers¿ grasp of the mathematical concepts presented.A streamlined approach to algebraic geometry topics in Chapter 6, making Bayes theory more accessible and less daunting.Embark on your machine learning and data science journey with this essential textbook and unlock the full potential of WAIC and WBIC today!

Master the art of machine learning and data science by diving into the essence of mathematical logic with this comprehensive textbook. This book focuses on the widely applicable information criterion (WAIC), also described as the Watanabe-Akaike information criterion, and the widely applicable Bayesian information criterion (WBIC), also described as the Watanabe Bayesian information criterion. This book expertly guides you through relevant mathematical problems while also providing hands-on experience with programming in R and Stan. Whether yoüre a data scientist looking to refine your model selection process or a researcher who wants to explore the latest developments in Bayesian statistics, this accessible guide will give you a firm grasp of Watanabe Bayesian Theory.The key features of this indispensable book include:A clear and self-contained writing style, ensuring ease of understanding for readers at various levels of expertise.100 carefully selected exercises accompanied by solutions in the main text, enabling readers to effectively gauge their progress and comprehension.A comprehensive guide to Sumio Watanabe¿s groundbreaking Bayes theory, demystifying a subject once considered too challenging even for seasoned statisticians.Detailed source programs and Stan codes that will enhance readers¿ grasp of the mathematical concepts presented.A streamlined approach to algebraic geometry topics in Chapter 6, making Bayes theory more accessible and less daunting.Embark on your machine learning and data science journey with this essential textbook and unlock the full potential of WAIC and WBIC today!

This edited book is a compilation of tangible research findings and actual experiences on various salt tolerant rice breeding programmes, that have been successfully practiced and continuing to do so by research centres in South East Asia, with major emphasis in India, Bangladesh and Philippines. Rice being one of the most important staple crops of the world, its production and productivity have to be kept on increasing so as to feed the burgeoning population. This is a very challenging task in the midst of shrinking resource base and arable lands in the face of climate change. Salt stress is the second major abiotic stress, next only to drought, which greatly affects rice production. To overcome this problem, development of improved salt tolerant rice cultivars coupled with appropriate package of practices, an ecologically sound and socially acceptable strategy should be developed which is well within the reach of marginal farmers. With rapid advances in molecular biology, mechanisms underlying the complexity of the trait are better understood now than before. Selection of appropriate parents, desired mapping populations, precise phenotyping are the key components to underpin the mapping and utilization of reliable QTLs. Understanding genetics of salt tolerance, identifying the robust molecular markers and targeted utilization of available molecular markers form the sound basis to develop the commercial products with more precision and speed. This book covers entire range of topics: starting from biophysical characterization of salt stressed areas in different rice ecologies, conventional and molecular breeding approaches for mapping salt tolerance and subsequent development of improved rice varieties for commercial cultivation and their societal impacts. This book is of interest to scientists, faculty, policy makers and administrators. It also serves as a resource guide to graduate students of agriculture particularly plant breeding, plant physiology, molecularbiology and soil science.

This book consists of select proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Advances in Civil Engineering (ICACE 2022), covering various fields of civil engineering. Various topics covered in this book are construction and building materials, eco-friendly ground improvement, waste disposal technique, waste management, the durability of different concrete structures, environmental impact studies in relation to covid-19 pandemic, various aspects of foundation engineering, transport planning scenario in developing countries, highway materials and many more. The book will be for researchers and professionals working in the area of civil engineering.

Our cities, and the systems that support them, have not been designed to address the FWE nexus. There exist gaps in awareness of the role and impacts of climate change. Improving communication among stakeholders with the support of scientific evidence is the key to narrowing the gaps. This book approached this issue with a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary moveable nexus approach through the lens of FEW nexus under the project of the Sustainable Urbanization Global Initiative of Belmont Forum. It presents a collection of evidence/science-based planning decisions and participatory practices by using Tokyo as the focal area. It visualizes the stock and flow of the Food-Water-Energy (FEW) supporting the world¿s largest metropolitan area, explores how the actors have worked together to secure the resilience and sustainability of resources, and demonstrates the potential of resources in making the city adaptive to climatic and social changes. It is designed for researchers in urbanization, nexus research, urban design research, environment, disaster risk reduction, and climate change studies, and can be used as a textbook for university courses. It is also a useful tool for practitioners and policymakers in applying collective knowledge to policy and decision-making.

This 2-volume book highlights cutting-edge ecodesign research and covers broad areas ranging from individual product and service design to social system design. It includes business and policy design, circular production, life cycle design and management, digitalization for sustainable manufacturing, user behavior and health, ecodesign of social infrastructure, sustainability education, sustainability indicators, and energy system design. Featuring selected papers presented at EcoDesign 2021: 12th International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing, it also includes diverse, interdisciplinary approaches to foster ecodesign research and activities. In the context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), it addresses design innovations for sustainable value creation, considering technological developments, legislation, and consumer lifestyles. Further, the book discusses the conceptof circular economy, which aims to develop circular business models for resource efficient society by taking advantage of digital technologies including artificial intelligence, internet of things, digital twin, data analysis and simulation. Written by experts from academia and industry, Volume 1 highlights sustainable design such as product and process design, collaborative design, sustainable innovation, digital technologies, design methodology for sustainability, and energy system design. The methods, tools, and practices described are useful for readers to facilitate value creation for sustainability.

This book is a comprehensive collection of information about the features, functions, and services of aquatic macrophytes. As primary producers, aquatic macrophytes form the basis of food webs, play a major role in highly productive aquatic ecosystems, and have a significant impact on ecosystem functions and services. Macrophytes are also known to strongly influence the micro-climate and biogeochemical processes occurring in the littoral zones of marine ecosystems and the sediment dynamics of freshwater systems. They also serve as highly effective carbon sinks and play an important role in carbon sequestration. This book deals with various aspects of aquatic macrophytes, including nutrient recycling, biogeochemical processes, biomass production, wetland ecosystems, water resource management, carbon sequestration, environmental clean-up, and bioenergy production. Additionally, it presents the current status of aquatic macrophytes and discusses the impact of climate change on these plants. The book also highlights the major challenges associated with harnessing the benefits provided by aquatic macrophytes as ecosystem services. The book holds value and relevance for academicians and scientists working in the related domain. Additionally, it will serve as a valuable resource for students and researchers working in the field of ecology, biogeochemistry, wetland conservation, phytoremediation, elements biomonitoring, wastewater management, bioenergy production, etc.

This book, written by leading international researchers of evolutionary approaches to machine learning, explores various ways evolution can address machine learning problems and improve current methods of machine learning. Topics in this book are organized into five parts. The first part introduces some fundamental concepts and overviews of evolutionary approaches to the three different classes of learning employed in machine learning. The second addresses the use of evolutionary computation as a machine learning technique describing methodologic improvements for evolutionary clustering, classification, regression, and ensemble learning. The third part explores the connection between evolution and neural networks, in particular the connection to deep learning, generative and adversarial models as well as the exciting potential of evolution with large language models. The fourth part focuses on the use of evolutionary computation for supporting machine learning methods. This includes methodological developments for evolutionary data preparation, model parametrization, design, and validation. The final part covers several chapters on applications in medicine, robotics, science, finance, and other disciplines. Readers find reviews of application areas and can discover large-scale, real-world applications of evolutionary machine learning to a variety of problem domains. This book will serve as an essential reference for researchers, postgraduate students, practitioners in industry and all those interested in evolutionary approaches to machine learning.

This book covers a comprehensive update on acute and chronic leukemia. In 54 chapters, authors introduce research progress and clinical trials of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL), acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The last decade has seen the integration of genetic and clinical information to determine the prognosis and treatment strategies.This book provides practitioners, researchers and graduate students of Hematology and Hematopathology a comprehensive update on the pathobiology, genomics, classification, diagnosis, monitoring, prognostication and therapy of both acute and chronic leukemias.

The book is an interdisciplinary study on the relationship between Muslims and their mosques in Indonesia and Malaysia. It presents selected historic mosques that demonstrate local interpretations and sociocultural assimilation, as well as a geographical syncretism, of Islam in local societies. The book unveils the contestations, synchronizations, assimilations, and integrations of local and foreign elements into the contextual architecture and sociologically institutionalized system that is the mosque: the Islamic place of worship. The author excavates the mosque¿s historical origins and traces the iconic elements, features, and designs from their earliest historical settings and contexts. He then identifies, analyzes, and theorizes the outcomes of the interaction between Islam and local traditions through Malaysian and Indonesian case studies. The book proposes that Islam, at its philosophical level, can be culturally acceptable anywhere because it contains universal virtues of humanity for equality, fraternity, and social justice. The book unfolds how a dialectical contestation and acculturation of Dutch colonialism, Middle Eastern elements of culture, and local customs and traditions, might then come into dialogue, peacefully. Finally, the book considers the relationship between Malay and Indonesian architecture within their respective political cultures, shedding light on Islam and its practice within rich multicultural contexts. Relevant to students and researchers in Islamic studies, architecture, and Southeast Asian studies more broadly, the book uncovers the issues, constraints, and opportunities relating to the meaning of mosques for Muslims in Malaysia and Indonesia.

This book focuses on the complex relationship between education and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and highlights how important context is for both critiquing and achieving the Goals though education, given the critical role teachers, schools and curriculum play in young people¿s lives. Readers will find examples of thinking and practice across the spectrum of education and training sectors, both formal and informal. The book adds to the increasing body of literature that recognises that education is, and must be, in its praxis, at the heart of all the SDGs. As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, we have a clear understanding of the wicked and complex crises regarding the health of life on our planet, and we cannot ignore the high levels of anxiety our young people are experiencing about their future. Continuing in the direction of unsustainable exploitation of people and nature is no longer an option if life is to have a flourishing future.The book illustrates how SDGs are supported in and by education and training, showcasing the conditions necessary to ensure SDGs are fore fronted in policy reform. It includes real-world examples of SDGs in education and training contexts, as well as novel critiques of the SDGs in regard to their privileging of anthropocentrism and neoliberalism.This book is beneficial to academics, researchers, post graduate and tertiary students from all fields relating to education and training. It is also of interest to policy developers from across disciplines and government agencies who are interested in how the SDGs relate to education.

This book examines the centrality of ideas such as satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), humility, and respect for understanding moral life in the complex milieu of human existence. It provides a comprehensive view of how Gandhian ideas have both a temporal and spatial universality significantly different from Western modern philosophy's universality claims. The chapters represent different styles of philosophy but with a common purpose, offering insights into how the global debates on religion, morality, and politics are assessed from Gandhi's point of view. Written in language accessible to general readers with an interest in Gandhian thinking, the book will appeal to academics and philosophers.

Bringing together a wide selection of work on cultural linguistics and pragmatics, this comprehensive handbook offers global, comparative insights into the field. Diversity does not always imply differences, but it also offers insights into surprising similarities and parallels when it comes to expressions. By the same token, this collection shows that when we see that linguistic differences, when they exist, stem from not merely language, but from the cultural and historical context that cultivates and nurtures them. Within that paradigm, then, this handbook locates the importance of philosophy, religion (or even the lack thereof), political affiliations, and so on, in forming expressions. In addition, comparisons with other models of cultural linguistics are undertaken. These trends provide readers with a comprehensive introduction to issues in cultural linguistics, addressing the peculiarities of the field under the rubric of localized studies, and speaking to the possibilities that exist in interpretation of what metaphors are. The book highlights the complexities that are so tightly interwoven into the fabric of every word and a sentence, across cultures and linguistic traditions. A must-have collection for anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, philologists, theoreticians, rhetoricians, and scholars of poetics, this is the one-stop reference in cultural linguistics.

This is an edited book that fills a gap in knowledge by providing a comprehensive view of esports practice from the Asia and Pacific region. The volume looks at the development of esports through the interconnections between institutions, industries, players, and society, across the Asia-Pacific. Over the last two decades, the Asia-Pacific region has been central to the growth and development of esports. The value of this book lies in its ability to provide a view of esport from countries that are currently underrepresented in the literature such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines and Australia while still integrating chapters looking at more well-researched countries such as China, Korea, and Japan. Through its diverse case studies, the book serves as a resource for scholars and educators worldwide who seek diverse examples with which to improve understanding of the esports phenomenon and the inclusiveness of media and communication curricula. chapters ¿Introduction to Esports in the Asia-Pacific¿ and ¿Conclusions to Esports in the AsiäPacific¿ are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This textbook offers a concise and thorough introduction to the topic of applied functional analysis. Targeted to graduate students of mathematics, it presents standard topics in a self-contained and accessible manner. Featuring approximately 300 problems sets to aid in understanding the content, this text serves as an ideal resource for independent study or as a textbook for classroom use. With its comprehensive coverage and reader-friendly approach, it is equally beneficial for both students and teachers seeking a detailed and in-depth understanding of the subject matter.

This book provides state-of-the-art coverage of deep learning applications in image analysis. The book demonstrates various deep learning algorithms that can offer practical solutions for various image-related problems; also how these algorithms are used by scientists and scholars in industry and academia. This includes autoencoder and deep convolutional generative adversarial network in improving classification performance of Bangla handwritten characters, dealing with deep learning-based approaches using feature selection methods for automatic diagnosis of covid-19 disease from x-ray images, imbalance image data sets of classification, image captioning using deep transfer learning, developing a vehicle over speed detection system, creating an intelligent system for video-based proximity analysis, building a melanoma cancer detection system using deep learning, plant diseases classification using AlexNet, dealing with hyperspectral images using deep learning, chest x-ray image classification of pneumonia disease using efficient net and inceptionv3.The book also addresses the difficulty of implementing deep learning in terms of computation time and the complexity of reasoning and modelling different types of data where information is currently encoded. Each chapter has the application of various new or existing deep learning models such as Deep Neural Network (DNN) and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN). The detailed utilization of deep learning packages that are available in MATLAB, Python and R programming environments have also been discussed, therefore, the readers will get to know about the practical implementation of deep learning as well. The content of this book is presented in a simple and lucid style for professionals, nonprofessionals, scientists, and students interested in the research area of deep learning applications in image analysis.

Using semi-structured interviews with 122 young Muslims in Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) from diverse ethnic backgrounds, this book investigates the lived reality of young Muslims from their own perspectives. It explores their ideas of key Islamic and secular issues, their struggles, world views, triumphs, how the stigmatized group negotiates their identity in these three English language speaking Western countries, 20 years after 9/11. The key aspect of this book is to transcend binaries and reductionisms by exploring what Muslims actually think and say rather than intellectual articulations on them. The book presents a very detailed account of these young Muslims in the Anglophone West on their political beliefs, their knowledge and understanding of sharia law, their interest and participation in local and transnational political activism, their positive and negative feelings about their own communities, and indeed how they define theircommunity.

This book highlights the latest developments on the numerical methods for inverse scattering problems associated with acoustic, electromagnetic, and elastic waves. Inverse scattering problems are concerned with identifying unknown or inaccessible objects by wave probing data, which makes possible many industrial and engineering applications including radar and sonar, medical imaging, nondestructive testing, remote sensing, and geophysical exploration. The mathematical study of inverse scattering problems is an active field of research. This book presents a comprehensive and unified mathematical treatment of various inverse scattering problems mainly from a numerical reconstruction perspective. It highlights the collaborative research outputs by the two groups of the authors yet surveys and reviews many existing results by global researchers in the literature. The book consists of three parts respectively corresponding to the studies on acoustic, electromagnetic, and elastic scatteringproblems. In each part, the authors start with in-depth theoretical and computational treatments of the forward scattering problems and then discuss various numerical reconstruction schemes for the associated inverse scattering problems in different scenarios of practical interest. In addition, the authors provide an overview of the existing results in the literature by other researchers. This book can serve as a handy reference for researchers or practitioners who are working on or implementing inverse scattering methods. It can also serve as a graduate textbook for research students who are interested in working on numerical algorithms for inverse scattering problems.

Ultra-high-pressure technology has been taking the sterilization and inactivation of agricultural products and food as core research and application fields since its birth. This book first outlines the basic principles of ultra-high pressure and then introduces non-traditional applications of the ultra-high-pressure technology in agricultural products such as Baijiu (the Chinese liquor), brown rice, and wood. These applications were discovered by the author, as well as the representative quality improvements of treatment objects brought by these applications. Finally, the author puts forward his own ideas on the non-traditional application trend of ultra-high-pressure technology in the future. This book aims to broaden the thinking for the application and research of ultra-high-pressure technology in agricultural product processing and propose specific ideas for future research and application in this field on the basis of the author¿s current research.

This book presents the findings of a major research program investigating structural design and controllable preparation of function-directed crystalline materials. The program was launched by the National Natural Science Foundation of China during the 11th Five-Year Plan period, which was started in October 2008 and concluded at the end of 2016. This book first summarizes the overall scientific objectives and the current state of the art of crystalline materials research in China and the international frontier. It also focuses on exploring the relationships between structures, compositions, and properties of crystalline materials and proposes new mechanisms and models for new materials exploration. In addition, it introduces a new functional-motif theory that can guide the development of crystalline materials with optical, electrical, and other composite functions and presents new research methods for the controlled synthesis and assembly of crystalline materials, and detection and characterization of functional motifs. Furthermore, practical applications for materials such as photoelectric conversion materials, nonlinear optical materials, laser and fluorescent crystal materials, and ferroelectric and microwave dielectric materials have been described. Given its scope, this book is of interest to researchers who work in crystalline materials. It also promotes the multidisciplinary collaboration among chemistry, materials science, and physics.

"This edited collection provides a rare look at the dynamic growth and multinationalization of Korean apparel firms. Despite their economic and social significance at home and abroad, little attention has been paid to the evolving nature of their business and strategies. This volume highlights their contributions as well as the challenges they are confronting in the fast-changing global apparel industry."- Kihak Sung, Chairman/CEO of Youngone Corporation and Former President of the International Textile Manufacturers Federation (ITMF)"The Korean apparel industry is an intriguing case in the study of industrial development because it was one of Korea's leading export sectors in the 1970s and 1980s, and then Korea adopted a critical middleman role in the subsequent internationalization of the apparel global value chain (GVC) since the 1990s. This edited volume highlights this new phase of globalization and regionalization by zooming in on Korean multinational first-tier suppliers and their role in fostering the expansion of the apparel GVC in Southeast Asia, Central America and other global regions."- Gary Gereffi, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Director of the Global Value Chains Center at DukeThis book offers a fresh look at the global apparel industry, focusing on Korean multinational corporations (MNCs) and their growing role in building regional connections and shaping economic and social development in Asia. Focusing on the multinationalization of Korean apparel firms over the past decades and their upgrading to first-tier suppliers in apparel global value chains, this edited volume highlights a host of new challenges these emerging MNCs confront in the rapidly changing global apparel industry and provides an in-depth view of their expanding role and adaptive strategies in configuring regional connections in post-Pandemic Asia.Joonkoo Lee is an Associate Professor in the School of Business at Hanyang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.Hyunji Kwon is a Professor of Sociology at Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.Hyun-Chin Lim is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Director of the Civil Society Program in Asia Center at Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

This book is as an extension of the previous two volumes on ¿Computer Vision and Machine Learning in Agriculture¿. This volume 3 discusses solutions to the problems of agricultural production by rendering advanced machine learning including deep learning tools and techniques. The book contains 13 chapters that focus on in-depth research outputs in precision agriculture, crop farming, horticulture, floriculture, vertical farming, animal husbandry, disease detection, plant recognition, production yield, product quality, defect assessment, and overall automation through robots and drones. The topics covered in the current volume, along with the previous volumes, are comprehensive literature for both beginners and experienced in this domain.

Image denoising, image deblurring, image inpainting, super-resolution, and compressed sensing reconstruction have important application value in engineering practice, and they are also the hot frontiers in the field of image processing. This book focuses on the numerical analysis of ill condition of imaging inverse problems and the methods of solving imaging inverse problems based on operator splitting. Both algorithmic theory and numerical experiments have been addressed. The book is divided into six chapters, including preparatory knowledge, ill-condition numerical analysis and regularization method of imaging inverse problems, adaptive regularization parameter estimation, and parallel solution methods of imaging inverse problem based on operator splitting. Although the research methods in this book take image denoising, deblurring, inpainting, and compressed sensing reconstruction as examples, they can also be extended to image processing problems such as image segmentation, hyperspectral decomposition, and image compression. This book can benefit teachers and graduate students in colleges and universities, or be used as a reference for self-study or further study of image processing technology engineers.This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.

This book presents the selected papers presented at the 5th International Symposium on Water Pollution and Treatment (ISWPT 2022), held during October 28¿29, 2022, in Bangkok, Thailand. It consists of themes pertaining to water management, policy and governance, and water governance and provides readers with comprehensive information on the principles of sustainable water resources management, as well as recent advances, directions for future research, and policy development for sustainable water resources management. This book is of interest to scientists, engineers, government officials, and water resource managers.

This book focuses on Chinäs foreign strategy and policy toward Central and Eastern Europe via the ¿China-CEEC¿ Cooperation Mechanism. It discusses the formation and evolution of the mechanism, concentrating on Chinäs leading role in this process, and covering a range of issues related to the mechanism¿s organizational development. This discussion includes the broad context of Chinäs foreign policy, a coherent framework analysis of institution and cooperation issues, the internal aspects of the heterogeneity, external aspects of its asymmetry interactions, and finally, its emphases on cooperation in the two primary dimensions of great powers engagement and localization.After the end of the Cold War and the sudden and shocking collapse of the Soviet Union, the geopolitics of Central and Eastern Europe begins to undergo dramatic changes. Since then, an increase in public discussion in China about the transformation from the planned economy to market economy became very visible. Moreover, this part of the world perceives as the gate to Europe through almost forget Silk Road. Both factors have played a crucial role in shaping Chinäs interest in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. Following the points mentioned above, Chinäs interests in Central and Eastern Europe are due to several factors, including its frontier stability, national security, economic expansion, and search for new sources of energy and new markets for made in China products. Recognition of the importance of the region culminates in the recent Chinese grand strategy of ¿Belt and Road,¿ which highlights Central and Eastern Europe as the essential link in Chinäs plan New Silk Road strategy. In this regard, the ¿China-CEEC¿ Cooperation Mechanism has a crucial role in Chinäs ¿Go West¿ strategy.

This book features high-quality research papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Pattern Recognition (CIPR 2022), held at Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal, India, during 23 - 24 April 2022. It includes practical development experiences in various areas of data analysis and pattern recognition, focusing on soft computing technologies, clustering and classification algorithms, rough set and fuzzy set theory, evolutionary computations, neural science and neural network systems, image processing, combinatorial pattern matching, social network analysis, audio and video data analysis, data mining in dynamic environments, bioinformatics, hybrid computing, big data analytics and deep learning. It also provides innovative solutions to the challenges in these areas and discusses recent developments.

This book systematically introduces the competitions in the field of algorithm and machine learning. The first author of the book has won 5 championships and 5 runner-ups in domestic and international algorithm competitions.Firstly, it takes common competition scenarios as a guide by giving the main processes of using machine learning to solve real-world problems, namely problem modelling, data exploration, feature engineering, model training. And then lists the main points of difficulties, general ideas with solutions in the whole process. Moreover, this book comprehensively covers several common problems in the field of machine learning competitions such as recommendation, temporal prediction, advertising, text computing, etc.The authors, also knew as "competition professionals¿, will explain the actual cases in detail and teach you various processes, routines, techniques and strategies, which is a rare treasure book for all competition enthusiasts. It is very suitable for readers who are interested in algorithm competitions and deep learning algorithms in practice, or computer-related majors.