Bøger udgivet af Springer Nature Singapore

This book identifies the effect of governance structure components on outreach and sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Bangladesh. It is designed to study and understand these structures with reference to the changing forms and functions of MFI administration, in theory and practice, with experiences from selected countries. It helps readers understand corporate governance across the globe with recent developments in this sector. It provides evidence from Bangladesh on what aspects need to be strengthened and identifies the importance of considering differences in institutional values, culture, and environment while pointing to the risk of applying normative assertions of governance structure. The book suggests that a regulatory and supervisory framework should be introduced in Bangladesh to enhance the governance structure of MFIs. It advocates that the sector requires a robust regulatory environment to improve its governance and administrative frameworks and expand the microfinance sector's outreach and sustainability opportunities. It will benefit researchers and students of economics, corporate governance, accountability, transparency, finance, business administration, microfinance institutions, and applied fields, as well as microfinance practitioners, administrators, and policymakers.

This first book of conference proceedings contains selected papers presented at ICGEC 2023, the 15th International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing, held on October 6-8, 2023, in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The conference is intended as an international forum for the researchers and professionals in all areas of genetic and evolutionary computing. And the readers know the up-to-date techniques of the mentioned topics, including swarm intelligence and its applications, operational technologies and networked multimedia applications, wearable computing and intelligent data hiding, image processing and intelligent applications, and intelligent multimedia tools and applications. It helps readers bring new ideas or apply the designed approaches from the collected papers to their professional jobs.

This book contains select papers on mathematical analysis and modeling, discrete mathematics, fuzzy sets, and soft computing. All the papers were presented at the international conference on FIM28-SCMSPS20 virtually held at Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar (SSN) College of Engineering, Chennai, India, and Stella Maris College (Autonomous), Chennai, from November 23-27, 2020. The conference was jointly held with the support of the Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics. Both the invited articles and submitted papers were broadly grouped under three heads: Part 1 on analysis and modeling (six chapters), Part 2 on discrete mathematics and applications (six chapters), and Part 3 on fuzzy sets and soft computing (three chapters).

This book is a superbly illustrated guide to the latest endoscopic approaches employed in surgery to the lumbar spine. In the past, spinal endoscopic surgeries have been performed mainly in the treatment of lumbar disc herniation, but indications have now expanded owing to breakthroughs in surgical methods and instruments. Furthermore, in addition to the traditional percutaneous transforaminal approach, various other approaches are now feasible, including the posterior, paraspinal, transpedicular, and contralateral. This book describes and illustrates the full array of approaches in indications including lumbar central stenosis, lumbar foraminal stenosis, and lumbar disc herniation. Detailed guidance is also provided on endoscopic lumbar interbody fusion, covering the oblique, uniportal, and biportal approaches. Supplementary surgical videos further facilitate understanding and execution of the described procedures. Written by expert spinal endoscopy surgeons with extensive practical experience and a record of academic achievement, the book will be an ideal aid for spine surgeons at all levels of experience.

With multidisciplinary examination, this book explores Waiting for Visa, Ambedkar's autobiographical writing. This investigation ranges from Dalit Studies to Discourse analysis. It aims to provide the reader with in-depth knowledge of Ambedkar's unexplored autobiographical memoir and supplement a range of generalized works. The issues addressed in this book are essential to Ethnic and Race studies in general, to which Dalit Studies is but one contributing discipline. The Dalit Studies already have many texts. These texts are primarily concerned with Dalit identity politics, socio-mythological explorations, and Ambedkarian thoughts on economics, politics, and racial-religious discriminations. These are not discussed with Ambedkar's life stories narrated by himself. This book bridges the gap between Dalit Studies and Ambedkar Studies to project how Ambedkar attempted to forge into an impregnable South Asian social, educational, and political fabric. This reference book aims to attractacademics and students of Asian, South Asian, and Dalit Studies. The book appeals to educators, policymakers, and comparative literary scholars.

This book presents various concepts and applications related to risk-conscious operations management. It also provides an overview of the risk-based engineering ¿ fundamental to the concept of risk-conscious operations management. It presents the reliability concept to support Dependency Modelling, which includes hardware systems structures and components for reliability improvement and risk reduction. The book further develops and builds attributes and model for risk-conscious culture ¿ critical to characterize operational approach to risk and presents human factor modelling, where it works on developing an approach for human error precursor analysis. This book will be useful for students, researchers, academicians and professionals working on identifying risk and reliability issues in complex safety and mission critical systems. It will also be beneficial for industry risk-and-reliability experts and operational safety staff working in the complex engineering systems.

This book provides new insights into the development of integrated approaches to peace and sustainability in the era of global change. Since the late 1980s, and in order to regulate the increasingly detrimental impacts of humans on the environment, the transition towards sustainability has been high on the agenda of researchers and policymakers alike. Meanwhile, peace considerations have expanded in recent decades to include the varied types and sources of conflict, from inter-state to intra-state conflicts due to various social, political, economic, and environmental factors. Through providing theoretical and empirical insights, this book demonstrates that sustainability and peace as intrinsically interrelated. The book elaborates on the multi-dimensional and constantly evolving concepts of sustainability and peace. In addition, the book contributes to a better understanding of the complex and dynamic interlinkages between peace and sustainability by presenting examples of pathways where sustainability and peace interact considering the different factors and contexts that are constantly shaping and reshaping the conditions for sustainable and peaceful societies.

This book focuses on the various applications of microorganisms for sustainable environment and the reduction of hazardous pollutants released in various forms, including xenobiotics, e-waste, pesticides, insecticides, plastic, heavy metals, paper waste, medical waste, textile dyes, and their impact on environmental and human health. The book involves a series of research reports that explain the application of microbes used to solve real-life issues raised due to changes happening in environment, including pollution, by covering applications, including the use of bacteria, fungi, microalgae and biofilm in the detection and degradation of crude oil, pesticides, dyes, e-waste, heavy metals and other pollutants. It also focuses on integrative strategies in the application of microbial nanomaterials for remediation of pollutant. This material will help environmental scientists and microbiologists to learn about existing environmental problems and suggest novel ways to control or contain their effects by employing various treatment approaches.

This book highlights the comprehensive overview of the current status and future potential of biopolymers in the textile industry, including the properties and performance of different types of biopolymers, the applications of biopolymers in various textile products, the challenges and limitations associated with their use, and the environmental impact and economic benefits of biopolymers in the textile industry. The textile industry is one of the largest and most important industries in the world, but it also has a significant environmental impact due to the use of non-renewable and non-biodegradable materials. Biopolymers, which are derived from renewable biological sources such as plants and microorganisms, have the potential to be a sustainable alternative to traditional textile materials. However, the use of biopolymers in the textile industry is still a relatively new and rapidly evolving field, and there is a need for more information and understanding about the opportunitiesand limitations associated with their use.

This book presents the systematic evolution of digitized education: trends, advances, challenges encountered and their solutions toward the use of advanced technologies. The book mainly covers variety of areas such as blended learning in modern education, flipped classroom, ICT-based education, digital transformation of education. Explosion of information and communication technologies has transformed the way we live, learn, work and socialize. This heavy intervention of technologies in the modern world has triggered us to think how we engage and interact with each other and how we make use of these digital tools and communications channels. And consequent upon which societies are transforming into digitized education where datafication, platformization and algorithmic governance are a common vocabulary.

This book documents Japan's psychological deterioration caused by its defeat in August 1945. Also, Japan¿s traumatic transformation from authoritarianism to democracy is detailed.The study exposes an ideological war between the Soviet Union and the USA within American-occupied Japan, which triggered violent polarization among the Japanese. Under General MacArthur¿s tutorage, the defeated Japanese were expected to become a peace-loving people, but the Cold War derailed Japan¿s progress toward freedom and democracy. The ¿Red Purge,¿ instituted by MacArthur's Headquarters (GHQ) from 1949 to 1950, triggered the devastating side effects on Japan's academic freedom and freedom of speech. Stanford University Professor Dr. Walter C. Eells (1886¿1962) served at the GHQ as an influential education adviser and became the most vocal advocate of the Red Purge. Japanese Marxist historians have constructed the popular postwar narrative of the Red Purge, blaming the GHQ for every failure. The vast archival materials, including the GHQ papers, Eells papers, and Japanese-language documents, revealed that the Red Purge was a serious propaganda battle between the Americans and the Soviets in a war-torn Japan. This propaganda war engendered the violently polarized political climate, in which the conservative Japanese government behaved according to the dictates of US Cold War policy. By revealing feverish tensions within the GHQ regarding communist influences in Japanese universities, this study sheds bright new light on the Red Purge and its lasting impact on Japan's political future.

This Compendium was conceived as a ¿pocket compass¿, a practical guide that may help readers to orientate themselves while they explore global affairs and attempt to make sense of the highly interconnected, multidimensional challenges of contemporary human development. The book is intended to be an accessible, concise, yet comprehensive reference for anyone who hopes to better understand today¿s world and its dramatic complexity. The aim is to highlight a relevant selection of the demographic, socio-economic, geo-political, and environmental macro-dynamics that define our time, and to explore in a practical way the indicators that can be used to monitor their evolution over time.  In general, this project stems from the need to apply ¿systemic thinking¿ to the study of the world and to develop a holistic perspective that can bridge the gap that for too long has existed across academic disciplines and their respective focuses. The macro-trends featured in the book shed light, in particular, on the change that has been occurring over time in the vast Global South ¿ a portion of the globe that accounts for over 80% of the world¿s total population. The book¿s ultimate ¿ although not exclusive ¿ target audience is undoubtedly composed of undergraduate students of subjects such as political science, international affairs, international development, human geography and the like. In addition, the Compendium may benefit professionals in both public and private organisations as well as members of the general public seeking to acquire "global development literacy" in manners that are academically sound, but also accessible and concise.

This book presents a new step farther into the twenty-first century, for the first time truly combining a comprehensive global data analysis with social policy theory development. The theory of global ideal-typical welfare regimes, also known as the ¿Ten Worlds of Welfare Regime Theory¿, as set forth earlier by Christian Aspalter, is now in this book tested empirically using a quantitative global data analysis for the first time. The strong and rich results fully vindicated the Ten Worlds Theory. All in all, about 150 countries are included in this test, measuring numerous variables on two main dimensions, i.e., povertization and inequality. The innovative approach of using a new indicator, Aspalter¿s Standardized Relative Performance Index, is applied, which facilitated the exact measurements of distances between relative performances of each variable, each dimension, each country, and each ideal-typical welfare regime (in relation to one another, respectively). In addition, one explanative and one normative meta-study is added to the book, to point to ways to understand and deal with the global culprit of inequality and, hence, poverty.¿On the backdrop of decades of comparative theoretical and empirical research we now, for the first time, have a truly global analysis of welfare regimes.¿ ---- Peter Abrahamson, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) play a pivotal role in the field of urban planning and management and provide better solutions for numerous urban problems. With GIS, one has the ability to better understand existing requirements of a city and its design to fulfill those needs. This book contributes to developing scientific knowledge based on geospatial technologies among planners, researchers, scientists, professionals, students, and laymen and providing them with better understanding for urban planning and management at various levels. The book manifests the importance of GIS in better understanding of current urban challenges and provides new insights on how to apply GIS in urban planning. It also encourages the various stakeholders of society to participate in the decision-making process and assists planners and authorities to formulate suitable plans for sustainable urban growth of a region. The book is divided into two parts. The first part describes the fundamental concepts of GIS and also deals with the advanced techniques of spatial planning. The second part addresses real-world case studies using various applications of GIS. The case studies include urban land-use changes, simulation of future urban growth, urban heat island, alternate landfill site selection and urban flood susceptibility mapping, among others. This book shows how to integrate GIS with remote sensing, geostatistics, artificial intelligence-machine learning techniques, and other cutting-edge technologies. Readers find this book to be an invaluable resource for understanding and solving problems relating to sustainable urban planning and management.

This book provides a state-of-the-art report on our current understanding of aquaporins and the future direction of the field. Aquaporins (AQPs) are a group of water-channel proteins that are specifically permeable to water and other small molecules, such as glycerol and urea. To date thirteen water-channel proteins (AQP0 ¿ AQP12) have been cloned and the mechanisms and physiological functions of water transport across biological membranes have long been the subject of interest. Recent advances in the molecular biology and physiology of water transport have yielded new insights into how and why water moves across cell membranes, and studies on aquaporin knockout mouse models suggest that aquaporins are involved in the development of some diseases and they may be useful targets of research into selective-inhibitor drugs. By focusing on the advances made over the last 30 years in the biophysics, genetics, protein structure, molecular biology, physiology, pathophysiology and pharmacology of aquaporins in mammalian cell membranes, this book provides novel insights into further mechanisms and the physiological significance of water and some small molecule transport in mammals in order to stimulate further research in new directions.In the second version, fourteen chapters will be updated base on the most recent research articles. Ten new chapters will be added.

This book provides a systematical investigation on the reservoir characteristics and percolation mechanism of ultradeep carbonate gas reservoirs, including reservoir characteristics and classification, gas storage and percolation capacities, gas-phase and gas-water two-phase percolation mechanism, microscale complex gas-water relationship, reservoir sensitivity characteristics, and gas production characteristics of heterogeneous carbonate reservoirs. Some advanced and improved experimental techniques and analytical methods are introduced and applied, including comprehensive evaluation technique of storage and percolation capacities, ultra-high temperature and pressure physical simulation experiment technique, microscopic visualization technique based on CT scanning and microelectronics lithography, and physical simulation technique for heterogeneous reservoir development. In addition, it summarizes strategies for the efficient development of ultradeep carbonate gas reservoirs based on these theoretical research results. The key techniques and methods introduced in this monograph satisfy the need for efficient development of ultradeep carbonate gas reservoirs and provide theoretical basis and methodological value for investigations on similar gas reservoirs. This book serves as a reference for engineering technical professionals, researchers, and graduate students who are engaged in the exploration and development of carbonate gas reservoirs.

This book focuses on the development of smart education in China and some countries of Central and Eastern Europe. A brief discussion on the idea of smart education was given in the introduction chapter, followed by a series of national smart education profiles of eleven countries. In detail, the profile starts with an overview of ICT in Education or smart education in the country and policies of ICT in Education or smart education. Some key features of smart education in each country were discussed with examples of best practices. The profile ends with a description of trends of smart education in the country. Based on the information above, the final chapter presents an analysis among the eleven countries with six major features they presented and concluded the book with suggestions on advancing smart education by three points.

This book highlights the relevant and timely global change movement: green entrepreneurship. Presented in this book is relevant literature and academic knowledge. The book is expected to  support in creating more green entrepreneurship initiatives in collaboration with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This book is the fourth volume of the ¿Marine Algal Flora of China-Rhodophyta.¿ The series has seven volumes covering about 20 orders, 45 families, 173 genera, and 560 species including over 150 species firstly described from China,  indicating significant importance to the knowledge of North-Western Pacific marine algal flora. The fourth volume covers coralline algae, including Sporolithales, Corallinales, and Hapalidiales.Almost all species involved are illustrated in detail on morphology, inner structure, habitats, and geographical distribution, based upon herbarium specimens collected along the China coast, and a lot of elaborate pictures are attached inside. This flora will gain our understanding of current Chinese marine red algae, but much research is still necessary to reflect the whole picture of the red algal diversity along the China coast.

With the purpose of exploring the critical possibilities offered by the global crisis of coronavirus pandemic, this volume presents the collected works of scholars, educators and practitioners worldwide, bringing to the readers a broad array of perspectives on how COVID-19 inspires us to rethink, redefine, and make sense of the theoretical and pedagogical approaches that can be applied in various educational contexts. Part One of the book provides an insightful exploration of the technology-mediated innovations used in English language learning and teaching. Part Two reflects on the online learning experiences of students, as well as the teachers¿ strategies to cope with changes as the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed unprecedented disruptions in class. Part Three looks into a range of case studies regarding the digital divide, cross-border schooling, cyberbullying, and cross-disciplinary skill training in the post-pandemic workplace, highlighting the importance of creating a positive learning environment. Part Four draws on the observations and experiences of frontline teachers, to examine ways to optimize the digital learning experiences of students in and outside the classroom. This volume will be a useful reference for scholars in Education, Communication, Applied Linguistics, Social Work, and Positive Psychology.

This book illustrates the importance and significance of the systems approach in deciphering diverse aspects of host-parasite interactions in infection dynamics. It describes the complex issues and state-of-the-art progress in the infection biology of parasitic protozoa. The book explores the current concepts and paradigms of gene expression, metabolome, and immune remodeling in these diseases. The chapters encompass updates on the parasitic tropism, co-evolution, systemic responses in hosts, and translational approaches. It provides an overview of the parasite's efficient ways of exploiting host molecules and describes pathways for their survival, differentiation, and replication within the host cells. The book also delineates the role of inflammasomes and their activation in response to the protozoan parasite. The book discusses technological progress and machine learning-based modeling approaches to revisit parasitic infection from a non-conventional perspective. Collectively this book offers a comprehensive purview of concepts and paradigms in parasitic infection in the form of an updated yet discernible elucidation.

The book is designed to serve as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses on soil and water conservation engineering for students of agricultural engineering, civil engineering, environmental engineering and related disciplines. The book presents the basics of soil and water erosion, and describes the measures to control erosion, focusing on structures to prevent and control erosion. The chapters dedicated to erosion control structures provide a detailed view of each structural construction, covering the function, design and elements of each type of structure. Some common type of structures covered in the book are terrace, bunds, vegetated waterways, and gully control structures, including spillways. The book also covers wind erosion and control structures to prevent wind erosion. Each chapter includes pedagogical elements such as examples, practice questions, and multiple-choice-type questions to improve understanding and aid in self-study. Besides serving as a textbook university coursework, the book can also serve as a supplementary or primary text for professional development courses for practicing engineers engaged in soil and water conservation or watershed management. The book will also serve as a reference for professionals, environmental consultants, and policy makers engaged in soil and water conservation related fields.

This book presents and analyzes methods to perform image co-segmentation. In this book, the authors describe efficient solutions to this problem ensuring robustness and accuracy, and provide theoretical analysis for the same. Six different methods for image co-segmentation are presented. These methods use concepts from statistical mode detection, subgraph matching, latent class graph, region growing, graph CNN, conditional encoder¿decoder network, meta-learning, conditional variational encoder¿decoder, and attention mechanisms. The authors have included several block diagrams and illustrative examples for the ease of readers. This book is a highly useful resource to researchers and academicians not only in the specific area of image co-segmentation but also in related areas of image processing, graph neural networks, statistical learning, and few-shot learning.

This book presents a bio-inspired hierarchical control scheme step by step toward developing limbless robots capable of 3D locomotion, fast reflex response, as well as sophisticated reaction to environmental stimuli. This interdisciplinary book introduces how to combine biological concept with locomotion control of limbless robots. The special features of the book include limbless locomotion classification and control, design of biological locomotor and the integration of sensory information into the locomotor using artificial intelligence methods, and on-site demonstrations of limbless locomotion in different scenarios. The book is suitable for readers with engineering background, especially for researchers focused on bio-inspired robots.

This book focuses on the recent innovations and therapeutic potentials of regenerative medicine and discusses the applications of stem cells, biomaterials, and tissue engineering in regenerative medicine. The book covers essential aspects of regenerative medicine, including tissue microenvironment, immunological perspectives, stem, and non-stem cell-mediated approaches, imaging techniques, biomarkers, and 3D printing technology. It also reviews the applications of biosensing technologies in regenerative medicine, including biomanufacturing, organ-on-a-chip technologies, and as indicators of therapeutic efficacy. Further, it focuses on the regenerative medicine approaches for diseases of the central nervous system. It also provides the therapeutic potential of regenerative medicine to improve soft tissue and wound healing, cardiovascular, neural, bone, and orofacial regeneration.¿

This book contains selected papers from the symposium on Engineering Pedagogy organised in honour of Professor Amitabha Ghosh and his Lecture Series on Evolution of Classical Mechanics. It covers evolution of mechanics from ancient times to modern days and good pedagogical practices among engineering and science faculty. The content includes chapters on challenges in engineering education, intellectual property rights, professional ethics, manufacturing education, additive manufacturing in engineering curricula, among others. The volume necessitates an efficient and effective pedagogical approach from engineering educators. This book will be of interest to those in teaching across all disciplines of engineering.

¿This timely, compelling, and extremely useful book adds considerably to our understanding of Chinese art immediately after the Cultural Revolution by linking the artistic development of Shanghai during the 1980s with the city¿s vibrant artistic role within Asia during the 1930s and early '40s. ¿¿¿David Elliott, Curator|Writer|Museum Director|Teacher, Oxford|Stockholm|Tokyo|Istanbul|Sydney|Kyiv|Moscow|Guangzhou|Berlin¿It fills a long-overlooked gap in the study of Chinäs Avant-Garde centered in Shanghai during the period, but also connected to the earlier and subsequent development from a new historicist perspective. ¿A must-read for understanding the evolution of Avant-Garde Art in China, but also of China in itself.¿¿Qiu Xiaolong, Professor, Doctor, Author (of the prize-winning Inspector Chen series translated into twenty languages and sold over two million copies worldwide)This book offers fresh perspectives and new insights into the avant-garde art in Shanghai in the 1980s that challenges the narrative in the current discourse on the appearance of contemporary art in China. It includes critical events in Shanghai, that will attract the serious attention of art professionals and collectors. Shanghai, with its semi-colonial, political, economic and cultural history, including the strong legacy of the early twentieth-century modernist art movement, has played a vital role in Chinäs modernisation and presents itself as a unique case in the evolution of contemporary art in China.Lansheng Zhang is an art historian and academic, art curator, artist and designer. He has worked in these roles with universities, governments, international organisations, major art institutions in China, Australia, Japan and Europe. His main research interests are in modern and contemporary art and design, art histories and visual cultures in Asia especially in China. He was an Adjunct Professor at the RMIT University Melbourne, Associate Professor at the East China Normal University Shanghai, Senior Fellow at Lincoln University, UK, Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University, and recently a Research Fellow at the University of Sydney.