Bøger udgivet af World Scientific Publishing Company

Many cities across the world continue to grapple with long-standing urban challenges even as new ones emerge. With each crisis, cities address these perennial (e.g. decentralization of urban cores and revitalising the city centre), nascent, and emergent (work-life balance, digitization of social-economy) urban challenges with a greater sense of urgency. The book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to signpost future pathways of cities, drawing on the experiences of the city-state of Singapore.

The book uses distance functions, a generalization of the more familiar production function, as the theoretical and empirical tools to construct Lerner indexes of market power in both the input and output markets. The use of distance functions enables us to explicitly account for the effects of firm inefficiency and price markups in the evaluation of market power. The book focusses on the theory and provides a menu of applications to construct measures of firm efficiency and market power in the financial and public sectors.

Organic Solar Thermal Fuels: Mechanisms, Design, and Applications offers a significant introductory overview of the key properties, mechanisms, applications, and research directions in this emerging field of photothermal conversion materials.This book explores the types, characteristics, preparation, testing, applications, and future trends of small organic molecules, polymers, and nanocomposites for solar heat storage. Through the functionalization, composite and ordered structure design, and function-oriented assembly of organic molecules, new micro-nano-superstructure composites with multi-level pore structure, multi-scale network structure, and multi-group interface structure can be constructed, which can greatly improve the energy storage and controllable release performance of existing photothermal fuels. All the basic aspects and technology-oriented developments in this emerging discipline will be covered within this comprehensive and timely book.This first-of-its-kind professional book on organic solar thermal fuels serves as a key major reference work for materials scientists, polymer scientists, and chemists in academia, student and research and development. It may also be of interest to nanoscientists, environmental scientists, and engineers.

As a key part and parcel of sustainable development of ASEAN-China relations, cooperation in non-traditional security issues has become a new growth area for both sides. This book is divided into three parts. The first part takes stock of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in 30 years of ASEAN-China public health cooperation, covering topics such as digital health and personnel training cooperation, global vaccine distribution and PPP in public health in Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. The second part explores how to reconnect ASEAN and China, which includes sharing the experiences of member states on vaccine multilateralism and offering proposals for practicable and safer regional standards to institute green lanes, travel bubbles and COVID-19 travel passports to strengthen the regional economy, especially in mass tourism. The third part introduces ASEAN-China cooperation on Nature based solutions (NBS) to environmental issues, including Southeast Asia's vulnerability to climate change and its Low Carbon Pathway, and NBS for climate change adaptation in Vietnam's Mekong Delta.

This compendium looks at the current status and practices of teaching and learning facilitated/enabled by digital technologies, reviews challenges/issues associated with classroom teaching, online teaching and hybrid-learning, and discusses success factors and future directions of teaching and learning in the digital era.The book also provides a number of studies at different perspectives of using digital technologies for teaching and learning.This useful reference text benefits teaching staff or administrators at education institutions (especially higher education providers) to update their professional knowledge and skills.

This book is a selection of the journal publications of William T Ziemba. Over a span of 50 years, Professor Ziemba contributed to a wide variety of disciplines including Stochastic Programming, Portfolio Theory, Sports Betting, and Risk Management. In his work he collaborated with academics and practitioners worldwide. Bill wrote for a variety of audiences. He was widely known as a leading practitioner of operations research methods applied to problems in financial planning and sports betting.Prior to his death, Bill Ziemba was working on a multivolume series on his collected papers. The Selected Works of William T Ziemba: A Memorial Volume captures some of the sentiment of Professor Ziemba's plans.

Soft power encompasses the ability to wield influence over others through skillful consensus-building, employing persuasive techniques, and cultivating a favorable image. In today's technologically advanced era, nations are adopting innovative diplomatic approaches; instead of solely relying on conventional state-to-state interactions, countries now prioritize engaging with societies through a variety of channels. Thus, in the evolving global landscape, where effective communication holds ever greater significance, public diplomacy takes center stage.Drawing from its robust historical legacy of strong statecraft, Türkiye strategically employs soft power to navigate diplomatic challenges, establish global connections, promote mutual understanding, dispel stereotypes, and encourage cross-cultural interactions. Through harnessing its cultural appeal and influence, Türkiye adeptly bridges gaps and facilitates meaningful exchanges among diverse communities. Within this framework, this book delves into the theoretical dimensions of soft power and its intersections with other principles and actions. Additionally, it conducts a historical analysis of Türkiye's soft power strategies, spanning from the time of the Ottoman Empire to the founding of the Republic and extending into contemporary times.

The purpose of this book is to examine the foreign policy of Jacinda Ardern's New Zealand Government between 2020 and early 2023 when the COVID-19 pandemic intersected with an evolving and often tumultuous post-Cold War global environment. This context witnessed the erosion of an international rules-based order and the renewal of great power competition. In particular, the Indo-Pacific has become a contested strategic space, which impacted on New Zealand's foreign policy interests.As a self-proclaimed small state, New Zealand faced distinct challenges: the Ardern Government formulated a distinctive foreign policy that drew on the success of its handling of the pandemic as well as Aotearoa New Zealand's indigenous values, and emphasised the importance of a good international reputation, strong diplomatic networks, and multilateral cooperation to maintain and grow its influence.This interdisciplinary volume brings together academics, policymakers and practitioners and provides essential reading for anyone interested in how relatively small states such as New Zealand can navigate significant foreign policy challenges in an increasingly complex and contested system of international relations.

Actin, a fundamental building block of intracellular cytoskeletal filaments, holds immense potential as a platform for information processing. In this groundbreaking book, the authors establish a solid theoretical and modelling foundation for the future experimental prototyping of actin-based cytoskeleton computers in laboratory settings.By delving into the mechanisms of signal propagation and perturbations on actin filaments, the authors uncover the underlying principles of information processing at the sub-cellular level. Through their innovative insights, novel principles for information processing emerge, potentially revolutionising the field of future and emergent information technologies and computational biology.The book's theoretical and modelling framework serves as a crucial stepping stone towards the experimental realisation of actin-based cytoskeleton computers. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, researchers and scientists can leverage this knowledge to conduct experiments, validate hypotheses, and explore the practical implications of actin-based computing systems.

The dramatic shift of the Indian subcontinent, once highly integrated for a millennium until its Partition in 1947, into one of the world's least integrated regions, raises questions about this swift transformation. The formation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) by the newly partitioned states aimed at fostering collaboration. However, initial efforts proved futile, prompting a comparison with the successful dynamics of the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).Drawing on his experience in the Bangladesh foreign ministry and as a World Bank consultant, Ambassador Tariq Karim's book provides insights into South Asian regional cooperation. It traverses history, analyses cooperation models, examines various dimensions of collaboration, and envisions extending sub-regional cooperation to the broader Bay of Bengal region.Ambassador Karim's narrative highlights contrasts between SAARC's challenges and the achievements of the EU and ASEAN, emphasising key factors that differentiate successful regional initiatives. This book not only serves as a documentation of historical shifts but also envisages a future where the Indian subcontinent and its neighbouring regions embrace enhanced collaboration for mutual benefit.

Bayesian analysis is today understood to be an extremely powerful method of statistical analysis, as well an approach to statistics that is particularly transparent and intuitive. It is thus being extensively and increasingly utilized in virtually every area of science and society that involves analysis of data.A widespread misconception is that Bayesian analysis is a more subjective theory of statistical inference than what is now called classical statistics. This is true neither historically nor in practice. Indeed, objective Bayesian analysis dominated the statistical landscape from roughly 1780 to 1930, long before 'classical' statistics or subjective Bayesian analysis were developed. It has been a subject of intense interest to a multitude of statisticians, mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists. The book, while primarily focusing on the latest and most prominent objective Bayesian methodology, does present much of this fascinating history.The book is written for four different audiences. First, it provides an introduction to objective Bayesian inference for non-statisticians; no previous exposure to Bayesian analysis is needed. Second, the book provides an overview of the development and current state of objective Bayesian analysis and its relationship to other statistical approaches, for those with interest in the philosophy of learning from data. Third, the book presents a careful development of the particular objective Bayesian approach that we recommend, the reference prior approach. Finally, the book presents as much practical objective Bayesian methodology as possible for statisticians and scientists primarily interested in practical applications.

How does social control theory explain the relationships between business firms and organizations? This book aims to answer that question. Providing a comprehensive organizing framework of control (1st, 2nd, and 3rd party control), this book focuses on informal and formal applications of control mechanisms such as contracts, monitoring mechanisms, incentives, and punishments. In doing so, it reviews existing control/governance theories such as transaction cost analysis, agency theory, power/dependence theory, contract theory, incentives theory and others. Social control theory is introduced as a meta-theory of governance and control. The derivation of control, the outcomes of control and, particularly, when and how control might be successful are discussed in detail.The book hypothesizes that the control mode and mechanisms in use are a function of the cost of control to the controller based on its desire to manage the relationship and its outcomes, and the target of control's extent of agreement with the control processes in use. The various components of costs of control are identified and discussed. Drawing on interdisciplinary sources of information, it is a must-read for all who are interested in understanding the mechanisms of control and relationships underpinning business organizations.

The process of decrypting innovation and creation, as a lurking nondescript so far, is theorized and operationalized based upon interdisciplinary taskings.First comes the mapping between real world and human brain; innovation is redefined as discovering new interrelationships in the brain using an algorithm, well-defined in 5 steps, of searching unknown relations herein, and the psychological synesthesia governing communications in the brain is dutifully augmented and made to function accordingly. The Dante effect then binds the fresh interactions into a metaphoric tome which is mapped back to the real world to become an up-to-date theory or a new appliance.Since the author has been nurtured both in Chinese spiritual excellence and advanced Western cultures, this book is penned in a provocative style of knowledgeably poetic prose that will appeal to a broad audience.In the era of Artificial Intelligence, it is the human capacity of Thinking Synesthesia acquitted itself with distinction in the profound understanding of various interrelationships that transcends time and will be blessed with eternal youth.

Professor Chen-Ning Yang is best known for his achievements in Physics. He has also made significant contributions to the development of mathematics, as mathematics is extensively used in his research. In his long and fruitful academic career, he has witnessed many important events in the fields of Physics and Mathematics, and has collaborated or interacted with many great scientists in history. This book records eight interviews with Professor Chen-Ning Yang, which were conducted by the authors from 2016 to 2019.Through Professor Yang's unique perspective, major scientific events in the 20th century were revisited vividly, elaborating the development and mutual influences of mathematics and physics, as well as unveiling the academic work, the daily lives, and the personalities of scientists, as well as their collaboration and competition, some stories unknown to the public before are also revealed in this book.

In this book, the focus is on five Asian countries/regions (Iran, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan) that show distinct approaches to combating infections. It specifically examines how the recent pandemic arose stigma in the context of history and sociocultural relations, how it is discussed and problematized among locals, and how disparate institutions and individuals mobilized to address it. A global comparative analysis across Greater Asia is presented in this book through the contributions of experts from multiple fields who have researched extensively in each region.

This textbook introduces the field of mechanics, commonly offered at universities in Germany as part of structured courses in theoretical physics.Within the framework of elementary Newtonian mechanics, the basic concepts - such as trajectory curves, mass point, equations of motion, reference frames - are introduced. The focus is placed on the Lagrangian formalism (Lagrangian equations of the first and second kind, Hamilton's principle, conservation laws, Noether's theorem, etc.) and its most important applications (e.g.: motion in a central potential, dynamics of a rigid body and harmonic oscillations). The Hamilton formalism is then introduced in a compact way and continuum mechanics is presented through illustrative examples, such as string vibrations, beam bending, elementary hydrodynamics, sound waves, and more. The book also deals in detail with special relativity (principle of relativity by Einstein, length contraction, time dilation, relativistic equation of motion, production of heavy particles, twin paradox, etc.), and is supplemented with an appendix that examines the relation between the Newtonian force and the Minkowksi force.

In China, many excellent students in mathematics take an active part in various mathematical contests, and each year, the best six senior high school students are selected to form the IMO National Team to compete in the International Mathematical Olympiad. In the past ten years, China's IMO Team has achieved outstanding results - they won first place almost every year.The authors of this book are coaches of the China national team. They are Xiong Bin, Xiao Liang, Yu Hongbing, Yao Yijun, Qu Zhenhua, Li Ting, Ai Yinhua, Wang Bin, Fu Yunhao, He Yijie, Zhang Sihui, Wang Xinmao, Lin Tianqi, Xu Disheng, et al. Those who took part in the translation work are Chen Haoran and Zhao Wei.The materials of this book come from a series of two books (in Chinese) on Forward to IMO: a collection of mathematical Olympiad problems (2021-2022). It is a collection of problems and solutions of the major mathematical competitions in China. It provides a glimpse of how the China national team is selected and formed.

The book is a handbook on corporate philanthropy in China, with comparisons to the best practices in Europe, especially Switzerland. It reviews the recent history of corporate philanthropy in China to provide context for representatives of foreign businesses and NGOs who wish to be involved in philanthropic activities in China. It compares the current situation in China with best practices in Europe and Switzerland. The handbook is also meant to assist students of philanthropy and other interested parties in understanding the development of corporate philanthropy in China, and how its development converges with, and diverges from similar trends in other countries.

The humanities (and social science) are the disciplines that study human, which are essential in helping us to understand ourselves and others and the world around us. Since science is the study of everything in the universe and human is a material system consisting of the same atoms that make up other nonhuman systems, humanities are part of science. Thus, understanding correctly what science is about will be helpful in making progress in the humanities. To patch up the gap between the "two cultures" derived from these two branches of knowledge, the best way is to recognize their common root in science and work through humanities-science synthesis, as advocated by Scimat, the new multidiscipline proposed by the author in 2007. Furthermore, raising the scientific level of the humanities, which include decision making, will help to make the world better.Humanities, Science, Scimat details these issues, consisting of three parts. Part I is about Scimat and the new humanities (history, philosophy, art). Part II is on the origin and nature of science, new insights on the life and works of selected scientists, some thoughts on science communication/popularization, and case examples of science innovation - all from the Scimat perspective. While Parts I and II are short essays with no references (with rare exceptions), Part III are longer articles with full references that supplement Parts I and II. Each essay/article starts with a color picture. They are all easy to read - nothing technical.In short, this book contains the basic knowledge about the humanities and science that everyone should know. The aimed readership is anyone, from high school students and laypeople to the professors, who are interested in what the humanities and science are about, and how we can work together to achieve a better humanity.

The purpose of this book is to provide a concise introduction to the mathematical theory of music, opening each chapter to the most recent research. Despite the complexity of some sections, the book can be read by a large audience. Many examples illustrate the concepts introduced. The book is divided into 9 chapters.In the first chapter, we tackle the question of the classification of chords and scales. Chapter 2 is a mathematical presentation of David Lewin's Generalized Interval Systems. Chapter 3 offers a new theory of diatonicity in equal-tempered universes. Chapter 4 presents the Neo-Riemannian theories based on the work of David Lewin, Richard Cohn and Henry Klumpenhouwer. Chapter 5 is devoted to the application of word combinatorics to music. Chapter 6 studies the rhythmic canons and the tessellation of the line. Chapter 7 is devoted to serial knots. Chapter 8 presents combinatorial designs and their applications to music. The last chapter, chapter 9, is dedicated to the study of tuning systems.

Materials science institutions have always been crucial to the development of materials research. Even before materials science emerged as a discipline in the 20th century, these institutions existed in various forms. They provided specialized facilities for research, educated new generations of researchers, drafted policies and funded programs, enabled valuable connections between research groups, or played any other role which were needed to further the progress of materials science.This volume, the third in a series of volumes covering the development and history of materials science, presents illuminating perspectives on material science institutions. Twenty chapters are organized into six comprehensive parts of which each cover a characteristic aspect or historical feature. True to the topic they write about, the contributors to this volume have varied backgrounds. Some are materials scientists and engineers, but others are historians, philosophers of science, sociologists, or even directors of institutions themselves. This comprehensive, unified collection is a valuable resource for undergraduates, graduate students, academics, policymakers and professionals who are actively interested in materials science and its development from the past to the future.

Discover the latest advances in ferroelectric and piezoelectric material sciences with this comprehensive monograph, divided into six chapters, each offering unique insights into the field.Chapter 1 delves into the manufacture and study of new ceramic materials, focusing on complex oxides of various metals (Aurivillius phases). The authors explore layered bismuth titanates and niobates, known for their high Curie temperature, and discuss how varying their chemical composition can lead to significant changes in their electrophysical properties. Chapter 2 explores the fascinating world of ferroelectrics - dielectrics with spontaneous polarization. Mathematical models and approaches of fractional calculus are used to understand the process of polarization switching in these materials, shedding light on the fractality of electrical responses. In Chapter 3, readers gain valuable insights into the inhomogeneous polarization process of polycrystalline ferroelectrics, a crucial stage in creating piezoceramic samples for energy converters. The authors present a comprehensive mathematical model that allows the determination of various characteristics, including dielectric and piezoelectric hysteresis loops and the effect of attenuation processes.Chapter 4 focuses on state-of-the-art piezoelectric energy harvesting, discussing theoretical, experimental, and computer modelling approaches. The authors discuss piezoelectric generators (PEGs) of different types (cantilever, stack and axis) and nonlinear effects arising at their operation. Chapter 5 presents expanded test and finite element models for cantilever-type and axial-type PEGs with active elements. The studies cover various structural and electric schemes of the PEGs with proof mass, bimorph and cylindrical piezoelectric elements, and excitation loads. Finally, Chapter 6 reviews some results in the last five years, obtained in modelling the vibration of devices from piezoactive materials, including five important effects: piezoelectric, flexoelectric, pyroelectric, piezomagnetic and flexomagnetic.As a diverse addition to the literature, this book is a relevant resource for researchers, engineers, and students seeking to expand their knowledge of cutting-edge developments in this exciting field.