This book embodies principles and applications of advanced soft computing approaches in engineering, healthcare and allied domains directed toward the researchers aspiring to learn and apply intelligent data analytics techniques. The first part covers AI, machine learning and data analytics tools and techniques and their applications to the class of several hospital and health real-life problems. In the later part, the applications of AI, ML and data analytics shall be covered over the wide variety of applications in hospital, health, engineering and/or applied sciences such as the clinical services, medical image analysis, management support, quality analysis, bioinformatics, device analysis and operations. The book presents knowledge of experts in the form of chapters with the objective to introduce the theme of intelligent data analytics and discusses associated theoretical applications. At last, it presents simulation codes for the problems included in the book for better understanding for beginners.

This book explores sustainable development from the perspective of resources and energy, based on China's practical experience and cross-disciplinary research. It focuses on major challenges, key solutions and policy recommendations, and studies and explores seven important themes of resources, energy and sustainable development, including: 1) China's low-carbon energy transition, 2) China's urbanization and low-carbon development, 3) China's low-carbon action in cities, 4) China's low-carbon power transition, 5) China's water resources management, 6) electric vehicle development and key metal resources and 7) China's low-carbon development of the iron & steel industry. This book contributes to a more integrated understanding of many themes and their relationships in the area of resources, energy and sustainable development and guides the related policy and management.

This book provides a clear insight about IoD and its requirements, protocols, performance improvement, evaluation methods and challenging aspects, to the readers at one place. The recent enhancement of integrating drone with the Internet of things (IoT) technology promises tremendous global development. The top applications of the Internet of Drones (IoD) are expected to be infrastructure & building monitoring, fire service systems, insurance investigations, retail fulfilment, agriculture and forensic evidence collections. Conventional drone technology is enhanced with the Internet and other emerging technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and communication networks which open up for enormous opportunities like ahead for on-demand service-oriented and user-friendly IoD applications. This book presents extensive knowledge about the role of IoT and emerging technology in drone networks. It focuses on major research areas of the Internet of Drones and its related applications. It provides a strong knowledge platform towards the Internet of Drones for graduates, researchers, data scientists, educators and drone hobbyists.

In 1965, a family-reunification policy for admitting immigrants to the United States replaced a system that chose immigrants based on their national origin. With this change, a 40-year hiatus in Asian immigration ended. Today, over three-quarters of US immigrants originate from Asia and Latin America. Two issues that dominate discussions of US immigration policy are the progress of post-reform immigrants and their contributions to the US economy. This book focuses on the earnings and human capital investment of Asian immigrants to the US after 1965. In addition, it provides a primer on studying immigrant economic assimilation, by explaining economists' methodology to measure immigrant earnings growth and the challenges with this approach. The book also illustrates strategies to more fully use census data such as how to measure family income and how to use "panel data" that is embedded in the census. The book is a historical study as well as an extremely timely work from a policy angle. The passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act set the United States apart among economically developed countries due to the weight given to family unification. Based on analyses by economists-which suggest that the quality of immigrants to the US fell after the 1965 law-policymakers have called for fundamental changes in the US system to align it with the immigration systems of other countries. This book offers an alternative view point by proposing a richer model that incorporates investments in human capital by immigrants and their families. It challenges the conventional model in three ways: First, it views the decline in immigrants' entry earnings after 1965 as due to investment in human capital, not to permanently lower "quality." Second, it adds human capital investment and earnings growth after entry to the model. And finally, by taking investments by family members into account, it challenges the policy recommendation that immigrants should be selected for their occupational qualifications rather than family connections.

The Compound-Nuclear Reaction and Related Topics (CNR*) international workshop series was initiated in 2007 with a meeting near Yosemite National Park. It has since been held in Bordeaux (2009), Prague (2011), Sao Paulo (2013), Tokyo (2015), and Berkeley, California (2018). The workshop series brings together experts in nuclear theory, experiment, data evaluations, and applications, and fosters interactions among these groups. Topics of interest include: nuclear reaction mechanisms, optical model, direct reactions and the compound nucleus, pre-equilibrium reactions, fusion and fission, cross section measurements (direct and indirect methods), Hauser-Feshbach theory (limits and extensions), compound-nuclear decays, particle and gamma emission, level densities, strength functions, nuclear structure for compound-nuclear reactions, nuclear energy, nuclear astrophysics, and other topics. This peer-reviewed proceedings volume presents papers and poster summaries from the 6th International Workshop on Compound-Nuclear Reactions and Related Topics CNR*18, held on September 24-28, 2018, at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA.

This book highlights the estimate of epidemic characteristics for different countries/regions in the world with the use of known SIR (susceptible-infected-removed) model for the dynamics of the epidemic, the known exact solution of the linear differential equations and statistical approach developed before. The COVID-19 pandemic is of great interest to researchers due to its high mortality and a negative impact to the world economy. Correct simulation of the pandemic dynamics needs complicated mathematical models and many efforts for unknown parameters identification. The simple method of detection of the new pandemic wave is proposed and SIR model generalized. The hidden periods, epidemic durations, final numbers of cases, the effective reproduction numbers and probabilities of meeting an infected person are presented for countries like USA, Germany, UK, the Republic of Korea, Italy, Spain, France, the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, and for the world. The presented information is useful to regulate the quarantine activities and to predict the medical and economic consequences of different/future pandemics.

This book presents a survey, dynamic monitoring and comprehensive analysis of Sri Lanka's land, vegetation, surface water, ocean and other environmental resources, as well as its economic, transportation, urban, agricultural and tourism development. It offers readers accurate, systematic and comprehensive information on Sri Lanka's ecological setting and socio-economic development. It also sheds light on policies for the protection of the environment and biodiversity.

This book explores the scope of reforms and changes in the social protection systems in Latin America that have started at the beginning of the 21st century. It describes how and to what extent changes in social protection systems and social policies have occurred in the region in recent decades. Taking a comparative approach, the volume identifies the triggers for the transformations and how such pressures are received by the welfare regime, or a specific policy sector, to finally yield a given type of reform. The analysis is characterized by the presence of certain factors that explain the development of social protection systems in Latin America, such as economic growth, the consolidation of democratic political regimes, and the region's Left Turns. The book also examines to what extent common challenges and processes induced by international institutions have led to convergence among countries or welfare regimes, or whether each maintains its own identity.