Sorghum is one of the hardiest crop plants in modern agriculture and also one of the most versatile. Its seeds provide calorie for food and feed, stalks for building and industrial materials and its juice for syrup. This book provides an in-depth review of the cutting-edge knowledge in sorghum genetics and its applications in sorghum breeding. Each chapter is authored by specialists in their fields to report the latest trends and findings. The book showcases the definitive value of sorghum as a model system to study the genetic basis of crop productivity and stress tolerance and will provide a foundation for future studies in sorghum genetics, genomics, and breeding.

The last two decades has been the most exciting period in cucurbit genetic, genomic, and breeding research especially for cucumber, melon, and watermelon. In addition, cucumber became the first cucurbit to be sequenced, after other field crops such as rice, sorghum, soybean, and maize. In thirteen chapters by 34 internationally renowned scientists, this book provides an in-depth review of the state of the art of genetic and genomic research conducted in cucurbits. It will be an essential resource for cucurbit researchers as well as scientists working in other crops."

Start speaking Korean the fun and easy way with "Korean For Dummies," a no-nonsense guide to Korean culture and the basics of Korean language. Pick up basic phrases and commonly used words so that you can converse with Koreans in both business and personal situations. You'll learn Korean for everyday life and task-specific expressions for Korean on the go. In addition, you'll discover important and fascinating aspects of Korean culture.

This handy guide won't burden you with lists of grammar rules; just look up the phrases and cultural phrases that you need or read through the whole book for a general overview. You'll be able to place material in a daily context with cultural tidbits, phonetic spelling of Korean words, and the recorded Korean dialogues on the accompanying CD. Exercises will jog your memory and reinforce everything that you learn. Find out how to: Use basic phrases and words correctlyConverse intelligently about Korean cultureDo business with a Korean companySay task-specific expressionsPronounce Korean wordsPut material in a real-world contextMake a good first impression with Koreans

Complete with lists of ten ways to learn Korean quickly, ten phrases to make you sound Korean, ten expressions that Koreans like to use, and ten things you should never do around a Korean, "Korean For Dummies" is your one-stop guide to speaking basic Korean and understanding the fundamentals of Korean culture.

This book portrays the middle class in contemporary China with plain language and precise professional knowledge in an all-round, broad and responsible way from the perspectives of income, property, profession, education, consumption, investment, physiological and behavioral characteristics, history and development. It gives, in a logical order, the reasons for stimulating the rise of the middle class in contemporary China. It emphatically describes what the middle class is and what the middle class in contemporary China looks like. It also analyzes whether the middle class can rise in China and sheds light on the basic thinking, medium and long-term goals, main measures and current work priorities for achieving full rise of the middle class in contemporary China. As China becomes the world's largest economy, the new middle class will be the Chinese people facing the world; as such, this book will be of interest to sociologists, sinologists, political scientists, and economists.

This book systematically describes the weld pool behavior in laser welding and its influencing factors from the perspectives of testing technology, theoretical calculation and process simulation technology, physical state transformation behavior of weld pools, and the impact of technical conditions on the weld pool behavior. The book covers extensive research achievements made in China in this field, some of which represent the latest cutting-edging researches conducted by the authors' research team. These latest research efforts mainly relate to the weld pool behavior of dual-beam laser welding, laser welding with filler wires, full-penetration laser welding of very-thick parts, and laser welding in vacuum and low vacuum conditions. The book is intended for undergraduate, graduate students and researchers who are interested in laser welding.

The book focuses more on the study of cruise economy industry chain based on the previous editions and the latest trend of China's cruise economy. It includes the Special Topic: Cruise Economic Reform and Innovation in the New Era, explores Asia cruise economic prosperity index, China's cruise economy whole-industry-chain strategy in the new era, and the development of cruise destinations in the context of the Yangtze River Delta integration. The volume provides a good reference for better promoting the high-quality development of China's cruise market.

This book systematically describes the weld pool behavior in laser welding and its influencing factors from the perspectives of testing technology, theoretical calculation and process simulation technology, physical state transformation behavior of weld pools, and the impact of technical conditions on the weld pool behavior. The book covers extensive research achievements made in China in this field, some of which represent the latest cutting-edging researches conducted by the authors' research team. These latest research efforts mainly relate to the weld pool behavior of dual-beam laser welding, laser welding with filler wires, full-penetration laser welding of very-thick parts, and laser welding in vacuum and low vacuum conditions. The book is intended for undergraduate, graduate students and researchers who are interested in laser welding.

The book contains 12 contributions that explain the current state of China's cruise industry and future development. Dating from the 1960s and with the rapid development of over 50 years, the modern cruise industry has developed into one of the fastest growing industries with the most remarkable economic benefits in the global tourism and hospitality industry, known as a "golden industry on the golden waterway". In recent years, with the gradual saturation of international cruise market and the eastward-moving trend of the center of cruise market, China has become a strategic emerging market with which international cruise lines have been competing. A number of international cruise lines, including Costa Crociere, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Princess Cruises, MSC Cruises, Star Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line and Dream Cruises, have entered the cruise market in Mainland China.

The book focuses more on the study of cruise economy industry chain based on the previous editions and the latest trend of China's cruise economy. It includes the Special Topic: Cruise Economic Reform and Innovation in the New Era, explores Asia cruise economic prosperity index, China's cruise economy whole-industry-chain strategy in the new era, and the development of cruise destinations in the context of the Yangtze River Delta integration. The volume provides a good reference for better promoting the high-quality development of China's cruise market.

This book presents a detailed background to the circular economy in China, explores government measures to promote it in China's market economy, and introduces the supporting laws and policies. The book goes on to describe, from a technology perspective, successful circular economy practices in sectors such as agriculture, iron and steel, cement, coal-fired power, chemistry, paper manufacturing and city mineral. This book sheds some light on what China has done and achieved to change the mode of economic development in order to minimize its negative impacts on resources and the environment. Readers will learn from and be inspired by China's circular economy practices. Industrializing countries can also draw on China's experiences to solve their own problems, enabling them to make their economic development resource-saving and more environmentally friendly. If this is achieved, this book can be considered a modest contribution to the sustainability of human society.

The book contains 12 contributions that explain the current state of China's cruise industry and future development. Dating from the 1960s and with the rapid development of over 50 years, the modern cruise industry has developed into one of the fastest growing industries with the most remarkable economic benefits in the global tourism and hospitality industry, known as a "golden industry on the golden waterway". In recent years, with the gradual saturation of international cruise market and the eastward-moving trend of the center of cruise market, China has become a strategic emerging market with which international cruise lines have been competing. A number of international cruise lines, including Costa Crociere, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Princess Cruises, MSC Cruises, Star Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line and Dream Cruises, have entered the cruise market in Mainland China.

This book provides insights into the current state of sorghum genomics. It particularly focuses on the tools and strategies employed in genome sequencing and analysis, public and private genomic resources and how all this information is leading to direct outcomes for plant breeders. The advent of affordable whole genome sequencing in combination with existing cereal functional genomics data has enabled the leveraging of the significant novel diversity available in sorghum, the genome of which was fully sequenced in 2009, providing an unmatched resource for the genetic improvement of sorghum and other grass species. Cultivated grain sorghum is a food and feed cereal crop adapted to hot and dry climates, and is a staple for 500 million of the world's poorest people. Globally, sorghum is also an important source of animal feed and forage, an emerging biofuel crop and model for C4 grasses, particularly genetically complex sugarcane.

As public attention on energy conservation and emission reduction has increased in recent years, engine idling has become a growing concern due to its low efficiency and high emissions. Service vehicles equipped with auxiliary systems, such as refrigeration, air conditioning, PCs, and electronics, usually have to idle to power them. The number of service vehicles (e.g. public-school-tour buses, delivery-refrigerator trucks, police cars, ambulances, armed vehicles, firefighter vehicles) is increasing significantly with tremendous social development. Therefore, introducing new anti-idling solutions is inevitably vital for controlling energy unsustainability and poor air quality. There are a few books about the idling disadvantages and anti-idling solutions. Most of them are more concerned with different anti-idling technologies and their effects on the society rather than elaborating an anti-idling system design considering different applications and limitations. There is still much room to improve existing anti-idling technologies and products. In this book, we took a service vehicle, refrigerator truck, as an example to demonstrate the whole process of designing, optimizing, controlling, and developing a smart charging system for the anti-idling purpose. The proposed system cannot only electrify the auxiliary systems to achieve anti-idling, but also utilize the concepts of regenerative braking and optimal charging strategy to arrive at an optimum solution. Necessary tools, algorithms, and methods are illustrated and the benefits of the optimal anti-idling solution are evaluated.

The number of heavy-duty construction vehicles is increasing significantly with growing urban development causing poor air quality and higher emissions. The electrification of construction vehicles is a way to mitigate the resulting air pollution and emissions. In this book, we consider tracked bulldozers, as an example, to demonstrate the approach and evaluate the benefits of the electrification of construction vehicles. The book is intended for senior undergraduate students, graduate students, and anyone with an interest in the electrification of heavy vehicles. The book begins with an introduction to electrification of heavy-duty construction vehicles. The second chapter is focused on the terramechanics and interactions between track and blades with soil. The third chapter presents the architecture and modeling of a series hybrid bulldozer. Finally, the fourth chapter discusses energy management systems for electrified heavy construction vehicles.

This book provides insights into the current state of sorghum genomics. It particularly focuses on the tools and strategies employed in genome sequencing and analysis, public and private genomic resources and how all this information is leading to direct outcomes for plant breeders. The advent of affordable whole genome sequencing in combination with existing cereal functional genomics data has enabled the leveraging of the significant novel diversity available in sorghum, the genome of which was fully sequenced in 2009, providing an unmatched resource for the genetic improvement of sorghum and other grass species. Cultivated grain sorghum is a food and feed cereal crop adapted to hot and dry climates, and is a staple for 500 million of the world's poorest people. Globally, sorghum is also an important source of animal feed and forage, an emerging biofuel crop and model for C4 grasses, particularly genetically complex sugarcane.

This book presents a detailed background to the circular economy in China, explores government measures to promote it in China's market economy, and introduces the supporting laws and policies. The book goes on to describe, from a technology perspective, successful circular economy practices in sectors such as agriculture, iron and steel, cement, coal-fired power, chemistry, paper manufacturing and city mineral. This book sheds some light on what China has done and achieved to change the mode of economic development in order to minimize its negative impacts on resources and the environment. Readers will learn from and be inspired by China's circular economy practices. Industrializing countries can also draw on China's experiences to solve their own problems, enabling them to make their economic development resource-saving and more environmentally friendly. If this is achieved, this book can be considered a modest contribution to the sustainability of human society.

Over the past decades, although stochastic system control has been studied intensively within the field of control engineering, all the modelling and control strategies developed so far have concentrated on the performance of one or two output properties of the system. such as minimum variance control and mean value control. The general assumption used in the formulation of modelling and control strategies is that the distribution of the random signals involved is Gaussian. In this book, a set of new approaches for the control of the output probability density function of stochastic dynamic systems (those subjected to any bounded random inputs), has been developed. In this context, the purpose of control system design becomes the selection of a control signal that makes the shape of the system outputs p.d.f. as close as possible to a given distribution. The book contains material on the subjects of: - Control of single-input single-output and multiple-input multiple-output stochastic systems; - Stable adaptive control of stochastic distributions; - Model reference adaptive control; - Control of nonlinear dynamic stochastic systems; - Condition monitoring of bounded stochastic distributions; - Control algorithm design; - Singular stochastic systems. A new representation of dynamic stochastic systems is produced by using B-spline functions to descripe the output p.d.f. Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

Many countries that subscribe to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have committed to ensuring access to basic health services for their citizens. Health insurance has been considered and promoted as the major financing mechanism to improve access to health services, as well to provide financial risk protection. In Africa, several countries have already spent scarce time, money, and effort on health insurance initiatives. Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Tanzania are just a few of them. However, many of these schemes, both public and private, cover only a small proportion of the population, with the poor less likely to be covered. In fact, unless carefully designed to be pro-poor, health insurance can widen inequity as higher income groups are more likely to be insured and use health care services, taking advantage of their insurance coverage. Despite the many benefits that health insurance may offer, table 1.1 shows that the journey to implement insurance and achieve the benefits is challenging, long, and risky. Policy makers and technicians that support development and scale-up of health insurance must figure out how to increase their country s financing capacity, extend health insurance coverage to the hard-to-reach populations, expand benefits packages, and improve the performance of existing schemes."

A recent development in SDC-related problems is the establishment of intelligent SDC models and the intensive use of LMI-based convex optimization methods. Within this theoretical framework, control parameter determination can be designed and stability and robustness of closed-loop systems can be analyzed. This book describes the new framework of SDC system design and provides a comprehensive description of the modelling of controller design tools and their real-time implementation. It starts with a review of current research on SDC and moves on to some basic techniques for modelling and controller design of SDC systems. This is followed by a description of controller design for fixed-control-structure SDC systems, PDF control for general input- and output-represented systems, filtering designs, and fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) for SDC systems. Many new LMI techniques being developed for SDC systems are shown to have independent theoretical significance for robust control and FDD problems.

As is known, the book named "Multivariate spline functions and their applications" has been published by the Science Press in 1994. This book is an English edition based on the original book mentioned 1 above with many changes, including that of the structure of a cubic - interpolation in n-dimensional spline spaces, and more detail on triangu- lations have been added in this book. Special cases of multivariate spline functions (such as step functions, polygonal functions, and piecewise polynomials) have been examined math- ematically for a long time. I. J. Schoenberg (Contribution to the problem of application of equidistant data by analytic functions, Quart. Appl. Math., 4(1946), 45 - 99; 112 - 141) and W. Quade & L. Collatz (Zur Interpo- lations theories der reellen periodischen function, Press. Akad. Wiss. (PhysMath. KL), 30(1938), 383- 429) systematically established the the- ory of the spline functions. W. Quade & L. Collatz mainly discussed the periodic functions, while I. J. Schoenberg's work was systematic and com- plete. I. J. Schoenberg outlined three viewpoints for studing univariate splines: Fourier transformations, truncated polynomials and Taylor ex- pansions. Based on the first two viewpoints, I. J. Schoenberg deduced the B-spline function and its basic properties, especially the basis func- tions. Based on the latter viewpoint, he represented the spline functions in terms of truncated polynomials. These viewpoints and methods had significantly effected on the development of the spline functions.

This study addresses a vendor's strategies to tackle its own installed base when selling a newly improved product. In particular, we investigate the optimal combinations of timing, pricing and product line strategies that the vendor can employ for selling its newly improved product in the presence of an installed base. We characterize the market with either a partly- or fully- covered installed base in terms of consumers' relative willingness to pay for the newly improved version and their relative payoffs from delayed purchase across periods. Different from the conventional proposition of constant consumer reservation price, we propose that if consumers already own an existing (old) version of a durable product, their willingness to purchase the newly improved version indeed increases over time! This effect, interweaving with consumer heterogeneity on valuation of quality and on purchase history may enable perfect intertemporal price discrimination.

A recent development in SDC-related problems is the establishment of intelligent SDC models and the intensive use of LMI-based convex optimization methods. Within this theoretical framework, control parameter determination can be designed and stability and robustness of closed-loop systems can be analyzed. This book describes the new framework of SDC system design and provides a comprehensive description of the modelling of controller design tools and their real-time implementation. It starts with a review of current research on SDC and moves on to some basic techniques for modelling and controller design of SDC systems. This is followed by a description of controller design for fixed-control-structure SDC systems, PDF control for general input- and output-represented systems, filtering designs, and fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) for SDC systems. Many new LMI techniques being developed for SDC systems are shown to have independent theoretical significance for robust control and FDD problems.

In the past decades, attraction of skilled migrants is one of the main strategies for governments of some traditional immigrant countries in response to the development of the knowledge society and economy. However, unsatisfactory results of socioeconomic integration of newly arrival skilled migrants always lead to public and academic debates on their role in hosting societies. This work uses multiple research strategies, combining analyses of historical and statistical materials, as well as a case study with new Chinese immigrants in New Zealand, to examine their contributions to the hosting country. It shows the role of knowledge in the emergence of the knowledge society and economy in New Zealand, the value placed on knowledge and skills in New Zealand immigration policies and the change in the Chinese community with the growing demand for skilled migrants. This book is useful for scholars in sociology, economics and education, immigration policy makers and advisors, and providers of immigration and settlement services.

Presently some on-line vibration monitoring methods was used as an in-flight diagnostic and trend monitoring device. But very little work has been accomplished on the detection and quantification of combined gear damages and bearing faults in a bearing-rotor-gear transmission system. Vibrations caused by the combined damages in gears and bearing usually can not be identified readily without special procedure applied to the vibration signature. In this thesis, under a variety operating cases, vibration signature due to the combined damage between the outer race of bearing and the teeth of gear were examined in both time and frequency domains for identification purposes. Joint time-frequency analysis such as the Wigner-Ville Distribution (WVD) was used in detecting and identifying various types of gear and bearing damage. The modified Poincare Maps based on chaotic vibration were also successfully applied in analyzing the vibration from gear and bearing damages. The objective of this work is to develop an on-line Health Monitoring system to detect faults in gear and bearing. Considerable success has been achieved in this work to identify faults in both bearing and gear components.