This book is intended as a reference book for advanced graduate students and research engineers in block-in-matrix rocks (bimrocks) or soil and rock mixtures (SRMs) or rock and soil aggregate (RSA). Bimrocks are complex formations characterized by competent rock inclusions floating in a weaker matrix. Typical types of bimrocks include a series of mixed geological or engineering masses such as melanges, fault rocks, coarse pyroclastic rocks, breccias, sheared serpentines, and waste dump mixture. Bimrock is especially different from the general soil and rock material, and the detection of the damage and fracture is still wide open to innovative research. Globally, there is a widespread interest in investigating the geomechanical behaviors of bimrocks, such as deformation and strength characteristics, damage and fracture evolution, and stability prediction of bimrock construction. However, the meso-structural factors control the whole mechanical properties of bimrocks; the source of the macroscopic deformation phenomenon is the meso-structural changes. Therefore, evaluation of the mesoscopic physical and mechanical properties, together with advanced testing technique, is an attractive research topic in rock mechanics. As a result, comprehensive macroscopic and mesoscopic experimental investigations should be conducted to reveal the damage and fracturing mechanical behaviors of bimrocks. The readers of this work can gain new insights into the meso-structural changes of bimrocks subjected to different stress paths. This book is expected to improve the understanding of the mesoscopic damage and fracturing mechanisms of bimrocks, and can be helpful to predict the stability of rock structures where rock mass is subjected to complex loading conditions.

INLA stands for Integrated Nested Laplace Approximations, which is a new method for fitting a broad class of Bayesian regression models. No samples of the posterior marginal distributions need to be drawn using INLA, so it is a computationally convenient alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), the standard tool for Bayesian inference. Bayesian Regression Modeling with INLA covers a wide range of modern regression models and focuses on the INLA technique for building Bayesian models using real-world data and assessing their validity. A key theme throughout the book is that it makes sense to demonstrate the interplay of theory and practice with reproducible studies. Complete R commands are provided for each example, and a supporting website holds all of the data described in the book. An R package including the data and additional functions in the book is available to download. The book is aimed at readers who have a basic knowledge of statistical theory and Bayesian methodology. It gets readers up to date on the latest in Bayesian inference using INLA and prepares them for sophisticated, real-world work. Xiaofeng Wang is Professor of Medicine and Biostatistics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and a Full Staff in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at Cleveland Clinic. Yu Ryan Yue is Associate Professor of Statistics in the Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics at Baruch College, The City University of New York. Julian J. Faraway is Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Bath.

New edition Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Chinese is an expertly developed course designed to help students achieve their potential in GCSE Chinese. Our award-winning Edexcel GCSE Chinese course has been updated so it delivers full coverage of the new Pearson Edexcel GCSE Chinese (9-1) specification. The course provides seamless progression from Jin bu at Key Stage 3 but can also be used as a stand-alone resource. The new edition of our Student Book provides: materials to develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills which now include a focus on translation, understanding authentic texts and spontaneous speaking new end-of-chapter exam preparation sections which help to prepare students for the GCSE Chinese (9-1) examination cultural content and a focus on 'learning something new' to help give students a sense of purpose and bring language learning to life easy-to-use word lists to help students with ongoing vocabulary learning and revision. Audio files to accompany our Student Books are sold separately.

“While he’s out for a walk in the autumn woods, Mr. Cat discovers a wee, thumb-sized girl who brings love, light, and laughter into his regimented days. The little sprite spreads joy and inspires creativity, brightening the cold winter months. Her bare feet and sunny yellow dress stand in contrast to Mr. Cat’s formal manners. This is a bittersweet tale of hope; it celebrates the beauty and transience of life and the passing seasons.� – Foreword Reviews "A story with quite engaging illustrations.� – Kirkus Reviews "The careful, softly shaded illustrations are gently luminous.� – Publishers Weekly Mr. Cat spends his days alone. When he goes out to paint a beautiful winter landscape, he finds a little girl. He decides to take her home. The girl colors his world… until she disappears A poetic story about friendship and saying good-bye. For daydreamers ages 5 years and up. Guided Reading Level O

INLA stands for Integrated Nested Laplace Approximations, which is a new method for fitting a broad class of Bayesian regression models. No samples of the posterior marginal distributions need to be drawn using INLA, so it is a computationally convenient alternative to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), the standard tool for Bayesian inference. Bayesian Regression Modeling with INLA covers a wide range of modern regression models and focuses on the INLA technique for building Bayesian models using real-world data and assessing their validity. A key theme throughout the book is that it makes sense to demonstrate the interplay of theory and practice with reproducible studies. Complete R commands are provided for each example, and a supporting website holds all of the data described in the book. An R package including the data and additional functions in the book is available to download. The book is aimed at readers who have a basic knowledge of statistical theory and Bayesian methodology. It gets readers up to date on the latest in Bayesian inference using INLA and prepares them for sophisticated, real-world work. Xiaofeng Wang is Professor of Medicine and Biostatistics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and a Full Staff in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at Cleveland Clinic. Yu Ryan Yue is Associate Professor of Statistics in the Paul H. Chook Department of Information Systems and Statistics at Baruch College, The City University of New York. Julian J. Faraway is Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Bath.

"While he's out for a walk in the autumn woods, Mr. Cat discovers a wee, thumb-sized girl who brings love, light, and laughter into his regimented days. The little sprite spreads joy and inspires creativity, brightening the cold winter months. Her bare feet and sunny yellow dress stand in contrast to Mr. Cat's formal manners. This is a bittersweet tale of hope; it celebrates the beauty and transience of life and the passing seasons." - Foreword Reviews "A story with quite engaging illustrations." - Kirkus Reviews "The careful, softly shaded illustrations are gently luminous." - Publishers Weekly Mr. Cat spends his days alone. When he goes out to paint a beautiful winter landscape, he finds a little girl. He decides to take her home. The girl colors his world... until she disappears A poetic story about friendship and saying good-bye. For daydreamers ages 5 years and up. Guided Reading Level O

This open access book explores new research directions in social inequality and urban segregation. With the goal of fostering an ongoing dialogue between scholars in Europe and China, it brings together an impressive team of international researchers to shed light on the entwined processes of inequality and segregation, and the implications for urban development. Through a rich collection of empirical studies at the city, regional and national levels, the book explores the impact of migration on cities, the related problems of social and spatial segregation, and the ramifications for policy reform. While the literature on both segregation and inequality has traditionally been dominated by European and North American studies, there is growing interest in these issues in the Chinese context. Economic liberalization, rapid industrial restructuring, the enormous growth of cities, and internal migration, have all reshaped the country profoundly. What have we learned from the European and North American experience of segregation and inequality, and what insights can be gleaned to inform the bourgeoning interest in these issues in the Chinese context? How is China different, both in terms of the nature and the consequences of segregation inequality, and what are the implications for future research and policy? Given the continued rise of China's significance in the world, and its recent declaration of war on poverty, this book offers a timely contribution to scholarship, identifying the core insights to be learned from existing research, and providing important guidance on future directions for policy makers and researchers.

This book is about the design and control of biomimetic underwater robots. It explains the six aspects of the underwater biomimetic vehicle- manipulator system in detail and provides practical examples. This book is the authors’ long-term exploration of the theoretical and technical issues in the development of the underwater biomimetic vehicle-manipulator system and is written based on more than 15 years of scientific research and practical experience. This book is a helpful reference for the researchers, engineers, master and Ph.D. students in the field of biomimetic underwater robots.

Written in readable format and rich with clinical cases, this book systematically introduces surgical nursing during robotic surgery. The first part introduces the history of robotic surgery, operating room management, quality control of robotic surgical nursing, management of safety, infection, and anaesthesia. The second part introduces key points of nursing during robotic surgery in urology, general surgery, gynaecology, heart, chest and otorhinolaryngology. It will be a helpful reference for practitioners those in the process of implanting or about to implant robotic surgery.

This book presents the latest research advances in complex network structure analytics based on computational intelligence (CI) approaches, particularly evolutionary optimization. Most if not all network issues are actually optimization problems, which are mostly NP-hard and challenge conventional optimization techniques. To effectively and efficiently solve these hard optimization problems, CI based network structure analytics offer significant advantages over conventional network analytics techniques. Meanwhile, using CI techniques may facilitate smart decision making by providing multiple options to choose from, while conventional methods can only offer a decision maker a single suggestion. In addition, CI based network structure analytics can greatly facilitate network modeling and analysis. And employing CI techniques to resolve network issues is likely to inspire other fields of study such as recommender systems, system biology, etc., which will in turn expand CI's scope and applications. As a comprehensive text, the book covers a range of key topics, including network community discovery, evolutionary optimization, network structure balance analytics, network robustness analytics, community-based personalized recommendation, influence maximization, and biological network alignment. Offering a rich blend of theory and practice, the book is suitable for students, researchers and practitioners interested in network analytics and computational intelligence, both as a textbook and as a reference work.

This book include research studies which deal with the attempts to address new solutions for challenges in geotechnical engineering such as characterization of new materials, application of glass fibre, geotextile fabric and permeable concrete, new numerical methods for traditional problems and some other geotechnical issues that are becoming quite relevant in today's world. The book adds to the geotechnical engineering field which still bears lots of big challenges. It contributes to make the civil infrastructures more sustainable using new technologies and materials that have been proposed and applied in various fields. Papers were selected from the 5th GeoChina International Conference 2018 - Civil Infrastructures Confronting Severe Weathers and Climate Changes: From Failure to Sustainability, held on July 23 to 25, 2018 in HangZhou, China.

This book presents the latest research advances in complex network structure analytics based on computational intelligence (CI) approaches, particularly evolutionary optimization. Most if not all network issues are actually optimization problems, which are mostly NP-hard and challenge conventional optimization techniques. To effectively and efficiently solve these hard optimization problems, CI based network structure analytics offer significant advantages over conventional network analytics techniques. Meanwhile, using CI techniques may facilitate smart decision making by providing multiple options to choose from, while conventional methods can only offer a decision maker a single suggestion. In addition, CI based network structure analytics can greatly facilitate network modeling and analysis. And employing CI techniques to resolve network issues is likely to inspire other fields of study such as recommender systems, system biology, etc., which will in turn expand CI's scope and applications. As a comprehensive text, the book covers a range of key topics, including network community discovery, evolutionary optimization, network structure balance analytics, network robustness analytics, community-based personalized recommendation, influence maximization, and biological network alignment. Offering a rich blend of theory and practice, the book is suitable for students, researchers and practitioners interested in network analytics and computational intelligence, both as a textbook and as a reference work.

This open access book explores new research directions in social inequality and urban segregation. With the goal of fostering an ongoing dialogue between scholars in Europe and China, it brings together an impressive team of international researchers to shed light on the entwined processes of inequality and segregation, and the implications for urban development. Through a rich collection of empirical studies at the city, regional and national levels, the book explores the impact of migration on cities, the related problems of social and spatial segregation, and the ramifications for policy reform. While the literature on both segregation and inequality has traditionally been dominated by European and North American studies, there is growing interest in these issues in the Chinese context. Economic liberalization, rapid industrial restructuring, the enormous growth of cities, and internal migration, have all reshaped the country profoundly. What have we learned from the European and North American experience of segregation and inequality, and what insights can be gleaned to inform the bourgeoning interest in these issues in the Chinese context? How is China different, both in terms of the nature and the consequences of segregation inequality, and what are the implications for future research and policy? Given the continued rise of China's significance in the world, and its recent declaration of war on poverty, this book offers a timely contribution to scholarship, identifying the core insights to be learned from existing research, and providing important guidance on future directions for policy makers and researchers.

This book aims to establish a wind energy evaluation system, to provide scientific reference for site selection, daily operation and long-term planning of wind power generation, thus to make contribution to breaking the shackles of power shortage. Firstly, it presents the advantages and disadvantages of offshore wind power, then further discusses about the status quo and challenges for wind power programs along the Maritime Silk Road and offer suggestions. A wind energy evaluation system was proposed with the Maritime Silk Road as a case study, including climatic features of wind power (temporal-spatial distribution), long-term climatic trend and mechanism, short-term forecast of wind energy, mid- and long-term projection of wind energy, technology of wind energy evaluation on key point or vital region and offshore wind energy dataset construction, to provide systematic and scientific reference for wind power evaluation and utilization. This book is one of the series of publications on 21st century Maritime Silk Road (shortened as "Maritime Silk Road"). It covers the characteristics of the marine environment and marine renewable energy, remote islands and reefs construction, climate change, early warning of wave disasters, legal escort, marine environment and energy big data construction, etc., contributing to the safe and efficient construction of the Maritime Silk Road. It aims to improve our knowledge of the ocean, thus, to improve the capacity for marine construction, enhance the viability of remote islands and reefs, ease the energy crisis and protect the ecological environment, improve the quality of life of residents along the Maritime Silk Road, and protect the rights, interests of the countries and regions participating in the construction of the Maritime Silk Road. It is a valuable reference for decision-makers, researchers, and marine engineers working in the related fields.

This book aims to establish a wind energy evaluation system, to provide scientific reference for site selection, daily operation and long-term planning of wind power generation, thus to make contribution to breaking the shackles of power shortage. Firstly, it presents the advantages and disadvantages of offshore wind power, then further discusses about the status quo and challenges for wind power programs along the Maritime Silk Road and offer suggestions. A wind energy evaluation system was proposed with the Maritime Silk Road as a case study, including climatic features of wind power (temporal-spatial distribution), long-term climatic trend and mechanism, short-term forecast of wind energy, mid- and long-term projection of wind energy, technology of wind energy evaluation on key point or vital region and offshore wind energy dataset construction, to provide systematic and scientific reference for wind power evaluation and utilization. This book is one of the series of publications on 21st century Maritime Silk Road (shortened as "Maritime Silk Road"). It covers the characteristics of the marine environment and marine renewable energy, remote islands and reefs construction, climate change, early warning of wave disasters, legal escort, marine environment and energy big data construction, etc., contributing to the safe and efficient construction of the Maritime Silk Road. It aims to improve our knowledge of the ocean, thus, to improve the capacity for marine construction, enhance the viability of remote islands and reefs, ease the energy crisis and protect the ecological environment, improve the quality of life of residents along the Maritime Silk Road, and protect the rights, interests of the countries and regions participating in the construction of the Maritime Silk Road. It is a valuable reference for decision-makers, researchers, and marine engineers working in the related fields.

Written in readable format and rich with clinical cases, this book systematically introduces surgical nursing during robotic surgery. The first part introduces the history of robotic surgery, operating room management, quality control of robotic surgical nursing, management of safety, infection, and anaesthesia. The second part introduces key points of nursing during robotic surgery in urology, general surgery, gynaecology, heart, chest and otorhinolaryngology. It will be a helpful reference for practitioners those in the process of implanting or about to implant robotic surgery.

Over-pumping of aquifers is a worldwide problem, mainly caused by agricultural water use. Among its consequences are the falling dry of streams and wetlands, soil subsidence, die-off of phreatophytic vegetation, saline water intrusion, increased pumping cost and loss of storage needed for drought relief. Stopping or reversing the trend requires management interventions. The North China Plain serves as an example. A management system is set up for a typical county. It contains three components: monitoring, decision support based on modelling, and implementation in the field. Besides all monitoring data, the decision support module contains an irrigation calculator, a box model, and a distributed groundwater model to project the outcomes of different water allocation scenarios. In view of grain security, a solution combines an adaptation of the cropping system with imports of surface water from the South. The Open Access book does not only describe the problem and the path to its solution. It also gives access to nine manuals concerning methods used. They include computer programs and the game Save the Water. The Chinese experience should be of considerable interest to other regions in the world which suffer from over-pumping of aquifers.