This book presents a snapshot of a major challenge, and shares subjective views on various areas of conflict in Africa and the diverse - theoretical and practical - efforts to achieve peace. Following an essential review of several real-world conflict contexts on the African continent and attempts to come to terms with them critically as a first step, the book explores the lessons learned to date with regard to peace studies in Africa.

In this book, computational optical phase imaging techniques are presented along with Matlab codes that allow the reader to run their own simulations and gain a thorough understanding of the current state-of-the-art. The book focuses on modern applications of computational optical phase imaging in engineering measurements and biomedical imaging. Additionally, it discusses the future of computational optical phase imaging, especially in terms of system miniaturization and deep learning-based phase retrieval.

This book systemically presents the latest research on renal fibrosis, covering all the major topics in the field, including the possible mechanisms, biomarkers, and strategies for prevention and treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Due to its high prevalence, CKD represents a huge global economic and social burden. Irrespective of the initial causes, CKD progresses to end stage kidney disease (ESKD) due to renal fibrosis, which is characterized by glomerulosclerosis, tubule atrophy and atresia, and the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) in the kidney. Unfortunately, an estimated 1%-2% of the adult population living with CKD will need renal replacement therapy at some point as a result of ESKD. As such, strategies for preventing or slowing CKD progression to ESKD are of utmost importance, and studies aiming to understand the mechanisms of renal fibrosis have been the focus of intensive research. Recently, novel insights into the pathophysiological processes have furthered our understanding of the pathogenesis of renal fibrosis, and more importantly, promoted studies on the early diagnosis and treatment of CKD. This book draws lessons from the extensive, state-of-the-art research in this field, elaborating the new theories and new techniques to offer readers a detailed and comprehensive understanding of renal fibrosis and as well as inspiration for future research directions.

In this book, computational optical phase imaging techniques are presented along with Matlab codes that allow the reader to run their own simulations and gain a thorough understanding of the current state-of-the-art.  The book focuses on modern applications of computational optical phase imaging in engineering measurements and biomedical imaging. Additionally, it discusses the future of computational optical phase imaging, especially in terms of system miniaturization and deep learning-based phase retrieval.

With the end of Dennard scaling and Moore's law, IC chips, especially large-scale ones, now face more reliability challenges, and reliability has become one of the mainstay merits of VLSI designs. In this context, this book presents a built-in on-chip fault-tolerant computing paradigm that seeks to combine fault detection, fault diagnosis, and error recovery in large-scale VLSI design in a unified manner so as to minimize resource overhead and performance penalties. Following this computing paradigm, we propose a holistic solution based on three key components: self-test, self-diagnosis and self-repair, or "3S" for short. We then explore the use of 3S for general IC designs, general-purpose processors, network-on-chip (NoC) and deep learning accelerators, and present prototypes to demonstrate how 3S responds to in-field silicon degradation and recovery under various runtime faults caused by aging, process variations, or radical particles. Moreover, we demonstrate that 3S not only offers a powerful backbone for various on-chip fault-tolerant designs and implementations, but also has farther-reaching implications such as maintaining graceful performance degradation, mitigating the impact of verification blind spots, and improving chip yield. This book is the outcome of extensive fault-tolerant computing research pursued at the State Key Lab of Processors, Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences over the past decade. The proposed built-in on-chip fault-tolerant computing paradigm has been verified in a broad range of scenarios, from small processors in satellite computers to large processors in HPCs. Hopefully, it will provide an alternative yet effective solution to the growing reliability challenges for large-scale VLSI designs.

This book systemically presents the latest research on renal fibrosis, covering all the major topics in the field, including the possible mechanisms, biomarkers, and strategies for prevention and treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Due to its high prevalence, CKD represents a huge global economic and social burden. Irrespective of the initial causes, CKD progresses to end stage kidney disease (ESKD) due to renal fibrosis, which is characterized by glomerulosclerosis, tubule atrophy and atresia, and the excessive accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) in the kidney. Unfortunately, an estimated 1%-2% of the adult population living with CKD will need renal replacement therapy at some point as a result of ESKD. As such, strategies for preventing or slowing CKD progression to ESKD are of utmost importance, and studies aiming to understand the mechanisms of renal fibrosis have been the focus of intensive research. Recently, novel insights into the pathophysiological processes have furthered our understanding of the pathogenesis of renal fibrosis, and more importantly, promoted studies on the early diagnosis and treatment of CKD. This book draws lessons from the extensive, state-of-the-art research in this field, elaborating the new theories and new techniques to offer readers a detailed and comprehensive understanding of renal fibrosis and as well as inspiration for future research directions.

This book studies the crash response of thin-walled beams with different cross sections. Two collapse behaviors are studied in this book, the axial collapse and the bending collapse. Mathematical equations are derived to predict and describe the thin-walled beams' collapse mechanisms. Based on the present collapse theories, simplified finite element (FE) models and modeling methodologies are developed for different types of thin-walled beams. The developed models are validated through crashworthiness analysis and the results agree very well to those obtained from the detailed FE models. As demonstrated in this book, compared to the detailed models, the developed simplified models have reduced size and consist of less number of elements thereby can save much more modeling labors and computing time. Such advantages make the simplified models most suitable for computer simulation and product design. For an example, the simplified models and modeling methods presented in this book can be applied in optimum design of the thin-walled beams.

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