This book aims to provide the readers a better understanding of rural China through the particular perspective of the rural underworld. It proposes new concepts to describe social changes of rural China by comparing the contemporary rural society with the acquaintance society-the classic model for depicting the traditional Chinese society. The author's down-to-earth fieldwork has revealed that, with a permeating gang influence, the society of rural China has actually changed in nature. Such change in social nature is summarized as "the estrangement of acquaintances" or "moral ambiguity". As a result of the rural gangster's unlawful acts of lining their pockets with national resources, rural China is going through "rural governance involution." In short, this book develops new models and concepts to establish a comprehensive scientific conceptual system for explaining social reality. With hard-to-come-by information and a prudent and multi-faceted analysis on a neglected topic, this book gradually reveals to the readers the true picture of rural China.

The cases of Singapore and Switzerland present a fascinating puzzle: how have two small states achieved similar levels of success through divergent pathways? Are both approaches equally sustainable, and what lessons do they hold for each other? While Singapore is the archetypal developmental state, whose success can be attributed to strong political leadership and long-term planning, Switzerland's success is a more organic process, due to the propitious convergence of strong industries and a resilient citizenry. Yet throughout the course of their development, both countries have had to deal with the dual challenges of culturally heterogeneous populations and challenging regional contexts. Edited by Yvonne Guo and Jun Jie Woo, with forewords from Ambassadors Thomas Kupfer and Tommy Koh, Singapore and Switzerland: Secrets to Small State Success features contributions from distinguished scholars and policymakers who explore the dynamics of two small states which have topped international rankings in a dazzling array of policy areas, from economic competitiveness to education to governance, but whose pathways to success could not be more different.

The cases of Singapore and Switzerland present a fascinating puzzle: how have two small states achieved similar levels of success through divergent pathways? Are both approaches equally sustainable, and what lessons do they hold for each other? While Singapore is the archetypal developmental state, whose success can be attributed to strong political leadership and long-term planning, Switzerland's success is a more organic process, due to the propitious convergence of strong industries and a resilient citizenry. Yet throughout the course of their development, both countries have had to deal with the dual challenges of culturally heterogeneous populations and challenging regional contexts. Edited by Yvonne Guo and Jun Jie Woo, with forewords from Ambassadors Thomas Kupfer and Tommy Koh, Singapore and Switzerland: Secrets to Small State Success features contributions from distinguished scholars and policymakers who explore the dynamics of two small states which have topped international rankings in a dazzling array of policy areas, from economic competitiveness to education to governance, but whose pathways to success could not be more different.

The "Intelligent Systems Series" encompasses theoretical studies, design methods, and real-world implementations and applications. It publishes titles in three core sub-topic areas: Intelligent Automation, Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Intelligent Computing.

This volume, "Intelligent Vibration Control in Civil Engineering Structures," focuses on design and property tests on different intelligent control devices, some innovative control strategies and analysis examples for structures with intelligent control devices, and design and tests on intelligent controllers.
This book s primary focus is on the principles, methods and applications of intelligent vibration control in civil engineering Covers intelligent control including active and semi-active controlComprehensive contents including design and properties of different intelligent control devices, control strategies and dynamic analysis, intelligent controller design, numerical examples, and experimental data"

The two-volume set LNCS 9516 and LNCS 9517 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, MMM 2016, held in Miami, FL, USA, in January 2016. The 32 revised full papers and 52 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. In addition 20 papers were accepted for five special sessions out of 38 submissions as well as 7 demonstrations (from 11 submissions) and 9 video showcase papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on video content analysis, social media analysis, object recognition and system, multimedia retrieval and ranking, multimedia representation, machine learning in multimedia, and interaction and mobile. The special sessions are: good practices in multimedia modeling; semantics discovery from multimedia big data; perception, aesthetics, and emotion in multimedia quality modeling; multimodal learning and computing for human activity understanding; and perspectives on multimedia analytics.

The two-volume set LNCS 9516 and 9517 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, MMM 2016, held in Miami, FL, USA, in January 2016. The 32 revised full papers and 52 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. In addition 20 papers were accepted for five special sessions out of 38 submissions as well as 7 demonstrations (from 11 submissions) and 9 video showcase papers. The papers are organized in topical sections on video content analysis, social media analysis, object recognition and system, multimedia retrieval and ranking, multimedia representation, machine learning in multimedia, and interaction and mobile. The special sessions are: good practices in multimedia modeling; semantics discovery from multimedia big data; perception, aesthetics, and emotion in multimedia quality modeling; multimodal learning and computing for human activity understanding; and perspectives on multimedia analytics.