This book highlights reliable, valid and practical testing and assessment of interpreting, presenting important developments in China, where testing and assessment have long been a major concern for interpreting educators and researchers, but have remained largely under-reported. The book not only offers theoretical insights into potential issues and problems undermining interpreting assessment, but also describes useful measurement models to address such concerns. Showcasing the latest Chinese research to create rubrics-referenced rating scales, enhance formative assessment practice, and explore (semi-)automated assessment, the book is a valuable resource for educators, trainers and researchers, enabling to gain a better understanding of interpreting testing and assessment as both a worthwhile endeavor and a promising research area.

This book develops an informational theory to account for the coexistence of China's exceptionally resilient authoritarianism and its high decentralization. The nuanced information contained in citizens' complaints, which are filed through the petition system, helps to sustain China's decentralized authoritarianism in three important ways. First, petitions help to alleviate the information asymmetry problem that arises when the central government has less information than lower level governments do. When studying citizens' petitions, higher level governments can obtain valuable and accurate information about local officials' performance in policy implementation, public goods provision, and corruption. Higher level governments need this information in order to effectively utilize the cadre management system to reward good performance and punish malpractice. The result of this interaction is the PRC's relatively high quality of governance and effective control of local officials. There is also a second way in which citizens' petitions help the government to overcome the dictator's dilemma that arises when an authoritarian regime is uncertain about how much support it really enjoys among its citizens. Citizens' specific grievances are revealed in these petitions and are mostly addressed in their beginning stages. When citizens' complaints are rooted in central policy, they set the agenda for policy change in order to maintain social order. There is yet a third benefit conferred upon the PRC by the petition system. Thanks to the petition system, the central government can present itself as the ally of citizens when it addresses the matters raised by their petitions. As a result, the petition system grants the central government an opportunity to hold local officials accountable, scapegoat local authorities, divide citizens and local officials, and justly claim all the credit when its policies succeed. This helps to build citizens' trust in their central government and reinforces its legitimacy in their eyes. In Huntington's terms, the Chinese Communist Party institutionalizes mass support by addressing citizens' grievances expressed through the channel of communication provided by the petition system. In this sense, the complaints of citizens can be very useful tools for regime maintenance. The author substantiates these points with case studies and statistical analysis.

This book presents a new economic theory developed from physical and biological principles. It explains how technology, social systems and economic values are intimately related to resources. Many people have recognized that mainstream (neoclassical) economic theories are not consistent with physical laws and often not consistent with empirical patterns, but most feel that economic activities are too complex to be described by a simple and coherent mathematical theory. While social systems are indeed complex, all life systems, including social systems, satisfy two principles. First, all systems need to extract resources from the external environment to compensate for their consumption. Second, for a system to be viable, the amount of resource extraction has to be no less than the level of consumption. From these two principles, we derive a quantitative theory of major factors in economic activities, such as fixed cost, variable cost, discount rate, uncertainty and duration. The mathematical theory enables us to systematically measure the effectiveness of different policies and institutional structures at varying levels of resource abundance and cost.The theory presented in this book shows that there do not exist universally optimal policies or institutional structures. Instead, the impacts of different policies or social structures have to be measured within the context of existing levels of resource abundance. As the physical costs of extracting resources rise steadily, many policy assumptions adopted in mainstream economic theories, and workable in times of cheap and abundant energy supplies and other resources, need to be reconsidered. In this rapidly changing world, the theory presented here provides a solid foundation for examining the long-term impacts of today's policy decisions.

In the deep south of America land, Buenos Aires used to be a very romantic and sexy and a pasionate soil where one could meet the most beautiful women in the world, tango musics, Italian food, and mixed American and European culture, South American cowboy spirit and hot coffee flavor.... But whenever you are visiting the country, watch your ass, Dude, because a lot of old things you did ever know and history can be repeated. The inside pages could take you back to that not so old time between 1976 up to 1983 and lasting up to now.... when money, power and sex meet together..., the world turns to be mad and bloody........; you know everything, but you still know nothing.......

This monograph provides a coherent and systematic explanation of China's regional economic development from the perspective of regional government competition. It gives an almost unknown exposition of the mechanisms of China's regional economic development, with numerous supporting cases drawn from both China and elsewhere. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested to learn more particularly the development and transformation of China's regional economy from both the Chinese and global perspectives.

This monograph provides a coherent and systematic explanation of China's regional economic development from the perspective of regional government competition. It gives an almost unknown exposition of the mechanisms of China's regional economic development, with numerous supporting cases drawn from both China and elsewhere. This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested to learn more particularly the development and transformation of China's regional economy from both the Chinese and global perspectives.

The multi-billion-dollar microsystem packaging business continues to play an increasingly important technical role in today 's information industry. The packaging process including design and manufacturing technologies is the technical foundation upon which function chips are updated for use in application systems, and it is an important guarantee of the continued growth of technical content and value of information systems.

Introduction to Microsystem Packaging Technology details the latest advances in this vital area, which involves microelectronics, optoelectronics, RF and wireless, MEMS, and related packaging and assembling technologies. It is purposefully written so that each chapter is relatively independent and the book systematically presents the widest possible overview of packaging knowledge.

Elucidates the evolving world of packaging technologies for manufacturing

The authors begin by introducing the fundamentals, history, and technical challenges of microsystems. Addressing an array of design techniques for packaging and integration, they cover substrate and interconnection technologies, examples of device- and system-level packaging, and various MEMS packaging techniques. The book also discusses module assembly and optoelectronic packaging, reliability methodologies and analysis, and prospects for the evolution and future applications of microsystems packaging and associated environmental protection.

With its research examples and targeted reference questions and answers to reinforce understanding, this text is ideal for researchers, engineers, and students involved in microelectronics and MEMS. It is also useful to those who are not directly engaged in packaging but require a solid understanding of the field and its associated technologies.

This book highlights reliable, valid and practical testing and assessment of interpreting, presenting important developments in China, where testing and assessment have long been a major concern for interpreting educators and researchers, but have remained largely under-reported. The book not only offers theoretical insights into potential issues and problems undermining interpreting assessment, but also describes useful measurement models to address such concerns. Showcasing the latest Chinese research to create rubrics-referenced rating scales, enhance formative assessment practice, and explore (semi-)automated assessment, the book is a valuable resource for educators, trainers and researchers, enabling to gain a better understanding of interpreting testing and assessment as both a worthwhile endeavor and a promising research area.

This book presents a new economic theory developed from physical and biological principles. It explains how technology, social systems and economic values are intimately related to resources. Many people have recognized that mainstream (neoclassical) economic theories are not consistent with physical laws and often not consistent with empirical patterns, but most feel that economic activities are too complex to be described by a simple and coherent mathematical theory. While social systems are indeed complex, all life systems, including social systems, satisfy two principles. First, all systems need to extract resources from the external environment to compensate for their consumption. Second, for a system to be viable, the amount of resource extraction has to be no less than the level of consumption. From these two principles, we derive a quantitative theory of major factors in economic activities, such as fixed cost, variable cost, discount rate, uncertainty and duration. The mathematical theory enables us to systematically measure the effectiveness of different policies and institutional structures at varying levels of resource abundance and cost.The theory presented in this book shows that there do not exist universally optimal policies or institutional structures. Instead, the impacts of different policies or social structures have to be measured within the context of existing levels of resource abundance. As the physical costs of extracting resources rise steadily, many policy assumptions adopted in mainstream economic theories, and workable in times of cheap and abundant energy supplies and other resources, need to be reconsidered. In this rapidly changing world, the theory presented here provides a solid foundation for examining the long-term impacts of today's policy decisions.

This volume contains the 37 papers presented at the 9th International Con- rence on Real-Time and Embedded Computing Systems and Applications (RT- CSA 2003). RTCSA is an international conference organized for scientists and researchers from both academia and industry to hold intensive discussions on advancing technologies topics on real-time systems, embedded systems, ubiq- tous/pervasive computing, and related topics. RTCSA 2003 was held at the Department of Electrical Engineering of National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. Paper submissions were well distributed over the various aspects of real-time computing and embedded system technologies. There were more than 100 participants from all over the world. The papers, including 28 regular papers and 9 short papers are grouped into thecategoriesofscheduling, networkingandcommunication, embeddedsystems, pervasive/ubiquitous computing, systems and architectures, resource mana- ment, ?le systems and databases, performance analysis, and tools and de- lopment. The grouping is basically in accordance with the conference program. Earlier versions of these papers were published in the conference proceedings. However, some papers in this volume have been modi?ed or improved by the authors, in various aspects, based on comments and feedback received at the conference. It is our sincere hope that researchers and developers will bene't from these papers. We would like to thank all the authors of the papers for their contribution. We thank the members of the program committee and the reviewers for their excellent work in evaluating the submissions. We are also very grateful to all the members of the organizing committees for their help, guidance and suppor

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on Frontiers in Algorithmics, FAW 2021, held in conjunction with second International Joint Conference on Theoretical Computer Science (IJTCS 2021), as IJTCS-FAW 2021, in Beijing, China, in August 2021. The conference IJTCS-FAW 2021 was held in hybrid mode due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 5 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 9 submissions. The joint conference provides a focused forum on Algorithmic Game Theory, Blockchain, Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning, Quantum Computation, Theory of Machine Learning, Machine Learning, Formal Method, Algorithm and Complexity, and EconCS.

In the year 2003, Argentina was under terrible economic depression, also in social disorder. Dick Williams, a U. S. veteran agent received a phone call from his chief through Mexico ordered him to go urgently to Buenos Aires for a mission while he was taking a short vocation in Costa Rica. After a couple of decade's separation with the City, he arrived in the tango Country again to fulfill his assigned job since he did an excellent work in the later 70's. He experienced international higher intelligence network cooperated with the local SEDE, parapolice webs. Dick Williams finally found himself was surrounding by deceptions and betrayals. He chose the wisest decision at the end before everything would be too late including his own life.............."

In the deep south of America land, Buenos Aires used to be a very romantic and sexy and a pasionate soil where one could meet the most beautiful women in the world, tango musics, Italian food, and mixed American and European culture, South American cowboy spirit and hot coffee flavor.... But whenever you are visiting the country, watch your ass, Dude, because a lot of old things you did ever know and history can be repeated. The inside pages could take you back to that not so old time between 1976 up to 1983 and lasting up to now.... when money, power and sex meet together..., the world turns to be mad and bloody........; you know everything, but you still know nothing.......