Fast-paced Hong Kong action adventure. Set in a land ruled by a vengeful queen (Ying Qu), who insists that all men will be slaves to women, the film follows the journey of two young brothers, Charcoal Head (Jaycee Chan) and Blockhead (Bo-Lin Chen), who come into the possession of a mysterious map. Presuming that the map will lead them to treasure, the boys set out on an adventure in the hope of finding wealth and happiness. They are pursued by Spring (Charlene Choi) and Blue Bird (Gillian Chung), two beautiful female warriors with secret intentions, and quickly discover that the map has led them into danger. Will the boys be able to fight their way to the bottom of the riddle - and past rivals as formidable as the Lord of Armour (Jackie Chan) - to fulfil their destiny?

This book provides foundations for the understanding and design of computation-efficient algorithms and protocols for those interactions with environment, i.e., wireless communication systems. The book provides a systematic treatment of the theoretical foundation and algorithmic tools necessarily in the design of computation-efficient algorithms and protocols in stochastic scheduling. The problems addressed in the book are of both fundamental and practical importance. Target readers of the book are researchers and advanced-level engineering students interested in acquiring in-depth knowledge on the topic and on stochastic scheduling and their applications, both from theoretical and engineering perspective.

Supercritical fluids have been utilized for numerous scientific advancements and industrial innovations. As the concern for environmental sustainability grows, these fluids have been increasingly used for energy efficiency purposes. Advanced Applications of Supercritical Fluids in Energy Systems is a pivotal reference source for the latest academic material on the integration of supercritical fluids into contemporary energy-related applications. Highlighting innovative discussions on topics such as renewable energy, fluid dynamics, and heat and mass transfer, this book is ideally designed for researchers, academics, professionals, graduate students, and practitioners interested in the latest trends in energy conversion.

This book discusses basic thermodynamic behaviors and 'abnormal' properties from a thermo-physical perspective, and explores basic heat transfer and flow properties, the latest findings on their physical aspects and indications, chemical engineering properties, microscale phenomena, as well as transient behaviors in fast and critical environments. It also presents the most and challenging problems and the outlook for applications and innovations of supercritical fluids.

This book, written by our distinguished colleague and friend, Professor Han-Lin Chen of the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica, Beijing, presents, for the first time in book form, his extensive work on complex harmonic splines with applications to wavelet analysis and the numerical solution of boundary integral equations. Professor Chen has worked in Ap proximation Theory and Computational Mathematics for over forty years. His scientific contributions are rich in variety and content. Through his publications and his many excellent Ph. D. students he has taken a leader ship role in the development of these fields within China. This new book is yet another important addition to Professor Chen's quality research in Computational Mathematics. In the last several decades, the theory of spline functions and their ap plications have greatly influenced numerous fields of applied mathematics, most notably, computational mathematics, wavelet analysis and geomet ric modeling. Many books and monographs have been published studying real variable spline functions with a focus on their algebraic, analytic and computational properties. In contrast, this book is the first to present the theory of complex harmonic spline functions and their relation to wavelet analysis with applications to the solution of partial differential equations and boundary integral equations of the second kind. The material presented in this book is unique and interesting. It provides a detailed summary of the important research results of the author and his group and as well as others in the field."

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the theoretical foundation and algorithmic tools necessary in the design of efficient tag counting and monitoring algorithms in emerging RFID systems. The book delivers an in-depth analysis on the following problems ranging from theoretical modeling and analysis, to practical algorithm design and optimization: Stability analysis of the frame slotted Aloha protocol, the de facto standard in RFID tag counting and identification; Tag population estimation in dynamic RFID systems; Missing tag event detection in the presence of unexpected tags; Missing tag event detection in multi-group multi-region RFID systems. The target readers are researchers and advanced-level engineering students interested in acquiring in-depth knowledge on the topic and on RFID systems and their applications.

Spatial Implications and Planning Criteria for High-speed Rail Cities and Regions evaluates the varied experiences that HSR systems have brought about to different station-cities and their regional territories around the world, with an eye towards better future planning and policy of such systems. This edited volume draws from examples of high-speed rail operations in different cities in Europe and Asia to depict the various impacts of this major transportation infrastructure. It attempts to distinguish the short- and long-term impacts described in the literature, classifying them into regional and inter-urban effects, urban effects, and wider economic impacts. Planning challenges appear at two major points: 1) during the initial planning stage that includes the route and location of stations; and 2) during the development process that follows. The case studies in the book concentrate on a variety of topics from the impact of high-speed rail on population growth in some station-cities, to the regional economic impacts that an HSR system can bring about to the larger territories it passes through, to the potential of station-cities to better attract firms, or to experience increases in tourism and commerce. They also assess planning strategies and experiences from station-cities to draw lessons for future HSR planning policies. The Chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of European Planning Studies.

Informed by the social-ecological framework, this book focuses on the development of Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) in urban China. Bringing a timely discussion around HCBS development in Shanghai, it presents an interplay of formal caregiving relationships, evolving caregiving culture, and the trajectory of long-term care in China. Drawing on surveys, in-depth interviews, and government archives, this book explores the emergence of one of the most developed HCBS programs in Shanghai, its development over the past decade, its administration and services, resource allocation, staff members' work experiences, older adults' service experiences, as well as service evaluation and improvements. Offering fresh insight into new forms of caregiving in community settings, and shaping a new discourse on caregiving policy, this book is a key read for both students and practitioners in the fields of long-term care, gerontology, geriatrics, health care, and health policy.

With an increasing number of elders moving into nursing homes, the shift from family to nursing home care calls for an exploration of caregiving decision-making in urban China. This study examines how a rapidly growing aging population, the one-child policy, and economic reform in urban China pose unprecedented challenges to the country's ingrained tradition of family caregiving. It presents interviews of matched elders and their children from a government-sponsored nursing home in Shanghai and analyzes the decision-making process of institutionalization. This book offers fresh insight into the evolving culture and arrangements of caregiving in contemporary Chinese society, illuminating the diverse needs for long-term care of Chinese elders-the world's largest aging population-in the coming decades.

Since 1978, when China embarked on a new period of economic reforms and introduced open door policies, it has experienced a great urban transformation. The role of transport has proved indispensable in this unprecedented rapid urbanisation and economic growth. As the first research-focused book dedicated to this important topic, the Handbook on Transport and Urban Transformation in China offers new insight into the various opportunities and challenges brought by fast-paced motorisation and urban development, and explores them in broad spatial-economic, environmental, social, and institutional dimensions. This collection is an informative and comprehensive reference for researchers and academics at all levels studying transport, urban planning, and geography. It will also help practitioners and consultants gain a deeper understanding of policy development and best practices, and international and domestic policy makers will find guidance in the implications and lessons proposed for future transport research, policy, and practice. Contributors include: M. Cao, X. Chen, C. Curtis, X. Fu, Y. Gao, Y. Gao, D. Gong, R. Hickman, S. Huang, Z. Kang, M.-P. Kwan, C. Liu, Y. Liu, P. Newman, Z.-R. Peng, D. Pojani, B. Quan, J. Scheurer, Y. Shen, K. Si, N. Ta, Y. Tang, A. Thomas, Y. Tian, H. Titheridge, S. Wang, Y. Wang, P. Wei, T.G. Wereta, A.R. Williams, J. Wu, D. Xu, J. Xu, R. Ye, P. Zhao, M. Zhang, X. Zhang, F. Zhen

This handbook includes three parts, corresponding to the following three domains of OR/MS research related to sustainability: (i) Systems Design, Innovation, and Technology, (ii) Manufacturing, Logistics, and Transportation, and (iii) Sustainable Natural Resource Management. The first part of the handbook (Chapters 2-6) will focus on the creation and development of sustainable products, services, value chains, and organizations from a systems perspective. Key areas to be covered include Green Design & Innovation, Technology and Engineering Management, Sustainable Value Chain Systems, Sustainability Standards and Performance Evaluation, and Circular Economy and New Research Directions in Sustainability. The second part of the handbook (Chapters 7-11) will concentrate on the major operational and logistic issues faced by today's industries in pursuing sustainability. Key areas to be covered include Remanufacturing, Reverse Logistics, Closed-Loop Supply Chains, Sustainable Transportation, and New Research Directions in Green Supply Chain Management. The third part of the proposed handbook (Chapters 12-16) will center on major sustainability issues in managing engineering infrastructure and natural resources. Key areas to be covered include Renewable Energy, Sustainable Water Resource, Biofuel Infrastructure, Natural Gas, and New Research Direction in Sustainable Resource Management. The handbook aims to bridge the three main OR/MS research domains in sustainability: "Systems Design, Innovation, and Technology," "Manufacturing, Logistics, and Transportation," and "Sustainable Natural Resource Management." Traditionally, these domains are treated separately in the OR/MS literature. By combining the three domains, the handbook will provide a more holistic treatment of MS/OR methodologies to address critical sustainability issues faced by today's society. Unlike most existing handbooks which only focus on current OR/MS research in sustainability within a domain, this handbook will include a concluding chapter in each of the three parts to discuss and identify potential future research directions in each of the three main domains.

Spatial Implications and Planning Criteria for High-speed Rail Cities and Regions evaluates the varied experiences that HSR systems have brought about to different station-cities and their regional territories around the world, with an eye towards better future planning and policy of such systems. This edited volume draws from examples of high-speed rail operations in different cities in Europe and Asia to depict the various impacts of this major transportation infrastructure. It attempts to distinguish the short- and long-term impacts described in the literature, classifying them into regional and inter-urban effects, urban effects, and wider economic impacts. Planning challenges appear at two major points: 1) during the initial planning stage that includes the route and location of stations; and 2) during the development process that follows. The case studies in the book concentrate on a variety of topics from the impact of high-speed rail on population growth in some station-cities, to the regional economic impacts that an HSR system can bring about to the larger territories it passes through, to the potential of station-cities to better attract firms, or to experience increases in tourism and commerce. They also assess planning strategies and experiences from station-cities to draw lessons for future HSR planning policies. The Chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of European Planning Studies.

This book explores how students in China vary in their understanding of careers upon arrival at college and how these initial differences develop into distinctive career preparation pathways. Drawing on survey data, students' self-reflections, and semi-structured interviews over the four years, the book examines students' engagement in curricular and extracurricular activities, as well as their interactions with peers, faculty, and staff, and how this affects their ability to navigate, develop, and cultivate career prospects and relevant skills. It also considers how colleges may aggravate social inequality rather than equalize among students with divergent family backgrounds through cumulative advantage framework, impacting on their conceptualization and construction of careers. Addressing a key generation in a key market, this text will interest students, scholars and practitioners in sociology, social work, education, and public policy, career counselling, student affairs, human resources, and education policy.

This book discusses basic thermodynamic behaviors and 'abnormal' properties from a thermo-physical perspective, and explores basic heat transfer and flow properties, the latest findings on their physical aspects and indications, chemical engineering properties, microscale phenomena, as well as transient behaviors in fast and critical environments. It also presents the most and challenging problems and the outlook for applications and innovations of supercritical fluids.

The Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province in Northwest China: Tectonics, Petrology, Geochemistry, and Geophysics is the first book to introduce the Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province. Based on more than twenty years of study, this book systematically presents time-spatial, geochemical and geodynamic features, along with the metallogenesis and magma evolution of the Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province. Furthermore, it provides a new geodynamic model for Large Igneous Provinces. It is intended for researchers and graduate students in tectonics, igneous petrology, geochemistry, geophysics, earth evolution and planetary geology in addition to mining industry professionals.

This book, written by our distinguished colleague and friend, Professor Han-Lin Chen of the Institute of Mathematics, Academia Sinica, Beijing, presents, for the first time in book form, his extensive work on complex harmonic splines with applications to wavelet analysis and the numerical solution of boundary integral equations. Professor Chen has worked in Ap proximation Theory and Computational Mathematics for over forty years. His scientific contributions are rich in variety and content. Through his publications and his many excellent Ph. D. students he has taken a leader ship role in the development of these fields within China. This new book is yet another important addition to Professor Chen's quality research in Computational Mathematics. In the last several decades, the theory of spline functions and their ap plications have greatly influenced numerous fields of applied mathematics, most notably, computational mathematics, wavelet analysis and geomet ric modeling. Many books and monographs have been published studying real variable spline functions with a focus on their algebraic, analytic and computational properties. In contrast, this book is the first to present the theory of complex harmonic spline functions and their relation to wavelet analysis with applications to the solution of partial differential equations and boundary integral equations of the second kind. The material presented in this book is unique and interesting. It provides a detailed summary of the important research results of the author and his group and as well as others in the field."

What things count as individuals, and how do we individuate them? It is a classic philosophical question often tackled from the perspective of analytic metaphysics. This volume proposes that there is another channel by which to approach individuation - from that of scientific practices. From this perspective, the question then becomes: How do scientists individuate things and, therefore, count them as individuals? This volume collects the work of philosophers of science to engage with this central philosophical conundrum from a new angle, highlighting the crucial topic of experimental individuation and building upon recent, pioneering work in the philosophy of science. An introductory chapter foregrounds the problem of individuation, arguing it should be considered prior to the topic of individuality. The following chapters address individuation and individuality from a variety of perspectives, with prominent themes being the importance of experimentation, individuation as a process, and pluralism in individuation's criteria. Contributions examine individuation in a wide range of sciences, including stem cell biology, particle physics, and community ecology. Other chapters examine the metaphysics of individuation, its bearing on realism/antirealism debates, and interrogate epistemic aspects of individuation in scientific practice. In exploring individuation from the philosophy of biology, physics, and other scientific subjects, this volume ultimately argues for the possibility of several criteria of individuation, upending the tenets of traditional metaphysics. It provides insights for philosophers of science, but also for scientists interested in the conceptual foundations of their work.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Brain Informatics, BI 2011, held in Lanzhou, China, in September 2011. The 27 revised full papers and 6 keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. They are grouped in topcial sections on thinking and perception-centric investigations of human information processing systems; information technologies for the management, analysis and use of brain data; cognition-inspired applications. Furthermore, there is a section with 8 papers from the workshop on meta-synthesis and complex systems.

This book presents a three-factor model of the term structure of interest rates in which the short mean and volatility of the short rate are stochastic. By this specification, this model has nested many of the term structure models in the existing literature. Based on this rather realistic and sophisticated model, the book further shows how to price interest rate derivatives and to formulate risk management schemes. The model is potentially useful for practical purposes such as pricing bonds, hedging bond portfolios, and formulating dynamic trading strategies. The model could also be used to perform other types of security analyses, such as the valuation of mortgage-backed securities, synthetic security construction, immunization, portfolio indexing, asset/liability management, etc.

This book provides foundations for the understanding and design of computation-efficient algorithms and protocols for those interactions with environment, i.e., wireless communication systems. The book provides a systematic treatment of the theoretical foundation and algorithmic tools necessarily in the design of computation-efficient algorithms and protocols in stochastic scheduling. The problems addressed in the book are of both fundamental and practical importance. Target readers of the book are researchers and advanced-level engineering students interested in acquiring in-depth knowledge on the topic and on stochastic scheduling and their applications, both from theoretical and engineering perspective.

This handbook includes three parts, corresponding to the following three domains of OR/MS research related to sustainability: (i) Systems Design, Innovation, and Technology, (ii) Manufacturing, Logistics, and Transportation, and (iii) Sustainable Natural Resource Management. The first part of the handbook (Chapters 2-6) will focus on the creation and development of sustainable products, services, value chains, and organizations from a systems perspective. Key areas to be covered include Green Design & Innovation, Technology and Engineering Management, Sustainable Value Chain Systems, Sustainability Standards and Performance Evaluation, and Circular Economy and New Research Directions in Sustainability. The second part of the handbook (Chapters 7-11) will concentrate on the major operational and logistic issues faced by today's industries in pursuing sustainability. Key areas to be covered include Remanufacturing, Reverse Logistics, Closed-Loop Supply Chains, Sustainable Transportation, and New Research Directions in Green Supply Chain Management. The third part of the proposed handbook (Chapters 12-16) will center on major sustainability issues in managing engineering infrastructure and natural resources. Key areas to be covered include Renewable Energy, Sustainable Water Resource, Biofuel Infrastructure, Natural Gas, and New Research Direction in Sustainable Resource Management. The handbook aims to bridge the three main OR/MS research domains in sustainability: "Systems Design, Innovation, and Technology," "Manufacturing, Logistics, and Transportation," and "Sustainable Natural Resource Management." Traditionally, these domains are treated separately in the OR/MS literature. By combining the three domains, the handbook will provide a more holistic treatment of MS/OR methodologies to address critical sustainability issues faced by today's society. Unlike most existing handbooks which only focus on current OR/MS research in sustainability within a domain, this handbook will include a concluding chapter in each of the three parts to discuss and identify potential future research directions in each of the three main domains.

Methane hydrates are still a complicated target for today's oil and gas offshore engineers, particularly the lack of reliable real field test data or obtaining the most recent technology available on the feasibility and challenges surrounding the extraction of methane hydrates. Oceanic Methane Hydrates delivers the solid foundation as well as today's advances and challenges that remain. Starting with the fundamental knowledge on gas hydrates, the authors define the origin, estimations, and known exploration and production methods. Historical and current oil and gas fields and roadmaps containing methane hydrates around the world are also covered to help lay the foundation for the early career engineer. Lab experiments and advancements in numerical reservoir simulations transition the engineer from research to practice with real field-core sampling techniques covered, points on how to choose producible methane hydrate reservoirs, and the importance of emerging technologies. Actual comparable onshore tests from around the world are included to help the engineer gain clarity on field expectations. Rounding out the reference are emerging technologies in all facets of the business including well completion and monitoring, economics aspects to consider, and environmental challenges, particularly methods to reduce the costs of methane hydrate exploration and production techniques. Rounding out a look at future trends, Oceanic Methane Hydrates covers both the basics and advances needed for today's engineers to gain the required knowledge needed to tackle this challenging and exciting future energy source.