Wearable Sensing and Intelligent Data Analysis for Respiratory Management highlights the use of wearable sensing and intelligent data analysis algorithms for respiratory function management, offering several potential and substantial clinical benefits. The book allows for the early detection of respiratory exacerbations in patients with chronic respiratory diseases, allowing earlier and, therefore, more effective treatment. As such, the problem of continuous, non-invasive, remote and real-time monitoring of such patients needs increasing attention from the scientific community as these systems have the potential for substantial clinical benefits, promoting P4 medicine (personalized, participative, predictive and preventive). Wearable and portable systems with sensing technology and automated analysis of respiratory sounds and pulmonary images are some of the problems that are the subject of current research efforts, hence this book is an ideal resource on the topics discussed.

This book gathers the proceedings of the IV International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics (ICBHI 2019), held on 17-20 April, 2019, in Taipei, Taiwan. Contributions span a range of topics, including medical imaging, biosignal processing, biodata management and analytics, public and personalized health systems, mobile health applications and many more. The IV conference edition gave a special emphasis to cybersecurity issues and cutting-edge medical devices, as it is reflected in this book, which provides academics and professionals with extensive knowledge on and a timely snapshot of cutting-edge research and developments in the field of biomedical and health informatics.

This volume presents the proceedings of the 3rd ICBHI which took place in Thessaloniki on 18-21 November, 2017.The area of biomedical and health informatics is exploding at all scales. The developments in the areas of medical devices, eHealth and personalized health as enabling factors for the evolution of precision medicine are quickly developing and demand the development of new scaling tools, integration frameworks and methodologies.

The contemporary Chinese engagement in Africa dates back to the 1950's, and it has gained momentum in the last two decades. The Chinese presence in African countries has been getting more and more visible; not only the number of Chinese investments in the area and international agreements has been increasing, but also the size of the Chinese diaspora in the region has grown. China has been looking for new sources of natural resources and markets on which the 'made in China' goods would be welcomed, therefore it spares no efforts to establish and maintain possibly good relationships with Africa, especially with political elites of African countries. At first, the Chinese expansion was supported by the country's image of an older brother, a co-victim of the Western domination, and a example to be followed on the the path leading to development. This image, however, has started to be covered with some spots and shadows, caused by various Chinese activities. In this book we aimed to sketch the image of China and the Chinese in Zambia and Angola, presented by textual media and citizens of these countries, and to trace the most important factors influencing it. Moreover, we brought up some possible consequences of the prevalence of a particular - positive or negative - image for the future development of the Chinese expansion in the region.To obtain the possibly detailed image, we decided to combine quantitative and qualitative analysis of media content with results of our field work conducted in Africa.