This book offers a critical assessment of governance ideas in the context of Chinese neoliberalism. It argues that the Chinese version of governance has emerged as an important discursive practice in the articulation of the neoliberal spirit of the national reform agenda. The book first examines the institutional and intellectual background of governance ideas, capturing the key features of neoliberalization in transitional China. The main body of investigation is an interpretive analysis of governance in terms of its normative principles and technical skills, which effectively package the mature neoliberal vision and reality so that it indicates the dominant ruling structure of Chinese neoliberalism. The subsequent analysis presents a genealogical review of governance discourse and traces its adaptation to local neoliberal experiments. The book concludes with reflections on possible ways of critical engagement with governance ideas and with the intellectual aspects of neoliberalism.

This book presents the unique mechanical, electrical, and optical properties of nanomaterials, which play an important role in the recent advances of energy-related applications. Different nanomaterials have been employed in energy saving, generation, harvest, conversion, storage, and transport processes very effectively and efficiently. Recent progress in the preparation, characterization and usage of 1D, 2D nanomaterials and hybrid architectures for energy-related applications and relevant technologies and devices, such as solar cells, thermoelectronics, piezoelectronics, solar water splitting, hydrogen production/storage, fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors is covered. Moreover, the book also highlights novel approaches in nanomaterials design and synthesis and evaluating materials sustainability issues. Contributions from active and leading experts regarding important aspects like the synthesis, assembly, and properties of nanomaterials for energy-related applications are compiled into a reference book. As evident from the diverse topics, the book will be very valuable to researchers working in the intersection of physics, chemistry, biology, materials science and engineering. It may set the standard and stimulates future developments in this rapidly emerging fertile frontier of nanomaterials for energy.

This book offers a critical assessment of governance ideas in the context of Chinese neoliberalism. It argues that the Chinese version of governance has emerged as an important discursive practice in the articulation of the neoliberal spirit of the national reform agenda. The book first examines the institutional and intellectual background of governance ideas, capturing the key features of neoliberalization in transitional China. The main body of investigation is an interpretive analysis of governance in terms of its normative principles and technical skills, which effectively package the mature neoliberal vision and reality so that it indicates the dominant ruling structure of Chinese neoliberalism. The subsequent analysis presents a genealogical review of governance discourse and traces its adaptation to local neoliberal experiments. The book concludes with reflections on possible ways of critical engagement with governance ideas and with the intellectual aspects of neoliberalism.

In this book anisotropic one-dimensional and two-dimensional nanoscale building blocks and their assembly into fascinating and qualitatively new functional structures embracing both hard and soft components are explained. Contributions from leading experts regarding important aspects like synthesis, assembly, properties and applications of the above materials are compiled into a reference book. The anisotropy, i.e. the direction-dependent physical properties, of materials is fascinating and elegant and has sparked the quest for anisotropic materials with useful properties. With such a curiosity, material scientists have ventured into the realm of nanometer length scale and have explored the anisotropic nanoscale building blocks such as metallic and nonmetallic particles as well as organic molecular aggregates. It turns out that the anisotropic nanoscale building blocks, in addition to direction-dependent properties, exhibit dimension and morphology dependence of physical properties. Moreover, ordered arrays of anisotropic nanoscale building blocks furnish novel properties into the resulting system which would be entirely different from the properties of individual ones. Undoubtedly, these promising properties have qualified them as enabling building blocks of 21st century materials science, nanoscience and nanotechnology. Readers will find this book professionally valuable and intellectually stimulating in the rapidly emerging area of anisotropic nanomaterials. Quan Li, Ph.D., is Director of the Organic Synthesis and Advanced Materials Laboratory at the Liquid Crystal Institute of Kent State University, where he is also Adjunct Professor in the Chemical Physics Interdisciplinary Program. He has directed research projects funded by US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFSOR), US Army Research Office (ARO), US Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (DoD MURI), US National Science Foundation (NSF), US Department of Energy (DOE), US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Ohio Third Frontier, and Samsung Electronics, among others.

This book focuses on the exciting topic of nanoscience with liquid crystals: from self-organized nanostructures to applications. The elegant self-organized liquid crystalline nanostructures, the synergetic characteristics of liquid crystals and nanoparticles, liquid crystalline nanomaterials, synthesis of nanomaterials using liquid crystals as templates, nanoconfinement and nanoparticles of liquid crystals are covered and discussed, and the prospect of fabricating functional materials is highlighted. Contributions, collecting the scattered literature of the field from leading and active players, are compiled to make the book a reference book. Readers will find the book useful and of benefit both as summaries for works in this field and as tutorials and explanations of concepts for those just entering the field. Additionally, the book helps to stimulate future developments.

In the wake of Shelby County v. Holder and the January 6 Capitol insurrection, changes to election laws, policies, and especially access to voting have become a key political battleground. A central point of contention is whether new restrictive voting laws intentionally discriminate against Black and Hispanic subpopulations in the United States. Conversely, do policies that expand voting access favor Democrats and increase the possibility of election fraud?In The Cost of Voting in the American States, Michael J. Pomante II, Scot Schraufnagel, and Quan Li test these questions. The authors look specifically for systematic outcomes produced by distinctive election policies in the American states. First, they establish a competent measure of voting restrictions to begin this unraveling. The authors create a Cost of Voting Index (COVI) for the fifty states, which uses a statistical procedure to extract an underlying dimension and to determine significance from state laws based on how restrictive the polices are. The authors call the underlying dimension extracted the “cost of voting.” With this measure in place, they evaluate which states have a higher cost of voting, how this cost impacts who votes, and whether there is a correlation between the cost of voting and minority populations. Using Racial Threat Theory arguments, the authors demonstrate that states with larger or growing Black and Hispanic populations have more restricted voting, and that these restrictive voting laws disproportionately demobilize these populations in predictable ways. States with a higher cost of voting also show lower minority electoral success as well as a larger gap in Black and female representation, and the authors reveal that decreasing the cost of voting does not lead to fraud or favor one party over another. The Cost of Voting in the American States makes a case for a new preclearance formula, and the COVI provides a viable approach for future election law.

In the wake of Shelby County v. Holder and the January 6 Capitol insurrection, changes to election laws, policies, and especially access to voting have become a key political battleground. A central point of contention is whether new restrictive voting laws intentionally discriminate against Black and Hispanic subpopulations in the United States. Conversely, do policies that expand voting access favor Democrats and increase the possibility of election fraud?In The Cost of Voting in the American States, Michael J. Pomante II, Scot Schraufnagel, and Quan Li test these questions. The authors look specifically for systematic outcomes produced by distinctive election policies in the American states. First, they establish a competent measure of voting restrictions to begin this unraveling. The authors create a Cost of Voting Index (COVI) for the fifty states, which uses a statistical procedure to extract an underlying dimension and to determine significance from state laws based on how restrictive the polices are. The authors call the underlying dimension extracted the “cost of voting.” With this measure in place, they evaluate which states have a higher cost of voting, how this cost impacts who votes, and whether there is a correlation between the cost of voting and minority populations. Using Racial Threat Theory arguments, the authors demonstrate that states with larger or growing Black and Hispanic populations have more restricted voting, and that these restrictive voting laws disproportionately demobilize these populations in predictable ways. States with a higher cost of voting also show lower minority electoral success as well as a larger gap in Black and female representation, and the authors reveal that decreasing the cost of voting does not lead to fraud or favor one party over another. The Cost of Voting in the American States makes a case for a new preclearance formula, and the COVI provides a viable approach for future election law.

Statistical analysis is common in the social sciences, and among the more popular programs is R. This book provides a foundation for undergraduate and graduate students in the social sciences on how to use R to manage, visualize, and analyze data. The focus is on how to address substantive questions with data analysis and replicate published findings. Using R for Data Analysis in Social Sciences adopts a minimalist approach and covers only the most important functions and skills in R to conduct reproducible research. It emphasizes the practical needs of students using R by showing how to import, inspect, and manage data, understand the logic of statistical inference, visualize data and findings via histograms, boxplots, scatterplots, and diagnostic plots, and analyze data using one-sample t-test, difference-of-means test, covariance, correlation, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and model assumption diagnostics. It also demonstrates how to replicate the findings in published journal articles and diagnose model assumption violations. Because the book integrates R programming, the logic and steps of statistical inference, and the process of empirical social scientific research in a highly accessible and structured fashion, it is appropriate for any introductory course on R, data analysis, and empirical social-scientific research.

REGULARIZED SEMIGROUPS AND NON-ELLIPTIC DIFFERENTIAL OPERATORS discusses the semi-group approach to non-elliptic differential operators, which was developed in the last two decades. A detailed introduction to the theory of regularized semigroups is provided. And then, the authors give the applications of regularized semigroups to non-elliptic differential operators with constant coefficients of time-dependent coefficients, parabolic systems, correct systems, abstract differential operators and pseudo differential operators. They also give the very recent use of regularized semigroups to Schrodinger operators.

In this book, Quan Li and Rafael Reuveny combine the social scientific approach with a broad, interdisciplinary scope to address some of the most intriguing and important political, economic, and environmental issues of our times. Their book employs formal and statistical methods to study the interactions of economic globalization, democratic governance, income inequality, economic development, military violence, and environmental degradation. In doing so, Li and Reuveny cross multiple disciplinary boundaries, engage various academic debates, bring the insights from compartmentalized bodies of literature into direct dialogue, and uncover policy tradeoffs in a growingly interconnected political-economic-environmental system. They show that growing interconnectedness in the global system increases the demands on national leaders and their advisors; academicians and policy makers will need to cross disciplinary boundaries if they seek to better understand and address the policy tradeoffs of even more complex processes than the ones investigated here.

In this book, Quan Li and Rafael Reuveny combine the social scientific approach with a broad, interdisciplinary scope to address some of the most intriguing and important political, economic, and environmental issues of our times. Their book employs formal and statistical methods to study the interactions of economic globalization, democratic governance, income inequality, economic development, military violence, and environmental degradation. In doing so, Li and Reuveny cross multiple disciplinary boundaries, engage various academic debates, bring the insights from compartmentalized bodies of literature into direct dialogue, and uncover policy tradeoffs in a growingly interconnected political-economic-environmental system. They show that growing interconnectedness in the global system increases the demands on national leaders and their advisors; academicians and policy makers will need to cross disciplinary boundaries if they seek to better understand and address the policy tradeoffs of even more complex processes than the ones investigated here.

For decades, free trade was advocated as the vehicle for peace, prosperity, and democracy in an increasingly globalized market. More recently, the proliferation of foreign direct investment has raised questions about its impact upon local economies and politics. Here, seven scholars bring together their wide-ranging expertise to investigate the factors that determine the attractiveness of a locale to investors and the extent of their political power. Multinational corporations prefer to invest where legal and political institutions support the rule of law, protections for property rights, and democratic processes. Corporate influence on local institutions, in turn, depends upon the relative power of other players and the types of policies at issue.

For decades, free trade was advocated as the vehicle for peace, prosperity, and democracy in an increasingly globalized market. More recently, the proliferation of foreign direct investment has raised questions about its impact upon local economies and politics. Here, seven scholars bring together their wide-ranging expertise to investigate the factors that determine the attractiveness of a locale to investors and the extent of their political power. Multinational corporations prefer to invest where legal and political institutions support the rule of law, protections for property rights, and democratic processes. Corporate influence on local institutions, in turn, depends upon the relative power of other players and the types of policies at issue.