Tracing China chronicles forty years of fieldwork. The journey began from exploring rural revolution and reconstitutions of community in South China; it spans decades of persistent rural-urban divide and eventually uncovers China's global reach and Hong Kong's cross-border dynamics. Siu traverses both physical and cultural landscapes, examines how political tumults transform into everyday lives, and fathoms the depths of human drama amid China's frenetic momentum toward modernity. She highlights complicity, portraying how villagers, urbanites, cadres, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals-laden with historical baggage-venture forward. The question is: Have they become victims of the circumstances created by their own actions? The essays are woven together by key themes in historical anthropology-culture, history, power, place-making, and identity formation, informed by critical social theories, and characterized by a careful scrutiny of fieldwork encounters and archival texts. Stressing process and contingency, Siu argues that culture and society are constructed through human actions with nuanced meanings, moral imagination, and contested interests. She challenges the perception that social/political changes are merely linear historical progressions. Instead, she traces layers of the past in present realities.

Designers provide creative solutions for user problems and identify the needs of users in a given environment. However, it is often difficult to understand the social design of a product or service. Practice and Progress in Social Design and Sustainability is a critical scholarly resource that provides groundbreaking research on social contributions to design. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as rural sustainability, ecological farmhouse designs, and community public spaces, this book is geared towards architects, designers, program planners, entrepreneurs, and engineers seeking information about design for resolving social issues.

The arts and humanities are considered to be a core academic subject under federal law. This designation grants these education programs the right to federal funds; however, budget propositions do not allot the arts sufficient financial resources. Funding Challenges and Successes in Arts Education is a timely research publication featuring the most recent scholarly information on fiscal changes that support the financing of the humanities in national and international education. Including extensive coverage on a number of topics and perspectives such as strategic planning, school reform, and teacher training, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, teachers, and administrators seeking current research on innovative ways to fund the arts.

In this book Siu Lang Carrillo Yap compares the land and forest rights of Amazonian indigenous peoples from Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru, and analyses these rights in the context of international law, property law theory, and forest and soil sciences. Within this scope and against the historical background, the recent interrelations between the Amazonian indigenous peoples' land, forest and community forest management rights and their importance for the self-determination of indigenous peoples in the Amazonian region are examined. Through bringing together international law with national law, natural resources law with property law and law with natural sciences, the author sheds new light on the complex topic of indigenous peoples' rights closely entwined with the conservation of the Amazonian rainforest.

Integrative therapy focuses on the mind-body-spirit relationship, recognizes spirituality as a fundamental domain of human existence, acknowledges and utilizes the mind's power as well as the body's, and reaches beyond self-actualization or symptom reduction to broaden a perception of self that connects individuals to a larger sense of themselves and to their communities. When it was published in 2009, Integrative Body-Mind-Spirit Social Work was the first book to strongly connect Western therapeutic techniques with Eastern philosophy and practices, while also providing a comprehensive and pragmatic agenda for social work, and mental health professionals. This breakthrough text, written by a cast of highly regarded researchers from both Asia and America, presented a holistic, therapeutic approach that ties Eastern philosophy and practical techniques to Western forms of therapy in order to help bring about positive, transformative changes in individuals and families. This second features a major reorganization of Part III: Applications and Treatment Effectiveness, renamed to "Evidence-informed Translational Practice and Evidence." Based on systematic reviews of Integrative body-mind-spirit practices, Part III provides a "resource guide" of different types of integrative practices used in diverse health and mental health conditions. A new companion website includes streaming video clips showing demonstrations of the BMS techniques described in the book and worksheets and client resources/handouts. Here, the authors provide a pragmatic, step-by-step description of assessment and treatment techniques that employ an integrative, holistic perspective. They begin by establishing the conceptual framework of integrative body-mind-spirit social work, then expertly describe, step-by-step, assessment and treatment techniques that utilize integrative and holistic perspectives. Numerous case studies demonstrate the approach in action, such as one with breast cancer patients who participated in body-mind-spirit and social support groups and another in which trauma survivors used meditation to get onto a path of healing. These examples provide solid empirical evidence that integrative body-mind-spirit social work is indeed a practical therapeutic approach in bringing about tangible changes in clients. The authors also discuss ethical issues and give tips for learning integrative body-mind-spirit social work. Professionals in social work, psychology, counseling, and nursing, as well as graduate students in courses on integral, alternative, or complementary clinical practice will find this a much-needed resource that complements the growing interest in alternatives to traditional Western psychotherapy.

In this book, we put forward a holistic conceptual framework for implementing Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoLT) in higher education. Unlike previous SoLT studies, which usually focus on a specific aspect, here various aspects are integrated into a holistic framework. Further, it identifies three main stakeholders, namely, the higher education institution, teaching staff, and students. These stakeholders are in turn connected by four interlocking themes: staff professional development, enhancement of student learning experiences, assessment, and digital technologies. Presenting chapters that address these four themes, this book supports the advancement of SoLT in higher education in relation to existing theories and emerging practices. By helping academics and leaders in higher education to implement SoLT for the improvement of student learning and teaching practices, it also makes a valuable contribution to the field of teacher education.

Huang's book analyzes the major Neo-Confucian philosophers from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. Focusing on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical philosophical issues, this study presents the historical development of the Neo-Confucian school, an outgrowth of ancient Confucianism, and characterizes its thought, background, and influence. Key concepts—for example ^Utai-ji (supreme ultimate), ^Uxin (mind), and ^Uren (humanity)—as interpreted by each thinker are discussed in detail. Also examined are the two major schools that developed during this period, Cheng-Zhu, School of Principle, and Lu-Wang, School of Mind. These schools, despite different philosophical orientations, were convinced that their common goal, to bring about a harmonious relationships between man and the universe and between man and man, could be achieved through different ways of philosophizing. To understand the Chinese mind, it is necessary to understand Neo-Confucianism as a reformation of early Confucianism. This analytical presentation of major Neo-Confucian philosophers, from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, examines Zhou Dun-yi (1017-1073), Shao Yong (1011-1077), Zhang Zai (1020-1077), Cheng Hao (1032-1085), Cheng Yi (1033-1107), Zhu Xi (1130-1200), Lu Xiang-shan (1139-1193), and Wang Yang-ming (1427-1529). With its focus on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical philosophical issues, Huang's study presents the historical development of the Neo-Confucian school, an outgrowth of ancient Confucianism, and characterizes its thought, background, and influence. Key concepts—for example, ^Utai-ji (supreme ultimate), ^Uxin (mind), and ^Uren (humanity)—as interpreted by each thinker are discussed in detail. The two major schools that developed during these six centuries are examined as well. Lu-Wang, School of Mind, developed in criticism of Cheng-Zhu, School of Principle. The two schools, despite different approaches toward their philosophical pursuits, were convinced that their common goals, to bring about harmonious relationships between man and the universe and between man and man, could be achieved through different ways of philosophizing. To understand the Chinese mind, it is necessary to understand Neo-Confucianism as a reformation of early Confucianism. Scholars of Eastern religions and philosophy will appreciate the objective interpretations of each thinker's philosophy, for which pertinent passages spoken by each man have been selected and translated by the author from the original Chinese, and the comparisons of the Neo-Confucian philosophies with those of the West. An introduction provides the historical background in which to study the rise of Neo-Confucianism. The study is organized ehronologically and includes a glossary of terms and a bibliography which serves as a helpful guide for further research.

This This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.This book offers a comprehensive guide, covering every important aspect of computational thinking education. It provides an in-depth discussion of computational thinking, including the notion of perceiving computational thinking practices as ways of mapping models from the abstraction of data and process structures to natural phenomena. Further, it explores how computational thinking education is implemented in different regions, and how computational thinking is being integrated into subject learning in K-12 education. In closing, it discusses computational thinking from the perspective of STEM education, the use of video games to teach computational thinking, and how computational thinking is helping to transform the quality of the workforce in the textile and apparel industry.

Theoretical Advances in Neural Computation and Learning brings together in one volume some of the recent advances in the development of a theoretical framework for studying neural networks. A variety of novel techniques from disciplines such as computer science, electrical engineering, statistics, and mathematics have been integrated and applied to develop ground-breaking analytical tools for such studies. This volume emphasizes the computational issues in artificial neural networks and compiles a set of pioneering research works, which together establish a general framework for studying the complexity of neural networks and their learning capabilities. This book represents one of the first efforts to highlight these fundamental results, and provides a unified platform for a theoretical exploration of neural computation. Each chapter is authored by a leading researcher and/or scholar who has made significant contributions in this area. Part 1 provides a complexity theoretic study of different models of neural computation. Complexity measures for neural models are introduced, and techniques for the efficient design of networks for performing basic computations, as well as analytical tools for understanding the capabilities and limitations of neural computation are discussed. The results describe how the computational cost of a neural network increases with the problem size. Equally important, these results go beyond the study of single neural elements, and establish to computational power of multilayer networks. Part 2 discusses concepts and results concerning learning using models of neural computation. Basic concepts such as VC-dimension and PAC-learning are introduced, and recentresults relating neural networks to learning theory are derived. In addition, a number of the chapters address fundamental issues concerning learning algorithms, such as accuracy and rate of convergence, selection of training data, and efficient algorithms for learning useful classes of mappings.

Fundamental and FUN first coding concepts for kids, and the great thing is: it's unplugged! What is Decomposition? ... a rock-and-roll adventure! is an exciting story that leads children through the idea of the decomposition of tasks in everyday life, and the super-important concept of debugging errors in their code. Volt and his robot rock band star in this story and get to know these fundamentals of coding as they learn to play music together! In the First Steps in Coding series, children are encouraged to become super coders with the help of various colourful and friendly robots, who are all going on awesome adventures. Children as young as 3-5 years old learn code through unplugged stories with bright and cheerful illustrations. Interactive elements throughout each book encourage hands-on engagement from children, and each story finishes with a creative activity to cement their coding learning. A parent, carer and teacher's guide at the back of each book makes this a great resource for home school and classroom learning. Titles in the series include: What's an Algorithm? ... a splash park adventure! What's Branching? ... a birthday adventure! What's Decomposition? ... a rock-and-roll adventure! What's a Loop? ... a tree house adventure! What's Sequencing? ... a school-day adventure! What's a Variable? ... a story-time adventure!

This book is a collection of research articles in algebraic geometry and complex analysis dedicated to Hans Grauert. The authors and editors have made their best efforts in order that these contributions should be adequate to honour the outstanding scientist. The volume contains important new results, solutions to longstanding conjectures, elegant new proofs and new perspectives for future research. The topics range from surface theory and commutative algebra, linear systems, moduli spaces, classification theory, Kähler geometry to holomorphic dynamical systems.

This comprehensive book offers a full picture of the cutting edge technologies in the area of "Multimedia Retrieval and Management". It addresses graduate students and scientists in electrical engineering and in computer science as well as system designers, engineers, programmers and other technical managers in the IT industries. The book provides a complete set of theories and technologies necessary for a profound introduction to the field. It includes multimedia low-level feature extraction and high-level semantic description in addition to multimedia authentication and watermarking, and the most up-to-date MPEG-7 standard. A broad range of practical applications is covered, e.g., digital libraries, medical images, biometrics, human palm-print and face-for-security, living plants data management and video-on-demand service.

Current issues and approaches in the reliability and safety analysis of dynamic process systems are the subject of this book. The authors of the chapters are experts from nuclear, chemical, mechanical, aerospace and defense system industries, and from institutions including universities, national laboratories, private consulting companies, and regulatory bodies. Both the conventional approaches and dynamic methodologies which explicitly account for the time element in system evolution in failure modeling are represented. The papers on conventional approaches concentrate on the modeling of dynamic effects and the need for improved methods. The dynamic methodologies covered include the DYLAM methodology, the theory of continuous event trees, several Markov model construction procedures, Monte Carlo simulation, and utilization of logic flowgraphs in conjunction with Petri nets. Special emphasis is placed on human factors such as procedures and training.

To maintain their status in the global marketplace, it is imperative for emerging economies to focus on the creation of high quality products in order to compete with organizations worldwide. To increase their economic momentum, it is necessary to utilize innovative and creative strategies to discovery and produce desirable goods. Design Education for Fostering Creativity and Innovation in China discusses the issues surrounding Chinese policy by analyzing the role design education plays in fostering an innovation-based economy. This compendium of contemporary research explores the challenges and opportunities presented by design education, and strategies to foster creativity to sustain China's economic progress. This book is ideal for educators, administrators, students of education, and policy makers in China and abroad.

First published in 1979. Sociology flourished in China during the 1930s and 1940s but with the establishment of the People's Republic of China, controversies arose over the place of sociology in the process of socialist construction. Siu-lun Wong analyses the reasons for this change in the fortune of sociological studies in China and examines it in relation to the country's contemporary political system.

Fundamental and FUN first coding concepts for kids, and the great thing is: it's unplugged! What's a Loop? ... a tree house adventure! is an exciting story that leads children through the idea of loops in everyday life, and the super-important concept of debugging errors in their code. Flash, Jet and Zeb, the super-powered robots who star in this story, learn these fundamentals of coding as they build an incredible tree house together! In the First Steps in Coding series, children are encouraged to become super coders with the help of various colourful and friendly robots, who are all going on awesome adventures. Children as young as 3-5 years old learn code through unplugged stories with bright and cheerful illustrations. Interactive elements throughout each book encourage hands-on engagement from children, and each story finishes with a creative activity to cement their coding learning. A parent, carer and teacher's guide at the back of each book makes this a great resource for home school and classroom learning. Titles in the series include: What's an Algorithm? ... a splash park adventure! What's Branching? ... a birthday adventure! What's Decomposition? ... a rock-and-roll adventure! What's a Loop? ... a tree house adventure! What's Sequencing? ... a school-day adventure! What's a Variable? ... a story-time adventure!

This new edition of Markov Chains: Models, Algorithms and Applications has been completely reformatted as a text, complete with end-of-chapter exercises, a new focus on management science, new applications of the models, and new examples with applications in financial risk management and modeling of financial data. This book consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the classical theory on both discrete and continuous time Markov chains. The relationship between Markov chains of finite states and matrix theory will also be highlighted. Some classical iterative methods for solving linear systems will be introduced for finding the stationary distribution of a Markov chain. The chapter then covers the basic theories and algorithms for hidden Markov models (HMMs) and Markov decision processes (MDPs). Chapter 2 discusses the applications of continuous time Markov chains to model queueing systems and discrete time Markov chain for computing the PageRank, the ranking of websites on the Internet. Chapter 3 studies Markovian models for manufacturing and re-manufacturing systems and presents closed form solutions and fast numerical algorithms for solving the captured systems. In Chapter 4, the authors present a simple hidden Markov model (HMM) with fast numerical algorithms for estimating the model parameters. An application of the HMM for customer classification is also presented. Chapter 5 discusses Markov decision processes for customer lifetime values. Customer Lifetime Values (CLV) is an important concept and quantity in marketing management. The authors present an approach based on Markov decision processes for the calculation of CLV using real data. Chapter 6 considers higher-order Markov chain models, particularly a class of parsimonious higher-order Markov chain models. Efficient estimation methods for model parameters based on linear programming are presented. Contemporary research results on applications to demand predictions, inventory control and financial risk measurement are also presented. In Chapter 7, a class of parsimonious multivariate Markov models is introduced. Again, efficient estimation methods based on linear programming are presented. Applications to demand predictions, inventory control policy and modeling credit ratings data are discussed. Finally, Chapter 8 re-visits hidden Markov models, and the authors present a new class of hidden Markov models with efficient algorithms for estimating the model parameters. Applications to modeling interest rates, credit ratings and default data are discussed. This book is aimed at senior undergraduate students, postgraduate students, professionals, practitioners, and researchers in applied mathematics, computational science, operational research, management science and finance, who are interested in the formulation and computation of queueing networks, Markov chain models and related topics. Readers are expected to have some basic knowledge of probability theory, Markov processes and matrix theory.

Fundamental and FUN first coding concepts for kids, and the great thing is: it's unplugged! What's a Variable? ... a story-time adventure! is a fun tale that leads children through the idea of variables in everyday life, and the super-important concept of debugging errors in their code. Flex and Type, the super-powered robots who star in this story, learn these fundamentals of coding as they write a flexible-and-fun story at the library called All About Me! In the First Steps in Coding series, children are encouraged to become super coders with the help of various colourful and friendly robots, who are all going on awesome adventures. Children as young as 3-5 years old learn code through unplugged stories with bright and cheerful illustrations. Interactive elements throughout each book encourage hands-on engagement from children, and each story finishes with a creative activity to cement their coding learning. A parent, carer and teacher's guide at the back of each book makes this a great resource for home school and classroom learning. Titles in the series include: What's an Algorithm? ... a splash park adventure! What's Branching? ... a birthday adventure! What's Decomposition? ... a rock-and-roll adventure! What's a Loop? ... a tree house adventure! What's Sequencing? ... a school-day adventure! What's a Variable? ... a story-time adventure!