The first woman ever admitted to a prestigious order of mages unravels a secret conspiracy that could change the practice of magic forever in this standalone dark fantasy from the author of The Sword of Kaigen.

For twenty years, Sciona has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fuelled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry.

When Sciona finally achieves her ambition and becomes a Highmage, she finds her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues are determined to make her feel unwelcome – and instead of a qualified lab assistant they give her a janitor.

What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was not always a janitor. Ten years ago he was a nomadic hunter who lost his family on their perilous journey from the wild plains to the city. But now he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland – and keep the privileged in power.

At first, mage and outsider have a fractious relationship. But working together, they uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever – if it doesn’t get them killed first.

After relocating to New York City, kung fu prodigy Li Fong attracts unwanted attention and embarks on a journey to enter the ultimate karate competition.

Guided by the wisdom of his kung fu teacher, Mr. Han, and the legendary Daniel LaRusso, Li merges their unique styles to prepare for an epic martial arts showdown.

Electrospinning: Nanofabrication and Applications presents an overview of the electrospinning technique, nanofabrication strategies and potential applications. The book begins with an introduction to the fundamentals of electrospinning, discussing fundamental principles of the electrospinning process, controlling parameters, materials and structures. Nanofabrication strategies, including coaxial electrospinning, multi-needle electrospinning, needleless electrospinning, electro-netting, near-field electrospinning, and three-dimensional macrostructure assembling are also covered. Final sections explore the applications of electrospun nanofibers in different fields and future prospects. This is a valuable reference for engineers and materials scientist working with fibrous materials and textiles, as well as researchers in the areas of nanotechnology, electrospinning, nanofibers and textiles.

Sweet Potato Processing Technology systematically introduces processing technologies of sweet potato starch and its series products including sweet potato protein, dietary fibers, pectin, granules, anthocyanins and chlorogenic acids. The book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of physicochemical and functional properties of sweet potato products, the nutritional components extracted from sweet potato, as well as their utilization in food, medicine and cosmetic fields. This book can provide the scientific basis and technical support for virtuous circle promotion and structure upgrade of sweet potato processing industry. This book will be a valuable reference for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as specialists and enterprise research staff in the field of food technology.

Protective clothing protects wearers from hostile environments, including extremes of heat and cold. Whilst some types of protective clothing may be designed primarily for non-thermal hazards (e.g. biological hazards), a key challenge in all protective clothing remains wearer comfort and the management of thermal stress (i.e. excessive heat or cold). This book reviews key types of protective clothing, technologies for heating and cooling and, finally, modeling aspects of thermal stress and strain.

China s legal system is vast and complex, and robust scholarship on the subject is difficult to obtain. Inside China s Legal System provides readers with a comprehensive look at the system including how it works in practice, theoretical and historical underpinnings, and how it might evolve. The first section of the book explains the Communist Party s utilitarian approach to law: rule by law. The second section discusses Confucian and Legalist views on morality, law and punishment, and the influence such traditional Chinese thinking has on contemporary Chinese law. The third section focuses on the roles of key players (including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and legal academics) in the Chinese legal system. The fourth section offers Chinese legal case studies in civil, criminal, administrative, and international law. The book concludes with a comparison of China s fundamental governing and legal principles with those of the United States, in such areas as checks and balances, separation of powers, and due process.
Uses extensive legal materials and historical documents generally unavailable to Western based academicsGives insider knowledge, including first-hand experience teaching law, and close involvement with judges, attorneys, and law professors in ChinaAnalyses legal issues from historical and cultural perspectives holistically"

In this volume, Qi Wang traces the developmental, social, cultural, and historical origins of the autobiographical self - the self that is made of memories of the personal past and of the family and the community. Wang combines rigorous research, sensitive survey of real memories and memory conversations, and fascinating personal anecdotes into a state-of-the-art book. As a "marginal woman" who grew up in the East and works and lives in the West, Wang's analysis is unique, insightful, and approachable. Her accounts of her own family stories, extraordinarily careful and thorough documentation of research findings, and compelling theoretical insights together convey an unequivocal message: The autobiographical self is conditioned by one's time and culture. Beginning with a perceptive examination of the form, content, and function of parent-child conversations of personal and family stories, Wang undertakes to show how the autobiographical self is formed in and shaped by the process of family storytelling situated in specific cultural contexts. By contrasting the development of autobiographical writings in Western and Chinese literatures, Wang seeks to demonstrate the cultural stance of the autobiographical self in historical time. She examines the autobiographical self in personal time, thoughtfully analyzing the form, structure, and content of everyday memories to reveal the role of culture in modulating information processing and determining how the autobiographical self is remembered. Focusing on memories of early childhood, Wang seeks to answer the question of when the autobiographical self begins from a cross-cultural perspective. She sets out further to explore some of the most controversial issues in current psychological research of autobiographical memory, focusing particularly on issues of memory representations versus memory narratives and silence versus voice in the construction of the autobiographical self appropriate to one's cultural assumptions. She concludes with historical analyses of the influences of the larger social, political, and economic forces on the autobiographical self, and takes a forward look at the autobiographical self as a product of modern technology.

This book helps lawyers, practitioners, legislators and students understand and cope with the challenges of e-commerce, and to learn about the most up-to-date technology and regulation of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). It introduces different forms of online dispute resolution, against the background of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) developments in the off-line environment; crucially, it examines the current technology and legal status of ODR in the EU, US, Asia and Australia, and discusses the relations between the various parties in dispute resolutions, especially the Fifth party for the provider of the technology. It further analyses the four most successful examples, such as Michigan Cybercourt, WIPO-UDRP, eBay-SquareTrade and AAA-CyberSettle. Finally, a proposal for resolving e-contract disputes via ODR is provided, and a code of conduct recommended in order to regulate the electronic commerce market.
Based on exclusive research and up-to-date best practices within the online dispute resolution fieldSimple and clear with an in-depth analysis and of a wide range of topics such as technology, management and lawProvides practical solutions to real-world problems with a proposal of core principles and codes of conduct, which is of great value in academia and legislative organizations such as the European Commission and UNCITRAL

The primary objective of this work is to give the reader an understanding of stress wave behaviour while taking into account the dynamic constitutive equations of elastic-plastic solids. The author has combined a 'materials characteristics' approach with a 'singularity surface' approach in this work, which readers will find to be a novel and unique route to solving their problems.
* Helps engineers understand the effects and behavior of stress waves in various materials
* Aids in the process of engineering design, testing, and evaluation

Over the last several years, the four authors have jointly conducted research into the analysis of vibrating Mindlin plates as a collaborative project between Nanyang Technological University, The National University of Singapore, and The University of Queensland. The research was prompted by the fact that there is a dearth of vibration results for Mindlin plates when compared to classical thin plate solutions. To generate the vibration results, the authors have successfully employed the Ritz method for general plate shapes and boundary conditions. The Ritz method, once thought to be awkward for general plate analysis, can be automated through suitable trial functions (for displacements) that satisfy the geometric plate boundary conditions "a priori." This work has been well-received by academics and researchers, as indicated by the continual requests for the authors' papers and the Ritz software codes. This monograph is written with the view to share this so-called "p"-Ritz method for the vibration analysis of Mindlin plates and its software codes with the research community. To the authors' knowledge, the monograph contains the first published Ritz plate software codes of its kind.

From ancient times China's remote and exotic South-a shifting and expanding region beyond the Yangtze River-has been an enduring theme in Chinese literature. For poets and scholar-officials in medieval China, the South was a barbaric frontier region of alienation and disease. But it was also a place of richness and fascination, and for some a site of cultural triumph over exile. The seven essays in this collection explore how tensions between pride in southern culture and anxiety over the alien qualities of the southern frontier were behind many of the distinctive features of medieval Chinese literature. They examine how prominent writers from this period depicted themselves and the South in poetic form through attitudes that included patriotic attachment and bitter exile. By the Tang dynasty poetic symbols and cliches about the exotic South had become well established, though many writers were still able to use these in innovative ways. Southern Identity and Southern Estrangement is the first work in English to examine the cultural South in classical Chinese poetry. The book incorporates original research on key poets, such as Lu Ji, Jiang Yan, Wang Bo and Li Bai. It also offers a broad survey of cultural and historical trends during the medieval period, as depicted in poetry. The book will be of interest to students of Chinese literature and cultural history.

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics offers a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field from a multi-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are contributed by leading scholars in their respective areas. This Handbook contains eight sections: history, languages and dialects, language contact, morphology, syntax, phonetics and phonology, socio-cultural aspects and neuro-psychological aspects. It provides not only a diachronic view of how languages evolve, but also a synchronic view of how languages in contact enrich each other by borrowing new words, calquing loan translation and even developing new syntactic structures. It also accompanies traditional linguistic studies of grammar and phonology with empirical evidence from psychology and neurocognitive sciences. In addition to research on the Chinese language and its major dialect groups, this handbook covers studies on sign languages and non-Chinese languages, such as the Austronesian languages spoken in Taiwan.

A compendium of poetry prompts from Joseph Coelho (Children's Laureate 2022-2024). Each fun and engaging prompt for writing a poem helps children discover how to write poems and then read them out loud. This is a book to build confidence and literacy skills through channeling children's imaginations.  This is a book for the whole family to enjoy, bright, cheerful but cool illustrations will appeal to children of all primary ages.

A celebratory, inclusive and educational exploration of Lunar New Year for both children that celebrate and children who want to understand and appreciate their peers who do. Lunar New Year captures the magic of the celebration by exploring how Ling and her family enjoy the biggest Chinese festival of the year. The new year festival lasts for 15 days full of preparation, celebration and symbolism. Join Ling, her sister Mei and granny Po Po as they clean the house from top to bottom, pick fresh flowers from the garden, visit friends and family, and carry red lanterns through their neighbourhood. Ling invites the reader into her home and family, allowing the reader to experience this special celebration first-hand through an authentic narrative non-fiction story. A fun 16-page 'factivity' section follows the story and delves into more detail about how the festival is celebrated in China and beyond. Enriching activities are also included, such as guess the riddle, make your own red envelope and a recipe to make delicious Lunar New Year 'pot sticker' dumplings.  Learn all about the magic of Lunar New Year, by exploring: The preparations in the lead-up to the festival The Reunion dinner on New Year's Eve New Year's day fireworks Dragon dancing and the New Year Monster The lantern festival ... and more!  ​ In the Celebrations & Festivals series, you are invited into a family's celebrations as you explore the magic and excitement of religious and cultural festivals around the world. The heart-warming story is followed by a fun 'factivity' section packed with information on the festival in more detail along with activities, recipes and craft projects to enjoy. 

This original book is a unique and original in-depth study on how, in the past decade, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) have achieved technological innovation in the large infrastructure sectors. It reveals a "new world" of Chinese innovation, showing that SOEs are willing to innovate and are also more than capable of doing so. Based on findings from first-hand data and years of observations, this book shows how the innovation ecosystem perspective incentivises and facilitates Chinese SOEs' innovation and highlights the entrepreneurial role of the government. Using the examples of UHV Power Transmission, mobile telecommunication standards, high-speed trains, and nuclear electric power, the book exhibits the complex determinants of SOEs' success in radical technological innovations within the large infrastructure sector. Chapters also demonstrate the innovation process of SOEs, the unique innovation model of China, as well as its advantages and disadvantages. Catch-Up and Radical Innovation in Chinese State-Owned Enterprises will be a useful resource for academics in research disciplines such as development studies, innovation and entrepreneurship, and Chinese studies. It will also aid entrepreneurs, businesses and managers who intend to collaborate with Chinese SOEs, to better understand the trends of SOEs' engagement in radical innovation and the potential opportunities for broadening their international collaborations.

Modelling and Control of Dynamic Spatially Distributed Systems: Pharmaceutical Processes provides a balanced approach to help readers to get started quickly in the field of biochemical pharmaceuticals. From a theoretical perspective, dynamic spatially distributed systems are introduced to address their industrial applications. After identifying problems, the book provides readers with modeling and control system design techniques via a novel fuzzy set (class of objects with a continuum of grades of membership, to describe the grade of the object belonging to this fuzzy set) and intelligent computation methods. From an application perspective, the book provides a thorough understanding of Good Manufacture Practices (GMP) and the importance of identification, modelling, and intelligent control of such systems, reducing the test-and-error cost, and the R&D design time cycle of original drug development.

The Elgar Encyclopedia of Nonprofit Management, Leadership and Governance is the ultimate reference guide for those interested in the rapidly growing nonprofit sector. Each insightful entry includes a definition of the concept, practical applications in nonprofit organizations, and discussion of current issues and future directions. With contributions from over 200 renowned experts in the field, this Encyclopedia provides a comprehensive overview of the essential topics related to nonprofit management, leadership and governance. Entries explore a diverse range of issues and actors within the nonprofit sector, including business planning, crowdfunding and fundraising, governing boards, mergers and acquisitions, risk management, stakeholder management and wealth inequality. They cover the foundations of the sector alongside more current and topical issues including celebrity, diaspora, LGBTQ+ and e-philanthropy; authoritarian regimes; the digital divide; and the Millennial generation’s civic engagement. This Encyclopedia is a vital resource for students and scholars of organization studies, business and management, corporate governance, and public administration. Its practical applications will prove beneficial to a diverse range of stakeholders across the nonprofit sector, including professional managers, board members, donors, government officials, and media professionals. Fully cross referenced and accessible in style Authoritative summaries of nearly 200 essential topics Written by leading scholars and practitioners across the field Provides definitions, applications, and discussions of current issues and future directions

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Providing a comprehensive overview of the key theories and concepts that have guided the field of negotiation for several decades, Leigh Thompson and Cynthia Wang demonstrate how collaborative multi-disciplinary research has enriched the study of negotiation. Key Features: Reviews the fundamental constructs, measures and terms that are widely used in research and teaching Examines how individual characteristics, situational contexts and ethical considerations of the negotiator influence negotiation processes and outcomes Traces the roots of modern negotiation research and theory back to its economic and psychological origins, and outlines how behavioural decision-making and social utility research has shaped the contemporary study of negotiation Cross-disciplinary in scope, this incisive Advanced Introduction will be an invaluable tool for early career academics of psychology, sociology, economics, and communication studies interested in conducting research on and teaching negotiation. MBA students will also benefit from its accessible overview of the history, key constructs and latest findings related to negotiation.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Fundamentals of Membrane Separation Technology provides a comprehensive and systematic introduction to this environmentally friendly separation process. Using a structured format that promotes comprehension and implementation each chapter provides overviews, principles, materials and preparation, and industrial applications.  Each chapter then concludes with future prospects, references, and end of chapter exercises. Written for students and professionals, this book is an ideal reference for those who wish to better understand the fundamentals and applications of membrane technology.

Full-Spectrum Responsive Photocatalytic Materials: From Fundamentals to Applications provides a comprehensive overview on the design, synthesis concepts, mechanisms, characterization techniques, and advances and limitations in applications of full-spectrum responsive photocatalytic materials. The book starts with the fundamentals of full-spectrum responsive materials. It then discusses the problems of most semiconductors that are not active in the whole solar spectrum and explains the benefits of utilizing full-spectrum responsive photocatalysts. Other sections describe examples of full-spectrum responsive photocatalysts classified by material types and provide the design principles and characterization protocols for these promising materials. Photocatalysis technology based on semiconductor materials holds great promise in various fields due to its potential advantages in energy-saving, cost and environmental impact. Maximizing the utilization of solar energy is always the target of pursuits in the areas of photocatalysis, and understanding and constructing appropriate full-spectrum (UV-VIS-NIR) responsive photocatalytic materials offer ways to better realize the practical utilization of photocatalysis.