This book examines China’s fertility transition over the past seven decades and explores the socioeconomic impacts of the two-child policy. The first half of this book highlights the characteristics of China’s low fertility and the risk of falling to an ultra-low state, aiming to answer the question: How China’s fertility is changing and evolving? How low is China’s fertility? What are the demographic structure, driving forces and institutional characteristics of China’s low fertility? The second half models the impacts of the two-child policy on China’s population trends and demands for women, infant and child health services, and education resources for preschool, compulsive education, addressing the questions of how the two-child policy affects fertility behaviours of Chinese women, particularly the second-child fertility? How would the two-child policy impact China’s future population trends, particularly labour supply and population aging? What are the consequences for obstetrics and gynaecological services, paediatrics and childcare services; and for school capacity and demand for teachers over compulsory education? The book will be an essential read for students and scholars of Chinese studies, population and demography studies, and those interested in contemporary China.

This book starts from the application of technologies in financial institutions and financial regulators in China, and defines the concept and connotation of FinTech and SupTech in the form of topics, analyses the main problems in the development process, and discusses in depth the future development and regulatory tendency of FinTech and SupTech. In recent years, with the in-depth application and cross-domain integration of information technology in the financial world, FinTech has rapidly developed and has been widely applied, which brings us an important enlightenment: technical factors will bring fundamental changes for the development of the modern financial industry. While improving financial efficiency, it has an impact on the core financial problems such as information matching and mutual trust solving, making it urgent to improve financial supervision capacity and regulatory efficiency through information technology to effectively guarantee financial security. At present, many Chinese financial institutions have applied technologies to their daily operations and management, such as accurate customer identification, enhanced process tracking, intelligent marketing, and product process transformation, so as to simplify financial service processes and shorten service cycles. Meanwhile, the financial regulators in China, such as PBOC, CBIRC, CSRC, have also applied technologies to the area of financial regulation, in order to reduce the cost of regulation, and promote the efficiency and effectiveness of regulation. In General, this book both pays attention to practical application and theoretical, which is a useful reference book for theoretical research and practical work, and also helps readers to understand the application of technologies in financial institutions and financial regulators in China.

China's economic rise and influence has been one of the most significant developments in the global economy of recent times. A driving force behind this expansion has been the private entrepreneurs and companies of China, some of which have literally redefined the economic and business landscape, both inside and outside of China. Jack Ma (Ma Yun) is one such entrepreneur. Together with his company, Alibaba, Ma has become one of the giants of the Internet world and Alibaba, one of the world's largest e-commerce platforms. This book presents Ma's experiences, entrepreneurial career and the whole process of Alibaba's creation. The authors show how Ma subverted traditions and built Alibaba into a behemoth, that set a world record as the largest public stock offering ever during its IPO in New York in 2014.

International Hospitality Management: concepts and cases brings together the latest developments in global hospitality operations with contemporary management principles. It develops a critical view of the management practices and the traditional theories, analysing how appropriate they are to the hospitality and tourism industries in a multicultural context. International Hospitality Management is designed to instil a greater awareness of the cultural factors influencing the strategies and performances of hospitality organization. This approach focuses on a critical analysis of the relevance and application of general management theory and practice to the hospitality industry. Consisting of eleven chapters to meet with the average semester duration, each deals with a major topic of international management, with thoroughly developed with consistent learning features throughout, including: Specified learning outcomes for each chapter International case studies including major world events and issues such as the riots in Paris, fast food lawsuits, tipping, corporate social responsibility as well as studies of international corporations such as Marriott, Hilton, Intercontinental, McDonalds, Starbucks, Disney and many more Study questions and discussion questions to consolidate learning and understanding Links to relevant websites and consolidated list of further reading at the back of the book Online resources available for lecturers and students including downloadable figures from the book, PowerPoint slides, further cases and extra exercises and points for discussion. Visit the site at http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780750666756/

Although ceramics have been known to mankind literally for millennia, research has never ceased. Apart from the classic uses as a bulk material in pottery, construction, and decoration, the latter half of the twentieth century saw an explosive growth of application fields, such as electrical and thermal insulators, wear-resistant bearings, surface coatings, lightweight armour, or aerospace materials. In addition to plain, hard solids, modern ceramics come in many new guises such as fabrics, ultrathin films, microstructures and hybrid composites.
Built on the solid foundations laid down by the 20-volume series Materials Science and Technology, Ceramics Science and Technology picks out this exciting material class and illuminates it from all sides.
Materials scientists, engineers, chemists, biochemists, physicists and medical researchers alike will find this work a treasure trove for a wide range of ceramics knowledge from theory and fundamentals to practical approaches and problem solutions.

Global Strategic Management in the Service Industry: A Perspective of the New Era covers recent changes within the service industry during the COVID-19 Pandemic and new and emerging consumer trends, providing a holistic view of this new era within the service industry. Across a range of thematic chapters, issues in digital marketing, online retailing and experiential marketing are examined, as well as the challenges faced by small and large businesses in the service sector. Tabari and Chen provide a fresh view of changes in the strategic management and marketing strategies within the service industry, exchanging new ideas for both the mid and post-pandemic crisis. Global Strategic Management in the Service Industry illustrates how strategic managers in service industry appraise the sectors in which their organisations are involved; appraise their competitors; and reassess their strategy and fix goals to meet all the challenges presented. This is important particularly due to rapid growth and technological advancements developed in service sectors being applied to other industries.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of deep learning (DL) in medical and healthcare applications, including the fundamentals and current advances in medical image analysis, state-of-the-art DL methods for medical image analysis and real-world, deep learning-based clinical computer-aided diagnosis systems. Deep learning (DL) is one of the key techniques of artificial intelligence (AI) and today plays an important role in numerous academic and industrial areas. DL involves using a neural network with many layers (deep structure) between input and output, and its main advantage of is that it can automatically learn data-driven, highly representative and hierarchical features and perform feature extraction and classification on one network. DL can be used to model or simulate an intelligent system or process using annotated training data. Recently, DL has become widely used in medical applications, such as anatomic modelling, tumour detection, disease classification, computer-aided diagnosis and surgical planning. This book is intended for computer science and engineering students and researchers, medical professionals and anyone interested using DL techniques.

This book presents the proceedings of the KES International Conferences on Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare (KES-InMed-21), held virtually on June 14-16, 2021. Covering a number of key areas, including digital IT architecture in healthcare; advanced ICT for medicine and healthcare; biomedical engineering, trends, research and technologies; and healthcare support systems, this book is a valuable resource for researchers, managers, industrialists and anyone wishing to gain an overview of the latest research in these fields.

This book presents the proceedings of the KES International Conferences on Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare (KES-InMed-19), held in Split, Croatia, on June 17-19, 2020. Covering a number of key areas, including digital IT architecture in healthcare; advanced ICT for medicine and healthcare; biomedical engineering, trends, research and technologies; and healthcare support systems, this book is a valuable resource for researchers, managers, industrialists and anyone wishing to gain an overview of the latest research in these fields.

This book presents the proceedings of the KES International Conferences on Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare (KES-InMed-21), held virtually on June 14-16, 2021. Covering a number of key areas, including digital IT architecture in healthcare; advanced ICT for medicine and healthcare; biomedical engineering, trends, research and technologies; and healthcare support systems, this book is a valuable resource for researchers, managers, industrialists and anyone wishing to gain an overview of the latest research in these fields.

This book elaborates on the physical principles of polarization remote sensing. It explains the reflective characteristics of surface objects and atmosphere separately, including theory, experiment, instrument and application. In addition, it introduces how polarization remote sensing works in advanced research programs as it can be used in aviation, astronomy, disaster risk prevention and navigation fields. This book serves as a fundamental and comprehensive reference for researchers and students.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of deep learning (DL) in medical and healthcare applications, including the fundamentals and current advances in medical image analysis, state-of-the-art DL methods for medical image analysis and real-world, deep learning-based clinical computer-aided diagnosis systems. Deep learning (DL) is one of the key techniques of artificial intelligence (AI) and today plays an important role in numerous academic and industrial areas. DL involves using a neural network with many layers (deep structure) between input and output, and its main advantage of is that it can automatically learn data-driven, highly representative and hierarchical features and perform feature extraction and classification on one network. DL can be used to model or simulate an intelligent system or process using annotated training data. Recently, DL has become widely used in medical applications, such as anatomic modelling, tumour detection, disease classification, computer-aided diagnosis and surgical planning. This book is intended for computer science and engineering students and researchers, medical professionals and anyone interested using DL techniques.

This book presents the proceedings of the KES International Conferences on Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare (KES-InMed-19), held in Split, Croatia, on June 17-19, 2020. Covering a number of key areas, including digital IT architecture in healthcare; advanced ICT for medicine and healthcare; biomedical engineering, trends, research and technologies; and healthcare support systems, this book is a valuable resource for researchers, managers, industrialists and anyone wishing to gain an overview of the latest research in these fields.

This book elaborates on the physical principles of polarization remote sensing. It explains the reflective characteristics of surface objects and atmosphere separately, including theory, experiment, instrument and application. In addition, it introduces how polarization remote sensing works in advanced research programs as it can be used in aviation, astronomy, disaster risk prevention and navigation fields. This book serves as a fundamental and comprehensive reference for researchers and students.

This is not a book just about flying a single engine airplane around the world.
This is the book about identifying the "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" in our lives and finding a way to accomplish it through focus and discipline.
The author accomplished three dreams: the dream of coming to the U.S. and getting an MBA degree (when he hardly spoke any English); the dream of starting a company and becoming a self-made millionaire (when he had no money, no business plan, no investors, no social network, and no experience); the dream of becoming the first Chinese citizen to fly a single-engine airplane around the world (when he had barely 200 hours of flying time and two years of flying experiences).
By sharing these stories, the author challenges everyone to think about one question: "What would you attempt to do if you knew you couldn't fail?"

This book discusses the latest research and new techniques in the field of lactic acid bacteria, including comparative genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. It also introduces the omics and functional evaluation in detail and shows the links between lactic acid bacteria and gut health and host immunity. Summarizing the biotechnological advances in lactic acid bacteria for food and health, it is a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students in the fields of food microbiology, bioengineering, food science, nutrition and health.

This book introduces readers to basic studies on and applied techniques involving lactic acid bacteria, including their bioengineering and industrial applications. It summarizes recent biotechnological advances in lactic acid bacteria for food and health, and provides detailed information on the applications of these bacteria in fermented foods. Accordingly, it offers a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students in the fields of food microbiology, bioengineering, fermentation engineering, food science, nutrition and health.

This book contains the proceedings of the KES International conferences on Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare (KES-InMed-19) and Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services (KES-IIMSS-19), held on 17-19 June 2019 and co-located in St. Julians, on the island of Malta, as part of the KES Smart Digital Futures 2019 multi-theme conference. The major areas covered by KES-InMed-19 include: Digital IT Architecture in Healthcare; Advanced ICT for Medical and Healthcare; Biomedical Engineering, Trends, Research and Technologies and Healthcare Support System. The major areas covered by KES-IIMSS-19 were: Interactive Technologies; Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics; Intelligent Services and Architectures and Applications. This book is of use to researchers in these vibrant areas, managers, industrialists and anyone wishing to gain an overview of the latest research in these fields.

This book offers an overview of power electronic applications in the study of power integrated circuit (IC) design, collecting novel research ideas and insights into fast transient response to prevent the output voltage from dropping significantly at the undershoot. It also discusses techniques and training to save energy and increase load efficiency, as well as fast transient response and high efficiency, which are the most important factors for consumer products that implement power IC. Lastly, the book focuses on power electronics for system loop analysis and optimal compensation design to help users and engineers implement their applications. The book is a valuable resource for university researchers, power IC R&D engineers, application engineers and graduate students in power electronics who wish to learn about the power IC design principles, methods, system behavior, and applications in consumer products.

This book presents new and advanced concepts, theories and methodologies in polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) target scattering mechanism modeling and interpretation, which is dedicated to bridge the gap between the acquired data and practical applications. It proposes adaptive and generalized polarimetric target decompositions, to precisely interpret the target scattering mechanisms. Further, it develops a uniform polarimetric matrix rotation theory and a polarimetric coherence pattern visualization and interpretation tool to completely explore and characterize the deep information and target signatures in the rotation domain. Finally, it demonstrates land cover classification, target detection, natural disaster damage investigation and mapping applications which use the novel scattering mechanism investigation tools. The book is a valuable resource for senior undergraduate and postgraduate students, teachers, engineers and researchers in the field of microwave remote sensing, radar polarimetry, imaging radar, and environmental studies.

International Hospitality Management: issues and applications brings together the latest developments in global hospitality operations with the contemporary management principles. It provides a truly international perspective on the hospitality and tourism industries and provides a fresh insight into hospitality and tourism management. The text develops a critical view of the management theory and the traditional theories, looking at how appropriate they are in hospitality and tourism and in a multicultural context. The awareness of cultural environments and the specifications imposed by those cultures will underpin the whole text.
International Hospitality Management is designed to instil a greater awareness of the international factors influencing the strategies and performances of hospitality organisation. The approach focuses on a critical analysis of the relevance and application of general management theory and practice to the hospitality industry.
Consisting of three 3 parts divided into 14 chapters, each of which deals with a major topic of international management, the book has been thoroughly developed with consistent learning features throughout, including:
Specified learning outcomes for each chapter
International case studies including major world events such as the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, the Argentine Financial Crisis, The SARS virus, The Institution of Euro, the accession of China to the World Trade Organization., and the expansion of European Union, as well as international corporations such as Marriott, Hilton, Intercontinental, McDonalds, Starbucks etc. It introduces the global market situation, including Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, andMiddle East.
Study questions and discussion questions to consolidate learning and understanding.
Links to relevant websites at the end of each chapter
On-line resources and a test bank is available for lecturers and students
* Designed to instil a greater awareness of the international factors influencing hospitality industry
* Provides a cultural context throughout, including cultural recognition and respect, and developing practices for working on an international level
* International case studies including those on Marriott, Hilton, Intercontinental, McDonalds and Starbucks explore management principles in practice

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the Third International Symposium, SETE 2018, held in conjunction with ICWL 2018, Chiang Mai, Thailand, in August 2018. The 23 full and 3 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. The papers have been organized in the following topical sections: Emerging Technologies of Design, Model and Framework of Learning Systems; Emerging Technologies Support for Intelligent Tutoring; Emerging Technologies Support for Game-Based and Joyful Learning; Emerging Technologies of Pedagogical Issues; UMLL (International Symposium on User Modeling and Language Learning); ETLTL (International Workshop on Educational Technology for Language and Translation Learning)

This volume focuses on smart medical and healthcare systems (modern intelligent systems for medicine and healthcare) and includes 31 papers presenting recent trends and innovations in medicine and healthcare, including biomedical engineering research and technologies; machine learning and labeling for biomedical visual data analysis and understanding; advanced ICT for medicine and healthcare; and healthcare support systems. Innovation in medicine and healthcare is an interdisciplinary research area, which combines advanced technologies and problem-solving skills with medical and biological science, and smart medical and healthcare systems can provide efficient and accurate solution to problems faced by healthcare and medical practitioners today by using advanced information communication techniques, computational intelligence, mathematics, robotics and other advanced technologies. Discussing the techniques developed in this area, which will have a significant effect on future medicine and healthcare, the book is a valuable resource for researchers, students, engineers, and professionals working in the fields of medical systems, medical technology, and intelligent systems.

This proceedings volume includes 32 papers, which present recent trends and innovations in medicine and healthcare including Innovative Technology in Mental Healthcare; Intelligent Decision Support Technologies and Systems in Healthcare; Biomedical Engineering, Trends, Research and Technologies; Advances in Data & Knowledge Management for Healthcare; Advanced ICT for Medical and Healthcare; Healthcare Support System; and Smart Medical and Healthcare System. Innovation in medicine and healthcare is an interdisciplinary research area, which combines the advanced technologies and problem solving skills with medical and biological science. A central theme of this proceedings is Smart Medical and Healthcare Systems (modern intelligent systems for medicine and healthcare), which can provide efficient and accurate solution to problems faced by healthcare and medical practitioners today by using advanced information communication techniques, computational intelligence, mathematics, robotics and other advanced technologies.

This illuminating text/reference presents a review of the key aspects of the modeling and simulation (M&S) life cycle, and examines the challenges of M&S in different application areas. The authoritative work offers valuable perspectives on the future of research in M&S, and its role in engineering complex systems. Topics and features: reviews the challenges of M&S for urban infrastructure, healthcare delivery, automated vehicle manufacturing, deep space missions, and acquisitions enterprise; outlines research issues relating to conceptual modeling, covering the development of explicit and unambiguous models, communication and decision-making, and architecture and services; considers key computational challenges in the execution of simulation models, in order to best exploit emerging computing platforms and technologies; examines efforts to understand and manage uncertainty inherent in M&S processes, and how these can be unified under a consistent theoretical and philosophical foundation; discusses the reuse of models and simulations to accelerate the simulation model development process. This thought-provoking volume offers important insights for all researchers involved in modeling and simulation across the full spectrum of disciplines and applications, defining a common research agenda to support the entire M&S research community.