This innovative, timely text introduces the theory and research of critical approaches to language assessment, foregrounding ethical and socially contextualized concerns in language testing and language test validation in today’s globalized world. The editors bring together diverse perspectives, qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and empirical work on this subject that speak to concerns about social justice and equity in language education, from languages and contexts around the world – offering an overview of key concepts and theoretical issues and field-advancing suggestions for research projects. This book offers a fresh perspective on language testing that will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, language policy, education, and related fields – as well as language program administrators.

This book takes a broad approach to studying China's policy processes. It aims to shed new light on the characteristics of China's political systems and to adapt theoretical frameworks of policy processes developed in Western democracies to China. In 2021, Xi Jinping introduced the concept of "whole-process people's democracy." This new discourse calls for a deeper understanding of both traditional and new mechanisms and institutions functioning in China's policy processes. Bringing together scholars with extensive fieldwork experience in mainland China and Taiwan, this edited volume investigates governance mechanisms and institutions of policy processes in China from different perspectives, such as mass line, Tiao-Kuai coordination, and people's congress. The book focuses not only on traditional topics such as agenda setting and policy change, but also on political-administrative relations, policy mix design, and delivering service contracts in communities. A comparative analysis of three social enterprises in Taiwan is provided as a case study of non-governmental actors' (lack of) influence on policies in a context that is different from mainland China. This book will appeal to scholars, students, and practitioners interested in policy processes in mainland China and Taiwan and in comparative theories about policy processes around the world.

This innovative, timely text introduces the theory and research of critical approaches to language assessment, foregrounding ethical and socially contextualized concerns in language testing and language test validation in today’s globalized world. The editors bring together diverse perspectives, qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and empirical work on this subject that speak to concerns about social justice and equity in language education, from languages and contexts around the world – offering an overview of key concepts and theoretical issues and field-advancing suggestions for research projects. This book offers a fresh perspective on language testing that will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and researchers of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, language policy, education, and related fields – as well as language program administrators.

This book investigates uneven regional development in China - with particular focus on the cases of Guangdong and Zheijiang provinces - which have been at the forefront of debate since Chinese economic reform. Rapid economic growth since the 'opening-up' of China has been accompanied by significant disparities in the regional distribution of income: this book represents one of the most recent studies to present a picture of this inequality. Built upon a multi-scale and multi-mechanism framework, it provides systematic examination of both the patterns and mechanisms of regional development and inequality in provincial China, emphasizing the effects of economic transition. Approaching from a geographical perspective, its authors consider the interplay between the local, the state, and the global forces in shaping the landscape of regional inequality in China. Extensive empirical findings will prove useful to those researching other developing countries within the frontier of globalization and economic transition. Regional Inequality in Transitional China will appeal to scholars and students of geography, economics and Chinese studies more broadly.

The first systematic, comprehensive and critical English-language study of radio in China, this book documents a historical understanding of Chinese radio from the early twentieth century to the present. Covering both public matters and private lives, Radio and Social Transformation in China analyses a range of themes from healthcare, migration and education, to intimacy, family and friendship. Through a concentrated and thorough scrutiny of a variety of new genres and radio practices in post-Mao China, it also investigates the interaction between radio and social change, particularly in the era of economic reform. Building on the core theoretical concept of 'compressed modernity', each of the radio genres explored is shown to embody China's efforts to achieve modernity, while simultaneously exemplifying radio's capacity to manage the challenges that have arisen from the country's distinctive and perhaps unique process of modernization. Written in an engaging style, this book makes an important contribution to radio history internationally. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of broadcast media, radio and Communication Studies, as well as Chinese culture and society.

Developments in deep learning in the past decade have led to phenomenal growth in AI-based automated medical diagnosis, opening a door to a new era of both medical research and medical industry. It is a golden age for researchers involved in the development and application of advanced machine learning techniques for medical and clinical problems. This book captures the most recent important advances in this cross-disciplinary topic and brings the latest advances to a wide audience including experts, researchers, students, industry developers and medical services.

This book investigates uneven regional development in China - with particular focus on the cases of Guangdong and Zheijiang provinces - which have been at the forefront of debate since Chinese economic reform. Rapid economic growth since the 'opening-up' of China has been accompanied by significant disparities in the regional distribution of income: this book represents one of the most recent studies to present a picture of this inequality. Built upon a multi-scale and multi-mechanism framework, it provides systematic examination of both the patterns and mechanisms of regional development and inequality in provincial China, emphasizing the effects of economic transition. Approaching from a geographical perspective, its authors consider the interplay between the local, the state, and the global forces in shaping the landscape of regional inequality in China. Extensive empirical findings will prove useful to those researching other developing countries within the frontier of globalization and economic transition. Regional Inequality in Transitional China will appeal to scholars and students of geography, economics and Chinese studies more broadly.

The first systematic, comprehensive and critical English-language study of radio in China, this book documents a historical understanding of Chinese radio from the early twentieth century to the present. Covering both public matters and private lives, Radio and Social Transformation in China analyses a range of themes from healthcare, migration and education, to intimacy, family and friendship. Through a concentrated and thorough scrutiny of a variety of new genres and radio practices in post-Mao China, it also investigates the interaction between radio and social change, particularly in the era of economic reform. Building on the core theoretical concept of 'compressed modernity', each of the radio genres explored is shown to embody China's efforts to achieve modernity, while simultaneously exemplifying radio's capacity to manage the challenges that have arisen from the country's distinctive and perhaps unique process of modernization. Written in an engaging style, this book makes an important contribution to radio history internationally. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of broadcast media, radio and Communication Studies, as well as Chinese culture and society.

This remarkable volume presents the extraordinary life and work of one of Taiwan s most reclusive artists, Yeh Shih-Chiang, as curated by renowned curator Chang Tsong-Zung (Johnson Chang), and reimagined by Taiwan-US artist Yeh Wei-Li. Constellations reflects a deep affinity between two artists who never met, but whose journeys intersect. Yeh Wei-Li has been reimagining and re-creating the life and living spaces of Yeh Shih-Chiang since 2015 archiving and restoring his printed matter, artworks, and inanimate objects; curating and designing exhibition and architectural structures; and re-creating the actual physical spaces in which he worked. This book reflects that journey, featuring more than 120 color plates. It also contains texts from leading international and regional art critics and scholars, including a defining introductory essay by Chang Tsong-Zung, and textual contributions from Corinne Diserens, Cheng Tsun-Shing, Boris Groys, and Tseng Shao-Chien.

Negative Emissions Technologies for Climate Change Mitigation provides a comprehensive introduction to the full range of technologies that are being researched, developed and deployed in order to transition from our current energy system, dominated by fossil fuels, to a negative-carbon emissions system. After an introduction to the challenge of climate change, the technical fundamentals of natural and engineered carbon dioxide removal and storage processes and technologies are described. Each NET is then discussed in detail, including the key elements of the technology, enablers and constraints, governance issues, and global potential and cost estimates. This book offers a complete overview of the field, thus enabling the community to gain a full appreciation of NETs without the need to seek out and refer to a multitude of sources.

This book introduces new models based on R-calculus and theories of belief revision for dealing with large and changing data. It extends R-calculus from first-order logic to propositional logic, description logics, modal logic and logic programming, and from minimal change semantics to subset minimal change, pseudo-subformula minimal change and deduction-based minimal change (the last two minimal changes are newly defined). And it proves soundness and completeness theorems with respect to the minimal changes in these logics. To make R-calculus computable, an approximate R-calculus is given which uses finite injury priority method in recursion theory. Moreover, two applications of R-calculus are given to default theory and semantic inheritance networks. This book offers a rich blend of theory and practice. It is suitable for students, researchers and practitioners in the field of logic. Also it is very useful for all those who are interested in data, digitization and correctness and consistency of information, in modal logics, non monotonic logics, decidable/undecidable logics, logic programming, description logics, default logics and semantic inheritance networks.

With 41 scholars worldwide contributing 46 chapters, and with nearly a decade in the making, this is one of the largest books in a single volume to cover a topic in architectural history and theory. A pioneering book that explores ways to integrate social methods and historical narratives in Chinese architecture. First English language reference volume on Chinese architecture.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Intelligence Computation and Applications, ISICA 2019, held in Guangzhou, China, in November 2019. The 65 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from the total of 112 submissions. This volume features the most up-to-date research in evolutionary algorithms, parallel computing and quantum computing, evolutionary multi-objective and dynamic optimization, intelligent multimedia systems, virtualization and AI applications, smart scheduling, intelligent control, big data and cloud computing, deep learning, and hybrid machine learning systems.The papers are organized according to the following topical sections: new frontier in evolutionary algorithms; evolutionary multi-objective and dynamic optimization; intelligent multimedia systems; virtualization and AI applications; smart scheduling; intelligent control; big data and cloud computing; statistical learning.

This book focuses on a conjectural class of zeta integrals which arose from a program born in the work of Braverman and Kazhdan around the year 2000, the eventual goal being to prove the analytic continuation and functional equation of automorphic L-functions. Developing a general framework that could accommodate Schwartz spaces and the corresponding zeta integrals, the author establishes a formalism, states desiderata and conjectures, draws implications from these assumptions, and shows how known examples fit into this framework, supporting Sakellaridis' vision of the subject. The collected results, both old and new, and the included extensive bibliography, will be valuable to anyone who wishes to understand this program, and to those who are already working on it and want to overcome certain frequently occurring technical difficulties.

This two-volume set (CCIS 873 and CCIS 874) constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Symposium, ISICA 2017, held in Guangzhou, China, in November 2017. The 101 full papers presented in both volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 181 submissions. This second volume is organized in topical sections on swarm intelligence: cooperative Search, swarm optimization; complex systems modeling: system dynamic, multimedia simulation; intelligent information systems: information retrieval, e-commerce platforms; artificial intelligence and robotics: query optimization, intelligent engineering; virtualization: motion-based tracking, image recognition.

This two-volume set (CCIS 873 and CCIS 874) constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Symposium, ISICA 2017, held in Guangzhou, China, in November 2017.The 101 full papers presented in both volumes were carefully reviewed and selected from 181 submissions. This first volume is organized in topical sections on neural networks and statistical learning: neural architecture search, transfer of knowledge; evolutionary multi-objective and dynamic optimization: optimal control and design, hybrid methods; data mining: association rule learning, data management platforms; Cloud computing and multiagent systems: service models, Cloud engineering; everywhere connectivity: IoT solutions, wireless sensor networks.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications, WASA 2018, held in Tianjin, China, in June 2018. The 59 full papers and 18 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 197 submissions. The papers cover various topics such as cognitive radio networks; wireless sensor networks; cyber-physical systems; distributed and localized algorithm design and analysis; information and coding theory for wireless networks; localization; mobile cloud computing; topology control and coverage; security and privacy; underwater and underground networks; vehicular networks; internet of things; information processing and data management; programmable service interfaces; energy-efficient algorithms; system and protocol design; operating system and middle-ware support; and experimental test-beds, models and case studies.

This book presents the latest research on the software crowdsourcing approach to develop large and complex software in a cloud-based platform. It develops the fundamental principles, management organization and processes, and a cloud-based infrastructure to support this new software development approach. The book examines a variety of issues in software crowdsourcing processes, including software quality, costs, diversity of solutions, and the competitive nature of crowdsourcing processes. Furthermore, the book outlines a research roadmap of this emerging field, including all the key technology and management issues for the foreseeable future. Crowdsourcing, as demonstrated by Wikipedia and Facebook for online web applications, has shown promising results for a variety of applications, including healthcare, business, gold mining exploration, education, and software development. Software crowdsourcing is emerging as a promising solution to designing, developing and maintaining software. Preliminary software crowdsourcing practices and platforms, including Apple's App Store and TopCoder, demonstrate the advantages of crowdsourcing in terms of software ecosystem expansion and product quality improvement.

Each review within the volume critically surveys one aspect of that topic and places it within the context of the volume as a whole. The most significant developments of the last 5 to 10 years are presented using selected examples to illustrate the principles discussed. The coverage is not intended to be an exhaustive summary of the field or include large quantities of data, but should rather be conceptual, concentrating on the methodological thinking that will allow the non-specialist reader to understand the information presented. Contributions also offer an outlook on potential future developments in the field.

Mathematical logic is a branch of mathematics that takes axiom systems and mathematical proofs as its objects of study. This book shows how it can also provide a foundation for the development of information science and technology. The first five chapters systematically present the core topics of classical mathematical logic, including the syntax and models of first-order languages, formal inference systems, computability and representability, and Goedel's theorems. The last five chapters present extensions and developments of classical mathematical logic, particularly the concepts of version sequences of formal theories and their limits, the system of revision calculus, proschemes (formal descriptions of proof methods and strategies) and their properties, and the theory of inductive inference. All of these themes contribute to a formal theory of axiomatization and its application to the process of developing information technology and scientific theories. The book also describes the paradigm of three kinds of language environments for theories and it presents the basic properties required of a meta-language environment. Finally, the book brings these themes together by describing a workflow for scientific research in the information era in which formal methods, interactive software and human invention are all used to their advantage. The second edition of the book includes major revisions on the proof of the completeness theorem of the Gentzen system and new contents on the logic of scientific discovery, R-calculus without cut, and the operational semantics of program debugging. This book represents a valuable reference for graduate and undergraduate students and researchers in mathematics, information science and technology, and other relevant areas of natural sciences. Its first five chapters serve as an undergraduate text in mathematical logic and the last five chapters are addressed to graduate students in relevant disciplines.

Each review within the volume critically surveys one aspect of that topic and places it within the context of the volume as a whole. The most significant developments of the last 5 to 10 years are presented using selected examples to illustrate the principles discussed. The coverage is not intended to be an exhaustive summary of the field or include large quantities of data, but should rather be conceptual, concentrating on the methodological thinking that will allow the non-specialist reader to understand the information presented. Contributions also offer an outlook on potential future developments in the field.

"Applications of Finite Element Methods for Reliability Studies" on ULSI Interconnections provides a detailed description of the application of finite element methods (FEMs) to the study of ULSI interconnect reliability. Over the past two decades the application of FEMs has become widespread and continues to lead to a much better understanding of reliability physics.

To help readers cope with the increasing sophistication of FEMs applications to interconnect reliability, "Applications of Finite Element Methods for Reliability Studies on ULSI Interconnections" will: introduce the principle of FEMs;review numerical modeling of ULSI interconnect reliability;describe the physical mechanism of ULSI interconnect reliability encountered in the electronics industry; anddiscuss in detail the use of FEMs to understand and improve ULSI interconnect reliability from both the physical and practical perspective, incorporating the Monte Carlo method.

A full-scale review of the numerical modeling methodology used in the study of interconnect reliability highlights useful and noteworthy techniques that have been developed recently. Many illustrations are used throughout the book to improve the reader s understanding of the methodology and its verification. Actual experimental results and micrographs on ULSI interconnects are also included.

"Applications of Finite Element Methods for Reliability Studies" on ULSI Interconnections is a good reference for researchers who are working on interconnect reliability modeling, as well as for those who want to know more about FEMs for reliability applications. It gives readers a thorough understanding of the applications of FEM to reliability modeling and an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of various numerical models for interconnect reliability."

This book provides cardiologists with access to the wealth of imaging from the Royal Brompton Hospital and National Heart and Lung Institute in London to enable them to improve on their own skills and refine their imaging technique. The authors correlate this echocardiography experience with the pathological and surgical aspects of congenital heart defects. They include a review of the pathologic, physiologic and surgical observations of different congenital diseases to assist in understanding the various echocardiographic presentations. The book contains large numbers of echocardiographic images.

Congenital heart disease is gaining importance as a condition that effects not only the pediatric population but also the adult population, as many congenital cardiac conditions remain silent for years until accidentally discovered on routine check up. Echocardiography in Adult Congenital Heart Disease provides cardiologists with access to the wealth of imaging from the Royal Brompton Hospital and National Heart and Lung Institute in London to enable them to improve on their own skills and refine their imaging technique. The authors correlate this echocardiography experience with the pathological and surgical aspects of congenital heart defects.