Due to the tremendous amount of data generated daily from fields such as business, research, and sciences, big data is everywhere. Therefore, alternative management and processing methods have to be created to handle this complex and unstructured data size. Big Data Management, Technologies, and Applications discusses the exponential growth of information size and the innovative methods for data capture, storage, sharing, and analysis for big data. With its prevalence, this collection of articles on big data methodologies and technologies are beneficial for IT workers, researchers, students, and practitioners in this timely field.

The expansion of the digital age continues to bring new mobile devices, technologies and methods that are introduced every day. Though commonly used, the technologies of these devices remain unfamiliar to users due to the complicated and fast-evolving disciplines. Mobile and Handheld Computing Solutions for Organizations and End-Users discusses a broad range of topics in order to advance handheld knowledge and apply the proposed methods to real-world issues for organisations and end users. This book brings together researchers and practitioners involved with mobile and handheld computing solutions useful for IT students, researchers, and scholars.

Education and research in the field of electronic commerce technology can prove problematic without the proper resources and tools on the most relevant issues, trends, and advancements. Selected Readings on Electronic Commerce Technologies: Contemporary Applications supplements course instruction and student research with quality articles focused on key issues concerning the technologies and applications of electronic commerce. Containing over 30 chapters from authors across the globe, these selected readings in areas such as e-marketing, IT business, and mobile commerce depict the most relevant and important areas of classroom discussion within the categories of fundamental concepts and theories; development and design methodologies; tools and technologies; application and utilization; critical issues; and emerging trends.

This book introduces the fundamental concepts, methods, and applications of Hausdorff calculus, with a focus on its applications in fractal systems. Topics such as the Hausdorff diffusion equation, Hausdorff radial basis function, Hausdorff derivative nonlinear systems, PDE modeling, statistics on fractals, etc. are discussed in detail. It is an essential reference for researchers in mathematics, physics, geomechanics, and mechanics.

This book addresses the needs of researchers and practitioners in the field of high-speed trains, especially those whose work involves safety and reliability issues in traction systems. It will appeal to researchers and graduate students at institutions of higher learning, research labs, and in the industrial R&D sector, catering to a readership from a broad range of disciplines including intelligent transportation, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, the biological sciences and engineering, economics, ecology, and the mathematical sciences.

The computing power and Internet connectivity of handheld devices has increased exponentially, creating a vast realm of potential applications in mobile commerce and personal information management. Internet-Enabled Handheld Devices, Computing, and Programming: Mobile Commerce and Personal Data Applications comprehensively reviews the state of handheld computing technology and application development, with coverage of such cutting-edge topics as Advanced Wireless Markup Language and J2ME programming. Uniquely focused on innovations that can drive mobile commerce and personal information management to new levels of utility and added value, this book provides a much-needed resource for academics and students engaged in mobile-technology research. It will also guide the efforts of developers and managers in industry seeking to maximize the evolving commercial opportunities presented by the current generation of internet-enabled handheld devices.

It is more important than ever to be concerned with energy related efforts, especially on what we as individuals can do now to help protect our future. With research coming out left and right on sustainable initiatives, we can only hope that future generations will benefit greatly from the efforts of today s researchers. Energy-Aware Systems and Networking for Sustainable Initiatives covers a great variety of topics such as materials, environment, electronics, and computing. This title is a vital source of information detailing the latest architectures, frameworks, methodologies, and research on energy-aware systems and networking for sustainable initiatives. With contributions from authors around the world, this book presents the most sophisticated research and developments from the field, relevant to researchers, academics, and practitioners alike.

One way to reduce the greenhouse gas from IT is green computing, which is the practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems for reducing the use of hazardous materials, maximizing energy efficiency, and promoting the recyclability or biodegradability of products. Sustainable ICTs and Management Systems for Green Computing focuses on information technology using sustainable green computing to reduce energy and resources used. While there are a wide variety of green computing topics, this book is a collection of IT articles using green computing techniques that will provide timely, important technologies and methods of green computing to IT workers, students, and researchers alike.

High definition video requires substantial compression in order to be transmitted or stored economically. Advances in video coding standards from MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 to H.264/AVC have provided ever increasing coding efficiency, at the expense of great computational complexity which can only be delivered through massively parallel processing.

This book will present VLSI architectural design and chip implementation for high definition H.264/AVC video encoding, using a state-of-the-art video application, with complete VLSI prototype, via FPGA/ASIC. It will serve as an invaluable reference for anyone interested in VLSI design and high-level (EDA) synthesis for video.

This volume provides a succinct up-to-date summary of global research on principal instructional leadership as it has evolved over the past 50 years. The book's particular focus is on the development and use of the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS). The PIMRS is the most widely used survey instrument designed for assessing instructional leadership for research and practice. It has been used in more than 250 studies in more than 30 countries around the world. The authors provide a detailed conceptual and data-based description of the rationale and development of the instrument as well as the ways in which it has been used in practice. The book also provides, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the scale's measurement properties. This represents essential information for future users of the instrument across different national contexts. Finally, the volume outlines an agenda for improving future research on the role of principal instructional leadership in student learning and school effectiveness.

The development of new information and communication technologies has a considerable impact on the way humans interact with each other and their environment. The proper use of these technologies is an important consideration in the success of modern human endeavors. Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Telecommunications, Wireless Systems, and Mobile Computing explores some of the latest advances in wireless communication technologies, making use of empirical research and analytical case studies to evaluate best practices in the discipline. This book will provide insight into the next generation of information and communication technologies for developers, engineers, students, researchers, and managers in the telecommunications field.

This book is a collection of principles and current practices in omics research, applied to skeletal muscle physiology and disorders. The various sections are categorized according to the level of biological organization, namely, genomics (DNA), transcriptomics (RNA), proteomics (protein), and metabolomics (metabolite). With skeletal muscle as the unifying theme, and featuring contributions from leading experts in this traditional field of research, it highlights the importance of skeletal muscle tissue in human development, health and successful ageing. It also discusses other fascinating topics like developmental biology, muscular dystrophies, exercise, insulin resistance and atrophy due to disuse, ageing or other muscle diseases, conveying the vast opportunities for generating new hypotheses as well as testing existing hypotheses by combining high-throughput techniques with proper experiment designs, bioinformatics and statistical analyses. Presenting the latest research techniques, this book is a valuable resource for the physiology community, particularly researchers and grad students who want to explore the new opportunities for omics technologies in basic physiology research.

The intercultural communication classroom can be a place an emotionally and intellectually heavy place for many students and teachers. Sensitive topics arise and students must face complex issues with intellectual curiosity and collegial respect. To navigate the precarious waters of intercultural communications, teachers need an intentional approach to foster meaningful discussion and learning. This pedagogical guide presents conceptual overviews, student activities, and problem-solving strategies for teaching intercultural communication. The authors navigate eight categories of potential conflict, including: communicating power and privilege, community engagement in social justice, and assessing intercultural pedagogies for social justice. In addition to empirical studies and the authors' own classroom experiences, the book features the personal narratives of junior and senior intercultural communication teacher-scholars whose journeys will encourage and instruct readers towards more fulfilling teaching experiences.

The intercultural communication classroom can be a place an emotionally and intellectually heavy place for many students and teachers. Sensitive topics arise and students must face complex issues with intellectual curiosity and collegial respect. To navigate the precarious waters of intercultural communications, teachers need an intentional approach to foster meaningful discussion and learning. This pedagogical guide presents conceptual overviews, student activities, and problem-solving strategies for teaching intercultural communication. The authors navigate eight categories of potential conflict, including: communicating power and privilege, community engagement in social justice, and assessing intercultural pedagogies for social justice. In addition to empirical studies and the authors' own classroom experiences, the book features the personal narratives of junior and senior intercultural communication teacher-scholars whose journeys will encourage and instruct readers towards more fulfilling teaching experiences.

Collective remembering is an important way that communities name and make sense of the past. Places and stories about the past influence how communities remember the past, how they try to preserve it, or in some cases how they try to erase it. The research in this book offers key insights into how places and memories intersect with intercultural conflicts, oppressions, and struggles by which communities make sense of, deal with, and reconcile the past. The authors in this book examine fascinating stories from important sites-such as international commemorations of Korean "Comfort Women," a film representation of the Stonewall Riots, and remembrances of the post-communist state in Albania. By utilizing various critical and cultural studies and ethnographic and narrative-based methods, each chapter examines cultural memory in intercultural encounters, everyday experiences, and identity performances that evoke collective memories of colonial pasts, immigration processes, and memories of places and spaces that are shaped by power structures and clashing ideologies. This book is essential reading for understanding the links between space/place and cultural memory, memories of nationally, and places constituted by markers of ethnicity, race, and sexuality. These readings are especially useful in courses in intercultural communication, cultural studies, international studies, and peace and conflict studies.

Collective remembering is an important way that communities name and make sense of the past. Places and stories about the past influence how communities remember the past, how they try to preserve it, or in some cases how they try to erase it. The research in this book offers key insights into how places and memories intersect with intercultural conflicts, oppressions, and struggles by which communities make sense of, deal with, and reconcile the past. The authors in this book examine fascinating stories from important sites-such as international commemorations of Korean "Comfort Women," a film representation of the Stonewall Riots, and remembrances of the post-communist state in Albania. By utilizing various critical and cultural studies and ethnographic and narrative-based methods, each chapter examines cultural memory in intercultural encounters, everyday experiences, and identity performances that evoke collective memories of colonial pasts, immigration processes, and memories of places and spaces that are shaped by power structures and clashing ideologies. This book is essential reading for understanding the links between space/place and cultural memory, memories of nationally, and places constituted by markers of ethnicity, race, and sexuality. These readings are especially useful in courses in intercultural communication, cultural studies, international studies, and peace and conflict studies.

Postcolonial Turn and Geopolitical Uncertainty: Transnational Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy connects and interweaves critical communication pedagogy and critical intercultural communication to create a new pedagogy, transnational critical communication pedagogy, that emphasizes the importance of postcolonial and global turns as they are molded into a new area of critical global and intercultural communication pedagogies. Contributors take a transnational approach that requires a deep commitment to acknowledging the importance of the role of geopolitics as it applies to voice, articulation, power, and oppression. This pedagogy ultimately focuses on the social change and social justice that are central to the critical and cultural communication work that aims to decolonize existing communication pedagogies and academia from a more global perspective. Scholars of communication, education, and decolonial studies will find this book particularly useful.

In her extensively researched exploration of China in British children's literature, Shih-Wen Chen provides a sustained critique of the reductive dichotomies that have limited insight into the cultural and educative role these fictions played in disseminating ideas and knowledge about China. Chen considers a range of different genres and types of publication-travelogue storybooks, historical novels, adventure stories, and periodicals-to demonstrate the diversity of images of China in the Victorian and Edwardian imagination. Turning a critical eye on popular and prolific writers such as Anne Bowman, William Dalton, Edwin Harcourt Burrage, Bessie Marchant, G.A. Henty, and Charles Gilson, Chen shows how Sino-British relations were influential in the representation of China in children's literature, challenges the notion that nineteenth-century children's literature simply parroted the dominant ideologies of the age, and offers insights into how attitudes towards children's relationship with knowledge changed over the course of the century. Her book provides a fresh context for understanding how China was constructed in the period from 1851 to 1911 and sheds light on British cultural history and the history and uses of children's literature.

In her extensively researched exploration of China in British children's literature, Shih-Wen Chen provides a sustained critique of the reductive dichotomies that have limited insight into the cultural and educative role these fictions played in disseminating ideas and knowledge about China. Chen considers a range of different genres and types of publication--travelogue storybooks, historical novels, adventure stories, and periodicals--to demonstrate the diversity of images of China in the Victorian and Edwardian imagination. Turning a critical eye on popular and prolific writers such as Anne Bowman, William Dalton, Edwin Harcourt Burrage, Bessie Marchant, G.A. Henty, and Charles Gilson, Chen shows how Sino-British relations were influential in the representation of China in children's literature, challenges the notion that nineteenth-century children's literature simply parroted the dominant ideologies of the age, and offers insights into how attitudes towards children's relationship with knowledge changed over the course of the century. Her book provides a fresh context for understanding how China was constructed in the period from 1851 to 1911 and sheds light on British cultural history and the history and uses of children's literature.

The colonial legacy in the construction of the modern Indian state has left a deep imprint on contemporary Indians' self-identity and self-determination. Borderland Politics in Northern India is a collection of essays, giving detailed accounts of the many different ways that people throughout India understand their homeland, the territory where they live, and the broader region to which they belong. Mona Chettri looks at the Gorkha community in the Darjeeling hills to the northeast, Manjeet Baruah examines Assam, and L. Lam Khan Piang explores the dispersion of the Zo people throughout many northeastern states. In the northwest, Aijaz Ashraf Wani illustrates how Jammu and Kashmir state is severed along complex regional, religious, and ethnic lines. This book is an invaluable source for readers interested in comparative studies of borderlands globally. It also contributes to South Asian studies broadly conceived, to Indian border studies, and to local social, cultural, and political histories of the constituent border regions of Northern India. This book was published as a special issue of Asian Ethnicity.

This textbook highlights the theory of fractional calculus and its wide applications in mechanics and engineering. It describes in details the research findings in using fractional calculus methods for modeling and numerical simulation of complex mechanical behavior. It covers the mathematical basis of fractional calculus, the relationship between fractal and fractional calculus, unconventional statistics and anomalous diffusion, typical applications of fractional calculus, and the numerical solution of the fractional differential equation. It also includes latest findings, such as variable order derivative, distributed order derivative and its applications. Different from other textbooks in this subject, the book avoids lengthy mathematical demonstrations, and presents the theories in close connection to the applications in an easily readable manner. This textbook is intended for students, researchers and professionals in applied physics, engineering mechanics, and applied mathematics. It is also of high reference value for those in environmental mechanics, geotechnical mechanics, biomechanics, and rheology.

An upsurge in violence between Uyghur and Han in China's far western region of Xinjiang has gained increased media and academic attention in recent years as was evidenced in the July 2009 riots. Numbering over eight million, the Uyghur are China's fifth-largest minority nationality, and their mounting aspiration for obtaining more autonomy has contributed to the recent ethnic conflicts in the region. This book looks at those who are seeking to preserve the Uyghur identity, and support the secession of Xinjiang from China in order to create their own independent state by exploring the global operations and sister groups of the Uyghur diaspora umbrella organization, the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). It examines the networks of the WUC, the coalitions it has formed, the strategies the organization pursues to raise public awareness about Uyghur issues around the globe, and looks at the actors that have emerged as key players in the contemporary WUC network. Further, this book shows that the Uyghur lobby is not a unified movement, but that the local groups that it consists of are highly constrained by the broader domestic politics of their host countries, a fact which has a significant impact on the lobby's ability to realize its strategic and political ambitions. In turn, Yu-Wen Chen gauges the impact of the WUC on public opinion and policymakers in the world's democracies, and shows how since Uyghur organizations have been given legitimacy by liberal democracies and international governmental organizations, they can no longer be considered merely splintered members of a far-flung diaspora locked in a one-sided struggle with Beijing. Indeed, Uyghur activists can and do use their hard-won legitimacy as legal migrants and asylum seekers to influence politics in their host countries. This unique and timely study reveals how an issue concerning a Chinese minority has been catapulted onto the wider global political stage, and as such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars working on Chinese politics, the Uyghur issue, and minority and ethnic politics, social movements, human rights, and international politics more broadly.

Politics, history, and religion have long lent Tibet a glamorous air, particularly in the West. But Tibet can be understood in an astonishingly wide variety of other ways, including linguistic, ecological, environmental and climatological, geographical, geological, economic, biologic, sociologic, medicinal. Tibetan Studies in Comparative Perspective touches on all the elements of the Tibet issue, offering invaluable insight to a wide variety of readers, from specialists to those with a general interest in the topic. By putting readers into the shoes of all the stakeholders, from the Dalai Lama in his home in exile and the various Tibetan exile communities, to decision makers in Beijing, New Delhi, Washington and London, the issues at stake come into bold relief. Furthermore, the book examines the potential opportunities that lay ahead, documents where and how Tibetans have been dispersed and offers a glimpse into the social and political undercurrents sending shudders through this exiled nation. With the chasm between exiles and indigenous Tibetans growing ever-larger, what challenges do Tibetans confront just to remain Tibetan? And how will this shape the future of their political movement? The book provides a timely re-examination of the contemporary predicament of Tibetans, both in and out of Tibet. This book was published as two special issues of Asian Ethnicity.

The colonial legacy in the construction of the modern Indian state has left a deep imprint on contemporary Indians self-identity and self-determination. "Borderland Politics in Northern India" is a collection of essays, giving detailed accounts of the many different ways that people throughout India understand their homeland, the territory where they live, and the broader region to which they belong. Mona Chettri looks at the Gorkha community in the Darjeeling hills to the northeast, Manjeet Baruah examines Assam, and L. Lam Khan Piang explores the dispersion of the Zo people throughout many northeastern states. In the northwest, Aijaz Ashraf Wani illustrates how Jammu and Kashmir state is severed along complex regional, religious, and ethnic lines. This book is an invaluable source for readers interested in comparative studies of borderlands globally. It also contributes to South Asian studies broadly conceived, to Indian border studies, and to local social, cultural, and political histories of the constituent border regions of Northern India.

This book was published as a special issue of Asian Ethnicity."