There has been a multitude of studies focused on the COVID-19 pandemic across fields and disciplines as all sectors of life have had to adjust the way things are done and adapt to the constantly shifting environment. These studies are crucial as they provide support and perspectives on how things are changing and what needs to be done to stay afloat. Connecting COVID-19-related studies and big data analytics is crucial for the advancement of industrial applications and research areas. Applied Big Data Analytics and Its Role in COVID-19 Research introduces the most recent industrial applications and research topics on COVID-19 with big data analytics. Featuring coverage on a broad range of big data technologies such as data gathering, artificial intelligence, smart diagnostics, and mining mobility, this publication provides concrete examples and cases of usage of data-driven projects in COVID-19 research. This reference work is a vital resource for data scientists, technical managers, researchers, scholars, practitioners, academicians, instructors, and students.

The book presents selected papers at the 8th Conference on Sound and Music Technology (CSMT) held in November 2020, at Taiyuan, Shanxi, China. CSMT is a multidisciplinary conference focusing on audio processing and understanding with bias on music and acoustic signals. The primary aim of the conference is to promote the collaboration between art society and technical society in China. In this proceeding, the paper included covers a wide range topic from speech, signal processing, music understanding, machine learning and signal processing for advanced medical diagnosis and treatment applications; which demonstrates the target of CSMT merging arts and science research together.its content caters to scholars, researchers, engineers, artists, and education practitioners not only from academia but also industry, who are interested in audio/acoustics analysis signal processing, music, sound, and artificial intelligence (AI).

The book presents the state of the art in high performance computing and simulation on modern supercomputer architectures. It covers trends in hardware and software development in general and specifically the future of high performance systems and heterogeneous architectures. The application contributions cover computational fluid dynamics, material science, medical applications and climate research. Innovative fields like coupled multi-physics or multi-scale simulations are presented. All papers were chosen from presentations given at the 14th Teraflop Workshop held in December 2011 at HLRS, University of Stuttgart, Germany and the Workshop on Sustained Simulation Performance at Tohoku University in March 2012.

Visual Question Answering (VQA) usually combines visual inputs like image and video with a natural language question concerning the input and generates a natural language answer as the output. This is by nature a multi-disciplinary research problem, involving computer vision (CV), natural language processing (NLP), knowledge representation and reasoning (KR), etc. Further, VQA is an ambitious undertaking, as it must overcome the challenges of general image understanding and the question-answering task, as well as the difficulties entailed by using large-scale databases with mixed-quality inputs. However, with the advent of deep learning (DL) and driven by the existence of advanced techniques in both CV and NLP and the availability of relevant large-scale datasets, we have recently seen enormous strides in VQA, with more systems and promising results emerging. This book provides a comprehensive overview of VQA, covering fundamental theories, models, datasets, and promising future directions. Given its scope, it can be used as a textbook on computer vision and natural language processing, especially for researchers and students in the area of visual question answering. It also highlights the key models used in VQA.

Covers fundamental aspects like influence of size and dispersion to help readers develop efficient, multi-functional, and eco-friendly flame-retardant polymer composites for a wide range of applications Discusses emerging 2D nanomaterials, including MXenes, graphitic carbon nitride, boron nitride, and black phosphorus Details theory, modeling, and simulation

This book is concerned with the fault estimation problem for network systems. Firstly, to improve the existing adaptive fault estimation observer, a novel so-called intermediate estimator is proposed to identify the actuator or sensor faults in dynamic control systems with high accuracy and convergence speed. On this basis, by exploiting the properties of network systems such as multi-agent systems and large-scale interconnected systems, this book introduces the concept of distributed intermediate estimator; faults in different nodes can be estimated simultaneously; meanwhile, satisfactory consensus performances can be obtained via compensation based protocols. Finally, the characteristics of the new fault estimation methodology are verified and discussed by a series of experimental results on networked multi-axis motion control systems. This book can be used as a reference book for researcher and designer in the field of fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control and can also be used as a reference book for senior undergraduate and graduate students in colleges and universities.

Flame Retardant Polymeric Materials provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the field, from basic properties and mechanisms of action for flame retardants to emerging methods, materials, and industrial applications. With over 120 black and white images, Hu and Wang cover the latest in the development of novel polymer nanocomposites such as graphene, CNTs, LDHs, POSS, and techniques such as layer-by-layer assembly. These expert authors also include discussions on the important flame-retardant systems based on phosphorus, silicon, and boron. In doing so, they highlight the use of flame-retardants in varying industries, for example, construction, textiles, and aviation. This comprehensive handbook is an essential read for students and academics of physics with a particular interest in flame-retardant materials. It would also be recommended for professionals within the materials science and engineering fields.

Applied Engineering Failure Analysis: Theory and Practice provides a point of reference for engineering failure analysis (EFA) cases, presenting a compilation of case studies covering a 35-year period, from the 1970s to 2012. This period spans the era from the time when slide rules were used routinely for engineering calculations, and when hard-copy photographs taken by film cameras were pasted onto typewritten sheets to make reports, to the present time when all these functions have become much less onerous through computer assistance. The cases are drawn from such diverse fields as mechanical engineering, metallurgy, mining, civil/structural engineering, electrical power systems, and radiation damage; the last two topics are quite scarce in current publications. It includes theoretical content that deals with useful topics in basic theory, material properties, failure mechanisms, EFA methodology, and applications. It provides high-quality illustrations throughout, which greatly helps to promote the understanding of the failure characteristics described. This book offers an integrated approach that serves as a useful first reference in the above topics, for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as for practicing engineers. The book provides a hands-on approach to EFA, which helps the user to develop an understanding of potential failure situations, to explore the consequences, and to better understand how to solve similar problems; it also helps users to develop their own techniques for most other engineering failure problems. The authors include a section on technical report writing, which will assist failure investigators in getting their findings across. They also present simple engineering calculations that may serve as illustrative examples, and typical problems and solutions are included at the end of each chapter.

Higher Education as a Field of Study in China: Defining Knowledge and Curriculum Structure concerns the complexity of higher education as an academic field the evolving nature of the field in light of the overall development of higher education in China. It reviews how higher education as a field of study has evolved in China since 1978 and how the field has been shaped by political and social forces, as well as institutional culture. Xin Wang argues that higher education is becoming an interdisciplinary field rather than a subfield under the discipline of education, especially when higher education has become an enterprise with such a broad scope in China. Wang also expresses a belief that the field of higher education is being challenged by the professional need for preparing and training competent professionals for various administrative positions in China. Higher education as a field will be professionalized with its own knowledge base and a set of skills in applying this knowledge to practical areas. This book also provides an account of the U.S. model of higher education as an example how the field was formed and developed, how it has evolved from a generalized area of inquiry into a professional specialization, how programs of higher education are structured, what classes they offer, and what challenges they face. The U.S. model presents a comparative perspective for Chinese scholars and program directors about higher education as a field of study.

Flame Retardant Polymeric Materials provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the field, from basic properties and mechanisms of action for flame retardants to emerging methods, materials, and industrial applications. With over 120 black and white images, Hu and Wang cover the latest in the development of novel polymer nanocomposites such as graphene, CNTs, LDHs, POSS, and techniques such as layer-by-layer assembly. These expert authors also include discussions on the important flame-retardant systems based on phosphorus, silicon, and boron. In doing so, they highlight the use of flame-retardants in varying industries, for example, construction, textiles, and aviation. This comprehensive handbook is an essential read for students and academics of physics with a particular interest in flame-retardant materials. It would also be recommended for professionals within the materials science and engineering fields.

Applied Engineering Failure Analysis: Theory and Practice provides a point of reference for engineering failure analysis (EFA) cases, presenting a compilation of case studies covering a 35-year period, from the 1970s to 2012. This period spans the era from the time when slide rules were used routinely for engineering calculations, and when hard-copy photographs taken by film cameras were pasted onto typewritten sheets to make reports, to the present time when all these functions have become much less onerous through computer assistance. The cases are drawn from such diverse fields as mechanical engineering, metallurgy, mining, civil/structural engineering, electrical power systems, and radiation damage; the last two topics are quite scarce in current publications. It includes theoretical content that deals with useful topics in basic theory, material properties, failure mechanisms, EFA methodology, and applications. It provides high-quality illustrations throughout, which greatly helps to promote the understanding of the failure characteristics described. This book offers an integrated approach that serves as a useful first reference in the above topics, for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as for practicing engineers. The book provides a hands-on approach to EFA, which helps the user to develop an understanding of potential failure situations, to explore the consequences, and to better understand how to solve similar problems; it also helps users to develop their own techniques for most other engineering failure problems. The authors include a section on technical report writing, which will assist failure investigators in getting their findings across. They also present simple engineering calculations that may serve as illustrative examples, and typical problems and solutions are included at the end of each chapter.

The book presents selected papers at the 8th Conference on Sound and Music Technology (CSMT) held in November 2020, at Taiyuan, Shanxi, China. CSMT is a multidisciplinary conference focusing on audio processing and understanding with bias on music and acoustic signals. The primary aim of the conference is to promote the collaboration between art society and technical society in China. In this proceeding, the paper included covers a wide range topic from speech, signal processing, music understanding, machine learning and signal processing for advanced medical diagnosis and treatment applications; which demonstrates the target of CSMT merging arts and science research together.its content caters to scholars, researchers, engineers, artists, and education practitioners not only from academia but also industry, who are interested in audio/acoustics analysis signal processing, music, sound, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Bio-Based Flame Retardants for Polymeric Materials provides a comprehensive overview of flame retardants derived directly and indirectly from plant sources, drawing on cutting-edge research and covering preparation methods, testing and evaluation techniques, enhanced properties, and end applications. Chapters introduce bio-based materials in the context of additives for flame retardancy, explaining fundamentals and testing methods and analyzing synthetic approaches and the potential advantages of pursuing a bio-based approach. This is followed by detailed coverage of bio-based retardants, with each chapter covering a specific source and guiding the reader systematically through preparation techniques, evaluation methods, properties and applications. Throughout the book, the latest progress in the field is critically reviewed, and there is a continual emphasis on novel approaches to achieve enhanced properties and performant materials. This is an essential guide for all those with an interest in innovative, sustainable flame retardant additives for polymeric materials, including researchers, scientists, advanced students, and more.

This book examines innovation in the fields of computer engineering and networking, and explores important, state-of-the-art developments in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, information analysis and communication. It gathers papers presented at the 8th International Conference on Computer Engineering and Networks (CENet2018), held in Shanghai, China on August 17-19, 2018. * Explores emerging topics in computer engineering and networking, along with their applications * Discusses how to improve productivity by using the latest advanced technologies * Examines innovation in the fields of computer engineering and networking

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Applications, WISA 2018, held in Taiyuan, China, in September 2018. The 29 full papers presented together with 16 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 103 submissions. The papers cover topics such as machine learning and data mining; cloud computing and big data; information retrieval; natural language processing; data privacy and security; knowledge graphs and social networks; query processing; and recommendations.

The book presents the state of the art in high performance computing and simulation on modern supercomputer architectures. It covers trends in hardware and software development in general and specifically the future of vector-based systems and heterogeneous architectures. The application contributions cover computational fluid dynamics, material science, medical applications and climate research. Innovative fields like coupled multi-physics or multi-scale simulations are presented. All papers were chosen from presentations given at the 13th Teraflop Workshop held in October 2010 at Tohoku University, Japan.

This book covers the results of the 11th and 12th Tera?op Workshop and continued a series initiated by NEC and the HLRS in 2004. As part of the Tera?op Workbench, it has become a meeting platform for scientists, application developers, international experts and hardware designers to discuss the current state and future directions of supercomputing with the aim of achieving the highest sustained application perf- mance. The Tera?op Workbench Project is a collaboration between the High Perf- mance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) and NEC Deutschland GmbH (NEC HPCE) to support users to achieve their research goals using High Performance Computing. The ?rst stage of the Tera?op Workbench project (2004-2008) c- centrated on user's applications and their optimization for the 72-node NEC SX-8 installation at HLRS. During this stage, numerous individual codes, developed and maintained by researchers or commercial organizations, have been analyzed and - timized. Several of the codes have shown the ability to outreach the TFlop/s thre- old of sustained performance. This created the possibility for new science and a deeper understanding of the underlying physics.

Modern freight forwarding companies attempt to cooperate with each other to increase their efficiency. Xin Wang studies the new operational transportation planning problems that arise in the context of cooperation in both static and dynamic scenarios. To achieve the cost-savings embedded in cooperation, novel planning approaches that can help forwarders obtaining high-quality solutions are proposed. Computational studies show considerable benefits that can be achieved through cooperation.

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 12th International Symposium, W2GIS 2013, held in Banff, Canada, in April 2013. The 11 revised full papers and 5 short papers presented were carefully selected from 28 submissions. The program covers a wide range of topics including Spatial Semantics and Databases, Location-based Services and Applications, Trajectory Representation and Sensor Web, Spatial Analysis and Systems and Map Generation and Modeling.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Rough Sets is devoted to the entire spectrum of rough sets related issues, from logical and mathematical foundations, through all aspects of rough set theory and its applications, such as data mining, knowledge discovery, and intelligent information processing, to relations between rough sets and other approaches to uncertainty, vagueness, and incompleteness, such as fuzzy sets and theory of evidence. Volume XVI includes extensions of papers from the Rough Sets and Knowledge Technology Conference which was held in Banff, Canada, in October 2011. In addition this book contains a long paper based on a PhD thesis. The papers cover both theory and applications of rough, fuzzy and near sets. They offer a continuation of a number of research streams which have grown out of the seminal work by Zdzislaw Pawlak during the first decade of the 21st century.

This volume consists of papers presented at the 2014 International Symposium on Systems and Computer Technology (ISSCT 2014, Shanghai, China, 15-17 November 2014). The demand for systems and informatics have been constantly increasing, as more and more computer applications have been built. Great efforts have been made to improve the state of the art in the technologies for computer-based applications. ISSCT 2014 aimed to advance these technologies to a new level and to encourage development of computer-based applications to be more reliable and efficient. The submissions, from all parts of the world, cover a variety of areas, including Control and Automation Systems, Power and Energy Systems, Intelligent Systems, Computer Systems and Applications, Communications and Networking, Image, Video, and Signal Processing, Data Engineering and Data Mining, and Software Engineering.

The four-volume set LNCS 13943, 13944, 13945 and 13946 constitutes the proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, DASFAA 2023, held in April 2023 in Tianjin, China.The total of 125 full papers, along with 66 short papers, are presented together in this four-volume set was carefully reviewed and selected from 652 submissions. Additionally, 15 industrial papers, 15 demo papers and 4 PhD consortium papers are included. The conference presents papers on subjects such as model, graph, learning, performance, knowledge, time, recommendation, representation, attention, prediction, and network.

The four-volume set LNCS 13943, 13944, 13945 and 13946 constitutes the proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, DASFAA 2023, held in April 2023 in Tianjin, China.The total of 125 full papers, along with 66 short papers, are presented together in this four-volume set was carefully reviewed and selected from 652 submissions. Additionally, 15 industrial papers, 15 demo papers and 4 PhD consortium papers are included. The conference presents papers on subjects such as model, graph, learning, performance, knowledge, time, recommendation, representation, attention, prediction, and network.

The four-volume set LNCS 13943, 13944, 13945 and 13946 constitutes the proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications, DASFAA 2023, held in April 2023 in Tianjin, China.The total of 125 full papers, along with 66 short papers, are presented together in this four-volume set was carefully reviewed and selected from 652 submissions. Additionally, 15 industrial papers, 15 demo papers and 4 PhD consortium papers are included. The conference presents papers on subjects such as model, graph, learning, performance, knowledge, time, recommendation, representation, attention, prediction, and network.