This book is a result from a collective study on philosophy of scientific practice (PSP), which began around 2002 and still ongoing. There is an apparently increasing interest in scientific practice, influenced by the historicistic philosophy of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). Prof. WU Tong and his research group believe that it is necessary for PSP to turn from the theory-dominant position to the practice dominance. PSP has also put forward the possibility of reinterpreting the epistemic status of local knowledge in Chinese tradition, which provides the most significant motivation to participate this study. In this book, we have selected three main cases - namely, Chinese medicine, Fengshui, and Ethnobotany - to examine the effect of PSP. The aim of our collective study is not merely on theoretical construction of PSP, but also to consider the various applications of PSP, especially for re-interpreting and demonstrating the variety of local knowledge from traditional China, which seems to be a genuine contribution to the international enterprise of philosophy of science, particularly made by Chinese scholars.

This SpringerBrief investigates the performance of semi-blind independent component analysis (ICA) based equalization and carrier frequency offset estimation approaches (CFO) for a number of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless communication systems. It provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges of channel equalization and frequency synchronization for different wireless systems. The authors present the wireless communication channel and system models. Key existing CFO estimation methods are reviewed, along with a number of the training based and non-training based (blind) channel estimation methods. This is followed by a study of ICA and its applications to OFDM-based wireless communication systems. Later chapters provide a detailed description of recent research on semi-blind CFO estimation and ICA based equalization approaches for various wireless communication systems including multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) OFDM and coordinated multipoint (CoMP) systems. Semi-blind CFO estimation and equalization structures provide a spectrum-efficient and high-performance solution for high speed wireless communications. This book is suitable for postgraduate students, researchers or professionals in the area of wireless communications.