Since its launch in late 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become a significant factor in shaping China's economic and diplomatic relations with the world. China's increasing clout presents opportunities as well as challenges, especially for the developing economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which constitute major sites for investment and trade alongside the BRI routes.This edited volume examines whether and to what extent China's economic ascendancy has impacted the proposed ASEAN Economic Community and the respective nations in the region. It deals with this question by grounding the analysis along three themes - institutions at a regional level, industry/sector, and particular ASEAN countries' economic relationship with China. Sixteen articles are presented to illuminate the state of affairs at the regional level and in specific ASEAN economies. They point to the importance of managing trade and investment flows stemming from China's increasingly sophisticated national firms. This in turn hinges on forging 'rules of the game' at both the multilateral and bilateral levels, which potentially leads to mutually beneficial industrialization and long-term wealth creation.The Political Economy of Regionalism, Trade, and Infrastructure will be of great interest to scholars of political economy and industrial policy in East Asia, as well as to scholars and policy professionals analyzing approaches to development strategy more broadly.

Unifying Themes in Complex Systems is a well-established series of carefully edited conference proceedings that serve to document and archive the progress made regarding cross-fertilization in this field. The International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS) creates a unique atmosphere for scientists from all fields, engineers, physicians, executives, and a host of other professionals, allowing them to explore common themes and applications of complex systems science. With this new volume, Unifying Themes in Complex Systems continues to establish common ground between the wide-ranging domains of complex systems science.

This volume provides an intensive review of the economic competitiveness of Singapore's economy. It identifies and analyses the strategies which will allow the economy to retain its competitive advantage in the years ahead in an increasingly globalised economic environment, considerably liberalised international trading and investment climate, and with regional economies challenging the country's competitive edge as a regional transportation hub, international financial centre and a primary regional centre for technology and education. Dialogues and interviews with managers and CEOs of industries in the private and public sectors are also included.

This volume provides an intensive review of the economic competitiveness of Singapore's economy. It identifies and analyses the strategies which will allow the economy to retain its competitive advantage in the years ahead in an increasingly globalised economic environment, considerably liberalised international trading and investment climate, and with regional economies challenging the country's competitive edge as a regional transportation hub, international financial centre and a primary regional centre for technology and education. Dialogues and interviews with managers and CEOs of industries in the private and public sectors are also included.

In June of 2002, over 500 professors, students and researchers met in Boston, Massachusetts for the Fourth International Conference on Complex Systems. The attendees represented a remarkably diverse collection of fields: biology, ecology, physics, engineering, computer science, economics, psychology and sociology, The goal of the conference was to encourage cross-fertilization between the many disciplines represented and to deepen understanding of the properties common to all complex systems.

This volume contains 43 papers selected from the more than 200 presented at the conference. Topics include: cellular automata, neurology, evolution, computer science, network dynamics, and urban planning.

About NECSI: For over 10 years, The New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) has been instrumental in the development of complex systems science and its applications. NECSI conducts research, education, knowledge dissemination, and community development around the world for the promotion of the study of complex systems and its application for the betterment of society. NECSI hosts the International Conference on Complex Systems and publishes the NECSI Book Series in conjunction with Springer Publishers.

ALI MINAI is an Affiliate of the New England Complex Systems Institute and an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati.

YANEER BAR-YAM is President and founder of the New England Complex Systems Institute. He is the author of Dynamics of Complex Systems and Making Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World.

This book aims to develop models and modeling techniques that are useful when applied to all complex systems. It adopts both analytic tools and computer simulation. The book is intended for students and researchers with a variety of backgrounds.

This book sheds light on the large-scale engineering systems that shape and guide our everyday lives. It does this by bringing together the latest research and practice defining the emerging field of Complex Engineered Systems. Understanding, designing, building and controlling such complex systems is going to be a central challenge for engineers in the coming decades. This book is a step toward addressing that challenge.

The book presents a critical evaluation of current approaches related to the use of digital games in education. The author identifies two competing paradigms: that of games-to-teach and games-to-learn. Arguing in favor of the latter, the author advances the case for approaching game-based learning through the theoretical lens of performance, rooted in play and dialog, to unlock the power of digital games for 21st century learning. Drawing upon the author's research, three concrete exemplars of game-based learning curricula are described and discussed. The challenge of advancing game-based learning in education is addressed in the context of school reform. Finally, future prospects of and educational opportunities for game-based learning are articulated. Readers of the book will find the explication of performance theory applied to game-based learning especially interesting. This work constitutes the author's original theorization. Readers will derive four main benefits: (1) an explication of the difference between game-based-teaching and game-based learning, and why this difference is of critical importance, (2) an exposition of the theory of game-based learning as performance, (3) concrete exemplars and research outcomes relating to three game-based learning curricula that have been empirically evaluated in schools, and (4) an understanding of complex issues related to the human side of school change that must be effectively addressed to achieve take-up of game-based learning in schools.

Functional materials research is one of the high priority strategic areas of - st velopmentinscienceandtechnologyinthe21 century.Amongstthevarietyof functions,theinteractionofmatterwithlighttogeneratelight-drivenorpho- responsive properties has always been one of the most appealing and attr- tive areas. Recent advances in the exploitation of transition metal complexes in bringing about photo-induced functions have attracted growing attention, particularly in areas related to materials, energy, and biomedical research. Selected examples include the development of molecular triplet emitters for organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs), optical and photo-switches, pho- chemical energy storage, dye-sensitized solar cells, photochemical molecular devices(PMD)andmachines,opticalandluminescenceprobesandchemos- sors,luminescentlabelsandtagsforbiomolecules,andluminescencesignaling and imaging. This volume serves to provide the readers with some fundamentals of - minescent transition metal complexes and the recent exciting developments of a selected variety of functions and potential applications that transition metal complexes can offer for the betterment of the society in areas related to materials, energy, and biomedical research. The ?rst chapter of this volume by Balch discussed the current progress in two-coordinate luminescent gold(I) complexes. This class of complexes is well-known to show weak metal***metal interactions that lead to the iso- tionofnovel architecturesand polymorphism fromrelatively simple building blocksandtheappearanceofuniqueelectronicabsorptionandemissionsp- troscopicfeatures.Theeffectoftheenvironment,suchassolventsandcounter ions, on the luminescence behavior of a number of two-coordinate gold(I) complexes was discussed.

Arguing for life, moral and values education as a bedrock for the original goals of school education, this monograph explores how life and values education is conceptualised and imparted in Greater China. Under a globalized, transnational, and technological world, where there has been an increase in people's mobility, in information and cultural exchanges, there is also a growing emphasis on personal and professional ethics. Against this context, life, moral and values education has gained attention for its impact on shaping students' characters as future citizens. However, the cultivation of these values is made deeply diversified and complex by varying interpretations of "life education" and "values education" across societies, given that different societies are influenced by different socio-cultural traditions, educational ideologies and religious beliefs. The means and approaches towards life education also vary vastly from formal school subjects, school-based programmes as well as teachers and peers' role modelling, community services, extra-curricular activities, school discipline, charity work, pastoral care, and school ethos. Recognising this inherent diversity and complexity in the approach to and the dissemination of life education, the contributors to this volume survey the practice of life education in Greater China so far, suggesting that life education is most effective when it is "diversified, dynamic and developmental across contexts". This book will provide the opportunity for engaging in important and serious debates about the future and the values that will underpin it and will prove of special interest to scholars and practitioners working on education policies curriculum development and teacher education in Greater China.

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has drawn considerable attention as an attractive inorganic raw material for various applications due to its inexpensiveness, nontoxic nature, stability, and excellent photocatalytic activity. Photocatalysis is one of the most promising route for sustainable chemistry of the 21st century. It can contribute to solving environmental, global energy, and chemical problems, as well as to the sustainable production of commodities in the near future. This book presents the fundamentals of photocatalysis in nanostructured TiO2 and describes the factors affecting the photocatalytic activity, design, and synthesis of various forms of nanostructured TiO2. It highlights the use of ion-doping and inert-atmosphere annealing to extend the light-absorption range of photocatalysts and reduce recombination between electrons and holes. It discusses numerous applications in the fields of energy and environment, such as water purification, gas sensing, storage and delivery, and energy generation. The book is an invaluable resource and useful guide for a broad readership in various fields of catalysis, materials science, environment, and energy.

The study of complex systems has attracted a broad range of researchers from many disciplines spanning both the hard and soft sciences. In the Autumn of 1997, 300 of these researchers came together for the First International Conference on Complex Systems. The proceedings of this conference is the first book in the New England Complex Systems Institute Series on Complexity and includes more than 100 presentations and papers on topics like evolution, emergence, complexity, self-organization, scaling, informatics, time series, emergence of mind, and engineering of complex systems.

The International Conference on Complex Systems provides a unique opportunity for scientists to rise above the disciplinary boundaries and explore unity in complex systems. This volume contains the proceedings of the Second International Conference on Complex Systems. The sessions ranged from the opening talk by Nobel laureate Philip Anderson on emergence and the relevance of complex systems to physics to the final panel that included many of the great management gurus of this generation. The plenary session topics for the second conference were emergence, description and modeling, self-organization, networks, time series, agents in action, and complexity and management. Talks in these sessions often focused on contributions in specific disciplines, but each session contained a diverse set of disciplines to show the strategies and concepts that can be applied generally to complex systems. Overall, the conference presentations dealt with issues of significant public interest, including individual psychology, dynamics of social and economic change, the human genome, and ecology.The New England Complex Systems Institute is an independent educational and research institution dedicated to advancing the study of complex systems, including new concepts and methodologies that are affecting all fields of science and engineering, and are being applied to technology, business, and even social policy. NECSI organizes conferences, workshops, short courses, and other activities from which books will be produced for the NECSI Series on Complexity. The books will range from conference proceedings and graduate textbooks to general-audience trade books, and will address fundamental concepts, new frontiers, and innovative applications of complex systems.

There is a large literature dealing with the spillover effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to emerging and developing economies at the aggregate level. Beyond the aggregate impacts, a growing number of studies also examine the impact of FDI spillovers on firms of different sizes, especially small and medium enterprises (SME). This book is dedicated to exploring issues relating to the various interactions between FDI flows, productivity spillovers and SMEs in Asia and beyond. It studies globalization, FDI, and regional innovation in China, and trade and investment liberalization in India. It analyses how to promote SMEs and enhance labor productivity in Singapore. It investigates the impact of intellectual property rights processes on productivity growth. It documents the use of finance and financing patterns of informal firms. It uses empirical analysis to point out the limitations of traditional banks lending to SMEs and suggests possible policy approaches facilitating them to access growth capital. It also provides an empirical investigation of the main determinants of entrepreneurial activities.

This unique volume aims to provide a first comprehensive assessment on attributes, conditions and characters which constitute a liveable city. The book posits that the degree of liveability depends on five themes: satisfaction with the freedom from want; satisfaction with the state of the natural environment and its management; satisfaction with freedom from fear; satisfaction with the socio-cultural conditions; and satisfaction with public governance.The authors attempt to be more constructive through performing policy simulations by first identifying relative weaknesses and strengths of 64 global cities across major continents including European, Asian, Middle Eastern, North and South American cities. The book also ranks and simulates 36 Asian cities separately, of which many are emerging third-world cities that are in need of policy guidance.

Arguing for life, moral and values education as a bedrock for the original goals of school education, this monograph explores how life and values education is conceptualised and imparted in Greater China. Under a globalized, transnational, and technological world, where there has been an increase in people's mobility, in information and cultural exchanges, there is also a growing emphasis on personal and professional ethics. Against this context, life, moral and values education has gained attention for its impact on shaping students' characters as future citizens. However, the cultivation of these values is made deeply diversified and complex by varying interpretations of "life education" and "values education" across societies, given that different societies are influenced by different socio-cultural traditions, educational ideologies and religious beliefs. The means and approaches towards life education also vary vastly from formal school subjects, school-based programmes as well as teachers and peers' role modelling, community services, extra-curricular activities, school discipline, charity work, pastoral care, and school ethos. Recognising this inherent diversity and complexity in the approach to and the dissemination of life education, the contributors to this volume survey the practice of life education in Greater China so far, suggesting that life education is most effective when it is "diversified, dynamic and developmental across contexts". This book will provide the opportunity for engaging in important and serious debates about the future and the values that will underpin it and will prove of special interest to scholars and practitioners working on education policies curriculum development and teacher education in Greater China.

Marketing in Healthcare-Related Industries captures the concepts and complexities of marketing healthcare in today's environment. The book provides detailed conceptual and practical insights that will be of great benefit to healthcare scholars and practitioners. Topics on healthcare marketing have been carefully selected to provide wide coverage and are illustrated by mini-cases with a highly practical marketing tool kit for healthcare managers included. The healthcare sector in the 21st century face a multiplicity of challenges, which include changing disease patterns, more technology-driven health interventions, a more assertive and quality conscious clientele, as well as a rapidly growing for-profit segment of the industry. This places more responsibilities on healthcare service providers in both the public and private sectors, to deliver value-for-money services at competitive costs. To respond to the changing business environment, a carefully crafted marketing approach is needed by all players in the industry to create value and sustain the confidence of clientele and stakeholders.

This book aims to develop models and modeling techniques that are useful when applied to all complex systems. It adopts both analytic tools and computer simulation. The book is intended for students and researchers with a variety of backgrounds.

Tensor Product Model Transformation in Polytopic Model-Based Control offers a new perspective of control system design. Instead of relying solely on the formulation of more effective LMIs, which is the widely adopted approach in existing LMI-related studies, this cutting-edge book calls for a systematic modification and reshaping of the polytopic convex hull to achieve enhanced performance. Varying the convexity of the resulting TP canonical form is a key new feature of the approach. The book concentrates on reducing analytical derivations in the design process, echoing the recent paradigm shift on the acceptance of numerical solution as a valid form of output to control system problems. The salient features of the book include: Presents a new HOSVD-based canonical representation for (qLPV) models that enables trade-offs between approximation accuracy and computation complexity Supports a conceptually new control design methodology by proposing TP model transformation that offers a straightforward way of manipulating different types of convexity to appear in polytopic representation Introduces a numerical transformation that has the advantage of readily accommodating models described by non-conventional modeling and identification approaches, such as neural networks and fuzzy rules Presents a number of practical examples to demonstrate the application of the approach to generate control system design for complex (qLPV) systems and multiple control objectives. The authors' approach is based on an extended version of singular value decomposition applicable to hyperdimensional tensors. Under the approach, trade-offs between approximation accuracy and computation complexity can be performed through the singular values to be retained in the process. The use of LMIs enables the incorporation of multiple performance objectives into the control design problem and assurance of a solution via convex optimization if feasible. Tensor Product Model Transformation in Polytopic Model-Based Control includes examples and incorporates MATLAB (R) Toolbox TPtool. It provides a reference guide for graduate students, researchers, engineers, and practitioners who are dealing with nonlinear systems control applications.

A comprehensive resource on airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, Airborne Circulatory Polarized SAR explains the theory, system design, hardware and software, and applications of airborne circularly polarized SAR in environmental monitoring and other uses. Readers learn how to build the hardware and software of circularly polarized SAR, the antenna system, and how to generate point target responses and images using the range doppler algorithm (RDA) from raw signal data. The book discusses applications and analyzing techniques using a circularly polarized SAR system and image processing. Images and MATLAB codes are provided to help professionals and researchers with their applications and future studies. Features 1. Provides the theory of circularly polarized wave and polarimetry related to system design, scattering analysis, polarimetric SAR, and applications in microwave remote sensing. 2. Explains the real radio frequency (RF) system and the original antenna, including circuit explanation and know-how of measurement technique to adjust to the required parameter in system design. 3. Discusses the technique of ground test and flight mission to calibrate and validate the performance of airborne circularly polarized SAR. 4. Highlights image signal processing with MATLAB codes and how to obtain a single look complex (SLC) image for further applications. 5. Includes several applications of airborne circularly polarized SAR from international leading experts. This book is beneficial to professionals, researchers, academics, and graduate students from disciplines such as Electronic Engineering; Radar Systems; Aerospace Engineering; Signal Processing; Image Processing; Environmental Remote Sensing.

This book follows the methodologies of complex adaptive systems research in their application to addressing the problems of terrorism, specifically terrorist networks, their structure and various methods of mapping and interdicting them as well as exploring the complex landscape of network-centric and irregular warfare. A variety of new models and approaches are presented here, including Dynamic Network Analysis, DIME/PMESII models, percolation models and emergent models of insurgency. In addition, the analysis is informed by practical experience, with analytical and policy guidance from authors who have served within the U.S. Department of Defense, the British Ministry of Defence as well as those who have served in a civilian capacity as advisors on terrorism and counter-terrorism.

An essential introduction to data analytics and Machine Learning techniques in the business sector In Financial Data Analytics with Machine Learning, Optimization and Statistics, a team consisting of a distinguished applied mathematician and statistician, experienced actuarial professionals and working data analysts delivers an expertly balanced combination of traditional financial statistics, effective machine learning tools, and mathematics. The book focuses on contemporary techniques used for data analytics in the financial sector and the insurance industry with an emphasis on mathematical understanding and statistical principles and connects them with common and practical financial problems. Each chapter is equipped with derivations and proofs—especially of key results—and includes several realistic examples which stem from common financial contexts. The computer algorithms in the book are implemented using Python and R, two of the most widely used programming languages for applied science and in academia and industry, so that readers can implement the relevant models and use the programs themselves. The book begins with a brief introduction to basic sampling theory and the fundamentals of simulation techniques, followed by a comparison between R and Python. It then discusses statistical diagnosis for financial security data and introduces some common tools in financial forensics such as Benford's Law, Zipf's Law, and anomaly detection. The statistical estimation and Expectation-Maximization (EM) & Majorization-Minimization (MM) algorithms are also covered. The book next focuses on univariate and multivariate dynamic volatility and correlation forecasting, and emphasis is placed on the celebrated Kelly's formula, followed by a brief introduction to quantitative risk management and dependence modelling for extremal events. A practical topic on numerical finance for traditional option pricing and Greek computations immediately follows as well as other important topics in financial data-driven aspects, such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and recommender systems with their applications, as well as advanced regression learners such as kernel regression and logistic regression, with discussions on model assessment methods such as simple Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves and Area Under Curve (AUC) for typical classification problems. The book then moves on to other commonly used machine learning tools like linear classifiers such as perceptrons and their generalization, the multilayered counterpart (MLP), Support Vector Machines (SVM), as well as Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and Random Forests. Subsequent chapters focus on linear Bayesian learning, including well-received credibility theory in actuarial science and functional kernel regression, and non-linear Bayesian learning, such as the Naïve Bayes classifier and the Comonotone-Independence Bayesian Classifier (CIBer) recently independently developed by the authors and used successfully in InsurTech. After an in-depth discussion on cluster analyses such as K-means clustering and its inversion, the K-nearest neighbor (KNN) method, the book concludes by introducing some useful deep neural networks for FinTech, like the potential use of the Long-Short Term Memory model (LSTM) for stock price prediction. This book can help readers become well-equipped with the following skills: To evaluate financial and insurance data quality, and use the distilled knowledge obtained from the data after applying data analytic tools to make timely financial decisions To apply effective data dimension reduction tools to enhance supervised learning To describe and select suitable data analytic tools as introduced above for a given dataset depending upon classification or regression prediction purpose The book covers the competencies tested by several professional examinations, such as the Predictive Analytics Exam offered by the Society of Actuaries, and the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries' Actuarial Statistics Exam. Besides being an indispensable resource for senior undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in financial engineering, statistics, quantitative finance, risk management, actuarial science, data science, and mathematics for AI, Financial Data Analytics with Machine Learning, Optimization and Statistics also belongs in the libraries of aspiring and practicing quantitative analysts working in commercial and investment banking.