This book revisits the long-standing puzzle of cross-scale energy transfer and dissipation in plasma turbulence and introduces new perspectives based on both magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and Vlasov models. The classical energy cascade scenario is key in explaining the heating of corona and solar wind. By employing a high-resolution hybrid (compact finite difference & WENO) scheme, the book studies the features of compressible MHD cascade in detail, for example, in order to approximate a real plasma cascade as "Kolmogorov-like" and to understand features that go beyond the usual simplified theories based on incompressible models. When approaching kinetic scales where plasma effects must be considered, it uses an elementary analysis of the Vlasov-Maxwell equations to help identify the channels through which energy transfer must be dissipated. In addition, it shows that the pressure-strain interaction is of great significance in producing internal energy. This analysis, in contrast to many other recent studies, does not make assumptions about wave-modes, instability or other specific mechanisms responsible for the dynamics - the results are direct consequences of the Vlasov-Maxwell system of equations. This is an important step toward understanding dissipation in turbulent collisionless plasma in space and astrophysics.

Crafted from a research project that lasted for three years, this book examines the impacts of China's universal two-child policy under the lens of education and focuses specifically on early childhood. This book not only provides number projection, but also the prediction and judgment of the supply and demand of service resources in early childhood education. It attempts to reveal the attitudes and views of families and stakeholders on the universal two-child policy and present the public's policy requirements for the quality of early childhood education. In addition, it analyses possible problems and challenges in current kindergarten layouts and resources allocation. Lastly, it aims to provide references and bases for formulating the plan that adapts to changes of Chinese preschoolers, supply guarantee of future early childhood education and the construction of public service system. Offering rich insights into the current and future status of education in China, this text will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers of sociology, early childhood education, contemporary China studies, East Asian educational practices and policy.

A Thematic Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese is a unique resource for intermediate to advanced students of Chinese. The dictionary presents 9,000 words organized thematically in approximately 300 different subject areas. These themes cover the vocabulary necessary for daily use and for conducting meaningful conversations with native Chinese speakers on a variety of topics, from politics to business, and from hobbies to education. Each vocabulary item is annotated with the most frequent collocations, allowing learners to improve their fluency by storing new vocabulary in larger linguistic units. Cultural and linguistic tips enable learners to grasp the vocabulary more effectively and increase their awareness of Chinese culture embedded in the language. Review exercises are provided throughout to ensure learners have ample opportunity to practice the new material. This is a great resource for both independent study and classroom use and will be of interest to students and teachers of Chinese alike. For further understanding of Chinese expressions, students are encouraged to read 500 Common Chinese Proverbs and Colloquial Expressions and 500 Common Chinese Idioms.

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 XVIII includes extensions of papers from the Joint Rough Set Symposium (JRS 2012), which was held in Chengdu, China, in August 2012. The seven papers that constitute this volume deal with topics such as: rough fuzzy sets, intuitionistic fuzzy sets, multi-granulation rough sets, decision-theoretic rough sets, three-way decisions and their applications in attribute reduction, feature selection, overlapping clustering, data mining, cost-sensitive learning, face recognition, and spam filtering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Rough Sets and Current Trends in Computing, RSCTC, held in Chengdu, China, in August 2012, as one of the co-located conferences of the 2012 Joint Rough Set Symposium, JRS 2012. The 55 revised full papers presented together with one keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on rough sets and its applications; current trends in computing; decision-theoretic rough set model and applications; formal concept analysis and granular computing; mining complex data with granular computing; data mining competition.

A Thematic Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese is a unique resource for intermediate to advanced students of Chinese. The dictionary presents 9,000 words organized thematically in approximately 300 different subject areas. These themes cover the vocabulary necessary for daily use and for conducting meaningful conversations with native Chinese speakers on a variety of topics, from politics to business, and from hobbies to education. Each vocabulary item is annotated with the most frequent collocations, allowing learners to improve their fluency by storing new vocabulary in larger linguistic units. Cultural and linguistic tips enable learners to grasp the vocabulary more effectively and increase their awareness of Chinese culture embedded in the language. Review exercises are provided throughout to ensure learners have ample opportunity to practice the new material. This is a great resource for both independent study and classroom use and will be of interest to students and teachers of Chinese alike. For further understanding of Chinese expressions, students are encouraged to read 500 Common Chinese Proverbs and Colloquial Expressions and 500 Common Chinese Idioms.

Globalization and changing demographics in the United States have resulted in a need for higher education to prepare teachers for an increasingly diverse society. To this end, teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities have included a curriculum with required multicultural education courses. Although the important role of causal attribution theory has been well-documented in a wide range of disciplines, its role in multicultural teacher education remains a mystery. In this book, the author first reviews two overarching theoretical frameworks, namely, causal attribution theory and aspects of multicultural education. Second, in an attempt to bridge the gap between causal attribution and multicultural teacher education, the author conducted a study exploring the relationship between causal attribution of cultural awareness and cultural competence among preservice teachers. Participants included 793 preservice teachers from two large public universities who reported their causal attributions of cultural awareness and their cultural competence. Canonical correlation analysis results showed two significant relationships between causal attribution and cultural competence. Personal control over the causes of cultural awareness was found to be positively related to praxis, i.e., behavioral outcome; whereas attributions to internal and stable causes were positively associated with knowledge as major components of cultural competence. The findings indicate the importance of addressing causal attribution and moving beyond negative emotions in improving preservice teachers cultural competence in multicultural education. Third, the author discussed the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study results. Limitations of the study and future directions are also discussed.

The majority of Medicare beneficiaries rely on supplemental insurance to help fill the gaps in Medicare's benefit package and to protect themselves from large, unanticipated health care expenses. Although numerous studies have been conducted on Medicare Supplemental insurance ownership, few attempts have been made to explore the decision- making process for purchasing Medigap. This book examined decision factors in the dynamics of private supplemental insurance purchases on the conceptual framework of Bounded Rationality. The study used Multilevel modeling to examine the time-dependent relationship of the Medigap purchasing decision on longitudinal data from the Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest-Old Survey (AHEAD). The study has implications for Medicare policies that are designed to enhance health care coverage while containing health care costs through market competition. It is also important for public agencies and other entities helping the disadvantaged elderly make informed enrollment decisions, and for furthering empirical knowledge and research methodology on the behavioral modeling with respect to health insurance purchases.