Toward Better Governance in China takes a fresh look at the latest efforts made by Chinese leaders to promote governance-based reform. It asserts that the improvement of governance has now become one of the breakthrough points of the much anticipated political reform. Although the Chinese government continues to play down expectations about political reform, many small-scale reform experiments have been quietly undertaken by Chinese leaders at various levels in recent years, inclu...

This book presents a systematic framework for risk assessment and predictions of extreme climate impacts using big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and intelligent monitoring technologies. Central to this effort is the concept of a smart water grid, a 'digital water network', capable of real-time monitoring, rapid transmission, accurate forecasting, optimized decision-making, precise allocation, and efficient management especially during floods and droughts.Building on case...

Reforging the Central Bank presents an insightful comparison between financial development in China — a rising global economic superpower — under the old and new normal and an all-encapsulating study of current monetary transmission mechanism and monetary policy instruments. Focusing on the 'top-level design' for Chinese financial system and the reformation of People's Bank of China (PBoC), China's central bank, Dr Deng, head of the Fixed Income Research Department at CITIC Securities, and...

This book aims to identify the impact of tourism on social and economic development in the Issyk-Kul region of Kyrgyzstan, and to predict the development of the tourism industry and identify any limiting factors for the development of the tourism industry in the Republic as a whole. The impacts of tourism on the region have been poorly understood since the country gained independence in 1991, and so improved methods for identifying and increasing the contribution of the tourism industry to...

This book describes how dynamic state estimation application in wide-area measurement systems (WAMS) are crucial for power system reliability, to acquire precisely power system dynamics. The event trigger DSE techniques described by the authors provide a design balance between the communication rate and estimation performance, by selectively sending the innovational data. The discussion also includes practical problems for smart grid applications, such as the non-Gaussian process/measureme...

Reliability Based Aircraft Maintenance Optimization and Applications presents flexible and cost-effective maintenance schedules for aircraft structures, particular in composite airframes. By applying an intelligent rating system, and the back-propagation network (BPN) method and FTA technique, a new approach was created to assist users in determining inspection intervals for new aircraft structures, especially in composite structures. This book also discusses the influence of Structure Hea...

Complexity theory aims to understand and classify computational problems, especially decision problems, according to their inherent complexity. This book uses new techniques to expand the theory for use with counting problems. The authors present dichotomy classifications for broad classes of counting problems in the realm of P and NP. Classifications are proved for partition functions of spin systems, graph homomorphisms, constraint satisfaction problems, and Holant problems. The book ass...

Tensor network is a fundamental mathematical tool with a huge range of applications in physics, such as condensed matter physics, statistic physics, high energy physics, and quantum information sciences. This open access book aims to explain the tensor network contraction approaches in a systematic way, from the basic definitions to the important applications. This book is also useful to those who apply tensor networks in areas beyond physics, such as machine learning and the big-data anal...

This book analyses climate change influences on rainfall erosivity and soil erosion across Central Asia, provides an overview (past and projections) on the Central Asian countries where projected changes in rainfall erosivity and erosivity density are the greatest, and discusses the potential impacts on the environment across the region. This analysis is accomplished primarily using the RUSLE model with past and future climate projections, spatiotemporal variations of rainfall erosivity an...

Reading in a Second Language offers a comprehensive survey of the phenomenon and process of reading in a second language, with graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and applied psychology as its primary audience. The book explores reading processes from a number of complementary standpoints, integrating perspectives from fields such as first and second language reading, second language acquisition, linguistics, psycholin...

In four chapters and an introduction, this book systematically helps readers understand the development of the Geographical Sciences both in China and in the world during the past 30 years.Through data analysis of methodologies including CiteSpace, TDA, qualitative analysis, questionnaires, data mining and mathematical statistics, the book explains the evolution of research topics and their driving factors in the Geographical Sciences and its four branches, namely Physical Geograph...

Do our ideas about social movements travel successfully beyond the democratic West? Unrest in China, from the dramatic events of 1989 to more recent stirrings, offers a rare opportunity to explore this question and to consider how popular contention unfolds in places where speech and assembly are tightly controlled. The contributors to this volume, all prominent scholars of Chinese politics and society, argue that ideas inspired by social movements elsewhere can help explain popular protes...