Throughout the world, people spend much of their time with animal companions of various kinds, frequently with cats and dogs. What meanings do we make of these relationships? In the ecocritical collection Reading cats and Dogs, a diverse array of scholars considers the philosophy, literature, and film devoted to human relationships with companion species. In addition to illuminating famous animal stories by Beatrix Potter, Jack London, Italo Svevo, and Michael Ondaatje, readers are introdu...

Psychopathology: An Empathic Representational Approach retraces the foundations of classical phenomenological psychopathology and integrates them with modern ideas drawn from anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, computational science, and evolutionary biology to synthesize a comprehensive framework and provide fresh insights.This book explores how the scientific concepts of ‘information and representation’ can be used to understand subjective mental phenomena and integrate them in...

This book presents high-quality original contributions on positive systems, including those with positivity in compartmental switched systems, Markovian jump systems, Boolean networks, interval observer design, fault detection, and delay systems. It comprises a selection of the best papers from POSTA 2018, the 6th International Conference on Positive Systems, which was held in Hangzhou, China, in August 2018. The POSTA conference series represents a targeted response to the growing need fo...

In 1878, the first complete dinosaur skeleton was discovered in a coal mine in Bernissart, Belgium. Iguanodon, first described by Gideon Mantell on the basis of fragments discovered in England in 1824, was initially reconstructed as an iguana-like reptile or a heavily built, horned quadruped. However, the Bernissart skeleton changed all that. The animal was displayed in an upright posture similar to a kangaroo, and later with its tail off the ground like the dinosaur we know of today. Focu...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference, APANConf 2025, held in Hong Kong, China, on July 31, 2025.The 12 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. These papers focus on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Computer Vision and Machine Learning and Networking and High-Performance Computing.

This book outlines the preface of bronze civilization in East Asia, and traces back to the beginning of “Bronze China”. Dating back from more than 6,000 years ago to 3,000 years ago, this book sorts out the archaeological discoveries in China from primitive copper alloys to red copper and bronze, clarifying the development of bronze techniques 1,000 years before the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions. It examines the archaeological materials from the late Longshan Period to the early Sh...

This 18-volume set constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th Chinese Conference on Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision, PRCV 2025, held in Shanghai, China, during October 15-18, 2025.The 692 full papers included in this book, comprising 66 oral presentations and 626 posters, were carefully reviewed and selected from 2370 submissions.PRCV's mission is to serve as a comprehensive platform for dialogues among researchers from both the academic field and the industry....

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the workshops of the 5th Asia-Pacific Web and Web-Age Information Management International Joint Conference on Web and Big Data, APWeb-WAIM 2021: The Fourth International Workshop on Knowledge Graph Management and Applications, KGMA 2021, The Third International Workshop on Semi-structured Big Data Management and Application, SemiBDMA 2021, and The Second International Workshop on Deep Learning in Large-scale Unstructured Data Analytics, D...

The food industry has seen many changes over the last several decades — new technologies have been introduced into the way we cook, manufacture, and present food products to consumers. Digital gastronomy, which combines new computational abilities such as three-dimensional (3D) printing with traditional food preparation, has allowed consumers to design and manufacture food with personalized shapes, colours, textures, and even nutrition. In addition to the personalization of food, 3D printi...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the latest research in the role of non-neuronal cells - astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, endothelial cells, pericytes, microglia, and other immune cells in ischemic brain injury and long-term recovery. In these cases, neurodegeneration and brain repair are controlled in a sophisticated system, incorporating interactions between different cell types and cellular systems. Also explored are the therapeutic strategies that target non-neuronal respons...

With comparative case studies from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Jianlin Chen's new work offers a fresh, descriptive and normative perspective on law and religion. This presentation of the original law and religious market theory employs an interdisciplinary approach that sheds light on this subject for scholars in legal and sociological disciplines. It sets out the precise nature of religious competition envisaged by the current legal regimes in the three jurisdictions and analyses how cer...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems, ACIIDS 2026, held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan during April 13–15, 2026.The 75 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 431 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Deep Learning Methods and Architectures; Generative, Foundation and Large Language Models; Explainable, Trustworthy and Responsible AI; Graph-Bas...