This book presents a systematic study of an emerging field in the development of multi-agent systems. In a wide spectrum of applications, it is now common to see that multiple agents work cooperatively to accomplish a complex task. The book assists the implementation of such applications by promoting the ability of multi-agent systems to track — using local communication only — the mean value of signals of interest, even when these change rapidly with time and when no individual agent has ...

Over the past several decades major advances in accelerators have resulted from breakthroughs in accelerator science and accelerator technology. After the introduction of a new accelerator physics concept or the implementation of a new technology, a leap in accelerator performance followed. A well-known representation of these advances is the Livingston chart, which shows an exponential growth of accelerator performance over the last seven or eight decades. One of the breakthrough accelera...

This cutting edge collection presents a political reading of the power of modern sport in Asia. Providing an interdisciplinary study of political and cultural tensions in Asia, past and present, through the key case-study of sport, it illuminates the complex practices and legacies of Japanese imperialism across East and Southeast Asia through the 20th century and beyond. Focusing on the deep background to contemporary dynamics of intraregional tensions, it examines sport both as a tool of ...

Enzymatic Plastic Degradation, Volume 648 in the Methods in Enzymology series, continues the legacy of this premier serial with chapters authored by leaders in the field. Chapters in this latest release include Evaluating plastic pollution and environmental degradation, Assessment methods for microplastic pollution in the oceans and fresh water, Exploring microbial consortia from various environments for plastic degradation, Characterization of filamentous fungi for attack on synthetic pol...

The 3-volume set, LNAI 16074-16076, constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2025, which took place in Okayama, Japan, during August 6-9, 2025.The 165 full papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 329 submissions.They were organized in topical sections as follows:Part 1: Robotic Dexterous Manipulation and Intelligent Control; Intelligent Perception and Contr...

Drylands, a home for nearly 2.5 billion people, are highly vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change, and dryland area may expand to 50% of the Earth's surface by 2100. Climate change may aggravate the prevalence of undernutrition and malnutrition because of adverse effects on quantity and quality of food production in these regions. This book takes a holistic approach to sustainable management of drylands to make agriculture drought-resilient. Eminent scientists from around the world sha...

This Element introduces the areas that second language (L2) pragmatics research has investigated. It begins with a theme-based review of the field with respect to L2 pragmatics learning, teaching, and assessing. The section on pragmatics learning examines studies on learners' pragmatic production and perception, and analyzes research modalities in this field. The section on pragmatics teaching examines the effects of and different approaches to L2 pragmatics instruction; and the section on...

Pragmatic competence plays a key role in intercultural communication, particularly for students studying in a target community. This book investigates the effect of study abroad on second language learners’ productive and receptive pragmatic competences, as well as their cognitive processes during speech act production. It employs a variety of research instruments, both quantitative and qualitative, to explore learners’ pragmatic development over one year. The inclusion of a control group ...

This book tells the story of the Mount Songshan area architecture in simple terms, while also providing detailed information on the history of Buddhist architecture. The history of the Mount Songshan area can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty in the 23rd century B.C. The heritage architecture in this area has seen the rise and fall of various powers – including the Han Dynasty, Northern Wei Dynasty, Tang and Song Empires, Jin Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, and the Ming and Qing Empires – and refle...

Volume 10 in the series of the annual journal Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology (RAST), will be its final volume. Its theme is 'The Future of Accelerators'. This volume, together with previous 9 volumes, gives readers a complete picture as well as detailed technical information about the accelerator field, and its many driving and fascinating aspects.This volume has 17 articles. The first 15 articles have a different approach from the previous volumes. They emphasize the more p...

This atlas provides detailed information on the human lymphatic system in the head, neck and chest regions as well as the extremities, with more than 400 photographs and radiographs, including micro and macro views of the morphology. Much of the content is presented for the first time, such as the individual differences in lymphatic distribution, especially in the head neck region; characteristics of the indirect precollecting lymph vessel in the scalp; the lymphatic ampulla and diverticul...

This book examines practices on the relationship between sign and meaning in the Pre-Imperial period of China from the semiotics perspective. Although the Chinese civilization did not develop a comprehensive semiotics system in that period, they are highly semiotic in many ways. The thinking and application of signs of Chinese people can be found in many classics, such as The Book of Changes, The Analects of Confucius, Tao De Jing and Zhuangzi. This book begins its study by re-examining th...