Lingdao, the Chinese word for leadership, is rarely used to denote acts of social persuasion that occur outside of contexts of formal rank or status. However, the ubiquity of informal leadership in China raises a number of practical and theoretical questions.Based on an analysis of selected Chinese cinematic works depicting settings of educational practice and policy, the book explores how "Western" understandings of leadership emerge from these texts to form discursive me...

This book provides comprehensive coverage of the latest trends/advances in subjective and objective quality evaluation for traditional visual signals, such as 2D images and video, as well as the most recent challenges for the field of multimedia quality assessment and processing, such as mobile video and social media. Readers will learn how to ensure the highest storage/delivery/ transmission quality of visual content (including image, video, graphics, animation, etc.) from the server to t...

This book provides an introduction to fuzzy logic approaches useful in image processing. The authors start by introducing image processing tasks of low and medium level such as thresholding, enhancement, edge detection, morphological filters, and segmentation and shows how fuzzy logic approaches apply. The book is divided into two parts. The first includes vagueness and ambiguity in digital images, fuzzy image processing, fuzzy rule based systems, and fuzzy clustering. The second part incl...

This book introduces a novel transcoding algorithm for real time video applications, designed to overcome inter-operability problems between MPEG-2 to H.264/AVC. The new algorithm achieves 92.8% reduction in the transcoding run time at a price of an acceptable Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) degradation, enabling readers to use it for real time video applications. The algorithm described is evaluated through simulation and experimental results. In addition, the authors present a hardware...

This book provides developers, engineers, researchers and students with detailed knowledge about the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. HEVC is the successor to the widely successful H.264/AVC video compression standard, and it provides around twice as much compression as H.264/AVC for the same level of quality. The applications for HEVC will not only cover the space of the well-known current uses and capabilities of digital video – they will also include the deployment of new s...

This book discusses efficient prediction techniques for the current state-of-the-art High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, focusing on the compression of a wide range of video signals, such as 3D video, Light Fields and natural images. The authors begin with a review of the state-of-the-art predictive coding methods and compression technologies for both 2D and 3D multimedia contents, which provides a good starting point for new researchers in the field of image and video compressio...

This book serves as a hands-on guide to RF tunable devices, circuits and subsystems. An innovative of modeling for tunable devices and networks is described, along with a new tuning algorithm, adaptive matching network control approach, and novel filter frequency automatic control loop. The author provides readers with the necessary background and methods for designing and developing tunable RF networks/circuits and tunable RF font-ends, with an emphasis on applications to cellular communi...

This book describes the building blocks and introductory business models for Internet of Things (IoT). The author provide an overview of the entire IoT architecture and constituent layers, followed by detail description of each block . Various inter-connecting technologies and sensors are discussed in context of IoT networks. In addition to this, concepts of Big Data and Fog Computing are presented and characterized as per data generated by versatile IoT applications . Smart parking system...

Opening with a detailed review of existing techniques for selective encryption, this text then examines algorithms that combine both encryption and compression. The book also presents a selection of specific examples of the design and implementation of secure embedded multimedia systems. Features: reviews the historical developments and latest techniques in multimedia compression and encryption; discusses an approach to reduce the computational cost of multimedia encryption, while preservi...

This book describes an alternative method of realizing accurate on-chip frequency references in standard CMOS processes. This method exploits the thermal-diffusivity of silicon, i.e. the rate at which heat diffuses through a silicon substrate. This is the first book describing the design of such electrothermal frequency references. It includes the necessary theory, supported by practical realizations that achieve inaccuracies as low as 0.1% and thus demonstrate the feasibility of this appr...

This book describes the use of low-power low-cost and extremely small radios to provide essential time reference for wireless sensor networks. The authors explain how to integrate such radios in a standard CMOS process to reduce both cost and size, while focusing on the challenge of designing a fully integrated time reference for such radios. To enable the integration of the time reference, system techniques are proposed and analyzed, several kinds of integrated time references are reviewe...

This book describes state-of-the-art approaches to Fog Computing, including the background of innovations achieved in recent years. Coverage includes various aspects of fog computing architectures for Internet of Things, driving reasons, variations and case studies. The authors discuss in detail key topics, such as meeting low latency and real-time requirements of applications, interoperability, federation and heterogeneous computing, energy efficiency and mobility, fog and cloud interplay...