Essential Chan Buddhism is the rare unearthing of an ancient and remarkable Chinese spiritual tradition. Master Guo Jun speaks through hard-won wisdom on Chan's spiritual themes familiar to Western readers, such as mindfulness and relaxation in meditation, as well as profound, simply expressed teachings and insightful explorations of religious commitment. Essential Chan Buddhism filters formal spiritual practices through the lens of mundane and everyday life activities. T...

This book aims to provide the readers a better understanding of rural China through the particular perspective of the rural underworld. It proposes new concepts to describe social changes of rural China by comparing the contemporary rural society with the acquaintance society—the classic model for depicting the traditional Chinese society. The author’s down-to-earth fieldwork has revealed that, with a permeating gang influence, the society of rural China has actually changed in nature. Suc...

The Changing Organization provides a multidisciplinary approach for studying the management of change under conditions of complexity. Single-discipline approaches frequently miss essential elements that reduce the possibility of coherence within a multi-agency organizational setting. Combining a systems and cybernetic 'living system' perspective, Guo, Yolles, Fink, and Iles offer a new agency paradigm designed to model, diagnose and analyse complex, real-world situations. Its capacity to a...

This book provides best practices for decarbonizing cities in East Asia, in which buildings are the major contributor to carbon emissions. Beyond the global commitment through the Paris Agreement to make collective efforts on climate action and accelerated policies, investment and development at the country and city level to combat climate change are occurring at an unprecedented rate. Rapid urbanization and increasing energy demand for large and dense Asian cities require smart and sustai...

This book aims to provide, with comprehensive detail, the fundamental theory of the Earth's global elastic deformation, as well as the associated variations of the gravity field and rotation, that the readers can thoroughly understand with little reference to other books or journal papers. Its contents belong to the essential background physics of geodesy nowadays.The noteworthy style of this book is its inclusion of ample intermediate steps of mathematical derivations and physical...

This textbook introduces physical geodesy. It treats the boundary-value theories of the discipline comprehensively, and provides insights to the theory of gravity reduction based on a spherical Earth model.This book is for students who wish to thoroughly understand the material and to expand their knowledge and skills in mathematics for more advanced study and research in this discipline. The details of mathematical derivations included are a useful asset for instructors and resear...

The two-volume set LNCS 9516 and LNCS 9517 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, MMM 2016, held in Miami, FL, USA, in January 2016.The 32 revised full papers and 52 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. In addition 20 papers were accepted for five special sessions out of 38 submissions as well as 7 demonstrations (from 11 submissions) and 9 video showcase papers.The pape...

The two-volume set LNCS 9516 and 9517 constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Multimedia Modeling, MMM 2016, held in Miami, FL, USA, in January 2016.The 32 revised full papers and 52 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. In addition 20 papers were accepted for five special sessions out of 38 submissions as well as 7 demonstrations (from 11 submissions) and 9 video showcase papers.The papers a...

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the development and application of near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) in cancer surgery. It thoroughly examines the history, principles, agents, functions, and devices associated with NIRF, along with the latest preclinical research and clinical applications. Special emphasis is placed on the advancements in the second NIRF window and its global implementation in cancer surgery, including innovative molecular imaging technologies in clinica...

The cases of Singapore and Switzerland present a fascinating puzzle: how have two small states achieved similar levels of success through divergent pathways? Are both approaches equally sustainable, and what lessons do they hold for each other? While Singapore is the archetypal developmental state, whose success can be attributed to strong political leadership and long-term planning, Switzerland's success is a more organic process, due to the propitious convergence of strong industries and...

This book presents dynamic response, vibration characteristics, and nonlinear behavior of complex oil and gas well string by using a combination of theoretical methods, numerical simulation, and experimental analysis. It lays both theoretical and experimental foundation for the design of oil and gas well string parameters. The theoretical methods involved mainly include Hamilton's principle, finite element method, and energy method, while experimental methods involved include similarity pr...

This book systematically discusses the workability, mechanical properties, water stability, and material design methods of ultra-high ductility magnesium phosphate cement-based composites (UHDMC) with PVA fibers, PE fibers, or hybrid fibers. The developed UHDMC possesses strain-hardening behavior, multi-cracking, and ultra-high ultimate tensile strain, which can be used in many engineering projects, such as rapid repair and strengthening of airport runways, roads, bridges, and military ins...