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This book timely provides high-quality records of 32 PTB sections across different depositional settings from terrestrial to marine facies in South China, including descriptions of lithologies, high-resolution correlation of key boundaries and fossil occurrences at each section. This book also analyzes the patterns and processes of the community and ecosystem evolution over space and through time in the lead to the end-Permian mass extinction, and critically analyzes the mostly debated hypothesis, anoxia and volcanism, which were considered as the causes of mass extinction, based on the data from the studied sections of South China, together with materials from other regions of the world.

A power converter is a device used in electrical engineering, power engineering, and the electric power sector to convert electric energy from one form to another, such as converting between AC and DC, changing voltage or frequency, or a combination of these. It is used in a variety of applications, such as industrial drives, power supply, energy generating equipment, consumer goods, electrical vehicles/aeroplanes/ships, smart grids and more.This book will open a door for engineers to design the power converters via the artificial intelligence (AI) method. It begins by reviewing current AI technology in power converters. The book then introduces customized AI algorithms for power converters that take into account the particular characteristics of power converters. The book then presents a set of AI-based design methodologies for power devices, including DC/DC converters, resonant DC/DC converters, bidirectional DC/DC converters, DC/AC inverters, and AC/DC rectifiers. This is the first book to cover all you need to know about using AI to create power converters, including a literature review, algorithm, and circuit design.

This book is devoted to the optimum design of the DCT in a hybrid AC/DC microgrid, which takes into account not only the influence of different inductors/capacitors values, but also numerous design goals (i.e., VCG, efficiency, stability and so on). This book examines the DCT's design problem in detail. It begins by reviewing existing DCTs in, the hybrid AC/DC microgrid and their design problems. Following that, this book proposes a family of DCT optimization design approaches to ensure that the designed DCT has good power transmission and voltage regulation ability in the hybrid AC/DC microgrid, even when the actual inductors/capacitors values fluctuate with practical power and temperature. Following that, this book provides a family of multi-objective optimization design methodologies for the DCT to guarantee that it concurrently achieves the requirements of VCG, efficiency, and system stability. This book also covers how to control the DCT in a hybrid AC/DC microgrid optimally and generically.

This book is a comprehensive collection of technologies and methods on intelligent information processing, which includes artificial neural network, fuzzy logic, and evolutionary computing. It also introduces the latest research directions and progress in intelligent information processing, such as transfer learning through convolutional neural network, time series prediction, clustering based on fuzzy neural network, test and evaluation of the traveling salesman problem, test and evaluation of continuous optimization problem, and more. This book promotes the development and application of intelligent information processing technology in the field of computational intelligence, effectively improving the intersection and integration of intelligent information processing methods. Researchers in computational intelligence and artificial intelligence technology, as well as teachers, students, and others interested in the subject, will benefit from this book.

The story of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as experienced by ordinary people in the Chinese river town of Zhenjiang.Fear swept Zhenjiang as British soldiers gathered outside the city walls in the summer of 1842. Already suspicious of foreigners, locals had also heard of the suffering the British inflicted two months earlier, in Zhapu. A wave of suicides and mercy killings ensued: rather than leave their families to the invaders, hundreds of women killed themselves and their children or died at the hands of male family members. British observers decried an “Asian culture” of ritual suicide. In reality, the event was sui generis—a tragic result of colliding local and global forces in nineteenth-century China.Xin Zhang's groundbreaking history examines the intense negotiations between local societies and global changes that created modern China. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, world-historic political, economic, and technological developments transformed the textures of everyday life in places like Zhenjiang, a midsize river town in China's prosperous Lower Yangzi region. Drawing on rare primary sources, including handwritten diaries and other personal writings, Zhang offers a ground-level view of globalization in the city. We see civilians coping with the traumatic international encounters of the Opium War; Zhenjiang brokers bankrolling Shanghai's ascendance as a cosmopolitan commercial hub; and merchants shipping goods to market, for the first time, on steamships.Far from passive recipients, the Chinese leveraged, resisted, and made change for themselves. Indeed, The Global in the Local argues that globalization is inevitably refracted through local particularities.

The book summarizes the emerging topic about the effects of SMF on biological samples ranging from single molecules, subcellular compartments, and cells to whole organisms. It also discusses the potential application of SMF in clinical treatment of cancer, pain, diabetes and other diseases.With the development and growing popularity of modern appliances like MRI in hospitals, the potential impact of magnetic fields on human health is invoking increasing concerns. At the same time, SMF has been explored in the treatment of tumor and other diseases for decades. Nevertheless, there are still some reservations and uncertainties about these treatments, which are largely due to the differential biological effects reported in the literature. These experimental inconsistencies are mainly caused by variations such as different magnetic field types, intensities, treatment time, as well as biological samples examined. The second edition added eight new chapters about new progressin this field including impacts of SMFs, magnetism of biomolecules, and potential of SMFs in the management of bone, pain, diabetes, and immune systems. This volume will help clarify some dilemmas in this field and encourage further investigations in order to achieve a better understanding of the biological effects of SMF, aiming for a rational application of SMF in clinical therapy in the near future. The book is useful for scientists, doctors, and students who are interested in magnetic fields and life sciences

This book provides updated, full-picture analysis of the laws and practices of cross-border debt finance in the PRC. It is featured by the first-handed experiences of the author's academic research and legal practice in this field over two decades. The author discusses legal and regulatory issues, transaction structures and documentation in relation to two debt finance products: loan and bond, covering the inbound structure (Chinese debtors'raising funds from the international market) and the outbound structure (Chinese creditors'supplying funds to the international market). For cross-border loans, this book thoroughly illustrates the foreign debt regulatory regime in the PRC and approaches the lending by Chinese banks to support exports and overseas investments under the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). For cross-border bonds, it discusses how Chinese issuers, by designing various transaction structures, enter into the international bond market, and then researches the “opening-up” of Chinese bond market to both international issuers (for issuing “Panda Bonds”) and investors (for purchasing Chinese bonds). This book is used as an authoritative source for not only students and researchers, but also bankers and legal practitioners, who are interested in the Chinese debt finance market.

This book presents a systematic study on the air balancing technologies in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Several modern air balancing methods, including advanced control-based air balancing, data-driven-based air balancing, and energy-saving-oriented air balancing, are introduced in this book to balance the air duct system. Furthermore, this book provides clear instructions for both HVAC designers and engineers, as well as researchers, on how to design and balance duct systems for improved performance and energy efficiency.

This book introduces a family of large-signal stability-based control methods for different power inverters (grid-connected inverter, standalone inverter, single-phase inverter, and three-phase inverter) in practical applications. Power inverters have stability issues, which include the inverter's own instability as well as the inverter's instability in relation to the other power electronic devices in the system (i.e., weak grid and the EMI filter). Most of the stability analyses and solutions are based on small-signal stability technology. Unfortunately, in actuality, the majority of practical instability concerns in power inverter systems are large-signal stability problems, which, when compared to small-signal stability problems, can cause substantial damage to electrical equipment. As a result, researchers must conduct a comprehensive investigation of the large-signal stability challenge and solutions for power inverters. This book can be used as a reference for researchers, power inverters manufacturers, and end-users. As a result, the book will not become obsolete in the near future, regardless of technology advancements.

The Third Space and Chinese Language Pedagogy presents the Third Space as a new frame through which foreign language pedagogy is conceptualized as a pedagogy of negotiating intentions and expectations in another culture. The field of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) in the past decades has been expanding rapidly at the beginning and intermediate levels, yet it is lacking in scholarship on the true advanced level both in theory building and research-supported curriculum and material development. This book argues that it is time for CFL to go beyond merely satisfying the desire of gazing at the other, whether it is curiosity about the other or superiority over the other, to focusing on learning to work with the other. It reimagines the field as co-constructing a transcultural Third Space where learners are becoming experts in negotiating intentions and expectations in another culture. It presents a range of research-based CFL pedagogical scholarship and practices especially relevant to the advanced level and to the goal of enabling learners to go past fans or critics to become actors/players in the game of cross-lingual and intercultural cooperation.

Magnetic field is a ubiquitous physical field. Humans have long been aware that certain birds can use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate. Indeed, such phenomenon inspired people to explore the biological effects of magnetic field and the underlying mechanism. The man-made ultra-high or ultra-weak magnetic fields provide excellent experimental conditions for material sciences and life sciences. Since the beginning of the 1990s, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been widely introduced as a stand-alone diagnostic technique in hospitals. As the image quality of MRI is positively correlated with the strength of the magnetic field, MRI instrument equipped with ever stronger magnet has been built, from 1.5 to 3 Tesla and higher. There is an urgent need to understand the safety limit of the maximum magnetic field strength on human health.This book mainly focuses on the progresses of inter-disciplinary researches of high magnetic fields and life sciences by researchers from mainland China. The topics covered can be roughly divided into two major categories. One is to study the effects of high magnetic fields on biological samples, such as cell, humans and animals. The other is to utilize techniques that based on high magnetic field to study biological questions, such as using NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) in structural biology and medical imaging. The researches about the biological effects of high magnetic fields are very interesting and inspiring, but still at a very initial stage. More studies are needed to promote the scientific development of this field, and their potential applications in medicine.

'This book is about Crystallization via Nonclassical Pathways, Volume 1: Nucleation, Assembly, Observation & Application'--

This timely book documents marvelous brachiopod fossils from the Palaeozoic-Mesozoic transition of South China. Numerous beautiful pictures and detailed descriptions (specifically the measurements of body size) of brachiopod species are presented. Systematic discussion on the evolution of brachiopod biodiversity and morphological features across the critical interval is not only extremely important for paleontologists to understand the marine ecosystem evolution from the Palaeozoic to the Mesozoic, but also attractive for students who need to know about the end-Permian mass extinction.The book distinguishes itself from other studies by its detailed study of the taxonomy, biodiversity and paleoecology of Permian-Triassic brachiopods from different palaeogeographic facies, especially from the deep-water environment in South China. The book also offers a unique study of the response of morphological features of brachiopods to palaeoenvironmental changes, providing insights for the process of Permian-Triassic crisis.

This book presents essential new insights in research and applications concerning spatial information technologies and coastal disaster prevention modeling for oceanic and coastal regions. As a new research domain of Digital Earth, it covers the latest scientific and technical advances, from the acquisition and integration of observational data, ocean spatio-temporal analysis and coastal flood forecasting to frequency modeling and the development of technical platforms. The individual chapters will be of interest to specialists in oceanic and coastal monitoring and management who deal with aspects of data integration, sharing, visualization, and spatio-temporal analysis from a Digital Earth perspective.

The book summarizes the emerging topic about the effects of SMF on biological samples ranging from single molecules, subcellular compartments, and cells to whole organisms, as well as the potential application of SMF in clinical treatment of cancer and other diseases. With the development and growing popularity of modern appliances, including MRI in the hospitals, the potential impact of magnetic fields on human health is invoking increasing concerns. At the same time, SMF has been used in the clinical treatment of tumors and other diseases for decades. However, there are still some reservations and uncertainties about these treatments, which are largely due to the differential biological effects reported in the literature. These experimental inconsistencies are mainly caused by variations such as different magnetic field types, intensities, treatment time as well as biological samples examined. This volume will help clarify some dilemmas in this field and encourage further investigations in order to achieve a better understanding of the biological effects of SMF, aiming for a rational application of SMF in clinical therapy in the near future. The book is useful for scientists doctors, and students who are interested in magnetic fields and life sciences.

This book introduces data-driven remaining useful life prognosis techniques, and shows how to utilize the condition monitoring data to predict the remaining useful life of stochastic degrading systems and to schedule maintenance and logistics plans. It is also the first book that describes the basic data-driven remaining useful life prognosis theory systematically and in detail. The emphasis of the book is on the stochastic models, methods and applications employed in remaining useful life prognosis. It includes a wealth of degradation monitoring experiment data, practical prognosis methods for remaining useful life in various cases, and a series of applications incorporated into prognostic information in decision-making, such as maintenance-related decisions and ordering spare parts. It also highlights the latest advances in data-driven remaining useful life prognosis techniques, especially in the contexts of adaptive prognosis for linear stochastic degrading systems, nonlinear degradation modeling based prognosis, residual storage life prognosis, and prognostic information-based decision-making.

This book focuses on the stellar disk evolution and gas disk turbulence of the most numerous galaxies in the local Universe – the dwarf galaxies. The “outside-in” disk shrinking mode was established for a relatively large sample of dwarf galaxies for the first time, and this is in contrast to the “inside-out” disk growth mode found for spiral galaxies. Double exponential brightness profiles also correspond to double exponential stellar mass profiles for dwarf galaxies, which is again different from most spiral galaxies. The cool gas distribution in dwarf galaxies was probed with the spatial power spectra of hydrogen iodide (HI) gas emission, and provided indirect evidence that inner disks of dwarf galaxies have proportionally more cool gas than outer disks. The finding that no correlation exists between gas power spectral indices and star formation gave important constraints on the relation between turbulence and star formation in dwarf galaxies.

This book discusses how biological molecules exert their function and regulate biological processes, with a clear focus on how conformational dynamics of proteins are critical in this respect. In the last decade, the advancements in computational biology, nuclear magnetic resonance including paramagnetic relaxation enhancement, and fluorescence-based ensemble/single-molecule techniques have shown that biological molecules (proteins, DNAs and RNAs) fluctuate under equilibrium conditions. The conformational and energetic spaces that these fluctuations explore likely contain active conformations that are critical for their function. More interestingly, these fluctuations can respond actively to external cues, which introduces layers of tight regulation on the biological processes that they dictate. A growing number of studies have suggested that conformational dynamics of proteins govern their role in regulating biological functions, examples of this regulation can be found in signal transduction, molecular recognition, apoptosis, protein / ion / other molecules translocation and gene expression. On the experimental side, the technical advances have offered deep insights into the conformational motions of a number of proteins. These studies greatly enrich our knowledge of the interplay between structure and function. On the theoretical side, novel approaches and detailed computational simulations have provided powerful tools in the study of enzyme catalysis, protein / drug design, protein / ion / other molecule translocation and protein folding/aggregation, to name but a few. This work contains detailed information, not only on the conformational motions of biological systems, but also on the potential governing forces of conformational dynamics (transient interactions, chemical and physical origins, thermodynamic properties). New developments in computational simulations will greatly enhance our understanding of how these molecules function invarious biological events.

Bridging the gap between textbook diagrams and the complex reality of histological preparations, this magnificent atlas of human microanatomy is designed to help students understand the complex structures encountered when viewing microscopic sections of tissues. Instead of simply depicting an individual section, each drawing is a compilation of the key structures and features seen in many preparations from similar tissues or organs. Invaluable to students in a range of life science and medical disciplines including human and veterinary medicine, dentistry, mammalian biology, pharmacy, and nursing.

Proteins act as macromolecular machinery that mediate many diverse biological processes - the molecular mechanisms of this machinery has fascinated biologists for decades. Analysis of the kinetic and thermodynamic features of these mechanisms could reveal unprecedented aspects of how the machinery function and will eventually lead to a novel understanding of various biological processes. This dissertation comprehensively demonstrates how two universally conserved guanosine triphosphatases in the signal recognition particle and its membrane receptor maintain the efficiency and fidelity of the co-translational protein targeting process essential to all cells. A series of quantitative experiments reveal that the highly ordered and coordinated conformational states of the machinery are the key to their regulatory function. This dissertation also offers a mechanistic view of another fascinating system in which multistate protein machinery closely control critical biological processes.Written while completing graduate work at California Institute of Technology.

This book presents a comprehensive survey of Chinese legal and regulatory systems governing international trade following China's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the coming into force of the revised PRC Foreign Trade Law. It provides a systematic and in-depth analysis on the text of applicable Chinese laws and rules,with a particular focus on their practical application. It also critically explores whether international trade regulation in China complies with the WTO Agreement both in the text and in spirit and identifies areas where improvements by Chinese trade regulators would be desirable.The book starts with an analysis of basic issues of international trade regulation in China. Part II, covers foreign trading rights, trade restrictions and prohibitions, licensing and quotas, customs regulation, health, safety and technical standards, and trade in technology. Part III discusses trade protection and remedies available under PRC law, in the form of anti-dumping law, anti-subsidy law, safeguarding measures and trade retaliation. Part IV explores new regulatory issues, including trade promotion, trade and competition, trade and IP rights protection, and resolution of trade disputes. The book combines analysis with detailed practical advice and will be of interest to academics, practitioners and policy makers.