Wireless sensor networks have a range of applications, including military uses and in environmental monitoring. When an area of interest is inaccessible by conventional means, such a network can be deployed in ways resulting in a random distribution of the sensors. Randomly Deployed Wireless Sensor Networks offers a probabilistic method to model and analyze these networks. The book considers the network design, coverage, target detection, localization and tracking of sensors in randomly de...

Xi Chen explores the question of why there has been a dramatic rise in and routinization of social protests in China since the early 1990s. Drawing on case studies, in-depth interviews and a unique data set of about 1,000 government records of collective petitions, this book examines how the political structure in Reform China has encouraged Chinese farmers, workers, pensioners, disabled people and demobilized soldiers to pursue their interests and claim their rights by staging collective ...

This book examines how e-assessment can be implemented in primary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing in an examination-oriented context. It provides valuable insights on e-assessment for learning (E-AfL) to teacher educators and teachers in both local and global contexts, especially teacher educators undertaking professional development programs of assessment in examination-oriented contexts. For researchers and graduate students who are interested in e-assessment for learning (E-...

This book uses the monographic study of litigation subjects, prosecution, trial, and enforcement to reveal the formation, operation, and development of criminal proceeding conventions in the Tang Dynasty. It also outlines the combination, coordination, and interaction of rules, conventions, and ideas in the traditional Chinese legal system, and presents an overview of the evolution and development of traditional litigation in China. This book is intended mainly for scholars and graduate an...

This book presents a systematic framework for risk assessment and predictions of extreme climate impacts using big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and intelligent monitoring technologies. Central to this effort is the concept of a smart water grid, a 'digital water network', capable of real-time monitoring, rapid transmission, accurate forecasting, optimized decision-making, precise allocation, and efficient management especially during floods and droughts.Building on case...

Towards Energy-Efficient Buildings: Envelope Technologies and Sustainable Energy Systems examines the intersection of building design and energy systems analysis, paving the way to sustainable, efficient buildings and our communal energy future. This book begins by outlining the major energy challenges for buildings and the fundamentals and opportunities in envelope technology for their increasing the efficiency of their energy systems. Close analysis of various technologies is then carrie...

Toward Better Governance in China takes a fresh look at the latest efforts made by Chinese leaders to promote governance-based reform. It asserts that the improvement of governance has now become one of the breakthrough points of the much anticipated political reform. Although the Chinese government continues to play down expectations about political reform, many small-scale reform experiments have been quietly undertaken by Chinese leaders at various levels in recent years, inclu...

Reading in a Second Language offers a comprehensive survey of the phenomenon and process of reading in a second language, with graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and applied psychology as its primary audience. The book explores reading processes from a number of complementary standpoints, integrating perspectives from fields such as first and second language reading, second language acquisition, linguistics, psycholin...

Co-opting Culture: Culture and Power in Sociology and Cultural Studies represents a collection of new scholarship on culture from the social sciences and from work done under the rubric of "cultural studies". Working from the idea that Sociology and Cultural Studies have developed distinct and valuable toolkits for understanding culture, the editors have brought together a collection of essays that address the ways in which the cultures around race, sex, and gender are mediated th...

Reliability Based Aircraft Maintenance Optimization and Applications presents flexible and cost-effective maintenance schedules for aircraft structures, particular in composite airframes. By applying an intelligent rating system, and the back-propagation network (BPN) method and FTA technique, a new approach was created to assist users in determining inspection intervals for new aircraft structures, especially in composite structures. This book also discusses the influence of Structure Hea...

Do our ideas about social movements travel successfully beyond the democratic West? Unrest in China, from the dramatic events of 1989 to more recent stirrings, offers a rare opportunity to explore this question and to consider how popular contention unfolds in places where speech and assembly are tightly controlled. The contributors to this volume, all prominent scholars of Chinese politics and society, argue that ideas inspired by social movements elsewhere can help explain popular protes...

Complexity theory aims to understand and classify computational problems, especially decision problems, according to their inherent complexity. This book uses new techniques to expand the theory for use with counting problems. The authors present dichotomy classifications for broad classes of counting problems in the realm of P and NP. Classifications are proved for partition functions of spin systems, graph homomorphisms, constraint satisfaction problems, and Holant problems. The book ass...