A new perspective for understanding the technology behind goods “made in China”The exquisite ceramic ware produced at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory at Jingdezhen in southern China functioned as a kind of visual propaganda for the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) court. Porcelain for the Emperor charts the career of bannerman Tang Ying, a technocrat in the porcelain industry, through the first half of the eighteenth century to uncover the wider role of special...

Ecostacking is a new concept and approach which aims to maximize the benefits of ecosystem service providers in cropping systems to help achieve the goal of long-term sustainable agriculture and food production. The term "ecostacking" means combining synergistically the beneficial services of functional biodiversity from all levels and types. It is a comprehensive approach, where the various ecosystem service providers are fully integrated with the rest of the cropping system including agr...

The energy demands of contemporary society mandate the urgent development and commercialisation of a ‘post-Li-ion battery’. Metal anodes are an important piece of this puzzle. This research and reference text discusses the role of metal electrodes in batteries in detail. Introducing the fundamental theoretical properties of metal anodes, the book surveys the history and prospects of the field, covering a wide range of metals, including Li, Na, K, Mg, Al, Zn, Ge, Sn, Sb and Bi. The first bo...

This book is one of the major courses for specialty of hydropower engineering. Hydropower is the most important renewable and green energy, with great development prospects in the developing countries. It contains 4 parts with 13 chapters, in which the basic concepts, basic theories, design principles, and analysis methods on turbines, water conveyance system, hydraulic transients, and powerhouses are elaborated by incorporating many practical examples. This book can be used not only as th...

Making the Palace Machine Work: Mobilizing People, Objects, and Nature in the Qing Empire brings the studies of institutions, labour, and material cultures to bear on the history of science and technology by tracing the workings of the Imperial Household Department (Neiwufu) in the Qing court and empire. An enormous apparatus that employed 22,000 men and women at its heyday, the Department operated a machine with myriad moving parts. The first part of the book portrays th...