Build Accurate, Grounded, and Trustworthy AI Systems with Retrieval-Augmented GenerationLarge language models are powerful—but they hallucinate. Advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation offers a complete guide from the foundations of information retrieval (IR) to the cutting-edge frontiers of RAG. Bridging large language models (LLMs) and knowledge graphs (KGs), this book provides the theoretical principles, practical techniques, and hands-on frameworks nee...

This book aims to provide a wide range of real-world applications in using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for geographic observation, spatial modeling, and urban informatics. Specifically, UAVs are incredibly effective platforms for connecting people, places, and technology. This book explores the utility of UAVs for monitoring, measuring, and improving urban infrastructure systems, urban sustainability, and the urban environment. The dynamism of cities provides opportunities for economic...

This book tackles the infodemic—the rapid, widespread diffusion of false, misleading, or inaccurate information about the disease and its ramifications—triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a focus on four Asian societies, the book compares and analyzes the spread of COVID-19 misinformation and its broad impacts on the public in Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Singapore.Providing both a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of misinformation and cross-societal analyses of pat...

Since the debut of the iPhone in 2007, the mobile phone has become a quick, convenient, and immensely popular gateway for accessing and consuming news. With three billion mobile phone subscribers, Asian countries have led this seismic shift in news consumption. They provide a wide range of opportunities to study how, as mobile technology matures and becomes routinized, mobile news is increasingly subject to societal constraints and impositions of political power that reduce the democratic ...

Biomethane Production from Vegetable and Water Hyacinth Waste explores the production of biomethane from vegetable waste and water hyacinth via anaerobic fermentation, focusing on effect factors, control methods and optimization. The book introduces principles and key technologies before proceeding into a deeper exploration of the fundamentals of municipal vegetable waste, such as composition, main indicators, experiment devices, and pretreatment. Processes to produce volatile fatty acids ...

Providing leading-edge perspectives on the legacy theories of mass media and society, this collection advances the foundational theories of mass communications, which have sustained the field of study over the past fifty years. Many of these contributions were originally published as a Deutschmann Scholarly Essay in the Mass Communication and Society journal, and together they comprise a remarkable source of knowledge, equipped to lead mass communications theory through the emerge...

This book explores how personalized content and the inherent networked nature of the mobile media could and do lead to positive externalities in social progress in Asian societies. Empirical studies that examine uses of the mobile phone and apps (voice mailing, SMS, mobile social media, mobile Weibo, mobile WeChat, etc.) are featured as a response to calls for theorization of the mobile media's efficacy as a tool for citizen engagement and participation in civic and political affairs, espe...

The 21st century has been called ‘the Asian Century’ by Eastern and Western academics, largely due to the economic and cultural rise of China and India. This volume explores both what this means for communication research, and the implications of Asia’s rising global power for communication scholars in Asia and from around the world. Hot topics and emerging trends are explored, encapsulating the new opportunities as well as the challenges for Asian communication scholars.Asia repre...

The ‘Milestones’ essays in Mass Communication and Society are reflective and analytical articles by the most notable scholars in the field. These classic essays address 21st century issues from the pioneers of media and communication studies, including Elihu Katz on new media and social movements, George Gerbner on cultivation analysis, and Dietram Scheufele on political communication. As technologies evolve and mass communication becomes mobilized and democratized - more individu...

This book looks at how information and communication technology and e-government influences power relations in public administration in China. It highlights the role of technology in combating corruption, and clarifies the interplay between ideas, institutions and technologies in shaping the foundation for organisational change. Using fieldwork based case studies, the book provides an incisive view into the working processes of the Chinese administration previously inaccessible to research...

This book offers a truly interdisciplinary exploration of our patterns of engagement with politics, news, and information in current high-choice information environments. Putting forth the notion that high-choice information environments may contribute to increasing misperceptions and knowledge resistance rather than greater public knowledge, the book offers insights into the processes that influence the supply of misinformation and factors influencing how and why people expose themselves ...

This book offers students a comprehensive, theoretical, and practical guide to communication theory. Croucher defines the various perspectives on communication theory—the social scientific, interpretive, and critical approaches—and then takes on the theories themselves, with topics including interpersonal communication, organizational communication, intercultural communication, persuasion, critical and rhetorical theory and other key concepts. Each theory chapter includes a sample undergra...