China’s rise as an aid provider in Africa has caught global attention, with China’s activity being viewed as the projection of soft power of a neo-colonialist kind in an international relations context. This book, which focuses on China’s education aid—government scholarships, training, Confucius Institutes, dispatched teachers, etc., reveals a much more complicated picture. It outlines how the divide between the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education hinders China’s so...

In this book the author explores the work and living experiences of Confucius Institute Chinese teachers (CICTs) in the UK, how they interpret and make sense of their sojourning experience, and how this context and the wider globalised social environment have impacted on their understandings and their personal growth. Because of their betwixt and between situation, the CICTs’ stories differ from those of other immigrants, international students and pre-service student teachers, who have be...

This book examines Sino-African relations and their impact on Africa. It argues that Africa’s relationship with China has had a profound impact on key sectors in Africa—economic and political development, the media, infrastructural development, foreign direct investments, loans, debt peonage, and international relations. The authors also analyze the imperialist and neo-colonialist implications of this relationship and discuss the degree to which the relationship is beneficial to Africa.

This book investigates the performance analysis and optimization design of parallel manipulators in detail. It discusses performance evaluation indices for workspace, kinematic, stiffness, and dynamic performance, single- and multi-objective optimization design methods, and ways to improve optimization design efficiency of parallel manipulators. This book collects the authors’ research results previously scattered in many journals and conference proceedings and presents them in a unified f...

This book focuses on the synthesis of lower-mobility parallel manipulators, presenting a group-theory-based method that has the advantage of being geometrically intrinsic. Rotations and translations of a rigid body as well as a combination of the two can be expressed and handled elegantly using the group algebraic structure of the set of rigid-body displacements. The book gathers the authors’ research results, which were previously scattered in various journals and conference proceedings, ...

Structural Reliability in Civil Engineering gives essential insights into the complexities of uncertainty in engineered structures, along with practical examples and advanced methods, making it an invaluable resource for both theory and real-world application in your civil engineering projects.Uncertainties are associated with the design, evaluation, and dynamic analysis of engineered structures. Structural Reliability in Civil Enginee...

The development of earth observation and computing technology has promoted the wide application of spatio-temporal big data and artificial intelligence. The enrichment of data and the improvement of computational performance make it possible to perform spatio-temporal analysis and computation on a larger scale. Therefore, it is necessary to study the optimization methods and application methods of high-performance geocomputing, starting from GIS architecture, in order to form a high-perfor...

The rise of cloud computing and Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has revolutionized data analytics pipelines. Analysts can collect, store, and process vast datasets in the cloud with high availability and scalability, and also leverage Generative AI to query and visualize datasets in natural languages. This pioneering textbook provides a gateway for students, educators, and professionals to develop and enhance social data analytics capabilities with the latest cloud computing and AI...

This book presents a systematic exploration of ancient Chinese literary criticism, spanning from the pre-Qin period to the late Qing Dynasty. Structured chronologically into seven parts, each section comprises chapters dedicated to influential literati. The study examines the prevailing intellectual climate, sociocultural context, literary characteristics, and the evolution of literary thought across different historical stages. It highlights the transmission and transformation of ideas am...

This two-volume set constitutes the proceedings of the 20th International Symposium, ISVC 2025, held in Las Vegas, NV, USA, during November 17–19, 2025.The 54 full papers and 18 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 118 submissions. The papers cover the following topical sections:Part I: Deep Learning; Computer Graphics; Motion and Tracking; Applications; Object Detection and Recognition; Medical Imaging, and Virtual Reality.Part II: Segmentation; 3D...

This two-volume set constitutes the proceedings of the 20th International Symposium, ISVC 2025, held in Las Vegas, NV, USA, during November 17–19, 2025.The 54 full papers and 18 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 118 submissions. The papers cover the following topical sections:Part I: Deep Learning; Computer Graphics; Motion and Tracking; Applications; Object Detection and Recognition; Medical Imaging, and Virtual Reality.Part II: Segmentation; 3D...

This two-volume set LNICST 286-287 constitutes the post-conference proceedings of the First EAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Communications and Networks, AICON 2019, held in Harbin, China, in May 2019. The 93 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 152 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on artificial intelligence, mobile network, deep learning, machine learning, wireless communication, cognitive radio, internet of things, big ...