This is the second edition of an introductory text that describes the principles of invariant measurement; how invariant measurement can be achieved using Rasch measurement theory; and how to use invariant measurement to solve a variety of measurement problems in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. Rasch models are used throughout the text, but brief comparisons of Rasch models to other item response theory (IRT) models are also provided.Written with students in mind, this...

This book introduces current perspectives on Rasch measurement theory with an emphasis on developing Rasch-based scales. Rasch measurement theory represents a paradigm shift in measurement theory away from classical test theory and creates a framework for scaling that can yield invariant measurement. Rasch Models for Solving Measurement Problems: Invariant Measurement in the Social Sciences is a broadly accessible text. Authors George Engelhard Jr and Jue Wang introduce Ra...

Can Christian identity and national identity be reconciled? For Christians in China, this question is particularly fraught. While Sinicization offers the indigenous church one path forward, it fails to provide a tenable solution for believers unwilling to submit their love of God under love of country. Dr. Jue Wang explores an alternative roadmap for Chinese Christian identity in the writings of Zhang Yijing. The editor of True Light, a Chinese Baptist publication, Zhang was also a Chinese...

Building on the recent initiative to truly globalize the field of international relations, this book provides an innovative interrogation of regionalism.The book applies a globalizing framework to the study of regional worlds in order to move beyond the traditional conception of regionalism, which views regions as competing blocs dominated by great powers. Bringing together a wide range of case studies, the book shows that regions are instead dynamic configurations of social and po...

To thrive, every living cell must continuously gauge and respond to changes in its environment. These changes are ultimately implemented by modulating gene expression, a process that relies on transcription by Nature’s most multivalent molecular machine, the RNA polymerase. This book covers progress made over the past decade understanding how this machine functions to compute the cellular state, from the atomistic structural level responsible for chemistry to the integrative level at which...

This book presents the most recent state-of-the-art algorithms on robust environmental perception and reliability control for intelligent vehicle systems. By integrating object detection, semantic segmentation, trajectory prediction, multi-object tracking, multi-sensor fusion, and reliability control in a systematic way, this book is aimed at guaranteeing that intelligent vehicles can run safely in complex road traffic scenes.Adopts the multi-sensor data fusion-based neural n...

Molecular Biology: Academic Cell Update Edition Study Guide aims to help students get a better grasp of important concepts in Molecular Biology: Academic Cell Update. Each of the chapters in this study guide contains a summary that lets students see the bigger picture, that is, how all the techniques fit together in that chapter. A list of terms is presented in a concise format rather than spread throughout the textbook chapter to help the student remember these key terms in preparation fo...

This open access book discusses the theory and methods of hypergraph computation.Many underlying relationships among data can be represented using graphs, for example in the areas including computer vision, molecular chemistry, molecular biology, etc. In the last decade, methods like graph-based learning and neural network methods have been developed to process such data, they are particularly suitable for handling relational learning tasks. In many real-world problems, however, re...

While the subject of migration has received enormous attention in academic journals and books across the social sciences, introductory texts on the matter are few and far between. Even fewer books have explored migration through a critical and explicit engagement with spatial concepts.Now in its second edition, Migration remains the only text in more than a decade that emphasizes how geographical or spatial concepts can be used critically to understand migration. The multi...

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of the basic principles of structural biology, as well as an up-to-date summary of some main directions of research in the field. The relationship between structure and function is described in detail for soluble proteins, membrane proteins, membranes, and nucleic acids.There are several books covering protein structure and function, but none that give a complete picture, including nucleic acids, lipids, membranes and carbohydrates, all being of ...

The 13-volume set LNCS 14425-14437 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th Chinese Conference on Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision, PRCV 2023, held in Xiamen, China, during October 13–15, 2023.The 532 full papers presented in these volumes were selected from 1420 submissions. The papers have been organized in the following topical sections: Action Recognition, Multi-Modal Information Processing, 3D Vision and Reconstruction, Character Recognition, Fundamental Theory o...

Applauded for its clarity, this accessible introduction helps readers apply multilevel techniques to their research. The book also includes advanced extensions, making it useful as both an introduction for students and as a reference for researchers. Basic models and examples are discussed in nontechnical terms with an emphasis on understanding the methodological and statistical issues involved in using these models. The estimation and interpretation of multilevel models is demonstrated us...