Lu Ning, former assistant to a vice-foreign minister of China, draws on archival materials, interviews, and personal experiences, to provide unique insights into the formal and informal structures, processes, mechanisms, and dynamics of--and key players in--foreign-policy decisionmaking in Beijing. Lu Ning sheds light on controversial decisions that were made, such as China's entering the Korean War, selling DF-3 missiles to Saudi Arabia in 1986, and cooperating with the Israeli defense es...

Landslides are caused by a failure of the mechanical balance within hillslopes. This balance is governed by two coupled physical processes: hydrological or subsurface flow and stress. The stabilizing strength of hillslope materials depends on effective stress, which is diminished by rainfall. This book presents a cutting-edge quantitative approach to understanding hydro-mechanical processes across variably saturated hillslope environments and to the study and prediction of rainfall-induced...

Energy storage is a main component of any holistic consideration of smart grids, particularly when incorporating power derived from variable, distributed and renewable energy resources. Energy Storage for Smart Grids delves into detailed coverage of the entire spectrum of available and emerging storage technologies, presented in the context of economic and practical considerations. Featuring the latest research findings from the world's foremost energy storage experts, complete with data a...

This SpringerBrief focuses on the network capacity analysis of VANETs, a key topic as fundamental guidance on design and deployment of VANETs is very limited. Moreover, unique characteristics of VANETs impose distinguished challenges on such an investigation. This SpringerBrief first introduces capacity scaling laws for wireless networks and briefly reviews the prior arts in deriving the capacity of VANETs. It then studies the unicast capacity considering the socialized mobility model of V...

This book is the first of its kind to comprehensively describe the principles of demand response. This allows consumers to play a significant role in the operation of the electric grid by reducing or shifting their electricity usage in response to the grid reliability need, time-based rates or other forms of financial incentives. The main contents of the book include modeling of demand response resources, incentive design, scheduling and dispatch algorithms, and impacts on grid operation a...

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the interdisciplinary field of dexterous robotic manipulation, focusing on advanced methods that enable robots to autonomously learn, adapt, and perform a variety of tasks. It covers key topics such as teleoperation systems, advanced control frameworks, and bio-inspired autonomous learning. The book stands out by providing a comprehensive examination of both the technical and theoretical aspects of dexterous manipulation, with a particular emphas...

Algae are sunlight-driven cell factories, and can efficiently absorb CO2 and convert light energy to chemical energy such as lipid, starch and other carbohydrates and release O2. Algal feedstock is a promising resource for bioproduct production, given its high photosynthetic efficiency for producing biomass compared to conventional crops. Microalgae can be used for flue-gas and wastewater bioremediation. This book highlights recent breakthroughs in the multidisciplinary areas of algal biot...

This book focuses on the finite-time control of attitude stabilization, attitude tracking for individual spacecraft, and finite-time control of attitude synchronization. It discusses formation reconfiguration for multiple spacecraft in complex networks, and provides a new fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode surface (FNTSMS). Further, it presents newly designed controllers and several control laws to enhance the performance of spacecraft systems and meet related demands, such as strong d...

This single-volume thoroughly summarizes advances in the past several decades and emerging challenges in fundamental research in geotechnical engineering. These fundamental research frontiers are critically reviewed and described in details in lights of four grand challenges our society faces: climate adaptation, urban sustainability, energy and material resources, and global water resources. The specific areas critically reviewed, carefully examined, and envisioned are: sensing and measur...

Over-pumping of aquifers is a worldwide problem, mainly caused by agricultural water use. Among its consequences are the falling dry of streams and wetlands, soil subsidence, die-off of phreatophytic vegetation, saline water intrusion, increased pumping cost and loss of storage needed for drought relief.Stopping or reversing the trend requires management interventions. The North China Plain serves as an example. A management system is set up for a typical county. It contains three ...

The Electrical Engineer's Handbook is an invaluable reference source for all practicing electrical engineers and students. Encompassing 79 chapters, this book is intended to enlighten and refresh knowledge of the practicing engineer or to help educate engineering students. This text will most likely be the engineer's first choice in looking for a solution; extensive, complete references to other sources are provided throughout. No other book has the breadth and depth of coverage available ...

This important text/reference presents state-of-the-art research on intelligent vehicles, covering not only topics of object/obstacle detection and recognition, but also aspects of vehicle motion control. With an emphasis on both high-level concepts, and practical detail, the text links theory, algorithms, and issues of hardware and software implementation in intelligent vehicle research. Topics and features: presents a thorough introduction to the development and latest progress in intell...