The Sinews of State Power seeks to explain why rural China has been so unstable since 2000, despite numerous national reforms. Using original fieldwork, it traces the rise and demise of cohesive local states in rural China since the Maoist era. It shows that, the county, township, and village levels of government, when in alliance, have facilitated economic growth and caused social grievances. However, national reforms redressing local deviation, together with individual responses...

China in the Era of Social Media discusses how social media is changing the world in an unprecedented way through speed, scope, and depth. In the last decade or so, social media in China has witnessed the most explosive growth in the world. Being the most populous nation in the world, it has the most social media users in the world as well. This book examines the current situation and unique characteristics of Chinese social media, the significance of social media in the country’s...

Comprehensive, systematic review of advances in key CRISPR/Cas technologies, such as TALENS and zinc finger nucleases, double-strand break repair techniques, insertion-based genome edits, base editing, guide RNAs, gRNA/Cas9 constructs and CRISPR/Cas off targetingCovers both techniques and their practical application to particular cereal and other cropsDiscusses challenges in regulating this emerging technology

Progress in Brain Research serial highlights new advances in the field with this new volume presenting interesting chapters. Each chapter is written by an international board of authors. - An authoritative opinion piece on the evolving landscape of research into physical exercise and cognitive function. - Systematical review articles offering a synthesis of existing research and key conclusions on the field of exercise and cognition. - Original research articles presenting new findings on ...

Drylands, a home for nearly 2.5 billion people, are highly vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change, and dryland area may expand to 50% of the Earth's surface by 2100. Climate change may aggravate the prevalence of undernutrition and malnutrition because of adverse effects on quantity and quality of food production in these regions. This book takes a holistic approach to sustainable management of drylands to make agriculture drought-resilient. Eminent scientists from around the world sha...

The book addresses and documents farmers' risks in developing and emerging economies. It draws lessons from experimental economics on measuring risk preferences, attitudes, gender differences in managing risks, and risk management strategies in countries across Africa and Asia. It argues policy makers, especially in emerging economies, need a better understanding of farmers' attitudes toward risk and choices of risk management strategies when designing policies to support production agricu...

Enhancement of Brain Functions Prompted by Physical Activity, Volume Two, Volume 286 in the Progress in Brain Research series, highlights new advances, with this updated volume presenting chapters on a variety of timely topics, including Predicting sports performance of elite female soccer players through smart wearable measurement platform, Physical activity and verbal memory performance: mediating effects of resting-state brain activity, Associations between physical activity, body compo...

Distributed Optimal Control of Large-Scale Wind Farm Clusters: Optimal Active and Reactive Power Control, and Fault Ride Through, a new volume in the Elsevier Wind Energy Engineering series, explores the latest advances in distributed optimal control of large-scale wind farm clusters, also describing distributed optimal control techniques for high voltage ride through (HVRT). Both mathematical formulations and algorithm details are provided, along with MATLAB codes to replicate and impleme...

The subject of this book is an analysis of the business models developed or adopted by Chinese small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), specifically those that are successfully listed on China’s capital market; in other words, it is a dissection of those Chinese business models that have “worked.” In China, there are over 10 million companies that are registered with China’s State Industrial and Commercial Administration and over 40 million unregistered businesses. Among them, only about...

Reviews latest research on crop physiology and genetic diversityDetailed coverage of key advances in breeding and their application to produce more resilient drought, salt and cold-tolerant varieties of soybeanSummarises good agricultural practices to optimise crop cultivation and make it more sustainable

Gathering contributions by leading social development scholars, this report offers a comprehensive description of the national development of cultural consumption in China. By comparing the annual growth of cultural consumption, GDP growth, per-capita income growth and savings growth, the authors reveal the disparity between urban and rural areas in terms of cultural consumption, as well as that between provinces. Based on an analysis of the status quo of cultural consumption in China, the...

Particular focus on development of the chicken gut microbiome over the lifetime of the birdReviews interactions between pathogens and the gut and the role of antibiotics in this processComprehensive review of research on efficacy of poultry feed additives: probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, antimicrobials, essential oils and other botanicals, cereal grains