This collection features four peer-reviewed reviews on African swine fever.The first chapter reviews recent research on the causes and epidemiology of African swine fever (ASF). It discusses the causative agent for ASF, its origins in Africa and its subsequent spread into other regions of the world. The chapter focusses on the distribution of genotype I and II strains of ASF and summarises the clinical indicators of the disease, as well as the different cycles invo...

This book is the first to systematically explore experimental erosion by integrating theory, erosion observations, and conservation applications. Although numerous books have been published on soil erosion both in English and in Chinese, none has concentrated on experimental studies on the Loess Plateau of China, in an attempt to establish a new sub-discipline: experimental erosion.One main objective of this book is to highlight monitoring and modeling methods for soil scientists w...

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 improving the performance (convergence rate, communication efficiency, computational efficiency, etc.) of algorithms in the context of distributed optimization in networked systems and their successful application to real-world applications (smart grids and online learning). Readers may be particularly interested in the sections on consensus protocols, optimization skills, accelerated mechanisms, event-triggered strategies, variance-reduction communication techniques, ...

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...

This book explores admissible consensus analysis and design problems concerning singular multi-agent systems, addressing various impact factors including time delays, external disturbances, switching topologies, protocol states, topology structures, and performance constraint. It also discusses the state-space decomposition method, a key technique that can decompose the motions of singular multi-agent systems into two parts: the relative motion and the whole motion. The relative motion is ...

This book investigates in detail production scheduling technology in different kinds of shop environment to achieve sustainability manufacturing. Studies on shop scheduling have attracted engineers and scientists from various disciplines, such as electrical, mechanical, automation, computer, and industrial engineering. Pursuing a holistic approach, the book establishes a fundamental framework for this topic, while emphasizing the importance of intelligent optimization and the significant i...

This monograph presents new developments in multi-level decision-making theory, technique and method in both modeling and solution issues. It especially presents how a decision support system can support managers in reaching a solution to a multi-level decision problem in practice.This monograph combines decision theories, methods, algorithms and applications effectively. It discusses in detail the models and solution algorithms of each issue of bi-level and tri-level decision-maki...

In four chapters and an introduction, this book systematically helps readers understand the development of the Geographical Sciences both in China and in the world during the past 30 years.Through data analysis of methodologies including CiteSpace, TDA, qualitative analysis, questionnaires, data mining and mathematical statistics, the book explains the evolution of research topics and their driving factors in the Geographical Sciences and its four branches, namely Physical Geograph...

Adsorption and Degradation of Emerging Contaminants in Soils and Water is an essential resource for understanding the removal of emerging contaminants from the environment. This book dives deep into topics such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, perfluoroalkyl substances, and microplastics, offering readers a comprehensive view of adsorption and degradation mechanisms. It discusses sustainable recovery approaches and the prospects for a circular economy, providing valuable insight...

This book consists of papers on the recent progresses in the state-of-the-art in images, signals, and their intersections with computing. The book can be useful for researchers, including professors, graduate students, as well as R & D staff in the industry, with a general interest in images, signals, and their intersections with computing. The work printed in this book was presented at the 2024 2nd International Conference on Images, Signals, and Computing (ICISC 2024), held from 21-23 Se...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th CCF Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, ChineseCSCW 2019, held in Kunming, China, in August 2019.The 52 revised full papers and 10 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 169 submissions. The papers of this volume are organized in topical sections on: collaborative models, approaches, algorithms, and systems; social computing (online communities, crowdsourcing, recommendati...