Managing Economic Reforms in Post-Mao China

Book Description

The issue of government or state involvement in the process of economic development and reform has become very popular in the economic development literature. This timely volume examines China's post-Mao economic reforms, and the Chinese government's involvement in the process of managing those reforms. Focusing on management issues, the book considers the state led reforms from a comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective. The work consists of two parts--the experience of China's post-Mao reforms and major issues associated with the reforms. The first part covers the background, stages and measures, and achievements and problems of economic reforms. The second part addresses major changes in China's regional development, administrative system, and state-society relations. A final chapter considers the lessons of China's economic reforms.

Managing Economic Reform in Post-mao China.

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Managing Economic Reform in Post-mao China.
Kuotsai Tom Liou
Manufacturer: Praeger
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N67BOO

Book Description

This volume contains twenty-six chapters on the biotechnology of medicinal and aromatic plants. It deals with the distribution, economic importance, conventional propagation, micropropagation, tissue culture studies, and the in vitro production of important medicinal and pharmaceutical compounds in various species of Achillea, Anethum, Aquilaria, Arnica, Aspergillus, Astragalus, Catalpa, Chelidonium, Eremophila, Eucalyptus, Eucommia, Geranium, Heterocentron, Hypericum, Maclura, Morinda, Mortierella, Nicotiana, Phaseolus, Pinellia, Piqueria, Psorales, Rhodiola, Sanguisorba, Valeriana, and Vancouveria.

Book Description

There exists quite a vast literature on mobile robots, covering fundamental principles on motion control and path-planning in indoor environments using ultrasonic/laser transducers. However, there is a scarcity of books/collective documents on vision based navigation of mobile robots and multi-agent systems. The book fills this gap and attempts to develop interesting models for vision based map building in indoor and outdoor environments, precise motion control, navigation in dynamic environment, and above all multi-agent co-operation of robots. The most important aspect of this book is that the principles and models introduced in the text are all field-tested, and thus can readily be used in solving real world problems, such as factory automation, disposal of nuclear wastes, landmine clearing and computerized surgery. Primarily meant for graduate students and researchers in robotics, the book is equally useful to interested audience of any discipline for its contents and simplicity in presentation style.

Real World Applications of Computational Intelligence (Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing)

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Real World Applications of Computational Intelligence (Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3540250069

Book Description

Computational Intelligence (CI) has emerged as a novel and highly diversified paradigm supporting the design, analysis and deployment of intelligent systems. This book presents a careful selection of the field that very well reflects the breadth of the discipline. It covers a range of highly relevant and practical design principles governing the development of intelligent systems in data mining, robotics, bioinformatics, and intelligent tutoring systems. The lucid presentations, coherent organization, breadth and the authoritative coverage of the area make the book highly attractive for everybody interested in the design and analysis of intelligent systems.

Book Description

From a beginning in an Egyptian Delta town and the port of Alexandria to the scenic vistas of sunny southern California, Ahmed Zewail takes us on a voyage through time -- his own life and the split-second world of the femtosecond. In this engaging exposé of his life and work until his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1999, Zewail explores in non-technical language the landscape of molecules glimpsed on the scale of one quadrillionth of a second: the femtosecond, 0. 000 000 000 000 001 second. Zewail enriches the journey into the strange territory of femtochemistry with insightful analogies and illustrations to aid both the general reader and the scientifically inclined. He likewise draws lessons from his life story so far, and he meditates on the impact the revolution in science has had on our modern world -- in both developed and developing countries. He suggests a concrete course of action for the world of the have-nots, and ends the book with hope for Egypt in developing the nation's greatest natural resource -- its youth -- to build a more promising future, and for America to develop a new vision domestically and internationally.

Customer Reviews:

Femtoscope and Zewail Unit.......2002-11-13

A papyrus of profundity:
One of the most inspiring autobiographies,destined to become a classic,
beautifully illustrated,
what an epitome of wisdom!
Blends the real with the ideal,
a Universal character from Kemet,the land of Maat,
the character of the age who lived an age of character
A mighty clarion call for all to excell,
A map of ideas,
A vision of beauty towards a green knowledge,
A paradigm on Geniization...
As Zewail freezes his book:"The book encapsulates six stations of the journey:childhood, which began on the banks of the Nile and was shaped by the love and confidence of my parents; admission to the Faculty of Science in Alexandria, which defined my science career as well as my engagement to a science student; the scholarship in America, which opened up a whole new world for me; the years of scientific discovery at Caltech, which have changed the way we think about the science of time and matter; the receipt of the King Faisal International Prize, which was the first major prize to recognize my group's contribution and which ultimately provided me with a new family; and the receipt of the Nobel prize, which led to a place in the history of science"
Chapter titles are but genius:
1-On the banks of the Nile
2-The Gate to Science
3-The American Encounter
4-California Gold
5-The Invisible Atom
6-The Race against Time
Six Millenia to Femtotime
7-Time and Matter
The Femtouniverse in Perspective
8-On the Road to Stockholm
Festivities and Fairy Tales
9-A personal Vision:
The World of the Have-Nots
10-Walks to the Future
My Hope for Egypt and America

Success--Is there a Formula?

Exquisite Language:
"I explored the landscape of molecules glimpsed on the scale of their lives in the split-second world of the femtosecond, a millionth of a billionth of a second, and the landscape of personal events glimpsed at the important stations of my life. Faith, fate, and intuition were forces influencing this voyage."Dr.Ahmed Hassan Zewail

An excellent book by the ýKing of Femtolandý........2002-08-18

To me, there is no happier moment than when I crack open a new book. After preparing a cup of tea, I'll settle down in anticipation of a pleasant journey. While doing the same with Zewail's book, I discovered that I read more than 70 pages without a second sip of my, then cold, tea. I have always thought of Zewail as an eminent scientist, but it wasn't until I read his book, that I discovered he is a talented writer as well. Zewail received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999 for founding and developing what is now known as "femtochemistry". The book is his autobiography. The author's description of his childhood and early years of study in Egypt is breathtaking. He also describes in a very interesting and humorous way, how he dealt with different cultural challenges facing him on his quest of a Ph.D. in the States. According to Zewail, the political barrier was relatively easy to overcome in comparison with cultural issues. He recalls an instance when a young man and woman started kissing each other passionately during a laboratory session in the university. As the person who was supposed to supervise the class, poor young Zewail could not believe his eyes and absolutely had no idea what to do. He soon ran out of the lab to consult his superior, who said: "Well, Ahmed, you know . . . they . . . they, you know, they do this here . . ".

The book, however, is not a mere biography. It explains the work that paved the way to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize. For a long time, scientists have been trying to understand what is happening during a chemical reaction: how molecules form; the way atoms respond to the movement of other atoms, and how they join, split or rotate or whatever. Unfortunately for us, all the events of a chemical reaction start and end within an extremely short time, only some femtoseconds (a "femtosecond" is a million billionth of a second). With his research group in Caltech, Zewail succeeded in using ultra-short laser flashes (short, relative to the time scale on which chemical reactions occur) to uncover what actually happens during this unbelievably short time. In order to understand how important this achievement is, imagine you are cooking a meal in a magical place. You add flour to raw meat and a pizza promptly forms, with everything happening so fast that you cannot witness the process, you see only the result, pizza. It is nice, albeit annoying that you cannot add salt or spices, or for that matter, modify the result in any way God rules the interim. Thanks to Zewail's achievements, not only do we understand more about chemical reactions, but we may also be able to manipulate non-compatible substances in the creation of never before dreamt of materials. It is a major contribution to science. The author also explains the scientific process, how the selection of scientists for prizes is decided upon, how scientific institutions celebrate the honoring of their own members, and how such awards can affect the lives of the honored and their families. The book richly reminds you of many events and views in the history of science. The author also makes known to the reader his own views regarding the future and how developing countries can contribute to science.

My only complaint would be the use of "adaption" for "adoption" on p. 178. The book was written well before 2002 but it appeared in 2002. As it is certainly going to be a classic, its talk of the 10-drachma coin of Greece (p. 100) will probably not be easily understood by future generations. Perhaps a footnote should have been added, explaining that there existed a form of currency before the Euro.

What were they able to see with the laser flashes?
Read "Voyage Through Time" to get the answer.

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Voyage through Time: Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize.

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ICTKII

Book Description

Percolation theory deals with clustering, criticality, diffusion, fractals, phase transitions and disordered systems. It provides a quantitative model for understanding these phenomena, and therefore provides a theoretical, statistical background to many physical and natural science disciplines. This book explains the basic theory for the graduate while also reaching into the specialized fields of disordered systems and renormalization groups. Readers are expected to be able to handle some fundamental mathematical procedures, such as integration and differentiation of single variable functions, probability and statistics. Computer programming experience in Fortran is also useful. While percolation is treated as a fundamentally physical concept, its relevance to various natural and living systems is addressed. Much of the book deals with systems lying close to the critical point phase transition point, where the subject is at its most interesting and sensitive. This book should be of value to all those who deal with systems which exhibit critical points and phase transition behavior.

Customer Reviews:

Classic book.......2006-08-03

This is a classic book on percolation theory, which has excellent intuitive derivations. It gives a good introduction to the subject and also includes more advanced topics. It is ideal for graduate students and should be on every statistical mechanician's desk.

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Introduction to Percolation Theory

Manufacturer: ROUTLEDGE
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GX9LDS

Amazon.com

Illness is often a transformative experience. In What Her Body Thought, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Susan Griffin describes the years of suffering and frustration that marked her battle against an autoimmune fatigue disorder. Her experience comes to resonate in her own mind with the fate of the famous 19th-century courtesan Marie Duplessis, the inspiration for both Dumas's La Dame Aux Camelias and Verdi's La Traviata (and, by extension, the 1937 Garbo classic Camille). Griffin is not the first writer, of course, to tackle the notion of disease as social epiphany--among the most notable are Norman Cousins (Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient) and Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor). But Griffin is a particularly fearless teacher; she writes passionately about the culture of blame that attaches words like psychosomatic to etiologies it does not fully understand. And as her disease drains personal and financial resources, she discovers how terrifyingly easy it is to become someone whom society overlooks. We have made progress since the 19th century in our understanding of health and medicine, Griffin concludes, but we have failed miserably in our social obligation to extend those benefits to all who suffer and to teach compassion to those who don't. --Patrizia DiLucchio

Book Description

In this boldly intimate and intelligent blend of personal memoir, social history, and cultural criticism, Susan Griffin profoundly illuminates our understanding of illness. She explores its physical, emotional, spiritual, and social aspects, revealing how it magnifies our yearning for connection and reconciliation.

Griffin begins with a gripping account of her own harrowing experiences with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), a potentially life-threatening illness that has been misconstrued and marginalized through the label "psychosomatic." Faced with terrifying bouts of fatigue, pain, and diminished thinking, the shame of illness, and the difficulty of being told you are "not really ill," she was driven to understand how early childhood loss made her susceptible to disease.

Alongside her own story, Griffin weaves in her fascinating interpretation of the story of Marie du Plessis, popularized as the fictional Camille, an eighteenth-century courtesan whose young life was taken by tuberculosis. In the old story, Griffin finds contemporary themes of "money, bills, creditors, class, social standing, who is acceptable and who not, who is to be protected and who abandoned." In our current economy, she sees "how to be sick can impoverish, how poverty increases the misery of sickness, and how the implicit violence of this process wounds the soul as well as the body."

Griffin insists that we must tell our stories to maintain our own integrity and authority, so that the sources of suffering become visible and validated. She writes passionately of a society where we are all cared for through "the rootedness of our connections. How the wound of being allowed to suffer points to a need to meet at the deepest level, to make an exchange at the nadir of life and death, the giving and taking which will weave a more spacious fabric of existence, communitas, community." Her views of the larger problems of illness and society are deeply illuminating.

Customer Reviews:

Invisible Illness not so invisible to the bearer.......2002-04-07

This is one of the most eloquent books I have read on the subject of chronic illness, in particular chronic illness which is not easily identified: "invisible illness, Susan calls it. She writes with authority because she has walked in those shoes. When standing in line and feeling totally exhausted because of her illness, another woman is wheeled to the front of the line in a wheelchair. Thus the perfect illustration of the difficulty. She uses the classic Dumas novel "Camille" to illustrate the status of the sufferer, and the reaction of those surrounding her. This is a book of perspective, and one that should be read by anyone in the caring professions, and anyone with a loved one who has an "invisible" illness.

exposes New Age moralism.......2000-09-10

I found this book to be one of, if not *the* best book I have ever read on the subject of illness. Susan Griffin writes from experience, and yet manages to write an objective, thoughtful book on illness and what it means to society. Although New Age prides itself in having escaped the restrictive judgments of past centuries, and mind/body philosophies and metaphysics portray themselves as more enlightened, Susan exposes the underlying hypothesis for what it is--the same old moralism: "If you think the right thoughts, you won't be ill." "You are ill because there is something for you to learn." We still want to believe, she points out, that we are greater than Nature, that we are in control. Yet, anyone who has had a chronic or severe illness knows how very little control we do have. Perhaps, after all, New Age is just another way of dealing with the knowledge that someday, no matter how good we are, we all will suffer and die.

Thank You, Susan Griffin!.......1999-12-24

As a sufferer of CIFIDS, I found it wonderful to read about someone else's experiences with the disease, and to know that the things I experience are not in my head, after all. Griffin's book brought tears to my eyes more than once, as her comparison of her experiences to those of Marie Duplessis is both beautiful and painful. This book had a powerful effect on me, one that I can't really put in words. All I can say is: Thank You!

What Her Body Thought - A Journey Into The Shadows

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What Her Body Thought - A Journey Into The Shadows
Susan Griffin
Manufacturer: Harper-san Francisco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000RIP6LI

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WHAT HER BODY THOUGHT: A Journey Into the Shadows
Susan Griffin
Manufacturer: Harper San Francisco
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OEY4H2

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