Gang Chen

This book takes readers through the sensational history of blockchains and their potential to revolutionize database systems of the future. In order to demystify blockchains, the book capitalizes on decades of research and field testing of existing database and distributed systems and applies these familiar concepts to the novel blockchain system. It then utilizes this framework to explore the essential block platform underpinning blockchains, which is often misunderstood as a specific attribute of cryptocurrencies rather than the core of the decentralized system independent of application. The book explores the nature of these decentralized systems, which have no single owner and build robustness through a multitude of stakeholder contributions. In this way, blockchains can build trust into existing systems and thus present attractive solutions for various domains across both academia and industry. Despite this, high-impact and real-world applications of blockchain have yet to be realized outside of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The book establishes how this new data system, if properly applied, can disrupt the sector in much the same way databases did so many years ago. The book explores the fundamental technical limitations that may be preventing blockchain from realizing this potential and how to overcome or mitigate them. Readers who are completely new to blockchains will find this book to be a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in blockchain technology. Readers with some experience of blockchains, for example through developing cryptocurrencies, will likely find the book’s database perspective enlightening. Finally, researchers already working with blockchain will learn to identify existing gaps in the design space and explore potential solutions for creating the next generation of blockchain systems.

This book takes readers through the sensational history of blockchains and their potential to revolutionize database systems of the future. In order to demystify blockchains, the book capitalizes on decades of research and field testing of existing database and distributed systems and applies these familiar concepts to the novel blockchain system. It then utilizes this framework to explore the essential block platform underpinning blockchains, which is often misunderstood as a specific attribute of cryptocurrencies rather than the core of the decentralized system independent of application. The book explores the nature of these decentralized systems, which have no single owner and build robustness through a multitude of stakeholder contributions. In this way, blockchains can build trust into existing systems and thus present attractive solutions for various domains across both academia and industry. Despite this, high-impact and real-world applications of blockchain have yet to be realized outside of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. The book establishes how this new data system, if properly applied, can disrupt the sector in much the same way databases did so many years ago. The book explores the fundamental technical limitations that may be preventing blockchain from realizing this potential and how to overcome or mitigate them. Readers who are completely new to blockchains will find this book to be a comprehensive survey of the state of the art in blockchain technology. Readers with some experience of blockchains, for example through developing cryptocurrencies, will likely find the book’s database perspective enlightening. Finally, researchers already working with blockchain will learn to identify existing gaps in the design space and explore potential solutions for creating the next generation of blockchain systems.

A Practical Guide Exam for the ARE 5.0 Project Planning & Design (PPD) Division To become a licensed architect, you need to have a proper combination of education and/or experience, meet your Board of Architecture's special requirements, and pass the ARE exams. This book provides an ARE 5.0 exam overview, suggested reference and resource links, exam prep and exam taking techniques, tips and guides for the ARE 5.0 Project Planning & Design (PPD) Division. More specifically this book covers the following subjects: ARE 5.0, AXP, and education requirements ARE 5.0 exam content, format, and prep strategies ARE 5.0 credit model and the easiest way to pass ARE exams by taking only 5 ARE divisions Allocation of your time and scheduling Timing of review: the 3016 rule; memorization methods, tips, suggestions, and mnemonics Environmental conditions & context Codes & regulations Building systems, materials, & assemblies Project integration of program & systems Project costs & budgeting This book will help you pass the PPD division of the ARE 5 and become a licensed architect

This book provides an in-depth explanation of public pension plan management and the decision-making processes surrounding pension policies within state and local governments in the United States. It addresses the intricate balance between securing retirement benefits for public employees and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of pension systems and their sponsoring governments. The book begins with an introduction to the purpose and significance of public pension systems, establishing a foundation for understanding key pension decisions. Using a logic model framework, the authors assess how environmental factors, stakeholders, and legal constraints shape decisions in pension management. The book identifies five core goals for public pension management — benefit sufficiency, cost affordability, funding sustainability, asset management efficiency, and governance quality — emphasizing the relationships among these objectives. Detailed chapters cover investment policies, actuarial processes, and the design of benefits and contributions, explaining the financial and actuarial bases necessary for sound pension decisions. Pension reform efforts, including the transition from defined benefit plans to defined contribution, cash-balance, and hybrid plans, are examined in depth, highlighting the reasons for reforms and analyzing their impacts on the employees and employers. The book concludes with ten takeaways for effective pension plan management and addresses emerging challenges such as fiscal pressures, inflation, and changing demographics. With practical implications grounded in research, this book serves as an essential resource for pension board members, pension system administrators, government officials, legislators and their staff, professionals, researchers, and students involved in public pension plan management.

This book provides an in-depth explanation of public pension plan management and the decision-making processes surrounding pension policies within state and local governments in the United States. It addresses the intricate balance between securing retirement benefits for public employees and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of pension systems and their sponsoring governments. The book begins with an introduction to the purpose and significance of public pension systems, establishing a foundation for understanding key pension decisions. Using a logic model framework, the authors assess how environmental factors, stakeholders, and legal constraints shape decisions in pension management. The book identifies five core goals for public pension management — benefit sufficiency, cost affordability, funding sustainability, asset management efficiency, and governance quality — emphasizing the relationships among these objectives. Detailed chapters cover investment policies, actuarial processes, and the design of benefits and contributions, explaining the financial and actuarial bases necessary for sound pension decisions. Pension reform efforts, including the transition from defined benefit plans to defined contribution, cash-balance, and hybrid plans, are examined in depth, highlighting the reasons for reforms and analyzing their impacts on the employees and employers. The book concludes with ten takeaways for effective pension plan management and addresses emerging challenges such as fiscal pressures, inflation, and changing demographics. With practical implications grounded in research, this book serves as an essential resource for pension board members, pension system administrators, government officials, legislators and their staff, professionals, researchers, and students involved in public pension plan management.

Thermoelectricity describes the physics of energy conversion, from heat to electric power, and from electric power to heat or cooling power in solids. The working fluid consists of the conduction electrons. Despite a long and distinguished history, recent developments in nanotechnologies have revolutionized the field. It was recognised in the 1990s that low-dimensional systems should result in materials with much better efficiencies than bulk materials, through low-dimensional effects on both charge carriers and lattice waves. This has been experimentally demonstrated in the early 2000s. This book aims to be the first monograph to comprehensively describe low-dimensional thermoelectricity in a systematic manner. Following the classic format of monographs in this area, it is written so that low-dimensional effects follow naturally from the transport equations. It is aimed at professional researchers in academia and industry, and graduate students in materials engineering, applied physics and chemistry.

This book focuses on the evolution of technocracy in contemporary Chinese politics and its implications in China’s elite politics and policymaking. The rise of technocracy in contemporary Chinese politics is not only attributed to the meritocratic tradition based on civil service exams in ancient China but also tied to the current authoritarian political system that relies on the top-down cadre promotion approach instead of public elections. Leaders with technocratic backgrounds have brought changes to China’s political landscape since technocrats tend to solve governance issues using technical solutions in an industrialized society as compared to pure politicians and revolutionaries, who are inclined to resort to political, and sometimes populist, options. This book examines the specific tech areas from which top technocrats have been emerging in Chinese politics, which include military and aerospace industry, public health, engineering and science, economics and finance, as well as information technology. It is a unique research monograph based on research on China’s evolving technocracy and its political, economic and international implications that provides a detailed and thorough study of the country’s industrial policies being reshaped by these technocrats and their likelihood of joining the Chinese Communist Party’s top echelon in the next five to ten years.

This book focuses on the evolution of technocracy in contemporary Chinese politics and its implications in China’s elite politics and policymaking. The rise of technocracy in contemporary Chinese politics is not only attributed to the meritocratic tradition based on civil service exams in ancient China but also tied to the current authoritarian political system that relies on the top-down cadre promotion approach instead of public elections. Leaders with technocratic backgrounds have brought changes to China’s political landscape since technocrats tend to solve governance issues using technical solutions in an industrialized society as compared to pure politicians and revolutionaries, who are inclined to resort to political, and sometimes populist, options. This book examines the specific tech areas from which top technocrats have been emerging in Chinese politics, which include military and aerospace industry, public health, engineering and science, economics and finance, as well as information technology. It is a unique research monograph based on research on China’s evolving technocracy and its political, economic and international implications that provides a detailed and thorough study of the country’s industrial policies being reshaped by these technocrats and their likelihood of joining the Chinese Communist Party’s top echelon in the next five to ten years.

This book explores and analyzes influential predictors and the underlying mechanisms of individual content sharing/retweeting behavior on social networking sites (SNS) from an empirical perspective. Since Individual content sharing/ retweeting behavior expedites information dissemination, it is a critical mechanism of information diffusion on Twitter. Individual sharing/retweeting behavior does not appear to happen randomly. So, what factors lead to individual information dissemination behavior? What are the dominating predictors? How does the recipient make retweeting decisions? How do these influential predictors combine and by what mechanism do they influence an individual’s retweeting decisions? Furthermore, are there any differences in the process of individual retweeting decisions? If so, what causes such differences? In order to answer these previously unexplored questions and gain a holistic view of individual retweeting behavior, the authors examined people’s retweeting history on Twitter and obtained a real dataset containing more than 60 million Twitter posts. They then employed text mining and natural language processing techniques to extract useful information from social media content, and used various feature selection methods to identify a subset of salient features that have substantial effects on individual retweeting behavior. Lastly, they applied the Elaboration Likelihood Model to build an overarching theoretical framework to reveal the underlying mechanisms of individual retweeting behavior. Given its scope, this book will appeal to researchers interested in investigating information dissemination on social media, as well as to marketers and administrators who plan to use social networking sites as an important avenue for information dissemination.

Pass the LEED Green Associate Exam, Get Your Building LEED Certified, Fight Global Warming, and Save Money The USGBC released LEED v4 in GreenBuild International Conference and Expo in November, 2013. The GBCI started to include the new LEED v4 content for all LEED exams in June 2014. We have incorporated the new LEED v4 content in this book. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is one of the most important trends in development and is revolutionizing the construction industry. It has gained tremendous momentum and has a profound impact on our environment. From this book, you will be able to: Identify your weakness through practice questions Learn to work well under the pressure of timed tests Check your responses against the solutions Understand the solutions for the difficult questions through the explanations Fully understand the scope, difficulty level, and format of the LEED Green Associate Exam Learn how to pass the LEED Green Associate Exam. There is NO official GBCI book on the LEED Green Associate Exam. "LEED Green Associate Mock Exams" fills in the blanks and demystifies LEED. The book includes 200 questions and simulates the real exam in every aspect, including scope, difficulty level, format, and number of questions in each LEED category. It includes questions, answers, and explanations. This book is small and easy to carry around. You can read it whenever you have a few extra minutes. It is an indispensable resource for ordinary people, developers, brokers, contractors, administrators, architects, landscape architects, engineers, interns, drafters, designers, and other design professionals. All our books are available at GreenExamEducation.com Check out FREE tips and info for all LEED Exams and ARE Exams at GeeForum.com, you can post your questions for other users' review.

The noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH), also known as noise and vibration (N&V), is a critical feature for customers to assess the performance and quality of vehicles. NVH characteristics are higher among factors that customers use to judge the vehicle's quality. This book sets out to introduce the basic concepts, principles, and applications of the NVH development and refi nement of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV), Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV), and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles. Each type comes with its own set of challenges.

A Practical Exam Guide for the ARE 5.0 Mock Exam (Architect Registration Exam) Construction & Evaluation (CE) Division To become a licensed architect, you need to have a proper combination of education and/or experience, meet your Board of Architecture's special requirements, and pass the ARE exams. This book provides an ARE 5.0 exam overview, suggested reference and resource links, exam prep and exam taking techniques, tips and guides, and critical content for the ARE 5.0 Construction & Evaluation (CE) Division. More specifically this book covers the following subjects: ARE 5.0, AXP, and education requirementsARE 5.0 exam content, format, and prep strategiesARE 5.0 credit model and the easiest way to pass ARE examsAllocation of your time and schedulingTiming of review: the 3016 rule; memorization methods, tips, suggestions, and mnemonicsPreconstruction ActivitiesConstruction ObservationAdministrative Procedures & ProtocolsProject Closeout & Evaluation This book will help you pass the CE division of the ARE 5.0 and become a licensed architect

In China’s 4,000-year-long history and modern development, natural disaster management has been about not only human combat against devastating natural forces, but also institutional building, political struggle, and economic interest redistribution among different institutional players. A significant payoff for social scientists studying disasters is that they can reveal much of the hidden nature of political and economic processes and structures, particularly those in non-democracies, which are normally covered up with great care. This book reviews the problems and progress in the politics of China’s disaster management. It analyses the factors in China’s governance and political process that restrains its capacity to manage disasters. The book helps the audience better understand the dynamic relationship among various interest groups and civic forces in modern China’s disaster politics, with special emphasis on the process of pluralization, decentralization and fragmentation.

This book explores and analyzes influential predictors and the underlying mechanisms of individual content sharing/retweeting behavior on social networking sites (SNS) from an empirical perspective. Since Individual content sharing/ retweeting behavior expedites information dissemination, it is a critical mechanism of information diffusion on Twitter. Individual sharing/retweeting behavior does not appear to happen randomly. So, what factors lead to individual information dissemination behavior? What are the dominating predictors? How does the recipient make retweeting decisions? How do these influential predictors combine and by what mechanism do they influence an individual’s retweeting decisions? Furthermore, are there any differences in the process of individual retweeting decisions? If so, what causes such differences? In order to answer these previously unexplored questions and gain a holistic view of individual retweeting behavior, the authors examined people’s retweeting history on Twitter and obtained a real dataset containing more than 60 million Twitter posts. They then employed text mining and natural language processing techniques to extract useful information from social media content, and used various feature selection methods to identify a subset of salient features that have substantial effects on individual retweeting behavior. Lastly, they applied the Elaboration Likelihood Model to build an overarching theoretical framework to reveal the underlying mechanisms of individual retweeting behavior. Given its scope, this book will appeal to researchers interested in investigating information dissemination on social media, as well as to marketers and administrators who plan to use social networking sites as an important avenue for information dissemination.

A Practical Exam Guide for the ARE 5.0 Programming & Analysis (PA) Division To become a licensed architect, you need to have a proper combination of education and/or experience, meet your Board of Architecture's special requirements, and pass the ARE exams. This book provides an ARE 5.0 exam overview, suggested reference and resource links, exam prep and exam taking techniques, tips and guides, and critical content for the ARE 5.0 Programming & Analysis (PA) Division. More specifically this book covers the following subjects: ARE 5.0, AXP, and education requirements ARE 5.0 exam content, format, and prep strategies ARE 5.0 credit model and the easiest way to pass ARE exams Allocation of your time and scheduling Timing of review: the 3016 rule; memorization methods, tips, suggestions, and mnemonics Environmental & contextual conditions Codes & regulations Site analysis & programming Building analysis & programming This book will help you pass the PA division of the ARE 5.0 and become a licensed architect Can you study and pass the ARE 5.0 Programming & Analysis (PA) exam in 2 weeks The answer is yes: If you study the right materials, you can pass with 2 weeks of prep. . If you study our book, " Programming & Analysis (PA) ARE 5.0 Exam Guide (Architect Registration Examination) " & " Programming & Analysis (PA) ARE 5.0 Mock Exam (Architect Registration Examination) ," you have an excellent chance of studying and passing the ARE 5.0 Programming & Analysis (PA) division in 2 weeks. We have added many tips and tricks that WILL help you pass the exam on your first try. Our goal is to take a very complicated subject and make it simple. " Programming & Analysis (PA) ARE 5.0 Exam Guide (Architect Registration Examination) " & " Programming & Analysis (PA) ARE 5.0 Mock Exam (Architect Registration Examination) " will save you time and money and help you pass the exam on the first try ArchiteG(R), Green Associate Exam Guide(R), GA Study(R), and GreenExamEducation(R) are registered trademarks owned by Gang Chen. . ARE(R), Architect Registration Examination(R) are registered trademarks owned by NCARB.

A Practical Exam Guide for the ARE 5.0 Project Management (PjM) Division This book provides an ARE 5.0 exam overview, suggested reference and resource links, exam prep and exam taking techniques, tips and guides, and critical content for the ARE 5 Project Management (PjM) Division. More specifically this book covers the following subjects: ARE 5.0, AXP, and education requirements ARE 5.0 exam content, format, and prep strategiesARE 5.0 credit model and the easiest way to pass ARE exams by taking only 5 ARE divisionsAllocation of your time and schedulingTiming of review: the 3016 rule; memorization methods, tips, suggestions, and mnemonicsResource Management Project Work PlanningContractsProject ExecutionProject Quality Control This book will help you pass the PjM division of the ARE 5.0 and become a licensed architect Can you study and pass the ARE 5.0 Project Management (PjM) exam in 2 weeks The answer is yes: If you study the right materials, you can pass with 2 weeks of prep. . If you study our book, " Project Management (PjM) ARE 5.0 Exam Guide (Architect Registration Examination) " & " Project Management (PjM) ARE 5.0 Mock Exam (Architect Registration Examination) , " you have an excellent chance of studying and passing the ARE 5.0 Project Management (PjM) division in 2 weeks. We have added many tips and tricks that WILL help you pass the exam on your first try. Our goal is to take a very complicated subject and make it simple. " Project Management (PjM) ARE 5.0 Exam Guide (Architect Registration Examination) " & " Project Management (PjM) ARE 5.0 Mock Exam (Architect Registration Examination) " will save you time and money and help you pass the exam on the first try ArchiteG(R), Green Associate Exam Guide(R), GA Study(R), and GreenExamEducation(R) are registered trademarks owned by Gang Chen. . ARE(R), Architect Registration Examination(R) are registered trademarks owned by NCARB. .

A Practical Exam Guide for the ARE 5.0 Practice Management (PcM) Division To become a licensed architect, you need to have a proper combination of education and/or experience, meet your Board of Architecture's special requirements, and pass the ARE exams. This book provides an ARE 5.0 exam overview, suggested reference and resource links, exam prep and exam taking techniques, tips and guides, and critical content for the ARE 5 Practice Management (PcM) Division. More specifically this book covers the following subjects: ARE 5.0, AXP, and education requirements ARE 5.0 exam content, format, and prep strategies ARE 5.0 credit model and the easiest way to pass ARE exams by taking only 5 ARE divisions Allocation of your time and scheduling Timing of review: the 3016 rule; memorization methods, tips, suggestions, and mnemonics Business Operations Finances, Risk, & Development of Practice Practice-Wide Delivery of Services Practice Methodologies This book will help you pass the PcM division of the ARE 5.0 and become a licensed architect

This volume of Annual Review Of Heat Transfer (ARHT) is devoted to thermal transport processes in the manufacturing of advanced materials. Topics covered include laser-assisted the formation of semiconductor nanomaterials, flame synthesis of nanomaterials deposited on different substrates, thermal spray coatings, heat and mass transfer processes in optical fiber drawing, and many more. In advanced materials manufacturing, energy is required to transform materials from one form to another. Often, heat is involved in the process. Heat may be an energy input and may also be either released or consumed during the transformation of material from one form to another. Understanding heat, mass, and momentum transport in the manufacturing processes is critical for the quality control of the final products. This volume highlights some of the exciting areas of manufacturing of advanced materials in which thermal processes play a dominant role. The topics covered in this volume serve as examples to illustrate the richness of thermal transport phenomena involved in manufacturing processes, from the nanoscale to macroscale. An interesting observation is that all topics covered focus on additive manufacturing processes: from forming new materials through a chemical reaction to coatings. Of course, lasers and other thermal sources can be used for cutting purposes, but one could argue that thermal processes are more widely used for the addition of materials. The great attention to freeform additive manufacturing calls for further understanding of the thermal processes involved. This enhanced understanding can lead to innovation to further expand the reach of 3D printing technologies.