Xin Wang

Structural Strengthening and Reinforcement using Grid Composites provides a comprehensive exploration of the use of grid composites for strengthening and rehabilitating concrete and masonry structures. Addressing the global challenges of structural deterioration and earthquake hazards, the book delves into the advantages of grid composites, such as their high strength-to-weight ratio, durability in harsh environments, and superior fatigue performance, while also examining limitations such as brittle behavior and undesirable failure modes. Through a combination of experimental, theoretical, and numerical studies, it offers systematic insights into bonding behavior, structural performance, analytical models, and design codes. Covering applications in bridges, tunnels, buildings, historic structures, and underwater constructions, this book is an essential resource for engineers, researchers, and graduate students in civil, structural, and material engineering, as well as professionals involved in structural design, manufacturing, and rehabilitation. Provides a detailed exploration of the fundamental behavior of grid composites, including raw materials, processing methods, and their impact on mechanical properties. Features comprehensive discussions on bond characteristics, debonding mechanisms, and stress transfer at the grid-concrete interface, supported by experimental, analytical, and numerical investigations to enhance understanding of failure modes and interfacial behavior. Covers a wide range of applications, including flexural, shear, torsional, seismic strengthening, spalling resistance, and the use of grid composites as reinforcement for new structures, offering practical solutions for both retrofitting and new construction projects.

This book provides a direct method based on system solutions to address the problems related to the analysis and control of delayed neural networks. The method proposed in this book is important for the following reasons: It does not involve the construct of any Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional (LKF), which overcomes the difficulty in constructing an appropriate and effective LKF; It can provide more simpler sufficient conditions, and hence it possesses less computational complexity; It can result in delay-dependent global exponential stability criteria that can used to give the decay rate estimation of the state; It is suitable for analysis and design problems of most system models with (multiple) delays after a small modification. The book is divided into 11 chapters, and focuses on the analysis and design problems related to delayed neural networks. It is written for graduate students and research level mathematicians and is suitable for postgraduates or as a reference.

With the rapid advancement of sensor technology and digital system, the capabilities of network communication have significantly improved, allowing multiple computing nodes to exchange information and collaborate seamlessly through networks. This progress has accelerated the development of distributed optimization theory and its applications in emerging fields such as low altitude economy, big data, and artificial intelligence. These emerging domains usually involve solving complex large-scale optimization problems, making it difficult for traditional centralized methods to handle. Therefore, it is necessary to study distributed algorithms to solve complex optimization problems in large-scale networked systems. In addition, the emergence of applications of large language model further stimulates researchers' growing interest in distributed optimization. This book provides the advanced methods and techniques of distributed optimization in networked systems, and thus is necessary and important for the research community. This book focuses on designing high-performance algorithms for solving more practical and complex optimization problems (multi-block optimization, composite optimization, constrained optimization, optimization with diversity objective functions, etc.) in the context of distributed optimization in networked systems and their successful application to real-world applications (model predictive control, smart grids, etc.). Readers may be particularly interested in the book on consensus and optimization protocols, forward-backward splitting methods, proximal gradient methods, primal-dual methods, fixed point methods, asynchronous communication/computaion mechanisms, randomized block coordinate techniques, operator splitting schemes, uncoordinated step sizes strategies, etc., in the process of distributed optimization in various networked systems. This book will introduce readers to the latest and advanced techniques in "Network-System Research and Distributed Composite Algorithm Design", and help them develop their own novel distributed algorithms that have practical applications. The prerequisite for understanding this book is to master basic mathematical knowledge, including graph theory, matrix theory, linear algebra, probability theory, etc. This book is meant for the researcher and engineer who uses distributed optimization algorithms in fields like control theory, electronic information, artificial intelligence, and computer science, etc. It can also serve as complementary reading for distributed optimization in networked systems at the post-graduate level.

It establishes simulation model to evaluate the influence of crystal defects on the dissolution of tricalcium silicate and morphology change of particles and explores the hydration kinetics and microstructure development of tricalcium silicate under the mixed control of dissolution, diffusion, as well as boundary nucleation and growth.

Visual Question Answering (VQA) usually combines visual inputs like image and video with a natural language question concerning the input and generates a natural language answer as the output. This is by nature a multi-disciplinary research problem, involving computer vision (CV), natural language processing (NLP), knowledge representation and reasoning (KR), etc. Further, VQA is an ambitious undertaking, as it must overcome the challenges of general image understanding and the question-answering task, as well as the difficulties entailed by using large-scale databases with mixed-quality inputs. However, with the advent of deep learning (DL) and driven by the existence of advanced techniques in both CV and NLP and the availability of relevant large-scale datasets, we have recently seen enormous strides in VQA, with more systems and promising results emerging. This book provides a comprehensive overview of VQA, covering fundamental theories, models, datasets, andpromising future directions. Given its scope, it can be used as a textbook on computer vision and natural language processing, especially for researchers and students in the area of visual question answering. It also highlights the key models used in VQA.

Foundations of the Information and Knowledge Professions covers topics deemed essential for students at the graduate and undergraduate level who are seeking to join the profession. The authors cover key developments from the Library of Alexandria through contemporary libraries and digital technological platforms. The advent of the Internet and the Web removed traditional geographical boundaries and allowed individuals access to information created in different languages, different cultures, and different political views. The digital transformation of business and commerce brought about fundamental societal changes and revolutionized how people access, use, manipulate, and interact with information. The authors also discuss issues related to privacy, security, and intellectual property, as well as social issues, including diversity, equity, and inclusion, codes of ethics, and codes of conduct.

This book uses the concept of the region to introduce traditional Chinese villages in ten typical areas. Most of the villages have been included in the World Cultural Heritage List or the Tentative List and reflect the diversity of rural and traditional life. Richly illustrated with pictures of architectural decorations, dwellings, day-to-day country life and aerial views of settlements, it not only enhances readers’ knowledge of China’s traditional architectural culture but also provides inspiration for architectural creation. It is a valuable resource for graduate students, lecturers and researchers in the field of traditional villages, heritage conservation and Chinese architectural culture.

Visual Question Answering (VQA) usually combines visual inputs like image and video with a natural language question concerning the input and generates a natural language answer as the output. This is by nature a multi-disciplinary research problem, involving computer vision (CV), natural language processing (NLP), knowledge representation and reasoning (KR), etc. Further, VQA is an ambitious undertaking, as it must overcome the challenges of general image understanding and the question-answering task, as well as the difficulties entailed by using large-scale databases with mixed-quality inputs. However, with the advent of deep learning (DL) and driven by the existence of advanced techniques in both CV and NLP and the availability of relevant large-scale datasets, we have recently seen enormous strides in VQA, with more systems and promising results emerging. This book provides a comprehensive overview of VQA, covering fundamental theories, models, datasets, andpromising future directions. Given its scope, it can be used as a textbook on computer vision and natural language processing, especially for researchers and students in the area of visual question answering. It also highlights the key models used in VQA.

This book uses the concept of the region to introduce traditional Chinese villages in ten typical areas. Most of the villages have been included in the World Cultural Heritage List or the Tentative List and reflect the diversity of rural and traditional life. Richly illustrated with pictures of architectural decorations, dwellings, day-to-day country life and aerial views of settlements, it not only enhances readers’ knowledge of China’s traditional architectural culture but also provides inspiration for architectural creation. It is a valuable resource for graduate students, lecturers and researchers in the field of traditional villages, heritage conservation and Chinese architectural culture.

Applied Engineering Failure Analysis: Theory and Practice provides a point of reference for engineering failure analysis (EFA) cases, presenting a compilation of case studies covering a 35-year period, from the 1970s to 2012. This period spans the era from the time when slide rules were used routinely for engineering calculations, and when hard-copy photographs taken by film cameras were pasted onto typewritten sheets to make reports, to the present time when all these functions have become much less onerous through computer assistance. The cases are drawn from such diverse fields as mechanical engineering, metallurgy, mining, civil/structural engineering, electrical power systems, and radiation damage; the last two topics are quite scarce in current publications. It includes theoretical content that deals with useful topics in basic theory, material properties, failure mechanisms, EFA methodology, and applications. It provides high-quality illustrations throughout, which greatly helps to promote the understanding of the failure characteristics described. This book offers an integrated approach that serves as a useful first reference in the above topics, for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as for practicing engineers. The book provides a hands-on approach to EFA, which helps the user to develop an understanding of potential failure situations, to explore the consequences, and to better understand how to solve similar problems; it also helps users to develop their own techniques for most other engineering failure problems. The authors include a section on technical report writing, which will assist failure investigators in getting their findings across. They also present simple engineering calculations that may serve as illustrative examples, and typical problems and solutions are included at the end of each chapter.