Unsaturated soil is a three-phase material that is ubiquitous on the Earth’s surface and exhibits complex behaviour, which becomes more complex in response to the Earth’s changing climate and increasing engineering activities. This is because the former affects its moisture and temperature conditions significantly and the latter governs its stress state and suction condition. This book is designed to meet the increasing challenges of climate change and engineering activities by covering the mechanics and engineering of unsaturated soil in a logical manner. It comprises four major parts: Water retention and flow characteristics Shear strength and stiffness at various temperatures State-dependent elasto-plastic constitutive modelling Field monitoring and engineering applications This second edition uniquely covers fundamental topics on unsaturated soil that are not covered in other similar books, including: the state- dependency of soil- water retention behaviour and water permeability functions, such as dependence on engineering activities small strain stiffness considering the influence of wetting- drying cycles and recent suction history, such as that due to climate change suction effects on dilatancy and peak shear strength cyclic thermal effects on soil behaviour state- dependent elastoplastic constitutive modelling of monotonic and cyclic behaviour engineering applications such as the South-to-North Water Transfer Project; an earthen landfill cover system devoid of geomembrane in the Xiaping landfill, Shenzhen; and a 15-m-deep multi- propped excavation in Tianjin, China
Professor Kuang-Chao Chou (also known as Guang-Zhao Zhou) is the former President of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has been elected as the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Third World Academy of Science, Foreign Member of Soviet (Russian) Academy of Sciences, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Romania Academy of Sciences, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Membre fondateur Academie Francophone d'Ingenieurs.He also served as the director of Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Dean of the Science School of Tsinghua University, the Chairman of the China Association for Sciences and Technology, the President of Pacific Science Association, Vice President of Third World Academy of Sciences.”Zhou is a first rate physicist: broad, powerful and very quick in grasping new ideas. His style of doing physics reminds me of that of Landau, Salam, and of Teller.”C N Yang”His published papers have won uniformly high praises by the international scientific community and his articles are always written with depth and elegance.”T D LeeThis volume presents a collection of selected papers written by Prof Chou. The papers are organized into four parts according to the subject of research areas and the language of publishing journals. Part I (in English) and Part III (in Chinese) are papers on field theories, particle physics and nuclear physics, Part II (in English) and Part IV (in Chinese) are papers on statistical physics and condensed matter physics. From the published papers, it illustrates and is clearly evident how Prof Chou was constantly at the frontiers of theoretical physics in various periods and carried out creative research works experimenting with initial ideas and motivations, as well as how he has driven and worked in different key research directions of theoretical physics, all for which he has made significant contributions to various interesting research areas and interdisciplinary fields.
Many machine learning tasks involve solving complex optimization problems, such as working on non-differentiable, non-continuous, and non-unique objective functions; in some cases it can prove difficult to even define an explicit objective function. Evolutionary learning applies evolutionary algorithms to address optimization problems in machine learning, and has yielded encouraging outcomes in many applications. However, due to the heuristic nature of evolutionary optimization, most outcomes to date have been empirical and lack theoretical support. This shortcoming has kept evolutionary learning from being well received in the machine learning community, which favors solid theoretical approaches. Recently there have been considerable efforts to address this issue. This book presents a range of those efforts, divided into four parts. Part I briefly introduces readers to evolutionary learning and provides some preliminaries, while Part II presents general theoretical tools for the analysis of running time and approximation performance in evolutionary algorithms. Based on these general tools, Part III presents a number of theoretical findings on major factors in evolutionary optimization, such as recombination, representation, inaccurate fitness evaluation, and population. In closing, Part IV addresses the development of evolutionary learning algorithms with provable theoretical guarantees for several representative tasks, in which evolutionary learning offers excellent performance.
This book presents the recent achievements on the processing of representative user generated content (UGC) on E-commerce websites. This large size of UGC is valuable information for data mining to help customer/object profiling. It provides a comprehensive overview on the concept of customer credibility, object-oriented review summarization technology and content-based collaborative filtering algorithm. It covers a feedback mechanism which is designed to discover customer credibility, which is used to define the professional degree of review content; product-oriented review summarization for restaurants or trip arrangements, and introduced content-based collaborative filtering for product recommendation.
This book introduces readers to the status quo and recent advances in China’s low-carbon development. From the evolution of human civilization, to the proposal of low-carbon concepts, up to the choice of China’s low-carbon path, the book provides a comprehensive review of low-carbon development, while also elaborating on the core concept, goals and methods. In addition, it addresses a series of questions and issues closely tied to today’s social development, such as: “Why is it so vital to pursue low-carbon development?” and “How can China implement low-carbon development?” Accordingly, readers will gain a better grasp of low-carbon development, including low-carbon production and low-carbon lifestyles.
From early times, Daoist writers claimed to receive scriptures via revelation from heavenly beings. In numerous cases, these writings were composed over the course of many nights and by different mediums. New revelations were often hastily appended, and the resulting unevenness gave rise to the impression that Daoist texts often appear slapdash and contain contradictions. A Library of Clouds focuses on the re-writing of Daoist scriptures in the Upper Clarity (Shangqing) lineage in fourth- and fifth-century China. Scholarship on Upper Clarity Daoism has been dominated by attempts to uncover “original” or “authentic” texts, which has resulted in the neglect of later scriptures—including the work fully translated and annotated here, the Scripture of the Immaculate Numen, one of the Three Wonders (sanqi) and among the most prized Daoist texts in medieval China. The scripture’s lack of a coherent structure and its different authorial voices have led many to see it not as a unified work but the creation of different editors who shaped and reshaped it over time. A Library of Clouds constructs new ways of understanding the complex authorship of texts like the Scripture of the Immaculate Numen and their place in early medieval Daoism. It stresses their significance in understanding the ways in which manuscripts were written, received, and distributed in early medieval China. By situating the scripture within its immediate hagiographic and ritual contexts, it suggests that this kind of revelatory literature is best understood as a pastiche of ideas, a process of weaving together previously circulating notions and beliefs into a new scriptural fabric.
The Along the River During the Qingming Festival was painted by Chang Ze-Duan of North Song Dynasty on silk. Painted in light colors, it is 528cm wide and 24.8cm tall. Qingming implies Qingming Festival or Tomb Sweeping Festival. “Shang He” (above the river) was a norm at that time. After worshipping the ancestors and sweeping their tombs, people would get on the bridge to enjoy the view of Bianjing and River Bian. Or they may wander along the bridge and buy snacks from the vendors there and visit the riverside towns. This is what “Qingming Shang He” means. In the painting, we can see many of the norms of Qingming Festival, such as the pasted paper building miniatures in front of the “Wang’s Paper Horse Shop,” the tomb sweeping team with sedan chairs decorated with willow branches and flowers outside the city, the vendors selling mud figurines at the entrances of the bridge, the people gathering and drinking after tomb sweeping, and more. These scenes are similar to the descriptions of The Eastern Capital: A Dream of Splendor. In short, it is a masterpiece of social norms painting completed in the Song Dynasty. Cosmos Classics hopes to delineate and demonstrate the connotations and beauty of Along the River During the Qingming Festival in a candid attitude to allow readers to feel the beauty of this portrayal of the Bianjing in North Song Dynasty nine hundred years ago through textual guides of this book and the appreciation of this painting. In addition, it is hoped that readers can feel the Chang Ze-Duan’s dedication in the layout and thinking of this painting. We write in a comprehensive manner to provide readers guides to the entire painting in detail with this book to render the interpretations of the North Song Dynasty as faithfully as possible to its original look and feel. We would like to apologize for any imperfection in researches and proofreading of this book. Regarding the arrangements of the contents in this book, it begins with three chapters “The Historic Values of Along the River During the Qingming Festival,” “Imperial Painting Academy (Hanlin Tuhua Yuan) during the North Song Society and the Painter Chang Ze-Duan,” and “Bianjing and Transportations on the River Bian at the North Song Dynasty” to present an overall view of the contents, painter, and historical background of this painting. In the “Conclusion” at the end of this book, the painting techniques and contents of this work are analyzed in detail to allow readers to understand the intentions of Chang Ze-Duan better. The reference section is attached to communicate the careful attitude of and the references cited by Cosmos Classics to show our respect for the writers and researchers. The major task of this book is to introduce this lengthy scroll. From right to left, it is divided into three parts in accordance with their themes “Leisure Atmosphere in the Suburb Greens,” “The Busy Water Transportation on River Bian,” and “The Prosperous Bianjing City.” According to their features, Along the River During the Qingming Festival is divided into forty zones. In the beginning of the essay, a lighted and focused thumbnail is provided to allow readers to understand the location of the discussions. In the essays, magnified graphics of the small zones are attached as illustrations to allow readers to observe every person and every corner carefully in detail. The major reference of this book The Eastern Capital: A Dream of Splendor, which records the events happening between 1102 and 1125, during the time of prosperity of Bianjing from the year of Chongning to the year of Xuanhe of Hui Zhong of North Song Dynasty, during the years of the completion of this painting. In addition, history,journals and poetry written on Song Dynasty are also referenced to explain the characters, events and things portrayed in the painting, hoping to remain faithful to the theme. As to the professional parts, the Treatise on Architectural Methods or State Building Standards is consulted to compare with the structure of the architecture in the painting. The Exploitation of the Works of Nature is consulted to find out the structure of the boats. “On the Carts and Costumes” in Song History is consulted to pinpoint the making of the carts, sedan chairs and costumes of that period. The Eastern Capital: A Dream of Splendor is consulted to examine the social norms and the geographical location of the capital. Of course, reference books and articles on Along the River During the Qingming Festival are read to present a complete interpretation on the painting. The great Jiehua(Margin Painting) painter Chang Ze-Duan left us with the first hand materials of the image of capital city in the North Song Dynasty, including trade and commercial activities, costumes and social norms architectural style, furniture and vessels, transportation, and more. All of them are of high historical value. Moreover, its humanistic connotations and sensations allow us to read and re-read this painting. The closer we read it, the more we can find the painter’s intentions. It always impresses us with its infinite charms that echo in our hearts. Therefore, it is regarded as a classic in Chinese and world history of art. Ranked as one of the top ten Chinese paintings, it is also renowned as the “first and heavenly work in Chinese painting.” Viewing this picture Along the River During the Qingming Festival in the 21st century, it still wins our exclamations. This masterpiece has been passed down from generation to generation, having gone through wars and dynasties, and shifts in times, with unchanging values. Great paintings can always prevail over the limits of time and space to become immortal, demonstrating the beauty of aesthetics and universal human values. Although Along the River During the Qingming Festival is not the only painting that portrays the capital in Chinese history, it is the most complete painting that captures the social norms and characters of Bianjing in art history. From the illustrations, deconstructive interpretations, and plain and simple introduction of this book, readers can have a glimpse of the authentic picture of Bianjing during the North Song Dynasty. Reminiscing the past, Cosmos Classics has edited and released Along the River During the Qingming Festival by Chang Ze-Duan, a North Song Dynasty painter, in electronic book format. It is hoped that Chinese of this generation can converse with tradition to fuse the ancient with the modern. Reading the classics, we may be inspired to lay down milestones for modern arts. In addition, we are enthusiastic to share them globally to allow international people to immerse themselves in the beauty of Chinese arts.
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