A reissue with a foreword and supplement, of a modern classic published in 1960. The invention of the mechanical clock was one of the most important turning points in the history of science and technology. This study revealed six centuries of mechanical clockwork preceding the first mechanical escapement clocks of the West of about AD 1300. Detailed and fully illustrated accounts of elaborate Chinese clocks are accompanied by a discussion of the social context of the Chinese inventions and an assessment of their possible transmission to medieval Europe. For this revised edition, Dr Joseph...

This study was designed to explore how vicarious
learning experiences and goal setting influence
preservice teachers self-efficacy for technology
integration. Two hundred and eighty participants
were divided into eighteen lab sections, which were
assigned into four conditions (3 experimental and 1
control). An instrument measuring self-efficacy for
computer technology integration was developed and
validated. The instrument was administered as pre-
and post-surveys to examine participants self-
efficacy beliefs for technology integration. Results
showed significant treatment effects...

This book addresses three important issues in VoIP networks: Quality of Service, pricing and security.

In addressing Quality of Service (QoS), it introduces the notion of delay not exceeding an upper limit, termed the bounded delay, to measure the Quality of Service in VoIP networks. Queuing models are introduced to measure performance in terms of bounded delays. Closed form solutions relating the impact of bounding delays on throughput of VoIP traffic are provided. Traffic that exceeds the delay threshold is treated as lost throughput. The results addressed can be used in scaling...

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2013, held in Nanning, China, in July 2013. The 192 revised full papers presented in the three volumes LNCS 7995, LNAI 7996, and CCIS 375 were carefully reviewed and selected from 561 submissions. The papers in this volume (CCIS 375) are organized in topical sections on Neural Networks; Systems Biology and Computational Biology; Computational Genomics and Proteomics; Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining; Evolutionary Learning and Genetic Algorithms; Machine Learning Theory and...

This book gives a systematic exposition of China's logistics development to the English-reading community. The ultimate goal of the book is to present a timely portrayal of China's logistics market growth and the evolution status of China's logistics industry. Being the fourth volume of the "Contemporary Logistics in China," the book strives to offer in-depth analysis on some hot issues and dilemmas amid the on going dynamic and multi-faceted development and also a source of reference for interested readers in academic and professional fields.

This book - in conjunction with the volumes LNCS 8588 and LNBI 8590 - constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2014, held in Taiyuan, China, in August 2014. The 85 papers of this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections such as soft computing; artificial bee colony algorithms; unsupervised learning; kernel methods and supporting vector machines; machine learning; fuzzy theory and algorithms; image processing; intelligent computing in computer vision;...

This book carries on the ideal of providing a systematic exposition of the logistics development in China to the English-reading community at large in the spirit of the four predecessor volumes, published in previous years. This book is the fifth volume in a series entitled "Contemporary Logistics in China," authored by the researchers in Logistics Center at Nankai University. Specially, the opening chapter of this book presents a synopsis of the intent, the history, the framework, the topical coverage and the train of thought of the sequel in the latest five years. As the previous four...

This book is the sixth volume in a series entitled "Contemporary Logistics in China," authored by researchers at the Logistics Center, Nankai University. As with the previous volumes, the ultimate aim of this book is to present a timely portrait of the rapid growth of China's logistics market and the status of its logistics industry's evolution.

While logistics has caught on as a vital component in China's national development plan, both government agencies at all levels and various types of enterprises have put considerable effort into propelling logistics to a new height.

This book gives a systematic exposition of China's logistics development to the English-reading community. The ultimate goal of the book is to present a timely portrayal of China's logistics market growth and the evolution status of China's logistics industry. Being the fourth volume of the "Contemporary Logistics in China," the book strives to offer in-depth analysis on some hot issues and dilemmas amid the on going dynamic and multi-faceted development and also a source of reference for interested readers in academic and professional fields.