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The Silk Road, a historical network of interlinking trade routes across the Afro-Eurasian landmass, was of great importance to the transport of peoples, goods, and ideas between the East and the West. Although its main use was for importing silk from China, traders moving in the opposite direction carried to Central China jewellery, glassware, and other exotic goods from the Mediterranean, jade from Khotan, and horses and furs from the nomads of the Steppe. The Silk Road brought together the achievements of the different peoples of Eurasia to advance the Old World as a whole.
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Advance of Polymers Applied to Biomedical Applications: Cell Scaffolds" that was published in Polymers
2012 International Conference on Software Engineering, Knowledge Engineering and Information Engineering (SEKEIE 2012) will be held in Macau, April 1-2, 2012 . This conference will bring researchers and experts from the three areas of Software Engineering, Knowledge Engineering and Information Engineering together to share their latest research results and ideas. This volume book covered significant recent developments in the Software Engineering, Knowledge Engineering and Information Engineering field, both theoretical and applied. We are glad this conference attracts your attentions, and thank your support to our conference. We will absorb remarkable suggestion, and make our conference more successful and perfect.
Exploring the darkest side of organizations may have a potential to change our previous assumptions about business life. Scholars both in management and organizational research fields have shown interest in the "bright" side of behavioral life and have looked for the ways to create a positive organizational climate and assumed a positive relation between happiness of employees and productivity. These main assumptions of the Human Relations School have dominated the scientific inquiry on organizational behavior. However, "the dark side of organizational life" may have more explanatory power than "the bright side". Hostility, jealousy, envy, rivalry, gossip, problematic personalities, dislike,...
Three-dimensional (3D) printing enables the fabrication of tissue-engineered constructs and devices from a patient’s own medical data, leading to the creation of anatomically matched and patient-specific constructs. There is a growing interest in applying 3D printing technologies in the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The main printing methods include extrusion-based, vat photopolymerization, droplet-based, and powder-based printing. A variety of materials have been used for printing, from metal alloys and ceramics to polymers and elastomers as well as from hydrogels to extracellular matrix proteins. More recently, bioprinting, a subcategory of 3D printing, has enab...
This book demonstrates the historical changes in early medieval China as seen in the tales of the supernatural—thematic transformation from traditional demonic retribution to Karmic retribution, from indigenous Chinese netherworld to Buddhist concepts of hell, and from the traditional Chinese savior to a new savior, Buddha. It also examines Buddhist imagery and the flourish of new motifs in the fantastic dreamworld and their relationship with Buddhism. This study relates the Youming lu to the development of popular Chinese Buddhist beliefs, attempting to single out ideas that differ from the beliefs found in Buddhist scriptures as well as miraculous tales written especially to promote Buddhism.
While scholarship on migration has been thriving for decades, little attention has been paid to professionals from Europe and America who move temporarily to destinations beyond ‘the West’. Such migrants are marginalised and depoliticised by debates on immigration policy, and thus there is an urgent need to develop nuanced understanding of these more privileged movements. In many ways, these are the modern-day equivalents of colonial settlers and expatriates, yet the continuities in their migration practices have rarely been considered. The New Expatriates advances our understanding of contemporary mobile professionals by engaging with postcolonial theories of race, culture and identity....
Soil organic matter (SOM) is the primary determinant of soil functionality. Soil organic carbon (SOC) accounts for 50% of the SOM content, accompanied by nitrogen, phosphorus, and a range of macro and micro elements. As a dynamic component, SOM is a source of numerous ecosystem services critical to human well-being and nature conservancy. Important among these goods and services generated by SOM include moderation of climate as a source or sink of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases, storage and purification of water, a source of energy and habitat for biota (macro, meso, and micro-organisms), a medium for plant growth, cycling of elements (N, P, S, etc.), and generation of net primar...
Functional Nanocomposite Hydrogels: Synthesis, Characterization, and Biomedical Applications reviews how the unique properties of nanoscale composite materials make them ideal candidates for use in biomedical hydrogels. The book covers a range of key nanocomposite materials for use in biomedical hydrogels, including graphene quantum dot, cellulose and collagen nanocomposites. A wide selection of biomedical applications for functional nanocomposite hydrogels is explored, from drug delivery and cancer therapy, to wound healing and bioimaging. This is a key reference for those working in the fields of biomaterials, nanotechnology, pharmacology, biomedical engineering, and anyone with a particul...
This book features a brief history of additive manufacturing and 3D/4D printing techniques, as well as the advantages, applications, and overall challenges facing the technology. It then focuses on the applications of bioadhesive systems for drug delivery. 3D/4D Printing of Bioadhesive Pharmaceutical Systems: Additive Manufacturing and Perspectives, explores recent discoveries of 3D printing in the development of pharmaceutical systems and drug delivery. Specifically, it discusses the main polymers/materials used in the development of bio-adhesive pharmaceutical systems and explains the importance of bio-adhesiveness of drug release through 3D printing. The authors also introduce the main st...