New Releases by Jen Wang

This book presents a wealth of images of the different diseases and conditions encountered in the field of uroradiology with the aim of enabling the reader to recognize lesions, to interpret them appropriately and to make correct diagnoses. The images have been selected because they depict typical or classic findings and provide a route to lesion recognition that is superior to memorization of descriptions. The imaging modalities represented include CT, CT angiography, CT urography, MRI, MRA, MRU, diffusion-weighted MRI and ADC mapping, dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI, sonography, conventional angiography, excretory urography, retrograde pyelography, cystography, urethrography and voiding cystourethrography. For each depicted case, important imaging features are highlighted and key points identified in brief accompanying descriptions. Readers will find that the book provides excellent guidance in the selection of imaging modalities and facilitates diagnosis. It will be an ideal ready source of information on key imaging features of urinary tract diseases for medical students, residents, fellows and physicians handling these diseases.

From New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow, the story of a girl who gets into gaming—and ends up on a globe-spanning crusade to stop exploitation online.

A collection of seven new stories by comics artists centers on a central theme of finding a hidden door.

This book looks at the relationship between Chinese international relations (IR) scholarship and China’s rise as a world power. Specifically, it addresses how China’s rising international status since the early 1990s has shaped the country’s IR studies, and the different ways that Chinese IR scholars are interpreting that rise. The author argues that the development of IR studies in China has been influenced by China’s past historical experiences, its recent change in status in world politics, and indigenous scholarly interpretations of both factors. Instead of treating Chinese IR scholars as value-free social scientists, the author shows how Chinese scholars—as purposive, strategic, and emotional actors—tend to manipulate existing (mostly Western) IR theories to support their policy propositions and identity statements. This book represents one of few efforts to determine how local Chinese scholars are constructing IR knowledge, how they are dealing with intersections between indigenous Chinese and imported IR theory and concepts, and how Chinese scholars are analyzing “their China” in terms of its current rise to power.

It''s been called one of Asia''s "miracle economies". The beauty of its mountains and rivers was astounding enough to attract the Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese navies.And, since, then it has produced everything from boba tea to famous director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) to millions of exported goods. This is Taiwan. It''s where East meets West-and it has a lot to offer curious travelers.Whether you''re a backpacker trekking through Asia on a budget, a business traveler coming to Taipei for a week of luxury, a descendant visiting the land of your ancestors, or someone who''s curious about the history, culture, food, and people of this unique island-Taipei: Footsteps will help you experience Taiwan from the perspective of a local.Written and designed by a team of five local college students who researched every corner of the island over a period of eighteen months, this book includes listings and descriptions of both popular and lesser-known tourist sites. It also features easy-to-use guides and maps.In Taipei: Footsteps, discover for yourself why this island has captured the imagination of so many people around the world.

The story of two very different people: KoKo, a twenty-something free spirit living her life to the max, and Jon, a quiet average guy who has given up his own dreams to move to Peru with his girlfriend. When the two meet, they find themselves rethinking their own lives.

"The influences of ZnO nanoparticles on cellular responses to activation of muscarinic receptors were studied in Chinese hamster ovary cells expressing the human M3 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor. ZnO particles (20 nm) induced cytotoxicity in a time and concentration-dependent manner: following a 24 h exposure, toxicity was minimal at concentrations below 20 [mu]g/ml but virtually complete at concentrations above 28 [mu]g/ml. ZnO particles did not affect antagonist binding to M3 receptors or allosteric ligand effects, but increased agonist binding affinity while eliminating guanine nucleotide sensitivity. At a noncytotoxic concentration (10 [mu]g/ml), ZnO increased resting [Ca2]i from 40 to 130 nM without compromising calcium homeostatic mechanisms. ZnO particles had minimal effects on inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3)- or thapsigargin-mediated release of intracellular calcium from the endoplasmic reticulum, but strongly inhibited store operated calcium entry (capacitive calcium entry). The latter effect was seen as 1) a decrease in the plateau phase of the response and 2) a decrease in Ca2 entry upon introduction of calcium to the extracellular medium following thapsigargin-induced depletion of calcium from the endoplasmic reticulum (EC50''s [approximately] 2 [mu]g/ml). Thus, ZnO nanoparticles interfere with two specific aspects of the M3 signaling pathway, agonist binding and store operated calcium entry"--Abstract, leaf iii

The current class of amorphous Fe-based alloys, also referred to as amorphous steels, possess some outstanding physical properties, including high specific strength, elastic modulus, and excellent corrosion resistance, as well as maintaining fairly low cost. However, thermally-induced embrittlement and insufficient overall ductility are detrimental factors that prohibit amorphous steels from being widely used as structural materials for civilian and military applications. Also, the desire to continuously enlarge the physical size of amorphous alloys, which requires significant improvement of the glass formability, is another hurdle that requires more scientific understanding in order to promote their future application. Consequently, obtaining systematic and detailed characterizations of amorphous alloys from structural and electronic aspects are important for future improvements in their development. In this research, two directions are focused on in characterizing these effects. First, studying the crystallization processes can help gain insight as to the alloy''s overall stability. Measuring formation kinetics of crystalline phases that result and the atomic segregation mechanisms associated with devitrification can be employed to interpret the factors contributing to the glass formability. Second, examining the electronic and atomic structures in the vitrified state can assist in determining effects associated with bonding strength and electronic interactions among the various elements, which can be correlated with glass formability and the alloy''s fracture behavior when key elements are added to bring the alloy through the ductile-to-brittle transition. The characterization methods utilized in this research involve the complementary studies of crystallization sequences, phase identification, growth kinetics, chemical and structural analyses, as well as the atomic and electronic structure examination in the vitrified state of the alloys. Differential thermal analysis (DTA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), three-dimensional atom probe (3DAP), and conventional and analytical transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are employed to carry out these studies. Detailed investigation on the atomic and electronic structure in the undercooled amorphous region of the alloys is implemented with XRD, and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS).

Abstract: In 1984, Patterson and Piatetski-Shapiro constructed cuspidal distinguished representations on the three-fold covers of GL(3). Their construction is based on the work of Kazhdan and Patterson on metaplectic forms and the method of the converse theorems given by Jacquet, Piatetski-Shapiro, and Shalika. These distinguished representations can be viewed as generalizations of classical theta functions. This dissertation consists of two parts. In the first part, we apply the approach of Patterson and Piatetski-Shapiro to the case of the two fold cover of GL(2). We show that each Hecke character corresponds to a distinguished representation on the two-fold cover of GL(2). If the Hecke character is odd, then the corresponding distinguished representation is cuspidal. The same result has been obtained by Gelbart and Piatetski-Shapiro with a different approach using Weil representations. In the second part, we make progress toward generalizing the work of Patterson and Piatetski-Shapiro to the case of the four-fold cover of GL(4). The goal is to develop the relevant local Rankin-Selberg theory, adapt the converse theorem of Cogdell and Piatetski-Shapiro to the metaplectic setting and verify the analytic information needed to construct cuspidal distinguished representations by the converse theorem.

We show that investment under financing constraints can be modeled as a one-sided deviation from a frictionless investment level, and that effects of financing constraints can be identified and quantified by imposing a distributional assumption on the effects. Panel data on Taiwanese manufacturing firms between 1989 and 1996 are used in the estimation. This period chronicles important financial reforms in the Taiwanese markets, thus providing a unique opportunity to test the financing constraint hypothesis. Estimation results show that cash flow not only have the first order effect of reducing the level of constraints, but also has the second order effect of reducing the variance of the constraints. The use of the quantitative measures of financing constraints in the post-estimation analysis yields two interesting findings: (1) Some of the sorting criteria used in the literature do not have significant and monotonic relationships with the degrees of financing constraint, resulting in problematic sample separations. (2) The effects of financial liberalization in Taiwan are such that the investment efficiency improved over time for a typical firm, and the improvement was particularly large for smaller firms.