Rong Chen

Alkaline Fuel Cells: Fundamentals, Design, and Applications is a comprehensive discussion of alkaline fuel cells that bridges the gap between fundamental knowledge and practical skills needed to address real-world challenges in alkaline fuel cells. The book provides readers with the essential information needed to understand, design, and implement efficient low-temperature and high-temperature alkaline fuel cell systems. The book provides a detailed understanding of alkaline fuel cells principles, materials, and operation. It begins with an introduction to alkaline fuel cells and a discussion on mass transport phenomena in these cells. Subsequent chapters delve into the mechanisms, classification, design, and challenges of alkaline hydrogen oxidation reaction catalysts and alkaline oxygen reduction reaction catalysts. The book also covers the synthesis, properties, and perspectives of anion exchange membranes for alkaline fuel cells. Further, it addresses cell design and stack engineering, performance testing and characterization techniques, and advanced theoretical modeling of alkaline fuel cells. It also explores liquid fuels and their applications in transportation and beyond. The book concludes with a global overview of market dynamics, the impact and future opportunities of government policies, and future perspectives. Alkaline Fuel Cells: Fundamentals, Design, and Applications is an indispensable guide for students seeking a comprehensive resource on alkaline fuel cells, equipping readers with the necessary tools to design, optimize, and implement alkaline fuel cells systems. It will also be of interest to researchers and practicing engineers working on alkaline fuel cells.

With the “discursive turn” has come a distrust – a complete rejection by some – of theories that seek deeper reasons for surface phenomena. Rong Chen argues that this distrust, with its accompanying overemphasis on specificity and fluidity of linguistic meaning and social values, is unwarranted and unhelpful. Drawing on insights from social theories and various strands of pragmatics, he proposes a motivation model of pragmatics (MMP), contending that language use can be adequately, coherently, and elegantly studied via the motivation behind it in its varied and dynamic contexts. The model, with its well-laid out components, is then applied to (im)politeness research, cross-cultural pragmatics, diachronic pragmatics, discourse and genre analysis, conversation analysis, identity construction, and the study of metaphor, sarcasm, parody, and lying. MMP is thus a framework aimed at accounting for fluidity with stable notions, specificity with general principles, and differences with similar underlying factors. As such, the book should appeal to students of pragmatics, (im)politeness, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, communication, sociology, and psychology.

Politeness in Chinese is a well-researched concept in pragmatics; however, this pioneering book sheds an original new light on the subject. It provides a thorough diachronic investigation of Chinese politeness, and argues for universality in politeness theorizing. The author takes us on a journey through changes in Chinese politeness from Confucius to the present day, showing how these processes are reactions to the changing world, rather than to changes in the principles of politeness itself. He splits Chinese face into Face1 and Face2 – the former referring to the person and the latter to the persona of the speaker - and presents a model of Chinese politeness (MCP). He then proposes B&L-E (Brown and Levinson Extended) by incorporating the theoretical constructs of self-politeness and impoliteness. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

With the “discursive turn” has come a distrust – a complete rejection by some – of theories that seek deeper reasons for surface phenomena. Rong Chen argues that this distrust, with its accompanying overemphasis on specificity and fluidity of linguistic meaning and social values, is unwarranted and unhelpful. Drawing on insights from social theories and various strands of pragmatics, he proposes a motivation model of pragmatics (MMP), contending that language use can be adequately, coherently, and elegantly studied via the motivation behind it in its varied and dynamic contexts. The model, with its well-laid out components, is then applied to (im)politeness research, cross-cultural pragmatics, diachronic pragmatics, discourse and genre analysis, conversation analysis, identity construction, and the study of metaphor, sarcasm, parody, and lying. MMP is thus a framework aimed at accounting for fluidity with stable notions, specificity with general principles, and differences with similar underlying factors. As such, the book should appeal to students of pragmatics, (im)politeness, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, communication, sociology, and psychology.

A comprehensive resource that draws a balance between theory and applications of nonlinear time series analysis Nonlinear Time Series Analysis offers an important guide to both parametric and nonparametric methods, nonlinear state-space models, and Bayesian as well as classical approaches to nonlinear time series analysis. The authors—noted experts in the field—explore the advantages and limitations of the nonlinear models and methods and review the improvements upon linear time series models. The need for this book is based on the recent developments in nonlinear time series analysis, statistical learning, dynamic systems and advanced computational methods. Parametric and nonparametric methods and nonlinear and non-Gaussian state space models provide a much wider range of tools for time series analysis. In addition, advances in computing and data collection have made available large data sets and high-frequency data. These new data make it not only feasible, but also necessary to take into consideration the nonlinearity embedded in most real-world time series. This vital guide: • Offers research developed by leading scholars of time series analysis • Presents R commands making it possible to reproduce all the analyses included in the text • Contains real-world examples throughout the book • Recommends exercises to test understanding of material presented • Includes an instructor solutions manual and companion website Written for students, researchers, and practitioners who are interested in exploring nonlinearity in time series, Nonlinear Time Series Analysis offers a comprehensive text that explores the advantages and limitations of the nonlinear models and methods and demonstrates the improvements upon linear time series models.

The book provides an account of English inversion, a construction that displays perplexing idiosyncrasies at the level of semantics, phonology, syntax, and pragmatics. Basing his central argument on the claim that inversion is a linguistic representation of a Ground-before-Figure model, the author develops an elegant solution to a hitherto unsolved multidimensional linguistic puzzle and, in the process, supports the theoretical position that a cognitive approach best suits the multidimensionality of language itself. Engagingly written, the book will appeal to linguists of all persuasions and to any reader curious about the relationship between language and cognition.