A major scholarly work, published in conjunction with the exhibition titled "Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei" (on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during 1996, and scheduled for several other American cities during 1996-1997). Written by scholars of both Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds and conceived as a cultural history, the book synthesizes scholarship of the past three decades to present the historical and cultural significance of individual works of art and analyses of their aesthetic content, as well as reevaluation of the cultural dynamics of Chinese history. Includes some 600 illustrations, 436 in color. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Internationalization, Design and Global Development, IDGD 2011, held in Orlando, FL, USA, in July 2011 in the framework of the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2011. The 71 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of internationalization, design and global development and address the following major topics: Cultural and cross-cultural design, culture and usability, design, emotion, trust and aesthetics, cultural issues in business and industry, culture, communication and society.

Taxonomy provides the basic building blocks of our understanding of the diversity of life on this planet. It stems from innate human curiosity; confronted with an unknown species or object we ask "what is it?" Taxonomists recognize species and other systematic unities (the taxa), define them and place them within the framework of known organisms, providing the means for their subsequent identification. The Catalogue of Palaearctic Coleoptera (edited by I. & D. Löbl) gives a taxonomic overview of the most diverse group of all living things in the world's largest biogeographical area. It fixes nomenclature needed for unambiguous transfer of information, gives information about the occurrence of species and subspecies, and contains references that provide key information of over 40,000 systematic units. The work is a scaffold for biotic surveys, ecological studies, and nature conservation. It responds also to the urgent need of assessment of the still left forms of life, actually threatened by the on-going destruction of habitats. Contributors are: Robert B. Angus, Martin Fikáček, Elio Gentili, Manfred A. Jäch, Fenglong Jia, Tomáš Lackner, Ivan Löbl, Sławomir Mazur, Yusuke Minoshima, Alfred F. Newton, Michel Perreau, Alexander Prokin, Marek Przewoźny, Jan Rŭžička, Sergey K. Ryndevich, Michael Schülke, André Skale, Aleš Smetana, Mikael Sörensson. The publication of the work was supported by the Muséum de la Ville de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland.

The world-class National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taiwan possesses a repository of the largest collection of Chinese cultural treasures of outstanding quality. Through implementing a two-organizational restructuring, and shifting its operational focus from being object-oriented to public-centered, it aims to capture the attention of people and promote awareness of the culture and traditions of China. In this vein, the NPM combines its expertise in museum service with the possibilities afforded by Information Technology (IT). This book analyses the research results of a team sponsored by the National Science Council in Taiwan to observe the development processes and accomplishments, and to conduct scientific researches covering not only the technology and management disciplines, but also the humanities and social science disciplines. The development process of new digital content and IT-enabled services of NPM would be a useful benchmark for museums, cultural and creative organizations and traditional organizations in Taiwan and around the world.