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Shadows, the common phenomena in most outdoor scenes, bring many problems in practical image processing. Shadow detection and removal, especial in uncalibrated outdoor image, is still a difficult problem. The purpose of this paper is to detect and to remove shadows in single outdoor image based on retinex theory.

The shadow extraction algorithm originates from a simple idea that the human‐vision‐based retinex has the natural ability to enhance the shadow regions of an image no matter it is penumbrae or umbrae. Shadows are detected by comparing the retinex‐enhanced images with original images in the paper. The shadow removal algorithm in the paper deals with the shadow regions and non‐shadow regions in the images separately using the retinex enhancement algorithm. Through adding smooth light forcibly to shadow edges and introducing shadow edge masks, the authors reduce the effects of shadow edges in shadow removal processing.

Some real single outdoor images with the umbra regions and those with penumbra regions are both experimented in the paper. Experimental results validate the feasibility of the approach.

The approach proposed here does not use any special prior knowledge and assumptions. The feasibility of this method is testified for detecting and removing both penumbrae and umbrae in the outdoor images.

The inclusion of esports as an official event in the Hangzhou Asian Games is an important step towards the institutionalisation of esports. The significance of this event marks that Asia once again takes a lead in the global esportisation. This chapter investigates a series of history events in the inclusion process of esports into the comprehensive Games in Asia using process sociology and actor network theory (ANT). This study will analyse the type characteristics of esports events in Hangzhou Asian Games, whilst examining how key stakeholders' interact and balance in the network composed of international sports organisations, host of the event, emerging esports organisations and esports game companies. The chapter also examines the functions of global game industrial economic geography, local cultural politics, esports geopolitics and Olympic values in esports sportization, aiming to reveal the implications of esports inclusion in the Asian Games on the debate of whether esports meets the criteria to be classified as a ‘sport’ and its enlightenment of digital strategy to the inclusion esports in the Olympics.

This first chapter is the introduction to the book. The purpose of this book is to address and better understand why China tightly embraces modern sport in contemporary times. Some view this as an indicator of glocalisation and a result of Western industrial civilization putting pressure on China to showcase their strengths as a nation. Some important considerations to explore are China's mediated ability to play and compete with the west. Sport is also seen as a channel of observing global political and economic challenges, especially those in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the intense tensions between communities, which certainly inspires further academic development. Given China's recently remarkable achievements in sport, it is high time to show the world more inside stories of sport development across the nation. The contributors of this collection bring foundational Chinese context to each chapter as they examine changing sport cultures at different scales.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the practical challenge faced by modern logistics enterprises to accurately evaluate driving performance with high computational efficiency under the disturbance of road smoothness and to identify significantly associated performance influence factors.

The authors cooperate with a logistics server (G7) and establish a driving grading system by constructing real-time inertial navigation data-enabled indicators for both driving behaviour (times of aggressive speed change and times of lane change) and road smoothness (average speed and average vibration times of the vehicle body).

The developed driving grading system demonstrates highly accurate evaluations in practical use. Data analytics on the constructed indicators prove the significances of both driving behaviour heterogeneity and the road smoothness effect on objective driving grading. The methodologies are validated with real-life tests on different types of vehicles, and are confirmed to be quite effective in practical tests with 95% accuracy according to prior benchmarks. Data analytics based on the grading system validate the hypotheses of the driving fatigue effect, daily traffic periods impact and transition effect. In addition, the authors empirically distinguish the impact strength of external factors (driving time, rainfall and humidity, wind speed, and air quality) on driving performance.

This study has good potential for providing objective driving grading as required by the modern logistics industry to improve transparent management efficiency with real-time vehicle data.

This study contributes to the existing research by comprehensively measuring both road smoothness and driving performance in the driving grading system in the modern logistics industry.

The purposes of this study are to contribute to the limited green growth (GG) literature in emerging markets, to analyze GG from a financial economy perspective and to determine the contribution of financial development and innovation to GG in Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa and Türkiye (BRICS-T). BRICS-T countries significantly impact the world population, international politics, energy resources and economy. In addition, BRICS-T countries are one of the leading countries in the world with their sustainability efforts. Investigating the GG model in these countries may contribute to structuring emerging economies around the principles of GG and advancing global green transformation efforts.

The authors applied panel data analysis from 2001 to 2019. GG is economic growth free from environmental depletion in the model. National income, personnel expenditure and foreign direct investments are macroeconomic variables. These variables measure economic development and promote economic and social progress, which is essential for GG. Capital accumulation and innovation are essential tools in GG transformation. Therefore, financial development and patent applications represent the moderating variables. The authors estimate the fixed effect model with Parks-Kmenta robust.

Empirical results show that national income growth and foreign direct investments positively affect GG. Personnel expenditure negatively affects GG. On the contrary, financial development and patent growth have little moderating role.

This study contributes to the literature on creating a GG model in emerging countries. The study is original in its model and sample.