Agriculture and Climate Beyond 2015 : A New Perspective on Future Land Use Patterns
Interactions between agriculture, climate and patterns of land use are complex. Major changes in agriculture, and land use patterns are foreseen in the next couple of decades in response to shifts in climate, greenhouse gas management initiatives, population growth and other forces. The book explores key interactions between changes in agriculture, patterns of land use and efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions from agriculture. The volume is based on inter-disciplinary science and policy interactions, exploring the way land use may aid in addressing or be affected by the onset of climate change and alterations in food demand. Future forces shaping land use decisions are examined, and its sensitivity to climate change is highlighted. Patterns of land use and the agricultural role in climate change mitigation are explored. Also, policy and social responses to the new perspectives on future land use patterns are identified. The perspective of the book is beyond the year 2015.
Affective computing and intelligent interaction ; 2nd International Conference, ACII 2007, Lisbon, Portugal, September 12-14, 2007, Proceedings
Organized in topical sections on affective facial expression and recognition, affective body expression and recognition, affective speech processing, affective text and dialogue processing, recognising affect using physiological measures, computational models of emotion and theoretical foundations, affective databases, annotations, tools and languages, affective sound and music processing, affective interactions: systems and applications, as well as evaluating affective systems.
Advances in Urban Ecology : Integrating Humans and Ecological Processes in Urban Ecosystems
The future of Earth’s ecosystems is increasingly influenced by the pace and patterns of urbanization. One of the greatest challenges for natural and social scientists is to understand how urbanizing regions evolve through the complex interactions between humans and ecological processes. Questions and methods of inquiry specific to our traditional disciplinary domains yield partial views that reflect different epistemologies and understandings of the world. In order to achieve the level of synthesis required to see the urban ecosystem as a whole we must change the way we pose questions and search for answers. Cities are the result of human and ecological processes occurring simultaneously in time and in space and the legacy of the simultaneous processes of the past. Urban ecology is the study of the co-evolution of human-ecological systems. Scholars of both urban systems and ecology must challenge the assumptions and world views within their disciplines and work towards a hybrid theory that builds on multiple world views.
Advances in Plant Ethylene Research ; Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on the Plant Hormone Ethylene
The rapid advances in elucidating the biosynthesis and mode of action of the plant hormone ethylene as well as its involvement in the regulation of the whole plant physiology made imperative the organization of a series of dedicated conferences. This volume contains the main lectures and poster contributions presented at the 7th International Symposium on the Plant Hormone Ethylene held in Pisa in 2006. The book is organized in seven sections dedicated to 1) Ethylene biosynthesis, perception and signal transduction, 2) Interactions between ethylene and other hormones, 3) Role of ethylene in plant growth and differentiation, 4) Fruit development, ripening and quality, 5) Abscission and senescence, 6) Ethylene involvement in biotic and abiotic stresses, and 7) Biotechnology and applied aspects.
Advances in Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Public Health ; Vol.15
Focuses on current progress in the broad field of medical microbiology, and covers both basic and applied topics related to the study of microbes, their interactions with human and animals, and emerging issues relevant for public health. Original research and review articles present and discuss multidisciplinary findings and developments on various aspects of microbiology, infectious diseases, and their diagnosis, treatment and prevention.
Advances in Mechanics of Materials for Environmental and Civil Engineering
Deals with both mathematical modeling and experimental studies related to systems relevant for various civil engineering fields. The book addresses several key topics, including artificial intelligence applied to the control and monitoring of construction site personnel, finite element models for endplate beam-to-column connections under various load conditions, random functionally graded micropolar beams, and many others. The book explores the design and study of microstructures aimed at increasing the toughness and durability of novel materials in building and construction, based also on the re-utilization of residues and wastes of metallurgical industry produces.
Advances in image enhancement
In the era of the internet of things, images have played important roles in human–computer interactions, and with the arrival of big data technology, people have higher requirements regarding image quality, especially for images collected in dark light. This can be addressed through the development of camera hardware quality, i.e., the resolution and exposure time of cameras, which may require high computational costs. As an alternative, image enhancement techniques can exact salient features to improve the quality of captured images according to the differences in diverse features, although they suffer from some challenges, i.e., a low contrast, artifacts, and overexposure, thus making it decidedly necessary to determine how to use advanced image enhancement techniques.
Advances in Artificial Life ; 9th European Conference, ECAL 2007, Lisbon, Portugal, September 10-14, 2007, Proceedings
This book is organized in topical sections on conceptual articles, morphogenesis and development, robotics and autonomous agents, evolutionary computation and theory, cellular automata, models of biological systems and their applications, ant colony and swarm systems, evolution of communication, simulation of social interactions, self-replication, artificial chemistry, and posters.
Advanced Motion Control and Sensing for Intelligent Vehicles
Provides the latest information in intelligent vehicle control, sensing, and intelligent transportation. It addresses the growing need for safe, comfortable, time and energy-efficient modes of transportation with emphasis on the latest key findings, current trends, and likely future developments in this rapidly expanding field. Highlights : Discusses individual vehicle dynamics, sensory and multiple ground-vehicle interactions / Includes systematic review of past and current research achievements / Presents case studies in cutting-edge directions such as vehicle steering motion, vehicle vision systems, cooperative driving, intersection safety, and tire pressure monitoring / Assesses the likely future developments of this field. This book is useful for both practicing engineers and researchers in the automotive industry.
Advanced computer simulation approaches for soft matter sciences II
This series presents critical reviews of the present and future trends in polymer and biopolymer science including chemistry, physical chemistry, physics and materials science. It is addressed to all scientists at universities and in industry who wish to keep abreast of advances in the topics covered.The second volume contains four contributions, and has a very strong topical focus on long range interactions.
Adaptive Backstepping Control of Uncertain Systems : Nonsmooth Nonlinearities, Interactions or Time-Variations
This book employs the powerful and popular adaptive backstepping control technology to design controllers for dynamic uncertain systems with non-smooth nonlinearities.
Acoustic MIMO Signal Processing
Telecommunication systems and human-machine interfaces start employing multiple microphones and loudspeakers in order to make conversations and interactions more lifelike, hence more efficient. This development gives rise to a variety of acoustic signal processing problems under multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scenarios, encompassing distant speech acquisition, sound source localization and tracking, echo and noise control, source separation and speech dereverberation, and many others. The last decade has witnessed a growing interest in exploring these problems, but there has been little effort to develop a theory to have all these problems investigated in a unified framework. This unique book attempts to fill the gap.
A short guide to clinical pharmacokinetics
Consists of seven chapters that cover various aspects of pharmacokinetics and its clinical applications. The chapters are structured to provide clear objectives and keywords are bolded throughout the text to facilitate understanding. The topics covered include the significance of pharmacokinetics in clinical practice, factors affecting pharmacokinetic parameters, pharmacokinetic drug interactions, therapeutic drug monitoring, dosage adjustment in different population groups, the influence of hepatic diseases on pharmacokinetics and the impact of pharmacogenomics on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Capability in Age and Ageing
This book provides insight on how to interpret capability in ageing – one’s individual ability to perform actions in order to reach goals one has reason to value – from a multidisciplinary approach. the book describes this demographic trends as well as the large global challenges and important societal implications this will have such as a worldwide increase in the number of persons affected with dementia, and in the ratio of retired persons to those still in the labor market. Through contributions from many different research areas, it discussed how capability depends on interactions between the individual (e.g. health, genetics, personality, intellectual capacity), environment (e.g. family, friends, home, work place), and society (e.g. political decisions, ageism, historical period).













