Air, Water and Soil Quality Modelling for Risk and Impact Assessment
This book is the result of the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Air, Water and Soil Quality Modelling for Risk and Impact Assessment,The aim of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on was to further joint environmental compartment modelling and applications of control theory to environmental management. The articles of the proceedings provide an overview of ongoing research in this field regarding assessment of environmental risks and impacts. Besides selected issues of practical application they address questions of forward and inverse modelling, integrated treatment of environmental changes and economic impacts as well as aspects of future development of numerical environmental modelling.
Air quality integrated assessment : A European perspective
This book reports on the results of an extended survey conducted across Europe within the framework of the APPRAISAL FP7 project to determine the extent to which an integrated assessment approach to air quality is being adopted, on the one hand, by regional and local authorities to develop air quality plans and, on the other, by researchers. Following a detailed analysis of the role and structure of the components of an integrated assessment study, the results of the survey are considered from a variety of perspectives.
Agroecology now! : Transformations towards more just and sustainable food systems
Develops a framework for advancing agroecology transformations focusing on power, politics and governance. It explores the potential of agroecology as a sustainable and socially just alternative to today’s dominant food regime. Agroecology is an ecological approach to farming that addresses climate change and biodiversity loss while contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals
Ages, generations and the social contract : The demographic challenges facing the welfare state
Our societies are ageing. The Family is changing. Labour force behaviour is evolving. How is the organisation of family and collective solidarity adapting in this context of longer life spans, low fertility, and work that is simultaneously scarce and abundant? The welfare states are currently facing three main challenges: ensure satisfactory living conditions for the elderly without increasing the cost burden on the active population, reduce social inequality, and maintain equity between successive generations. In this book, researchers from different countries compare their experiences and offer contrasting views on the future of social protection. They consider the theoretical aspects of the intergenerational debate, relations between generations within the family, the living standards of elderly people, and the question of social time.
Agency and causal explanation in economics
This book provides an exploration of the consequences of the ontological differences between natural and social objects (sometimes described as objects of nature and objects of thought) in the workings of causal and agency relationships.
African Languages and Literatures in the 21st Century
Examines the crucial role still played by African languages in pedagogy and literatures in the 21st century, generating insights into how they effectively serve cultural needs across the African continent and beyond. Boldly positioning African languages as key resources in the 21st century, chapters focus on themes such as language revolt by marginalized groups at grassroots level, the experience of American students learning African languages, female empowerment through the use of African languages in music, film and literary works, and immigration issues. The contributions are written by scholars of language, literature, education and linguistics, and will be of interest to students and scholars in these and related areas.
Africa-Europe Research and Innovation Cooperation : Global Challenges, Bi-regional Responses
Concerned with the evolution and achievements of cooperation in research and innovation between Africa and Europe, and points to the need for more diversified funding and finance mechanisms, and for novel models of collaboration to attract new actors and innovative ideas. It reflects on the political, economic, diplomatic and scientific rationale for cooperation, while also examining practical developments, illustrated with examples, in the fields of food security, health, and climate change. The need to mobilise scientific knowledge and to ensure equality and fairness in the cooperation are recurrent themes. Africa-Europe Cooperation in Research and Innovation is essential reading for policy makers and researchers in international relations and science diplomacy.
Affect and Mathematics Education : Fresh Perspectives on Motivation, Engagement, and Identity
Presents the latest trends in research in the area. Following an introduction and a survey chapter providing a concise overview of the state-of-art in the field of mathematics-related affect, the book is divided into three main sections: motivation and values, engagement, and identity in mathematics education. Each section comprises several independent chapters based on original research, as well as a reflective commentary by an expert in the area. Collectively, the chapters present a rich methodological spectrum, from narrative analysis to structural equation modelling.
Advancing Energy Policy : Lessons on the integration of Social Sciences and Humanities
Advocates for the Social Sciences and Humanities to be more involved in energy policymaking. It forms part of the European platform for energy-related Social Sciences and Humanities’ activities, and works on the premise that crossing disciplines is essential. All of its contributions are highly interdisciplinary, with each chapter grounded in at least three different Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines. These varying perspectives come together to cover an array of issues relevant to the energy transition, including: energy poverty, justice, political ecology, governance, behaviours, imaginaries, systems approaches, modelling, as well as the particular challenges faced by interdisciplinary work. As a whole, the book presents new ideas for future energy policy, particularly at the European level. It is a valuable resource for energy researchers interested in interdisciplinary and society-relevant perspectives. Those working outside the Social Sciences and Humanities will find this book an accessible way of learning more about how these subjects can constructively contribute to energy policy.
Advances of Computational Intelligence in Industrial Systems
Advances of Computational Intelligence in Industrial Systems reports the exploration of CI frontiers with an emphasis on a broad spectrum of real-world applications. Section I – Theory and Foundation presents some of the latest developments in CI.
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 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles : State of the Art and the Road to Autonomy
There has been tremendous emphasis in unmanned aerial vehicles, both of fixed (airplanes) and rotary wing (vertical take off and landing, helicopters) types over the past ten years. Applications span both civilian and military domains, the latter being the most important at this stage. This edited book provides a solid and diversified reference source related to basic, applied research and development on small and miniature unmanned aerial vehicles, both fixed and rotary wing. As such, the book offers background information on the evolution of such vehicles over the years, followed by modeling and control fundamentals that are of paramount importance due to unmanned aerial vehicle model complexity, nonlinearity, coupling, inhirent instability and parameter values uncertainty. Aspects of navigation, including visual-based navigation and target tracking are discussed, followed by applications to attitude estimation on micro unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous solar unmanned aerial vehicle, biomimetic sensing for autonomous flights in near-earth environments, localization of air-ground wireless sensor networks, decentralized formation tracking, design of an unmanned aerial vehicle for volcanic gas sampling and design of an on-board processing controller for miniature helicopters.
Advances in Telerobotics
The main purpose of this book is to provide readers with recent advances in the field of Telerobotics. It describes methods, experimental results, applications, and developments, highly relevant for scientists, researchers, and students in Teleoperation. This book is structured in three parts: I. Human System Interfaces, II. Control, and III. Applications. Chapters in part I concentrate on human interface technology which allows a human operator to close the control loop of a remote robot. Topics related to control algorithms - in particular for the case with time delay in the communication network - are the focus in part II, concentrating on bilateral control methods. Part III presents a variety of advanced applications in surgery, space, and other fields relevant to everyday life.
Advances in statistical methods for the health sciences : Applications to cancer and AIDS studies, genome sequence analysis, and survival analysis
This volume, an outgrowth of an "International Conference on Statistical Methods in Health Sciences," covers a wide range of topics pertaining to new statistical methods and novel applications in the health sciences.
Advances in Sensing with Security Applications
The chapters in this volume were presented at the July 2005NATO Advanced Study Institute on Advances in Sensing with Security App- cations. The ASI was divided into three broadly de?ned but interrelated areas: the - creasing need for fast and accurate sensing, the scienti?c underpinnings of the ongoing revolution in sensing, and speci?c sensing algorithms and techniques. The ASI brought together world leaders from academia, government, andindustry,withextensivemultidisciplinarybackgroundsevidencedby theirresearchandparticipationinnumerousworkshopsandconferences.
Advances in semantic media adaptation and personalization
Realizing the growing importance of semantic adaptation and personalization of media, the editors of this book brought together leading researchers and practitioners of the field to discuss the state-of-the-art, and explore emerging exciting developments. This volume comprises extended versions of selected papers presented at the 1st International Workshop on Semantic Media Adaptation and Personalization (SMAP 2006).
Advances in Probabilistic Graphical Models
This carefully edited book brings together in one volume some of the most important topics of current research in probabilistic graphical modelling, learning from data and probabilistic inference. This includes topics such as the characterisation of conditional independence, the sensitivity of the underlying probability distribution of a Bayesian network to variation in its parameters, the learning of graphical models with latent variables and extensions to the influence diagram formalism. In addition, attention is given to important application fields of probabilistic graphical models, such as the control of vehicles, bioinformatics and medicine.
Advances in Natural Multimodal Dialogue Systems
The chapters in this book jointly contribute to what we shall call the fieldof natural and multimodal interactive systems engineering. This is not yet awell-established field of research and commercial development but, rather, anemerging one in all respects. It brings together, in a process that, arguably, wasbound to happen, contributors from many different, and often far more estab-lished, fields of research and industrial development. To mention but a few,these include speech technology, computer graphics and computer vision. Thefield’s rapid expansion seems driven by a shared vision of the potential of newinteractive modalities of information representation and exchange for radicallytransforming the world of computer systems, networks, devices, applications,etc.
Advances in Mobile and Wireless Communications : Views of the 16th IST Mobile and Wireless Communication Summit
This Volume presents the most exciting results of the Mobile and Wireless Communication Summit, held 2007 in Budapest. It contains worked out contributions from all areas of wireless communications, physical layer, access methods, techniques and technologies, networks, applications and systems.
Advances in Mathematical and Statistical Modeling
Enrique Castillo is a leading figure in several mathematical, statistical, and engineering fields, having contributed seminal work in such areas as statistical modeling, extreme value analysis, multivariate distribution theory, Bayesian networks, neural networks, functional equations, artificial intelligence, linear algebra, optimization methods, numerical methods, reliability engineering, as well as sensitivity analysis and its applications. Organized to honor Castillo's significant contributions, this volume is an outgrowth of the International Conference on Mathematical and Statistical Modeling and covers recent advances in the field. Also presented are applications to safety, reliability and life-testing, financial modeling, quality control, general inference, as well as neural networks and computational techniques.



















