الصفحة 6
الصفحة 6
Expanding Horizons in Bioethics
What are the resources and needs, the strengths and the vulnerabilities of patients, of society, or of nature? How do we evaluate the societal potential of scientific discovery? It is fairly well assured that we are influencing the terms of existence of many inhabitants of this planet, from flora to fauna to humans. Moreover, history has shown that while technologies can be used neutrally, they can be (and have been) used to the great benefit – or the great detriment – of human life and the fate of the world as a whole. How various types of knowledge and technological ability will be deployed is up to us, individually and collectively. How such information and ability should be deployed, and for what reasons, are questions at the core of bioethical inquiry. These are the "expanding horizons in bioethics" to which this volume refers. This volume is comprised of fourteen essays. It is a rare gathering of scholarly opinion, featuring well-known experts from a diversity of disciplines. The topics addressed are of immediate concern to the public. The essays ask questions about human nature, genetic technologies, reproductive rights, human subjects research, and environmental issues – all in provocative and challenging new ways. Yet the themes that emerge throughout the volume are of enduring interest to anyone concerned about the interactions of scientific development, ethics, and society. This volume is of interest to students and teachers of bioethics and related topics, as well as to professionals working in these disciplines.
Evidence-Based Management : How to Use Evidence to Make Better Organizational Decisions
Evidence-based management has evolved with the goal of improving the quality of decision-making by using critically evaluated evidence from multiple sources - organizational data, professional expertise, stakeholder values and scientific literature. This book sets out and explains the specific skills needed to gather, understand and use evidence to make better-informed organizational decisions.
Evaporites : Sediments, Resources and Hydrocarbons
The monograph offers a comprehensive discussion of the role of evaporites in hydrocarbon generation and trapping. For the first time, diverse knowledge on exploitable salts has been assembled and organized, along with a summary of evaporate karst hazards as well as a summary of exploitative methods and pitfalls in dealing with evaporites in conventional and solution mining. Written by a field specialist in research and exploration, the book presents a comprehensive synthesis of the low temperature realm of evaporite evolution. It is aimed for earth science professionals, sedimentologists, oil and gas explorers, mining geologists, as well as environmental geologists.
Evaluation of Text and Speech Systems
Provides an overview of the state-of-the-art and best practice in several sub-fields of evaluation of text and speech systems and components. The evaluation aspects covered include speech and speaker recognition, speech synthesis, animated talking agents, part-of-speech tagging, parsing, and natural language software like machine translation, information retrieval, question answering, spoken dialogue systems, data resources, and annotation schemes. With its broad coverage and original contributions this book is unique in the field of evaluation of speech and language technology.
Evaluation Methods in Biomedical Informatics
This book is a general reference designed for individuals from a broad range of professional backgrounds at various stages of learning about medical information systemsIt attempts to explain why medical information resources should be studied, and why this is a challenging process. It explores the options for conducting such studies, and specifically deciding what topic to study. It also explains how to design, carry out, and interpret a study using a particular set of techniques, how to conduct studies in the context of health care organizations, and how to communicate study designs and study results to the proper audience.
Evaluating the organizational impact of health care information systems
Evaluating the Organizational Impact of Health Care Information Systems, Second Edition, is heavily updated and revised from its First Edition, which is entitled Evaluating Health Care Information Systems: Methods and Applications. The much-needed Second Edition is a guide for evaluating the organizational impacts of computer systems in health care institutions. It provides a practical guide for determining the appropriate questions to ask based on underlying models of change and the most effective methods available. An introduction to various methods is provided, as well as appendices containing survey instruments usable in research and evaluation, computer programs for data analyses, and other evaluation resources. The book provides a critical overview of current research and evaluation to date with numerous bibliographic references from health care and other fields. The methods and instruments described are applicable to a wide variety of other organizations that utilize information technology and they emphasize the importance of clearly specifying the purpose of the evaluation, recognizing assumptions about organizational change and using a multi-method approach to system evaluation. The material presented is drawn from a variety of social and health science disciplines in order to integrate the study of information system with social science theory and methods. Chapter highlights include Cognitive Approaches to Evaluation, Computer Simulation as an Evaluation Tool, and Research and Evaluation: Future Directions.
European Somalis' Post-Migration Movements : Mobility Capital and the Transnationalisation of Resources
Based on a qualitative study on migrants of Somali origin who have settled in Europe for at least a decade, this open access book offers a ground-breaking exploration of the idea of mobility, both empirically and theoretically. It draws a comprehensive typology of the varied “post-migration mobility practices” developed by these migrants from their country of residence after having settled there. It argues that cross-border mobility may, under certain conditions, become a form of capital that can be employed to pursue advantages in transnational social fields. The study sheds a different light on migrants who are often considered passive or problematic migrants/refugees in Europe, and demonstrates that mobility capital is not the prerogative of highly qualified elites: less privileged migrants also circulate in a globalised world, benefiting from being embedded in transnational social fields and from mobility practices over which they have gained some control.
Essential pharmaceutics
Essential Pharmaceutics is suited to this modern teaching style, and is the first book of its kind to provide the resources and skills needed for successful implementation of an active learning pharmaceutics course.This text offers a format that is specifically suited for integration in an active learning, team-based classroom setting
Essential Fish Habitat Mapping in the Mediterranean
This book presents latest advances in EFH mapping and modelling and introduces the environmental approach to EFH identification through the combined use of latest technologies and advanced techniques, such as Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems and Spatial Statistics.The contents of this book include overviews and comparisons of different approaches on species habitat modelling, methods to identify teleconnection patterns between large-scale meteo-oceanic phenomena and local environmental variation, and EFH maps for cephalopod, shrimp, hake, anchovy, sardine, and swordfish resources in the Mediterranean.
Environmental Security in Harbors and Coastal Areas : Management Using Comparative Risk Assessment and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
This book explores the challenges facing coastal areas during the next few decades and the difficult decisions needed to prevent a repeat of the past. Establishing, maintaining or enhancing a sense of environmental security in different coastal regions and improving the management of critical infrastructure will require (i) matching human demands with available environmental resources; (ii) recognition of environmental security threats and infrastructure vulnerabilities; and, (iii) identification of the range of available options for preventing and/or minimizing natural disasters, technological failures, and/or terror actions. This book emphasizes beliefs that the convergence of seemingly disparate viewpoints and often uncertain and limited information is possible only by using one or more available risk assessment methodologies and decision-making tools such as multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA).
Environmental Problems of Central Asia and their Economic, Social and Security Impacts
entral Asia is a developing region with great potential, but there are valid concerns that current resource management practices are not sustainable, particularly with regard to the management of water resources. Recent changes in social structures, accompanied by regional climate change, have caused substantial environmental changes leading to security concerns in the region. As a result, the local economy has been significantly impacted to the extent that the potential for social unrest is of great concern.
Environmental Policy Instruments for Conserving Global Biodiversity
If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. —Mark 9:23 The current, unprecedented loss of global biodiversity as a result of anthropo genic interference in the world's ecosystems is affecting human well-being across the globe with increasing severity. It therefore represents a major chal lenge in international environmental policymaking. With the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the community of states has recognized the in creasing importance of preserving biodiversity. Given the extensive context of biodiversity loss and preservation, this study focuses on two issues, which are at the center of the public discussion regarding the objectives of conservation and the sustainable use of biodiversity, and that are addressed by specific policy instruments. The first issue is the regulation of cross-border trade in genetic information and genetic resources. Here, the question is whether the commercial use of genetic information derived from bio diversity can create incentives for its preservation. The second issue involves the conservation of biodiversity through the protection of ecologically valuable eco systems from human use.
Environmental Governance in Latin America
The multiple purposes of nature – livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists – have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goals have led to a myriad of contrasting initiatives that are reshaping social relations and rural territories. This edited collection addresses these tensions by unpacking environmental governance as a complex process of formulating and contesting values, procedures and practices shaping the access, control and use of natural resources. Contributors from various fields address the challenges, limitations, and possibilities for a more sustainable, equal, and fair development. In this book, environmental governance is seen as an overarching concept defining the dynamic and multi-layered repertoire of society-nature interactions, where images of nature and discourses on the use of natural resources are mediated by contextual processes at multiple scales.
Environmental Geology : Handbook of Field Methods and Case Studies
As earth’s population continues to grow and the detrimental aftereffects of industrialization and environmental negligence become more apparent, society has become more aware of, and concerned about, stewardship of the natural environment – water, soil, and air. Sustainable development has become more widely received and promoted in many parts of the world. The need is now critical for earth and environmental scientists and engineers to work together to implement technologies that can preserve our environment. The Earth’s population was 6.6 billion as of April 2007 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This number is expected to rise to 9.4 billion by 2050. The population is increasing the demand for natural resources and energy, and increasing stress on the environment. Thus, protection of the environment and remediation of damage to the environment must be a priority. It is also important to develop procedures that will help to avert further damage to the environment and to recognize as early as possible the risks associated with changes in the environment. Many methodologies and technologies have become more advanced in the past few decades, and new technologies and approaches have been developed, all to address the growing need for environmental assessment, monitoring, and remediation. As these technologies have grown, the need for interdisciplinary cooperation has also become more apparent.
Environmental and Resource Valuation with Revealed Preferences : A Theoretical Guide to Empirical Models
Environmental and Resource Valuation with Revealed Preferences: A Theoretical Guide to Empirical Models provides a systematic review of those economic approaches for valuing the environment and natural resources that use information on what people do, not what they say.
Enterprise Risk Management : Modern Approaches to Balancing Risk and Reward
Demonstrates how Enterprise Risk Management creates value in strategic- and decision-making-processes. The author introduces modern approaches to balancing risk and reward based on many examples of medium-sized and large companies from different industries. Since traditional risk management in practice is often an independent stand-alone process with no impact on decision-making processes, it is unable to create value and ties up resources in the company unnecessarily. Herewith, he serves students as well as practitioners with modern approaches that promote a connection between ERM and corporate management. The author demonstrates in a didactically appropriate manner how companies can use ERM in a concrete way to achieve better risk-reward decisions under uncertainty. Furthermore, theoretical and psychological findings relevant to entrepreneurial decision-making situations are incorporated.
Energy Resources in East Africa: Opportunities and Challenges
East African states have historically shared several resources including energy and common heritage of its people. This book provides information on available sources of energy in the region and how the energy suppliers can exploit them in an integrated form to produce the right blend of energy for various applications e.g., industrial, domestic and recreational uses. We provide an in-depth analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of different energy sources in-terms of environmental, industrialization, distribution costs and impacts. We hope that the book will contribute towards a sustainable exploitation of energy resources for the improvement of the people’s quality of life.
Energy in Africa : Challenges and Opportunities
This open access book presents a picture of the current energy challenges on the African continent (and the Sub-Saharan region in particular) and proposes pathways to an accelerated energy transition. Starting with an analysis of the status quo and the outlook for Africa’s energy demand and energy access, it provides an account of the available resources, including hydrocarbons and renewable energy resources, which are playing an increasingly crucial role. It then moves on to analyze the level of investment required to scale-up Africa’s energy systems, shedding light on the key barriers and elaborating on potential solutions. It also provides a suggestion for improving the effectiveness of EU–Africa cooperation. While mainly intended for policymakers and academics, this book also speaks to a broader audience interested in gaining an overview of the challenges and opportunities of the African energy sector today and in the future.
Enabling things to talk : Designing IoT solutions with the IoT architectural reference model
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging network superstructure that will connect physical resources and actual users. It will support an ecosystem of smart applications and services bringing hyper-connectivity to our society by using augmented and rich interfaces. Whereas in the beginning IoT referred to the advent of barcodes and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which helped to automate inventory, tracking and basic identification, today IoT is characterized by a dynamic trend toward connecting smart sensors, objects, devices, data and applications. The next step will be “cognitive IoT,” facilitating object and data re-use across application domains and leveraging hyper-connectivity, interoperability solutions and semantically enriched information distribution.
Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces
This book describes research on low-literate, poor buyers and sellers in subsistence marketplaces, the consequent development of an innovative marketplace literacy educational program that enables consumer and entrepreneurial literacy, and implications of the research and the educational program for business, education, and a variety of disciplines and functions. There are two important resources that individuals living in subsistence need to function in the economic realm: finances and know-how. The book describes an educational program that focuses on enabling generic skills about the marketplace. This program uses the "know-why" or an understanding of marketplaces as a basis for the know-how of being an informed buyer or seller. This volume discusses implications of the research and the educational program for non-profit organizations, for research and practice in education, for business research and practice, and for academic and applied research.
