Global Change and Mountain Regions : An Overview of Current Knowledge
Mountain regions occupy about a quarter of the global terrestrial land surface and provide goods and services to more than half the humanity. Global environmental change threatens the integrity of these systems and their ability to provide the goods and services upon which humanity has come to depend. This book gives an overview of the state of research in fields pertaining to the detection, understanding and prediction of global change impacts in mountain regions. More than 60 contributions from paleoclimatology, cryospheric research, hydrology, ecology, and development studies are compiled in this volume, each with an outlook on future research directions.
Gettering Defects in Semiconductors
The authors address not only well-established gettering techniques but also describe contemporary trends in gettering technologies from an international perspective. The types and properties of structural defects in semiconductors, their generating and their transforming mechanisms during fabrication are described. The primary emphasis is placed on classifying and describing specific gettering techniques, their specificity arising from both their position in a general technological process and the regimes of their application. This book addresses both engineers and material scientists interested in semiconducting materials theory and also undergraduate and graduate students in solid–state microelectronics and nanoelectronics. A comprehensive list of references provides readers with direction for further reading.
Geostatistics Banff 2004
The five major sections are: theory, mining, petroleum, environmental and other applications. The first section showcases new and innovative ideas in the theoretical development of geostatistics as a whole; these ideas will have large impact on (1) the directions of future geostatistical research, and (2) the conventional approaches to heterogeneity modelling in a wide range of natural resource industries. The next four sections are focused on applications and innovations relating to the use of geostatistics in specific industries. Historically, mining, petroleum and environmental industries have embraced the use of geostatistics for uncertainty characterization, so these three industries are identified as major application areas. The last section is open for innovative geostatistical application to address the issues and impact of uncertainty in other industries.
Geographic Information Science ; 5th International Conference, GIScience 2008, Park City, UT, USA, September 23-26, 2008. Proceedings
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Geographic Information Secience, GIScience 2008, held in Park City, UT, USA, in September 2008.The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 77 submissions. Among the traditional topics addressed are spatial relations, geographic dynamics, and spatial data types. A significant number of papers deal with navigation networks, location-based services, and spatial information query and retrieval. Geo-sensors, mobile computing, and Web mapping rank among the important new directions.
Genomics of Disease
Genomics of Disease is the 24th volume in the Stadler Genetics Symposium series published by Springer, which has, over many years, served as a comprehensive collection of current trends and hot topics in the field of genetics. The current volume summarizes recent progress in our attempts to characterize the genomics of plant and animal diseases. Authoritative analytical reviews are specialized to be attractive to professional researchers, teachers, and students, while also being appealing to a wider audience of scientists in related disciplines. Genomics of Disease offers essential reference material for any scientist or teacher working in the fields of plant and animal diseases. Coverage of key areas of both animal and plant disease is a unique feature of this volume and one that allows direct comparisons between the systems. All academics, scientists, and industry professionals that desire to take advantage of the most up-to-date information on the continuously emerging and expanding field of the genomics of plant and animal diseases will find it an invaluable resource.
Genome editing in drug discovery
In Genome Editing in Drug Discovery, a team of distinguished biologists delivers a comprehensive exploration of genome editing in the drug discovery process, with coverage of the technology’s history, current issues and techniques, and future perspectives and research directions. The book discusses techniques for disease modeling, target identification with CRISPR, safety studies, therapeutic editing, and intellectual property issues.
Galling Arthropods and Their Associates ; Ecology and Evolution
The book addresses recent developments in the ecology, evolution, systematics, physiology, and biodiversity of gall-inducing arthropods, with individual contri butions ranging in scope from detailed descriptions to profoundly synthetic stud ies. One underlying theme of the book is the various impacts of gall induction that indirectly affect insect communities on the host plant. The other important contri bution is the highly intricate and dynamic interactions between galling arthropods and their uniquely specialized host plants. Included also are chapters that discuss biodiversity and distribution patterns of gall-inducing arthropods, and biological control of invasive gall-inducing arthropods and of invasive trees. We believe that this book makes an important contribution to the knowledge of galling arthropods and their associates and to the development of robust, general principles of the ecology and evolution of these organisms.
Fuzzy Logic : A Spectrum of Theoretical & Practical Issues
This book exclusively surveys the active on-going research of the current maturity of fuzzy logic over the last four decades. Many world leaders of fuzzy logic have enthusiastically contributed their best research results into five theoretical, philosophical and fundamental sub areas and nine distinctive applications, including two PhD dissertations from two world class universities dealing with cutting-edge research areas of bioinformatics and geological science. Beyond the scope of survey and collection of the book, one important spin off is the emerging and recognition of a major scientific paradigm shift from the conventional mathematics to the mathematics of uncertainty, which arguably holds the key to solving very difficult and complex problems in biological and social sciences alike. The book, loaded with historical perspective, creative thinking, critical reviewing, and uniquely constructed strategy for future growth of this dynamic research area, is an invaluable resource for active researchers at all levels, university administrators, foundation directors, funding agency program chiefs, research & development planners and technological assessors.
Future-Oriented Technology Analysis : Strategic Intelligence for an Innovative Economy
The application of foresight to address the challenges of uncertainty and rapid change has grown dramatically in the past decade. In that period, the techniques have been greatly refined and the scope has been broadened to encompass future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) and more recently, the concept and practice of strategic intelligence. FTA addresses directly the longer-term future through the active and continuous development of visions, and pathways to realise these visions. It is increasingly seen as a valuable management and policy tool complementing, and extending further into the future, classical strategy, planning, and decision-making approaches.
Future Shaper : How Leaders Can Take Charge in an Uncertain World
What should leaders do? The answer is not to shy away from inevitable changes and more uncertainty, but to have the courage to face it. Leaders need to take charge by embracing new technologies, new ideas and converting these into opportunities for leadership innovation. The best ways for leaders to predict the future is to help create the future. Future Shaper is about giving back a sense of control. It's about empowering leaders to take charge and shape the future. Niamh O'Keeffe asks leaders to re-calibrate their leadership skills to include imagination and courage, to embrace innovation and drive growth and create a better future. Future Shaper helps readers to: · Embrace new digital technologies, understand AI and equip themselves for those not-yet-invented challenges ·
Fungal Genomics
Presents an overview on mutualistic and pathogenic interactions between fungi and plants. This book offers reviews on fungal lifestyles, mechanisms of their interactions with their host plants, signal perception and transduction, and plant defense responses directed against attack by fungal pathogens. It is suitable for students in microbiology.
Fundamentals of electrical drives
This brings us to the purpose of this book namely to help students and engineers appreciate and understand the fundamental concepts of modern electrical drives. An interactive learning approach is taken in this text: theory and calculations are augmented by generic models which are transposed to a simulation platform. The 'build and play' method used in this text visualizes the dynamic operation of a comprehensive set of modules ranging from an inductance to a novel 'ideal rotating transformer' (IRTF). This module is at the center of the generic models used in this text to explore the dynamic and steady state operation of grid and converter fed induction, synchronous and DC machines. The section on modulation and control emphasizes the role of power electronics and digital signal processors in drives. Downloadable files that accompany this text have an extensive set of 'build and play' tutorials, in Simulink R° and Caspoc. The latter is a simulation platform which allows direct access to the 'build and play' modules, without further licensing needs. All figures in this text are included in the downloadable files in order to help with the preparation of customized Power Point type lecture material.
Fundamentals of durable reinforced concrete
The book presents a framework for specification through internationally adopted codes and standards and summarises the background to probabilistic approaches to durability design, providing a state-of-the-art review of mathematical modelling of deterioration mechanisms along with current directions in test methods for performance-based specifications.
Fundamentals in Nuclear Physics : From Nuclear Structure to Cosmology
Explores nuclear physics and its applications ranging from the structure of nuclei and their reactions, to astrophysics and cosmology. The physics is introduced with arguments based on simple ideas such as the empirical structure of nuclear forces and its interplay with the Pauli principle and Coulomb repulsion. The book then develops elementary nuclear models and illustrates nuclear systematics with experimental data. Reactions and decays are discussed both phenomenologically and from the point of view of fundamental electro-weak interaction theory. The discussions of fission and fusion emphasize nuclear energy production. This leads directly into nuclear astrophysics and nucleosynthesis. The book ends with a presentation of the latest ideas about cosmology. As a primer this course will lay the foundations for more specialized subjects within the vast domain of nuclear physics as a whole. This book emerged from a series of topical courses the authors delivered at the Ecole Polytechnique and will be useful for advanced undergraduates and for scientists in a variety of fields.
Fundamental change : International handbook of educational change
This set of four volumes on brings together evidence and insights on educational change issues from leading writers and researchers in the field from across the world. Many of these writers, whose chapters have been specially written for these books, have been investigating, helping initiate and implementing educational change, for most or all of their lengthy careers. Others are working on the cutting edge of theory and practice in educational change, taking the field in new or even more challenging directions. And some are more skeptical about the literature of educational change and the assumptions on which it rests. They help us to approach projects of understanding or initiating educational change more deeply, reflectively and realistically.
Functional approach to nonlinear models of water flow in soils
The mathematical modelling required by these processes revealed from the beg- ning interesting and dificult mathematical problems, so that the attention was redirected to the theoretical mathematical aspects involved. Then, the qualitative results found were used for the explanation of certain behaviours of the physical processes which had made the object of the initial study and for giving answers to the real problems that arise in the soil science practice. In this way the work evidences a perfect topic for an applied mathematical research.
Functional and operatorial statistics
An increasing number of statistical problems and methods involve infinite-dimensional aspects. This is due to the progress of technologies which allow us to store more and more information while modern instruments are able to collect data much more effectively due to their increasingly sophisticated design. This evolution directly concerns statisticians, who have to propose new methodologies while taking into account such high-dimensional data (e.g. continuous processes, functional data, etc.). The numerous applications (micro-arrays, paleo-ecological data, radar waveforms, spectrometric curves, speech recognition, continuous time series, 3-D images, etc.) in various fields (biology, econometrics, environmetrics, the food industry, medical sciences, paper industry, etc.) make researching this statistical topic very worthwhile. This book gathers important contributions on the functional and operatorial statistics fields
Full of Life : UNESCO Biosphere Reserves - Model Regions for Sustainable Development
UNESCO biosphere reserves are full of life. Here, people put sustainable development into practice: economic, ecological, social and cultural objectives are pursued, conserving precious natural spaces in the process. People are opening up new opportunities for today and are taking responsibility for future generations. What could be more exciting than a look at new ways into the future? The 14 biosphere reserves in Germany are part of a world network of 440 areas in the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB). Founded in the 1970s to research the relationship between man and the environment, biosphere reserves have been developed into model regions for sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Conference. This publication gives an overview of developments to date and the new direction for the MAB Programme in Germany. The generally valid guidelines for the conservation, care and development of these areas are explained. Various project examples from practice and research bear witness to the living implementation of the Programme in the German UNESCO biosphere reserves.
Fuel cell technologies : State and perspectives ; Proceedings of the NATO advanced research workshop on fuel cell technologies: State and perspectives, Kyiv, Ukraine from 6 to 10 June 2004.
This book has brought together a team of world-renowned experts in all aspects of fuel cell development for both SOFC and PEM in a workshop environment. The workshop held between June 6–10, 2004 was held in the capital city of the Ukraine, Kiev. The reason for the venue was that Ukraine is the third largest resource of zircon sands, a major source of material for the solid oxide fuel cell. Ukraine is looking at undertaking a very large effort in the solid oxide fuel cell arena, and hopes, one day, to be an international player in this market, and this book is an outcome from the workshop. The book focuses on the issues related to fuel cells, particularly the state-of-the-art internationally, the issues that were of particular interest for getting fuel cells fully commercialized, and advances in fuel cell materials and technology. The focus was on all types of fuel cells, but the emphasis was particularly on solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), due to their importance to the host country. The book is an essential reference to researchers, academics and industrialists interested in up-to-date information on SOFC and PEM development.
Fuel Cell Electronics Packaging
Today's commercial, medical and military electronics are becoming smaller and smaller. At the same time, these devices are packed with more functions and demand more power. This power requirement is currently met almost exclusively by battery power. A fuel cell is like a battery converting chemical energy directly to electricity. The convergence of fuel cell technology and microelectronics is enabling the new design and manufacturing of fuel cells.Fuel Cell Electronics Packaging presents the latest developments in the technology convergence of microelectronics and fuel cells. Using the well established manufacturing methods used in microelectronics packaging, fuel cells can be further fabricated in smaller sizes with higher energy density, at a faster pace and lower cost.



















