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First Light in the Universe : Saas-Fee Advanced Course 36. Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy
The exploration of the first billion years of the history of the Universe, from the so-called Dark Ages to cosmic reionisation, represents one of the great challenges of contemporary astrophysics and one of the main drivers for future observational facilities. The book contains the elaborated notes of lectures given at the 36th Saas-Fee Advanced Course "First Light in the Universe" by three eminent scientists in the field: Abraham Loeb, Andrea Ferrara, and Richard Ellis. The formation of the first stars and black holes, the initial mass function, feedback effects, early dust formation, the history of cosmic star formation, distant galaxies, cosmic reionisation and the cosmic infrared background are the main topics treated. This book provides an accessible and up-to-date review of the field and will be useful to graduate students of astronomy, cosmologists, physicists and researchers.
Fire Safety for Very Tall Buildings : Engineering Guide
Provides information on special topics that affect the fire safety performance of very tall buildings, their occupants and first responders during a fire. This Guide addresses these topics as part of the overall building design process using performance-based fire protection engineering concepts as described in the SFPE Engineering Guide to Performance Based Fire Protection. This Guide is not intended to be a recommended practice or a document that is suitable for adoption as a code. The Guide pertains to “super tall,” “very tall” and “tall” buildings. Throughout this Guide, all such buildings are called “very tall buildings.” These buildings are characterized by heights that impose fire protection challenges; they require special attention beyond the protection features typically provided by traditional fire protection methods. This Guide does not establish a definition of buildings that fall within the scope of this document.
Financing clean energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa : Risk mitigation strategies and innovative financing structures
This book analyses barriers and challenges associated with the financing of clean energy access in sub-Saharan Africa. By considering various economic, financial, political, environmental and social factors, it explores the consequences of energy poverty across the region and maps the real and perceived investment risks for potential capital providers, both domestic and international. Furthermore, it analyses risk mitigation strategies and innovative financing structures available to the public and private sectors, which are aimed at leveraging capital in the clean energy sector at scale and fostering the creation of an enabling business and investment environment.
Financial technologies and DeFi : A revisit to the digital finance revolution
Fleshes out the core developments and trending fintech 2.0 solutions that pause challenges and bring opportunities for businesses and economies. It comprises nine main chapters with collective insights and interdisciplinary perspectives covering the business, tech, and regulatory layers of financial technologies and decentralized finance. Besides, the book illustrates how to leverage these state-of-the-art technologies for the evolving digital and decentralized finance world.
Financial Controlling
Provides an introduction to the fundamentals of operational and strategic controlling. It conveys the central tasks and functions that controlling has in the company and shows the challenges that this cross-sectional position entails. In addition, it addresses trends and developments in controlling that will have a significant impact on the work of controllers in the coming years.
Field and Service Robotics ; Vol. 24 : Recent Advances in Research and Applications
This unique collection is the post-conference proceedings of the 4th FSR in Lake Yamanaka, Japan at July 2003. This book edited by Shin’ichi Yuta, Hajime Asama, Sebastian Thrun, Erwin Prassler and Takashi Tsubouchi is rich by topics and authoritative contributors and presents the current developments and new directions in field and service robotics. The contents of these contributions represent a cross-section of the current state of robotics research from one particular aspect: field and service applications, and how they reflect on the theoretical basis of subsequent developments. Pursuing technologies aimed at realizing skilful, smart, reliable, robust field and service robots is the big challenge running throughout this focused collection.
Femtosecond laser pulses : Principles and experiments
This is the second edition of this advanced textbook written for scientists who require further training in femtosecond science. Four years after pub- cation of the ?rst edition, femtosecond science has overcome new challenges and new application ?elds have become mature. It is necessary to take into account these new developments. Two main topics merged during this period that support important scienti?c activities: attosecond pulses are now gen- ated in the X-UV spectral domain, and coherent control of chemical events is now possible by tailoring the shape of femtosecond pulses. To update this advanced textbook, it was necessary to introduce these ?elds; two new ch- ters are in this second edition: “Coherent Control in Atoms, Molecules, and Solids”(Chap.11)and“AttosecondPulses”(Chap.12)withwell-documented references. Some changes, addenda, and new references are introduced in the ?rst edition’s ten original chapters to take into account new developments and updatethisadvancedtextbookwhichistheresultofascienti?cadventurethat started in 1991. At that time, the French Ministry of Education decided that, in view of the growing importance of ultrashort laser pulses for the national scienti?c community, a Femtosecond Centre should be created in France and devoted to the further education of scientists who use femtosecond pulses as a research tool and who are not specialists in lasers or even in optics.
Feedforward Amplifiers for Wideband Communication Systems
Feedforward Amplifiers for Wideband Communication Systems has been possible thanks to the research carried out throughout several years in the field of the linearization techniques applied to digital communication systems, particularly to those with high spectral efficient modulation techniques. This challenge is enshrined in one of the present wideband communication systems, but all the recommended design guidelines are perfectly reusable in the future wideband applications.
FastSLAM : A Scalable Method for the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Problem in Robotics
This monograph describes a new family of algorithms for the simultaneous localization and mapping problem in robotics (SLAM). SLAM addresses the problem of acquiring an environment map with a roving robot, while simultaneously localizing the robot relative to this map. This problem has received enormous attention in the robotics community in the past few years, reaching a peak of popularity on the occasion of the DARPA Grand Challenge in October 2005, which was won by the team headed by the authors. The FastSLAM family of algorithms applies particle filters to the SLAM Problem, which provides new insights into the data association problem that is paramount in SLAM. The FastSLAM-type algorithms have enabled robots to acquire maps of unprecedented size and accuracy, in a number of robot application domains and have been successfully applied in different dynamic environments, including the solution to the problem of people tracking.
Fashion marketing in emerging economies Vol. II : South American, Asian and African perspectives
Provides and sheds light on insights, challenges, and opportunities to support the development and economic growth of the fashion industries within emerging markets. The fashion industry is growing rapidly in emerging markets; fashion marketers and retailers are increasingly becoming aware of the benefits of this market and are forced to seek their future growth potentials in this part of the world; in addition, marketing strategies, tools and technologies have also evolved.
Farewell to the Internal Clock : A contribution in the field of chronobiology
Nearly everything making up what we call the “environment” of a plant has an infuence on the way it grows. Sunlight, te- perature, moisture contents of soil and atmosphere and vib- tions are all obvious examples of environmental components, and transient variations in their amount or intensity lead the plant to manifest more or less immediate responses. Small changes in carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere can even have effects, but these take a longer time to be registered – at least those that are visible, albeit at the microscopic level. Plants meet the challenges of the environment by means of acclimation. In this respect, plants are notable for the pl- ticity of their development. However, where morphological or physiological plasticity is no longer an option, the responses would be by means of adaptations as a result of genetic - lection or genetic “assimilation” (Waddington 1957).
Family-Oriented Primary Care
I was a Medical Student in 1966 when the Millis Report on the training of the generalist physician was published,de?ning the concept of primary care. According to the Report, the primary provider has four major responsib- ities or roles. The ?rst role is that of initial contact care of the undiffer- tiated patient. The second is to provide comprehensive care based on the belief that the primary provider should be able to manage the overwhe- ing majority of problems with which patients present. Equally important is the third role—continuity and coordination of care within the health care system. Finally,the primary provider is responsible for demonstrating le- ership in the community. This Report’s description of a primary provider seems as relevant today as it was when it was written. In 1994,the Institute of Medicine’s assessment of primary care added the responsibility of family and community integration of care to the Millis Report description. Without question there are many challenges to a contemporary imp- mentation of this comprehensive description of primary care, beginning with the level of individual patients who so often suffer from complex pr- lems, such as mental disorders and obesity. Treating these conditions in a brief primary care visit is dif?cult. At the level of the larger system, re- bursement is often inadequate and can represent policies that are uns- portive of primary care, such as those that compromise payment for preventive services that help patients to quit smoking or lose weight.
Fading Foundations : Probability and the Regress Problem
This book addresses the age-old problem of infinite regresses in epistemology. How can we ever come to know something if knowing requires having good reasons, and reasons can only be good if they are backed by good reasons in turn? The problem has puzzled philosophers ever since antiquity, giving rise to what is often called Agrippa's Trilemma. The current volume approaches the old problem in a provocative and thoroughly contemporary way. Taking seriously the idea that good reasons are typically probabilistic in character, it develops and defends a new solution that challenges venerable philosophical intuitions and explains why they were mistakenly held. Key to the new solution is the phenomenon of fading foundations, according to which distant reasons are less important than those that are nearby.
Fabbriche, sistemi, organizzazioni : Storia dell'ingegneria industriale = Factories, systems, organizations : A history of industrial engineering
This book examines the origin of the technological and organizational challenges of industry in Europe and the United States and the stages of its theoretical formulation; the creation of the figure of the industrial engineer between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the elaboration of the technological disciplines and of the language and of the fundamental concepts (system, automation, control, optimization, network) of modern industrial engineering. Divided into three chronologically organized parts, each chapter is accompanied by readings, bibliographic information for in-depth study and illustrative sheets of historical, biographical aspects (relating to some great engineers, scientists and philosophers), terminological and mathematical-technical aspects.
Exploring the Vertebrate Central Cholinergic Nervous System
The volume’s eleven chapters cover a wide variety of topics including the complexity of synthesis of acetylcholine, cholinesterases, cholinergic teratology, anticholinesterase agents, clinical use of cholinergic drugs, central cholinergic pathways and behaviors with cholinergic correlates. The figures and diagrams help illustrate various subjects and its photographs of "cholinergikes" of the past and present bring a personal note to the book. The book illustrates the peaks that have been reached in the course of the history of cholinergic research and challenges the perennial frontier of human science: the understanding of ourselves.
Exploring Probability in School : Challenges for Teaching and Learning
Exploring Probability in School provides a new perspective into research on the teaching and learning of probability. It creates this perspective by recognizing and analysing the special challenges faced by teachers and learners in contemporary classrooms where probability has recently become a mainstream part of the curriculum from early childhood through high school. The authors of the book discuss the nature of probability, look at the meaning of probabilistic literacy, and examine student access to powerful ideas in probability during the elementary, middle, and high school years. Moreover, they assemble and analyse research-based pedagogical knowledge for teachers that can enhance the learning of probability throughout these school years.
Experimental Aspects of Quantum Computing
Practical quantum computing still seems more than a decade away, and researchers have not even identified what the best physical implementation of a quantum bit will be. There is a real need in the scientific literature for a dialog on the topic of lessons learned and looming roadblocks. These papers, which appeared in the journal of "Quantum Information Processing" are dedicated to the experimental aspects of quantum computing These papers highlight the lessons learned over the last ten years, outline the challenges over the next ten years, and discuss the most promising physical implementations of quantum computing.
Exosomes based drug delivery strategies for brain disorders
Provides a comprehensive overview of the role of exosomes in brain diseases, including stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and depression. It covers the basics of exosome biogenesis, composition, and synthesis, as well as the therapeutic potential of exosomes in brain disorders. The correlation between exosomes and neuroinflammation, the challenges of using exosomes as a novel carrier, and engineered exosomes to deliver therapeutic protein are covered well in this book. Use of radiolabelled exosomes as a diagnostic tool and the toxicity studies of exosomes with potential overcome approaches. It is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians, and healthcare professionals working in the field of exosome research, especially on its applications in brain disorders.
Exchange traded funds : Structure, regulation and application of a new fund class
The organization of traditional mutual funds as Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) produced revolutionary changes in the fund industry. These changes, and the subsequent events to which they led, have greatly - creased the practical way of trading funds. Traditional mutual fund m- kets were fragmented, and transactions were both costly and from time to time difficult to arrange. Investments in emerging markets for example were anything but efficient. As a consequence of establishing ETF funds market segments, the efficiency of transactions has been broadly increased as well as transaction costs dramatically reduced. All this changed in the early Nineties with the introduction of the first ETF for the purpose of trading funds. Exchange Traded Funds – Structure, Regulation and Application of a New Fund Class is a comprehensive summary of articles covering all aspects of the Exchange Traded Fund industry.The present book is divided into four parts: The opening part, containing ETFs – A Leading Financial Innovation and From Continent to Sectors: Challenges and Uses of ETFs in Europe, is - signed to give the reader broad insight into the industry, developments and trends. Further, the article Spiders: Where Are the Bugs? examine the characteristics and performance of these instruments from an academic point of view.
Excavations and Foundations in Soft Soils
The book is about soft soil engineering and is intended to serve the practicing as well as the research engineers. The planning, design and construction of exca- tions and foundations in soft to very soft soils is always a difficult and challanging assignment to engineers. The authors have tried to address some of these problems and challenges in this book. Beside the state of the art of soft soils, authors own research results and expe- ences from practical projects are presented in the book. Special emphasis is also given among others on the presentation of several case studies coresponding to each topic treated in the book as well as a summary of the experiences in the - termination of soil parameters for finite element analysis of geotechnical pr- lems. The book is illustrated by a wealth of photographs and diagrams.
