A Biomass Future for the North American Great Plains : Toward Sustainable Land Use and Mitigation of Greenhouse Warming
The Great Plains of North America is a major global breadbasket but its agriculture is stressed by drought, heat spells, damaging winds, soil erosion and declining ground water resources. This book explores the possibility that the ecology and economy of the Plains region (and similar regions) would benefit from the introduction of perennial biomass crops. Biomass production and processing on the Plains (possibly aided by genetic engineering) would partially restore a perennial vegetative cover and create new employment opportunities. Biomass also offers a means of reducing fossil fuel use, providing fuel to local power plants and a feedstock for production of cellulosic ethanol, a gasoline substitute. Interest in biofuels is growing rapidly in public, political and business circles with rising fossil fuel prices and because of a growing recognition of the need for energy independence in petroleum importing countries.
4th Kuala Lumpur International Conference on Biomedical Engineering 2008 ; BIOMED 2008 25–28 June 2008 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The topics covered in the conference proceedings include: Artificial organs, bioengineering education, bionanotechnology, biosignal processing, bioinformatics, biomaterials, biomechanics, biomedical imaging, biomedical instrumentation, bioMEMS, clinical engineering, prosthetics.
3rd Kuala Lumpur International Conference on Biomedical Engineering 2006 ; Biomed 2006, 11-14 December 2006, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The Kuala Lumpur International Conference on Biomedical Engineering (Biomed 2006) was held from 11 to 14 December 2006 at the Palace of the Golden Horses, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This international conference was jointly organised by the Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Malaya, Malaysia; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Inje University, Korea; and Malaysian Society of Medical and Biological Engineering. The papers presented at Biomed 2006 cover the following areas: artificial intelligence, biological effects of non-ionising electromagnetic fields, biomaterials, biomechanics, biomedical sensors, biomedical signal analysis, biotechnology, clinical engineering, human performance engineering, imaging, medical informatics, medical instruments and devices, physiological modelling, simulation, and control, prostheses and artificial organs, regulations and organisations, rehabilitation engineering, telemedicine, tissue engineering, and virtual reality in medicine.
25 Years of Transformations of Higher Education Systems in Post-Soviet Countries : Reform and Continuity
A result of the first ever study of the transformations of the higher education institutional landscape in fifteen former USSR countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It explores how the single Soviet model that developed across the vast and diverse territory of the Soviet Union over several decades has evolved into fifteen unique national systems, systems that have responded to national and global developments while still bearing some traces of the past. The book is distinctive as it presents a comprehensive analysis of the reforms and transformations in the region in the last 25 years; and it focuses on institutional landscape through the evolution of the institutional types established and developed in Pre-Soviet, Soviet and Post-Soviet time. It also embraces all fifteen countries of the former USSR, and provides a comparative analysis of transformations of institutional landscape across Post-Soviet systems.



