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Les douleurs abdominales en questions : Rôle physiopathologique de la sensibilité viscérale = Abdominal pain in question : The pathophysiological role of visceral sensitivity

The gut-brain axis refers to the network of nerve pathways that connect the myenteric plexus, the veritable "gut brain," to the central nervous system. Nearly 80% of these neurons are sensory neurons, and the afferent pathways that transmit information from the digestive tract to the central nervous system play a crucial role in the physiological regulation of digestive functions, as well as in certain pathological conditions. A large majority of these sensations remain unconscious and give rise to reflex responses. Only those requiring a conscious response reach the level of awareness in a normal state (hunger, thirst, the urge to defecate). In pathological situations, the same is true for painful sensations of digestive origin. Functional bowel disorders are a frequent reason for consultation. Their pathophysiology is now based on a model integrating the various etiological factors around the brain-gut axis. These patients frequently present with visceral hypersensitivity, which manifests as an increased perception of digestive sensations, notably the onset of pain in response to stimuli that are not painful in normal subjects. Recognizing the role of visceral hypersensitivity has made it possible to explain the mechanism of action of medications used to treat functional bowel disorders and paves the way for the development of new molecules acting on digestive afferents. In this book, we will describe the anatomical and physiological basis for understanding the concept of visceral sensitivity and the role of digestive afferents in the pathophysiology of acute and chronic abdominal pain, particularly irritable bowel syndrome.

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Lamto : Structure, Functioning, and Dynamics of a Savanna Ecosystem

Known as "a dream place for scientists," the Lamto savannas, located on the edge of the Cote d'Ivoire rain forests, are one of the only savannas in the world where ongoing ecological research has endured for more than forty years. Drawing from and synthesizing this abundance of research, the book examines the structure, functioning, and dynamics of the Lamto humid savanna. Beginning with the history of the Lamto ecology station and an overview of the major environmental conditions of the site, this exacting work specifically examines the integrative view of energy and nutrient fluxes relative to the dynamics of the savanna's vegetation.

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Chromatin and Disease

It is more evident now than ever before that dynamic organization of human genome into nucleoprotein structure, chromatin confers the unique regulatory mechanisms for most of the cellular phenomena, which include replication, transcription, DNA repair, recombination and also apoptosis. The dynamic nature of the chromatin is regulated by chromatin modifications (epigenetic alterations), remodeling, histone chaperones and functional interactions of different chromatin interacting n- histone proteins. Dysfunction of this highly inter connected machineries disturb the cellular homoeostasis, and thereby causes several diseases. As we advance in our knowledge of chromatin function and also disease mechanisms in more details, their causal relationship is becoming more evident. This has lead to the identification of chromatin function as target for new generation therapeutics.

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Machine learning and its application to reacting flows: ml and combustion

These two fields, ML and turbulent combustion, have large body of work and knowledge on their own, and this book brings them together and explain the complexities and challenges involved in applying ML techniques to simulate and study reacting flows. This is important as to the world’s total primary energy supply (TPES), since more than 90% of this supply is through combustion technologies and the non-negligible effects of combustion on environment. Although alternative technologies based on renewable energies are coming up, their shares for the TPES is are less than 5% currently and one needs a complete paradigm shift to replace combustion sources. The book covers the current state of the art in these two topics and outlines the challenges involved, merits and drawbacks of using ML for turbulent combustion simulations including avenues which can be explored to overcome the challenges.

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Legal Programming : Designing Legally Compliant RFID and Software Agent Architectures for Retail Processes and Beyond

LEGAL PROGRAMMING: Designing Legally Compliant RFID and Software Agent Architectures for Retail Processes and Beyond provides a process-oriented discussion of the legal concerns presented by agent-based technologies, processes and programming. It offers a general outline of the potential legal difficulties that could arise in relation to them, focusing on the programming of negotiation and contracting processes in a privacy, consumer and commercial context. The authors will elucidate how it is possible to create form of legal framework and design methodology for transaction agents, applicable in any environment and not just in a specific proprietary framework, that provides the right level of compliance and trust. Key elements considered include the design and programming of legally compliant methods, the determination of rights in respect of objects and variables, and ontologies and programming frameworks for agent interactions. Examples are used to illustrate the points made and provide a practical perspective.

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Building a Data Warehouse : With Examples in SQL Server

The book is organized as follows. In the beginning of this book (chapters 1 through 6), you learn how to build a data warehouse, for example, defining the architecture, understanding the methodology, gathering the requirements, designing the data models, and creating the databases. Then in chapters 7 through 10, you learn how to populate the data warehouse, for example, extracting from source systems, loading the data stores, maintaining data quality, and utilizing the metadata. After you populate the data warehouse, in chapters 11 through 15, you explore how to present data to users using reports and multidimensional databases and how to use the data in the data warehouse for business intelligence, customer relationship management, and other purposes. Chapters 16 and 17 wrap up the book: After you have built your data warehouse, before it can be released to production, you need to test it thoroughly. After your application is in production, you need to understand how to administer data warehouse operation.

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Beginning JBoss Seam : From novice to professional

Reacting to the popularity of Java 2.0 Enterprise Edition™ alternatives such as Ruby on Rails and the enterprise Spring Framework, Red Hat JBoss®, Inc. developed JBoss® Seam, a new open-source lightweight Java™ EE 5-based contextual application development framework. Beginning JBoss® Seam: From Novice to Professional gets you started as the first book on this popular framework.

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Agile software construction

Agile software is a means of putting the software first while at the same time reacting to these user requirements in a flexible and agile way.Agile Software Construction covers the emerging methods and approaches (including extreme programming, feature-driven development and adaptive software development), that are loosely described as "Agile" and shows how to apply them effectively to software development projects. It shows how to plan, organise and develop systems using agile techniques, and highlights some of the problems that may be encountered.

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A Theory of Distributed Objects : Asynchrony - Mobility - Groups - Components

Distributed and communicating objects are becoming ubiquitous. In global, Grid and Peer-to-Peer computing environments, extensive use is made of objects interacting through method calls. So far, no general formalism has been proposed for the foundation of such systems. Caromel and Henrio are the first to define a calculus for distributed objects interacting using asynchronous method calls with generalized futures, i.e., wait-by-necessity -- a must in large-scale systems, providing both high structuring and low coupling, and thus scalability. The authors provide very generic results on expressiveness and determinism, and the potential of their approach is further demonstrated by its capacity to cope with advanced issues such as mobility, groups, and components.

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Civil engineering materials : From theory to practice ; 1st ed.

Presents the state-of-the-art in civil engineering materials, including the fundamental theory of materials needed for civil engineering projects and unique insights from decades of large-scale construction in China. The title includes the latest advances in new materials and techniques for civil engineering, showing the relationship between composition, structure and properties, and covering ultra-high-performance concrete and self-compacting concrete developed in China. This book provides comprehensive coverage of the most commonly used, most advanced materials for use in civil engineering. This volume consists of eight chapters covering the fundamentals of materials, inorganic cementing materials, Portland cement concrete, bricks, blocks and building mortar, metal, wood, asphalt and polymers.

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Marketing communications in emerging economies ; Vol. II : Conceptual issues and empirical evidence

Aims to share fascinating perspectives on marketing communications by discussing the shift in the power of public relations, and highlighting how the small and local use communication effectively to improve performance and shares useful lessons on how to communicate hope by responding to customer emotions during uncertainties. The book contains valuable lessons and insights on communicating corporate social responsibility, effective social media communication, enacting brand purpose through communication, and using aesthetics in point-of-purchase advertising to drive purchase intention.

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Competition in Marketing : Two Essays on the Impact of Information on Managerial Decisions and on Spatial Product Differentiation

In her first essay Vera Magin uses primary experimental data to explore the effects of information on marketing decisions, performance, and competition. In her second essay the author discusses several approaches to measure product differentiation in spatial contexts. In doing so, she refers to the measurement of diversity and also applies methods from disciplines like spatial statistics, forestry, and geography.

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Brands and Consumers : A Research Overview

This short-form book provides a comprehensive overview of research evidence on several core branding topics whilst acting as a catalyst for advancing future research and informing business practice. The book represents a timely compendium on popular topics in branding and aims to be a valuable addition to knowledge in branding. The book focuses on reviewing research in branding and brand management, and proposes areas for expanding research in the field.

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Bargaining Power Effects in Financial Contracting : A Joint Analysis of Contract Type and Placement Mode Choices

The aim of this dissertation is to examine bargaining power effects in financial contracting. In particular power effects on firms' choices of contract type (debt vs. equity) and placement mode (public offering vs. private placement)

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Asian economy and finance : A post-crisis perspective

Topicality of Asian economy has refused to fade for almost four decades; if anything it has been levitating. The Asian economy has changed markedly since the economic and financial crisis of 1997-1998 and is continuing to evolve. As a scholarly subject matter, Asian economy has not stopped attracting academicians, policy mandarins, decision makers in the arena of business and students of Asian economy. The Asian crisis was a cataclysmic event for the region and brought to the surface several systemic limitations, like those in the financial sector, corporate governance, regulatory oversight, legal framework, and exchange rate management. Managers of Asian economy need to get to the bottom of these acutely problematical systemic issues. Additionally, Asian economies need to change with the demands of time and devise their post-crisis development strategy. Asia’s growth model, that served it so well for four decades, is overdue for renewal so that it can re-strengthen its bonds with the ever-evolving regional and global economic reality. The old growth model is likely to be less relevant and effective in the post-crisis future of the Asian economies. It is sure to run into the wall of diminishing returns.

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Architecture and the housing question

Examines how the design and provision of housing around the world have become central both to competing political projects and to the architecture profession. How have architects acting as housing experts helped alleviate or enforce class, race, and gender inequality? What are the disciplinary implications of taking on shelter for the multitude as an architectural assignment and responsibility? The book features essays in the historiography of architecture and the housing question, and a collection of historical case studies from Belgium, China, France, Ghana, the Netherlands, Kenya, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and the United States.

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Mathematical Modeling of Complex Biological Systems : A Kinetic Theory Approach

This book describes the evolution of several socio-biological systems using mathematical kinetic theory. Specifically, it deals with modeling and simulations of biological systems—comprised of large populations of interacting cells—whose dynamics follow the rules of mechanics as well as rules governed by their own ability to organize movement and biological functions. The authors propose a new biological model for the analysis of competition between cells of an aggressive host and cells of a corresponding immune system.Because the microscopic description of a biological system is far more complex than that of a physical system of inert matter, a higher level of analysis is needed to deal with such complexity. Mathematical models using kinetic theory may represent a way to deal with such complexity, allowing for an understanding of phenomena of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics not described by the traditional macroscopic approach. The proposed models are related to the generalized Boltzmann equation and describe the population dynamics of several interacting elements (kinetic population models).The particular models proposed by the authors are based on a framework related to a system of integro-differential equations, defining the evolution of the distribution function over the microscopic state of each element in a given system. Macroscopic information on the behavior of the system is obtained from suitable moments of the distribution function over the microscopic states of the elements involved. The book follows a classical research approach applied to modeling real systems, linking the observation of biological phenomena, collection of experimental data, modeling, and computational simulations to validate the proposed models. Qualitative analysis techniques are used to identify the prediction ability of specific models.

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Many Body Structure of Strongly Interacting Systems ; Refereed and Selected Contributions from the Symposium "20 Years of Physics at the Mainz Microtron MAMI"

This carefully edited proceedings volume provides an extensive review and analysis of the work carried out over the past 20 years at the Mainz Microtron (MAMI). This research centered around the application of Quantum Chromodynamics in the strictly nonperturbative regime at hadronic scales of about 1 fm. Due to the many degrees of freedom in hadrons at this scale the leitmotiv of this research is "Many body structure of strongly interacting systems". Further, an outlook on the research with the forthcoming upgrade of MAMI is given. This volume is an authoritative source of reference for everyone interested in the field of the electro-weak probing of the structure of hadrons.

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Managing Weather and Climate Risks in Agriculture

In many parts of the world, weather and climate are one of the biggest production risks and uncertainty factors impacting on agricultural systems performance and management. Both structural and non-structural measures can be used to reduce the impacts of the variability (including extremes) of climate resources on crop production. While the structural measures include strategies such as irrigation, water harvesting, windbreaks etc., the non-structural measures include use of seasonal to interannual climate forecasts, improved application of medium-range weather forecasts and crop insurance. This book based on an International Workshop held in New Delhi, India should be of interest to all organizations and agencies interested in improved risk management in agriculture.

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Low-Dimensional Molecular Metals

Assimilating new research in the field of low-dimensional metals, this monograph provides a detailed overview of the current status of research on quasi-one- and two-dimensional molecular metals, describing normal-state properties, magnetic field effects, superconductivity, and the phenomena of interacting p and d electrons. It will be useful not only for frontier researchers with a broad interest in low-dimensional electronic and magnetic properties, but also for graduate students of solid-state physics and chemistry with some background knowledge of solid-state physics. It includes a number of fundamental and novel findings relating to the characteristics of these low-dimensional metals, which in future are likely to become standard material in textbooks on solid-state physics.

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