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Mass Vaccination : Global Aspects - Progress and Obstacles
Mass immunization is the blitzkrieg of vaccination practice. It serves to rapidly protect populations, both because of the high coverage achieved and because of the herd immunity thereby induced. However, as in war, mass immunization campaigns must be conducted intelligently, with careful strategy and strong attention to logistics of supply and deployment. If conducted badly, mass immunization may fail or even be counter-productive. In this volume, some of the most successful practitioners of mass im- nization tell us about its art and science. David Heymann and Bruce Aylward of WHO begin the book with a theoretical and practical overview of mass immunization. Michael Lane, who participated in the successful effort to eradicate smallpox relates how this was done using mass vaccination and other strategies. Application of mass immunization by the US military is c- ered by John Grabenstein and Remington Nevin, who have a large experience in these matters. Karen Noakes and David Salisbury recount the striking s- cesses of mass immunization in the United Kingdom. The global control of the clostridia that produce diphtheria toxin is described by Charles Vitek. Hepa- tis A is decreasing dramatically under the impact of large-scale vaccination, as Francis André illustrates. The French experience with Hepatitis B vac- nation has been mixed, and François Denis and Daniel Levy-Bruhl explain the circumstances. In?uenza vaccination is an annual example of large-scale campaigns, the complexity of which is recounted by Benjamin Schwartz and Pascale Wortley.
Life as We Know It
Life As we Know It ["LAKI"] covers several aspects of Life, ranging from the prebiotic level, origin of life, evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes and finally to various affairs of human beings. Although it is hard to define Life, one can, however, characterize it and describe its features. Topics treated are categories of bacteria, algae and fungi, conscience, philosophy, theology, aesthetics, appearance of sport and life destiny, life after clinical death, and thoughts of the world to come ("Olam Haba"). The various chapters have been written so that they are accessible to all - from the avid lay reader to the specialist – and make available multidisciplinary sources of information about Life. This volume will interest open minded scholars, students at all levels of general sciences, natural and Life science, researchers of philosophy, theology, history of Life, astrobiology, and those who wish to widen their knowledge about "who are we in the universe".
Lake Taihu, China : Dynamics and Environmental Change
There are many shallow lakes in the world. Many of them play an important socio-economic role as contributors to the drinking water supply, in flood attenuation, fisheries and recreation activities. Because of the current anthropogenic changes in the environment, such lakes rapidly respond to eutrophication and swamping. It is often hard to address these issues because many changes in the ecosystems of shallow lakes are associated with little studied physical processes. This interaction between the aquatic biota and the physical and chemical environment increases the complexity of shallow lake ecosystems. Lake Taihu, located in the delta of Yangtze River, is a typical large, shallow eutrophic lake with area of 2338 km2 and maximum depth of less than 3m . This book provides basic data on various aspects of this lake and summarizes research work on the interaction between its ecology and physical limnology. It will be a reference for teachers and students of freshwater ecology and biology, the aquatic environment in general, and, most strikingly, for all those interested in physical limnology.
La protesi di ginocchio di primo impianto = The first-time knee prosthesis
Total knee replacement has now become a routine procedure in our operating rooms. The widespread use of this procedure, however, should not obscure the complexity of this joint surgery, which also relies on sophisticated computer aids. Drawing on their long and proven experience, the authors of this fourth volume in the series provide the reader with an updated overview of the state of the art.
Computational and Statistical Approaches to Genomics
Computational and Statistical Approaches to Genomics, 2nd Edition, aims to help researchers deal with current genomic challenges. During the three years after the publication of the first edition of this book, the computational and statistical research in genomics have become increasingly more important and indispensable for understanding cellular behavior under a variety of environmental conditions and for tackling challenging clinical problems. In the first edition, the organizational structure was: data à analysis à synthesis à application. In the second edition, the same structure remains, but the chapters that primarily focused on applications have been deleted.
Complexity in landscape ecology
Interactions matter. To understand the distributions of plants and animals in a landscape you need to understand how they interact with each other, and with their environment. The resulting networks of interactions make ecosystems highly complex. Recent research on complexity and artificial life provides many new insights about patterns and processes in landscapes and ecosystems. This book provides the first overview of that work for general readers. It covers such topics as connectivity, criticality, feedback, and networks, as well as their impact on the stability and predictability of ecosystem dynamics. With over 60 years of research experience of both ecology and complexity, the authors are uniquely qualified to provide a new perspective on traditional ecology.
Complex Systems in Biomedicine
Features contributions from several Italian research groups that are working on the field of biomedicine. Each chapter in this book deals with a specific subfield, with the aim of providing an overview of the subject and an account of the research results.
Communication in Plants : Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life
Plant neurobiology is a newly emerging field of plant sciences. It covers signalling and communication at all levels of biological organization – from molecules up to ecological communities. In this book, plants are presented as intelligent and social organisms with complex forms of communication and information processing. Authors from diverse backgrounds such as molecular and cellular biology, electrophysiology, as well as ecology treat the most important aspects of plant communication, including the plant immune system, abilities of plants to recognize self, signal transduction, receptors, plant neurotransmitters and plant neurophysiology. Further, plants are able to recognize the identity of herbivores and organize the defence responses accordingly. The similarities in animal and plant neuronal/immune systems are discussed too. All these hidden aspects of plant life and behaviour will stimulate further intense investigations in order to understand the communicative plants in their whole complexity.
Cilia : Methods and protocols
Covers the latest advancements in the study of ciliary complexity. Protocols cover genomic, proteomic, imaging, and functional analysis of different ciliated tissues and their wide applicability in cilia biology. Chapters in this book primarily focus on methods to study multiciliated cells, and discuss topics such as SARS-CoV-2 infections of human primary nasal multiciliated epithelial cells; expansion microscopy of ciliary proteins; live-imaging centriole amplification in mouse brain multiciliated cells; biophysical properties of cilia motility; and mucociliary transport device construction. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls.
Brain development in Drosophila melanogaster
The central nervous system (CNS) represents the organ with the highest structural and functional complexity. Accordingly, uncovering the mechanisms leading to cell diversity, patterning and connectivity in the CNS is one of the major challenges in developmental biology. The developing CNS of the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster is an ideal model system to study these processes. Several principle questions regarding neurogenesis (like stem cell formation, cell fate specification, axonal pathfinding) have been addressed in Drosophila by focusing on the relatively simply structured truncal parts of the nervous system. This book provides an overview of some major facets of recent research on Drosophila brain development.
Arthropod Diversity and Conservation
Despite their enormous bulk and complexity of architecture, plants make up only around a quarter of a million of the 8 million or so species on Earth. The major components of biodiversity, instead, are the smaller, largely unseen, silent majority of invertebrates – most of which are arthropods. Vertebrates, a mere blip on the biotic horizon, are elevated in importance in the bigger scheme of things only by the human psyche. This collection of more than 30 peer-reviewed papers focuses on the diversity and conservation of arthropods, whose species inhabit virtually every recess and plane – and feature somewhere in virtually every food web – on the planet. Highlighting issues ranging from large-scale disturbance to local management, and from spatial heterogeneity to temporal patterns, these papers reflect some of the most exciting new research taking place today – and in some of the most biodiverse corners of the planet.
Analyse céphalométrique fonctionnelle et esthétique de profil = Functional and aesthetic cephalometric profile analysis
The complexity of the craniofacial architecture explains the multiplicity of cephalometric analyzes, too often based on points without phylogenetic, ontogenetic, anatomical or biomechanical justification. The value of a reliable and rapid analysis designed from indisputable fundamental foundations is essential. It enables the use of cephalometry in the daily practice of orthodontists, maxillofacial surgeons and facial plastic surgeons. This functional and aesthetic cephalometric analysis is carried out from fourteen anatomical points, ten bony points and four skin points, which all have in common that they are exo-basicranial. This analysis is easy to understand and use. It only takes five minutes to be learned and five minutes to be traced (fifteen seconds if it is computerized). The resulting results are reliable. The functional and aesthetic analysis is developed through four chapters. The first is devoted to the fundamental bases, the second to the analysis itself and to clinical cases, the third to the comparative study of different cephalometric analyzes, and finally the fourth chapter revisits the work of Arne Björk.
Agroecological transitions : From theory to practice in local participatory design
There is wide agreement on the need to change the prevalent agricultural models, given their negative impacts and their incompatibility with current societal issues. Agroecological transition has been promoted as a potential solution to the ecological, social and economic problems generated by these models. It however involves a systemic, multi-scale and transdisciplinary process. Due to this complexity, the overall picture of what farms and food systems “actually are” and “might be” may not be apparent at the individual level. Yet individuals’ knowledge and values provide complementary insights on how to proceed in deepening ecological modernisation. Expertise can also provide landmarks to be considered in that process. Because local stakeholders’ experience and skills are key resources in the adaptation and adoption of agroecological transition, new conceptual and methodological frameworks and tools have to be developed to support them in the design process of such a complex transition. This book presents feedback from the ‘Territorial Agroecological Transition in Action’- TATA-BOX research project, which was devoted to these specific issues.
25 Years of P53 Research
Communication, awareness and access to information: Given the complexity of the field and the fact that data pertaining to each particular aspects of p53 biology or deregulation are scattered in many different publications, it is extremely difficult to access the full scale of relevant information of any specific p53-related topic. This book may help in this task by putting into perspective both general considerations on the p53 pathway and more specific information on various aspects of p53. In the longer term, however, open access to p53 complexity will require the development of knowledge bases accessible through the web and using simple navigation tools to guide users towards the specific information they need. Several efforts are currently being developed in that direction. They need to be strenghtened and better integrated within the rapidly growing galaxy of web-based information sources on molecular and individual variations in cancer. 2. Reference functional assays and structural analysis: Given the huge diversity of cellular and animal models for wild-type or mutant p53 functions, it will be important to set up standard, universally accepted assays to measure critical p53 protein functions.
Mathematical Linguistics
Mathematical Linguistics introduces the mathematical foundations of linguistics to computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians interested in natural language processing. The book presents linguistics as a cumulative body of knowledge from the ground up, with no prior knowledge of linguistics being assumed, covering more than the average two-semester introductory course in linguistics.This comprehensive, reader-friendly volume offers readers a high-level orientation, discussing the foundations of the field and presenting both the classical work and the most recent results. It covers an extremely rich array of topics including not only syntax and semantics but also phonology and morphology, probabilistic approaches, complexity, learnability, and the analysis of speech and handwriting.
Management of Data Center Networks
Discover state-of-the-art developments in DCNs from leading international voices in the field. Delivers a rigorous and insightful exploration of the network management challenges that present within intra- and inter-data center networks, including reliability, routing, and security. The book also discusses new architectures found in data center networks that aim to minimize the complexity of network management while maximizing Quality of Service, like Wireless/Wired DCNs, server-only DCNs, and more. offers: A thorough overview of the architectures of data center networks, including the classification of switch-centric, server-centric, enhanced, optical, and wireless DCN architectures An exploration of resource management in wired and wireless data center networks, including routing and wireless channel allocation and assignment challenges and criteria Practical discussions of inter-data center networks, including an overview of basic virtual network embedding Examinations of energy and security management in data center networks
Machine Learning for Multimedia Content Analysis
Challenges in complexity and variability of multimedia data have led to revolutions in machine learning techniques. Multimedia data, such as digital images, audio streams and motion video programs, exhibit richer structures than simple, isolated data items. A number of pixels in a digital image collectively conveys certain visual content to viewers. A TV video program consists of both audio and image streams that unfold the underlying story. To recognize the visual content of a digital image, or to understand the underlying story of a video program, we may need to label sets of pixels or groups of image and audio frames jointly.
Machine learning and deep learning in medical data analytics and healthcare applications
Introduces and explores a variety of schemes designed to empower, enhance, and represent multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) research in healthcare paradigms. Serving as a unique compendium of existing and emerging ML/DL paradigms for the healthcare sector, this book demonstrates the depth, breadth, complexity, and diversity of this multi-disciplinary area. It provides a comprehensive overview of ML/DL algorithms and explores the related use cases in enterprises such as computer-aided medical diagnostics, drug discovery and development, medical imaging, automation, robotic surgery, electronic smart records creation, outbreak prediction, medical image analysis, and radiation treatments.
Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics ; 5th International Conference, LACL 2005, Bordeaux, France, April 28-30, 2005, Proceedings
Inaugurates the new FoLLI LNAI subline. It constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Logical Aspects of Computational Linguistics, LACL 2005, held in Bordeaux, France in April 2005. The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from over 40 submissions. The papers address a wide range of logical and formal methods in computational linguistics with studies of particular grammar formalisms and their computational properties, language engineering, and traditional topics about the syntax/semantics interface.
List decoding of error-correcting codes : Winning thesis of the 2002 ACM doctoral dissertation competition
Presents some spectacular new results in the area of decoding algorithms for error-correcting codes. Specifically, it shows how the notion of “list-decoding” can be applied to recover from far more errors, for a wide variety of err- correcting codes, than achievable before. A brief bit of background : error-correcting codes are combinatorial str- tures that show how to represent (or “encode”) information so that it is - silient to a moderate number of errors. Speci?cally, an error-correcting code takes a short binary string, called the message, and shows how to transform it into a longer binary string, called the codeword, so that if a small number of bits of the codewordare ?ipped, the resulting string does not look like any other codeword. The maximum number of errorsthat the code is guaranteed to detect, denoted d, is a central parameter in its design. A basic property of such a code is that if the number of errors that occur is known to be smaller than d/2, the message is determined uniquely. This poses a computational problem, called the decoding problem : compute the message from a corrupted codeword, when the number of errors is less than d/2.
