الصفحة 10
الصفحة 10
Flexible Databases Supporting Imprecision and Uncertainty
This volume collects selected contributions on the application of heterogeneous methods for managing uncertainty and imprecision in databases. It contains both survey chapters on classic topics such as "flexible querying in databases", and up to date ontributions on "database models to represent imperfect data". Further, it includes specific contributions on uncertainty management in database integration, and in representing and querying semistructured and spatial data. These topics are of particular relevance nowadays with the diffusion of the internet since, most of the time, applications require information spread across several information sources and their integration may result in inconsistent information.
Flavours and Fragrances : Chemistry, Bioprocessing and Sustainability
This book is an introduction to the fascinating world of aroma chemicals, essential oils, fragrances and flavour compositions for the food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry. The present state-of-the-art technology, the future use of resources and biotechnological approaches for the production of the respective chemical compounds are described. A large section is devoted to the description of the renewable resources of flavours: spice plants, fruits from moderate to tropical climates, vegetables, fermented and heated plants. Analytical methods, such as gas chromatography coupled to human or electronic noses or to a mass spectrometer, are outlined and consumer trends, legal and safety aspects are described. Novel renewable resources come from biotechnology.
Finite element analysis for building assessment : Advanced use and practical recommendations
Existing structures represent a heterogeneous category in the global built environment as often characterized by the presence of archaic materials, damage and disconnections, uncommon construction techniques and subsequent interventions throughout the building history. In this scenario, the common linear elastic analysis approach adopted for new buildings is incapable of an accurate estimation of structural capacity, leading to overconservative results, invasive structural strengthening, added intervention costs, excessive interference to building users and possible losses in terms of aesthetics or heritage values. For a rational and sustainable use of the resources, this book deals with advanced numerical simulations, adopting a practical approach to introduce the fundamentals of Finite Element Method, nonlinear solution procedures and constitutive material models.
Femtosecond laser spectroscopy
As concepts and methodologies have evolved over the past two decades, the realm of ultrafast science has become vast and exciting and has impacted many areas of chemistry, biology and physics, and other fields such as materials science, electrical engineering, and optical communication. The field has recently exploded with the announcement of a series of remarkable new developments and advances. This volume surveys this recent growth in eleven chapters written by leading international researchers in the field. It includes sections on femtosecond optical frequency combs, soft x-ray femtosecond laser sources, and attosecond laser sources. In addition, the contributors address real-time spectroscopy of molecular vibrations with sub-5-fs pulses and multidimensional femtosecond coherent spectroscopies for studying molecular and electron dynamics. Novel methods for measuring and characterizing ultrashort laser pulses and ultrashort pulses of light are also described. The topics covered are revolutionizing the fields of biomedical imaging, electron dynamics, ultrahigh precision spectroscopy, and optical frequency metrology. Surveying the latest advances in ultrafast lasers, Femtosecond Laser Spectroscopy will be of interest to both researchers and graduate students.
Federation over the Web ; International Workshop, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, May 1-6, 2005, Revised Selected Papers
The lives of people all around the world, especially in industrialized nations, continue to be changed by the presence and growth of the Internet. Its in?uence is felt at scales ranging from private lifestyles to national economies, boosting thepaceatwhichmoderninformationandcommunicationtechnologiesin?uence personal choices along with business processes and scienti?c endeavors. In addition to its billions of HTML pages, the Web can now be seen as an open repository of computing resources. These resources provide access to computational services as well as data repositories, through a rapidly growing variety of Web applications and Web services.
Explaining Executive Pay : The roles of managerial power and complexity
The pay of corporate leaders has escalated in the last few decades. At the same time the number of research papers on this issue has soared. Despite an impressive research volume, however, many questions concerning executive compensation remain unsolved. The author shows that both firm complexity and managerial power are associated with higher pay levels. This suggests that top managers are paid for the complexity of their job and that more powerful top managers receive pay in excess of the level that would be optimal for shareholders.
Expanding Horizons in Bioethics
What are the resources and needs, the strengths and the vulnerabilities of patients, of society, or of nature? How do we evaluate the societal potential of scientific discovery? It is fairly well assured that we are influencing the terms of existence of many inhabitants of this planet, from flora to fauna to humans. Moreover, history has shown that while technologies can be used neutrally, they can be (and have been) used to the great benefit – or the great detriment – of human life and the fate of the world as a whole. How various types of knowledge and technological ability will be deployed is up to us, individually and collectively. How such information and ability should be deployed, and for what reasons, are questions at the core of bioethical inquiry. These are the "expanding horizons in bioethics" to which this volume refers. This volume is comprised of fourteen essays. It is a rare gathering of scholarly opinion, featuring well-known experts from a diversity of disciplines. The topics addressed are of immediate concern to the public. The essays ask questions about human nature, genetic technologies, reproductive rights, human subjects research, and environmental issues – all in provocative and challenging new ways. Yet the themes that emerge throughout the volume are of enduring interest to anyone concerned about the interactions of scientific development, ethics, and society. This volume is of interest to students and teachers of bioethics and related topics, as well as to professionals working in these disciplines.
Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments
This book provides a compilation on the state-of-the-art and recent advances of evolutionary algorithms in dynamic and uncertain environments within a unified framework. The motivation for this book arises from the fact that some degree of uncertainty in characterizing any realistic engineering systems is inevitable. Representative methods for addressing major sources of uncertainties in evolutionary computation, including handle of noisy fitness functions, use of approximate fitness functions, search for robust solutions, and tracking moving optimums, are presented. "Evolutionary Computation in Dynamic and Uncertain Environments" is a valuable reference for scientists, researchers, professionals and students in the field of engineering and science, particularly in the areas of computational intelligence, natural computing and evolutionary computation.
Evidence-Based Management : How to Use Evidence to Make Better Organizational Decisions
Evidence-based management has evolved with the goal of improving the quality of decision-making by using critically evaluated evidence from multiple sources - organizational data, professional expertise, stakeholder values and scientific literature. This book sets out and explains the specific skills needed to gather, understand and use evidence to make better-informed organizational decisions.
Evaporites : Sediments, Resources and Hydrocarbons
The monograph offers a comprehensive discussion of the role of evaporites in hydrocarbon generation and trapping. For the first time, diverse knowledge on exploitable salts has been assembled and organized, along with a summary of evaporate karst hazards as well as a summary of exploitative methods and pitfalls in dealing with evaporites in conventional and solution mining. Written by a field specialist in research and exploration, the book presents a comprehensive synthesis of the low temperature realm of evaporite evolution. It is aimed for earth science professionals, sedimentologists, oil and gas explorers, mining geologists, as well as environmental geologists.
Evaluation of Text and Speech Systems
Provides an overview of the state-of-the-art and best practice in several sub-fields of evaluation of text and speech systems and components. The evaluation aspects covered include speech and speaker recognition, speech synthesis, animated talking agents, part-of-speech tagging, parsing, and natural language software like machine translation, information retrieval, question answering, spoken dialogue systems, data resources, and annotation schemes. With its broad coverage and original contributions this book is unique in the field of evaluation of speech and language technology.
Evaluation Methods in Biomedical Informatics
This book is a general reference designed for individuals from a broad range of professional backgrounds at various stages of learning about medical information systemsIt attempts to explain why medical information resources should be studied, and why this is a challenging process. It explores the options for conducting such studies, and specifically deciding what topic to study. It also explains how to design, carry out, and interpret a study using a particular set of techniques, how to conduct studies in the context of health care organizations, and how to communicate study designs and study results to the proper audience.
Evaluating the organizational impact of health care information systems
Evaluating the Organizational Impact of Health Care Information Systems, Second Edition, is heavily updated and revised from its First Edition, which is entitled Evaluating Health Care Information Systems: Methods and Applications. The much-needed Second Edition is a guide for evaluating the organizational impacts of computer systems in health care institutions. It provides a practical guide for determining the appropriate questions to ask based on underlying models of change and the most effective methods available. An introduction to various methods is provided, as well as appendices containing survey instruments usable in research and evaluation, computer programs for data analyses, and other evaluation resources. The book provides a critical overview of current research and evaluation to date with numerous bibliographic references from health care and other fields. The methods and instruments described are applicable to a wide variety of other organizations that utilize information technology and they emphasize the importance of clearly specifying the purpose of the evaluation, recognizing assumptions about organizational change and using a multi-method approach to system evaluation. The material presented is drawn from a variety of social and health science disciplines in order to integrate the study of information system with social science theory and methods. Chapter highlights include Cognitive Approaches to Evaluation, Computer Simulation as an Evaluation Tool, and Research and Evaluation: Future Directions.
European water law and hydropolitics : An inquiry into the resilience of transboundary water governance in the European Union
provides the first comprehensive assessment of the various issues faced by countries in the European Union, where progressing climate change and urbanization pose significant cooperative challenges in a large number of river basins. Conducting a thorough analysis of the intricate web of EU water governance, it reveals that the hydropolitical stability of the European Union is already at risk. Further, given the structural nature of the shortcomings in EU water policy—e.g. the rigidity of the EU’s founding treaties or the institutional complacency of the European Commission— argues that these risks are likely to turn into sources of prolonged conflict, unless EU decision-making bodies take steps to address the new hydrological realities early on.
European Somalis' Post-Migration Movements : Mobility Capital and the Transnationalisation of Resources
Based on a qualitative study on migrants of Somali origin who have settled in Europe for at least a decade, this open access book offers a ground-breaking exploration of the idea of mobility, both empirically and theoretically. It draws a comprehensive typology of the varied “post-migration mobility practices” developed by these migrants from their country of residence after having settled there. It argues that cross-border mobility may, under certain conditions, become a form of capital that can be employed to pursue advantages in transnational social fields. The study sheds a different light on migrants who are often considered passive or problematic migrants/refugees in Europe, and demonstrates that mobility capital is not the prerogative of highly qualified elites: less privileged migrants also circulate in a globalised world, benefiting from being embedded in transnational social fields and from mobility practices over which they have gained some control.
Essential pharmaceutics
Essential Pharmaceutics is suited to this modern teaching style, and is the first book of its kind to provide the resources and skills needed for successful implementation of an active learning pharmaceutics course.This text offers a format that is specifically suited for integration in an active learning, team-based classroom setting
Essential oils as antibacterial agents
An alarm increase in the rate of emerging of resistant bacteria have been causing a great public concern worldwide. This problem of increasing resistance has necessitated the search for safe and effective factors that may be used to treat persistent bacterial infections or modify the currently available antibiotics. An experimental approach, using agar diffusion method was used to estimate the antibacterial properties of 5 essential oils (cinnamon, clove, peppermint, rosemary and thyme) each one individually, in pure and commercial form, against 3 of the bacterial strains that cause common skin infections which are gram negative bacteria (Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and gram positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus), obtained from clinical sources. Only two of the commercial oils had an antibacterial effect on both gram negative bacteria (E. coli) and gram positive bacteria (S. aureus) and in lesser extent on gram negative bacteria (P. aeruginosa).synergy.
Essential oils : sources, production and applications
Essential oils are simply the volatile oils of plants. These are concentrated liquids contain many terpenes, alkaloids and alcohols etc. Various compounds of essential oils have bioactive properties such as antimicrobial, anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, anti-viral and anti-fungal etc. This book describes the sources of essential oils, extraction and production method, characterizing tools, bioactivity, and various applications in the field of industries, daily usage, agriculture, health, and food.
Essential Fish Habitat Mapping in the Mediterranean
This book presents latest advances in EFH mapping and modelling and introduces the environmental approach to EFH identification through the combined use of latest technologies and advanced techniques, such as Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems and Spatial Statistics.The contents of this book include overviews and comparisons of different approaches on species habitat modelling, methods to identify teleconnection patterns between large-scale meteo-oceanic phenomena and local environmental variation, and EFH maps for cephalopod, shrimp, hake, anchovy, sardine, and swordfish resources in the Mediterranean.
Environmental Security in Harbors and Coastal Areas : Management Using Comparative Risk Assessment and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
This book explores the challenges facing coastal areas during the next few decades and the difficult decisions needed to prevent a repeat of the past. Establishing, maintaining or enhancing a sense of environmental security in different coastal regions and improving the management of critical infrastructure will require (i) matching human demands with available environmental resources; (ii) recognition of environmental security threats and infrastructure vulnerabilities; and, (iii) identification of the range of available options for preventing and/or minimizing natural disasters, technological failures, and/or terror actions. This book emphasizes beliefs that the convergence of seemingly disparate viewpoints and often uncertain and limited information is possible only by using one or more available risk assessment methodologies and decision-making tools such as multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA).
