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Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for Risk Assessment and Management
Provides in-depth guidance on how to use multi-criteria decision analysis methods for risk assessment and risk management. The frontiers of engineering operations management methods for identifying the risks, investigating their roles, analyzing the complex cause-effect relationships, and proposing countermeasures for risk mitigation are presented in this book. The most significant feature of this book is that it provides various systematic multi-criteria decision analysis methods for risk assessment and management, and illustrates the application of these methods in different fields.
Modulation of host gene expression and innate immunity by viruses
This book is reference on a relatively young area of research in which virology, cellular biology and molecular pathogenesis govern the principles of coinvestigation. Infection of a naïve (non-immune) host with a virus elicits an immediate response which results in a cascade of changes in the host, including an interferon response (innate immunity). The outcome of this interaction is influenced by the genes of the virus as well as the genes of the host. Interestingly, different viruses do it in different ways. Not only is there a plethora of mechanisms used by the invading organisms, but the host has also evolved a great variety of redundant and robust countermeasures. This interplay of host and virus represents one of the most significant frontiers in biology today. A clearer understanding of the mechanisms involved will arm us with better strategies to deal with viruses, including emerging pathogens and potential bioterrorism agents. This book is sure to benefit students, scientists, and physicians working in the areas of virology, immunology, microbiology, and infectious diseases.
Models for Discrete Longitudinal Data
This book provides a comprehensive treatment on modeling approaches for non-Gaussian repeated measures, possibly subject to incompleteness. The authors consider a variety of extensions, such as models for multivariate longitudinal measurements, random-effects models with serial correlation, and mixed models with non-Gaussian random effects. They sketch the general principles for how to deal with the commonly encountered issue of incomplete longitudinal data. The authors critique frequently used methods and propose flexible and broadly valid methods instead, and conclude with key concepts of sensitivity analysis. The book shows how the different approaches can be implemented within the SAS software package. The text is organized so the reader can skip the software-oriented chapters and sections without breaking the logical flow.
Model-based Process Supervision : A Bond Graph Approach
Model-based fault detection and isolation requires a mathematical model of the system behaviour. Modelling is important and can be difficult because of the complexity of the monitored system and its control architecture. The authors use bond-graph modelling, a unified multi-energy domain modelling method, to build dynamic models of process engineering systems by composing hierarchically arranged sub-models of various commonly encountered process engineering devices. The structural and causal properties of bond-graph models are exploited for supervisory systems design.
Migrant Hospitalities in the Mediterranean : Encounters with Alterity in Birth and Death
This book applies insights from the anthropology of hospitality to illuminate ethnographic accounts of migrant reception in various parts of the Mediterranean. The contributors ground the idea and practice of hospitality in concrete ethnographic settings and challenge how the casual usage of Derridean or Kantian notions of hospitality can blur the boundaries between social scales and between metaphor and practice. Host-guest relations are multiplied through pregnancy and childbirth, and new forms of hospitality emerge with the need to offer mortuary practices for dead strangers, helping to illuminate the spatial and scalar dimensions of morality and politics in Mediterranean migrant reception.
Microphone Array Signal Processing
Microphone arrays have attracted a lot of interest in the last two decades. The reason behind this is that they have the potential to solve many important problems in both human-machine and human-human interfaces for different kinds of communications. But before microphone arrays can be deployed broadly, there is a strong need for a deep understanding of the problems encountered in the real world and their clear formulation in order that useful algorithms can be developed to process the sensor signals.
Micromanufacturing and Nanotechnology
Micromanufacturing and Nanotechnology is an emerging technological infrastructure and process that involves manufacturing of products and systems at the micro and nano scale levels. Development of micro and nano scale products and systems are underway due to the reason that they are faster, accurate and less expensive. Moreover, the basic functional units of such systems possesses remarkable mechanical, electronic and chemical properties compared to the macro-scale counterparts. Since this infrastructure has already become the prefered choice for the design and development of next generation products and systems it is now necessary to disseminate the conceptual and practical phenomenological know-how in a broader context. This book incorporates a selection of research and development papers. Its scope is the history and background, underlynig design methodology, application domains and recent developments.
Méthodes Numériques : Algorithmes, analyse et applications = Numerical Methods : Algorithms, Analysis and Applications
This book aims to present the theoretical and methodological foundations of numerical analysis. Particular attention is paid to the concepts of stability, precision and complexity of algorithms. Modern methods relating to the following topics are presented and analyzed in detail: solving linear and nonlinear systems, polynomial approximation, optimization, numerical integration, orthogonal polynomials, rapid transformations, ordinary differential equations. The techniques presented are illustrated by numerous tables and figures. Many examples and counter-examples are offered to allow the reader to develop his critical sense.
Mental health disorders in pregnancy and the early postpartum
Mental health disorders are common in pregnancy and after childbirth with over 10% of women manifesting some form of mental illness during this time. Maternity services will encounter women with symptoms that vary in severity from mild self-limiting to potentially life-threatening. These conditions carry risks for both the woman and the fetus/newborn. Detecting women with, or at risk of, a serious mental health disorder and enabling them to access appropriate care in a timely fashion is a shared responsibility. However, given the frequency of contact they have with women through this period, maternity services have a pivotal role. From a mental health perspective, high-risk pregnancies are those primarily associated with serious mental illness (psychotic illnesses, bipolar disorder and severe depressive episodes). Healthcare professionals caring for pregnant women should have the appropriate skills to detect serious mental illness and identify women at risk and how to access specialist mental health care.
Medical Emergencies in the Dental Office
Prepares dental professionals to promptly and proactively recognize and manage medical emergencies that may occur in the dental office. It details how to anticipate potential emergencies and what resources must be on hand to deal effectively with these situations. The book is arranged in eight sections concentrating on topics such as prevention of emergencies through patient evaluation (medical history) and specific types of more common emergencies that practitioners may encounter. "It successfully fulfils its aim of stimulating all members of the dental team to improve and maintain their skills in the effective prevention, recognition and management of medical emergencies.
Medical emergencies in dental practice
Practitioners and their entire dental staff must be ready to confront medical emergencies that may arise during treatment with sufficient medical knowledge to initiate appropriate primary treatment. This accessible manual addresses the most common medical emergencies encountered during dental treatment. Step-by-step treatment guidelines and decision-making algorithms outline the steps for immediate treatment and make this practical book an essential office manual.
Medical and healthcare interactions
Presenting a series of empirical studies by scholars working with approaches from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Medical and Healthcare Interactions studies real-life work and training encounters among medical and healthcare professionals and trainees or between professionals and patients. Using video analysis and detailed description, it considers the methods and procedures through which professionals, trainees, and patients produce actions and interpret those of others, exploring questions of member competence and socialization within situated courses of interaction. Offers fruitful contributions for training and education in the field of healthcare and will appeal to scholars in the human and social sciences with interests in interaction, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis.
Mechanisms of Angiogenesis
Is it advisable to go back from bedside to the bench? During the last decade, few topics encountered such a broad interest in bio- gy and medicine as angiogenesis. The amazing ability of the body to restore blood flow by induction of blood vessel growth as part of an adaptive process has alarmed physicians dealing with diseases in which angiogenesis is either exaggerated (as in tumors) or too slow (as in ischemic diseases of heart and brain). Not surprisingly, pro- and antiangiogenic strategies have found their way into clinical trials. For instance, for the USA, the NIH website in early 2004 displayed 38 clinical studies involving either pro- or antiangiogenic th- apies. Given the expected overwhelming wealth of clinical data, the question may be asked whether further exploration of biological mechanisms is required or whether results from the bedside are instructive enough to proceed. This question depends also on the progress of pro- and antiangiogenic clinical trials. In the following, I give a short overview about some of the progress that has been made in this field. Since Judah Folkman proposed antiangiogenic tumor therapy thirty years ago, it has become increasingly evident that agents which interfere with blood vessel formation also block tumor progression. Accordingly, antiangiogenic therapy has gained much attention as a potential adjunct to conventional c- cer therapy.
Measurement Errors and Uncertainties : Theory and Practice
Measurement Errors and Uncertainties addresses the most important problems that physicists and engineers encounter when estimating errors and uncertainty. Building from the fundamentals of measurement theory, the author develops the theory of accuracy of measurements and offers a wealth of practical recommendations and examples of applications.
Meaning-Making for Living : The Emergence of the Presentational Self in Children’s Everyday Dialogues
This Brief analyzes the dynamics in which children’s selves emerge through their everyday activities of meaning construction, both in their relationships with family and within school education. It begins with a discussion of new psychological inquiries into children's selves and builds upon the innovative theoretical notion of the Presentational Self, developed by the author over the last decade. The book illustrates how the observation of children’s meaning construction in their everyday lives becomes a starting point for theoretical and empirical inquiries into child development and gives a framework that promotes new inquiries in this area. The book describes the Presentational Self Theory as a sense of how the notion of the Self is being worked upon in everyday life encounters. Chapters feature in-depth analyses of exchanges between adults and children in the Japanese cultural context.
Meaning and Use
The second Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter was held in Jerusalem on April 25-28, 1976, The topic of the symposiumwas Meaning and Use. For Bar-Hillel, the question 'meaning or use?' was of great importance, one which he took as a question of priorities. Which approach to natural language is prior: the formal, semantical approach, which accords a central position to the truth functional concept of meaning and to the theory of reference, or rather the alternative approach which accords the central position to linguistic commu nication and prefers dealing with speech acts to dealing with Statements? Bar Hillel's answer to this question, in his later years, can be summed up by our title, meaning and use: neither approach deserves priority, each is equally necessary, and they both complement each other.
Matrix Algebra From a Statistician`s Perspective
This book presents matrix algebra in a way that is well-suited for those with an interest in statistics or a related discipline. It provides thorough and unified coverage of the fundamental concepts along with the specialized topics encountered in areas of statistics such as linear statistical models and multivariate analysis. It includes a number of very useful results that have only been available from relatively obscure sources. Detailed proofs are provided for all results. The style and level of presentation are designed to make the contents accessible to a broad audience. The book is essentially self-contained, though it is best-suited for a reader who has had some previous exposure to matrices (of the kind that might be acquired in a beginning course on linear or matrix algebra).
Introduction to Geometric Computing
The geometric ideas in computer science, mathematics, engineering, and physics have considerable overlap and students in each of these disciplines will eventually encounter geometric computing problems. The topic is traditionally taught in mathematics departments via geometry courses, and in computer science through computer graphics modules. This text isolates the fundamental topics affecting these disciplines and lies at the intersection of classical geometry and modern computing.
Introduction to Bayesian Scientific Computing : Ten Lectures on Subjective Computing
Inverse problems are closely related to statistical inference problems, where the observations are used to infer on an underlying probability distribution. This connection between statistical inference and inverse problems is a central topic of the book. Inverse problems are typically ill-posed: small uncertainties in data may propagate in huge uncertainties in the estimates of the unknowns. To cope with such problems, efficient regularization techniques are developed in the framework of numerical analysis. The counterpart of regularization in the framework of statistical inference is the use prior information.
Interpolation, Schur Functions and Moment Problems
In signal processing, they are often named reflection coefficients. Under the word "Schur analysis" one encounters a variety of problems related to Schur functions, such as interpolation problems, moment problems, the study of the relationships between the Schur coefficients and the properties of the function, or the study of underlying operators. Such questions are also considered for some generalizations of Schur functions. Furthermore, there is an extension of the notion of a Schur function for functions that are analytic and have a positive real part in the open upper half-plane; these functions are called Carathéodory functions. This volume is almost entirely dedicated to the analysis of Schur and Carathéodory functions and to the solutions of problems for these classes.
