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Life in Extreme Environments
Investigating life processes under extreme conditions can also bring clues for understanding and predicting ecosystems' responses to global changes. Furthermore, this area of research has a wide application potential in the fields of (bio)technoloty, chemical industry, pharmaceutics, biomedicine or cosmetics.
Life : An Introduction to Complex Systems Biology
What is life? Has molecular biology given us a satisfactory answer to this question? And if not, why, and how to carry on from there? This book examines life not from the reductionist point of view, but rather asks the question: what are the universal properties of living systems and how can one construct from there a phenomenological theory of life that leads naturally to complex processes such as reproductive cellular systems, evolution and differentiation? The presentation has been deliberately kept fairly non-technical so as to address a broad spectrum of students and researchers from the natural sciences and informatics.
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.
Learning, philosophy, and African citizenship
This book discusses and addresses the compelling questions concerning the ideals of citizenship, the processes of learning to fulfill these ideals, and possibilities of education in fostering citizenship. Rather than advocating for one framework, the authors demonstrate the continuously contested nature of the concept of citizenship as theoretically discussed and practically experienced. The monograph combines, in an unconventional way, selected philosophical accounts and everyday experiences from certain locations in Tanzania and Uganda.
Learning in Modern International Society : On the Cognitive Problem Solving Abilities of Political Actors
Claudia Hofmann engages in a theoretical modelling of international learning processes and the substantiation of this model through three cases from international politics. She answers two questions: How may international actors learn as a collective? And how may the lessons learned influence actor behaviour and problem solving processes? As a foundation for answering these questions she examines the nature of actor behaviour within a social international system and integrates the diffusion of norms and values among macro-level actors.
Lean Architecture : Excellence in Project Delivery
Shows readers a path to improve their project delivery via the application of lean concepts and process management. Authors Michael Czap and Gregory Buchanan challenge readers to reexamine their approach to architectural practice and projects by presenting a unique and compelling alternative. Readers will learn to: Maximize the use of their resources to deliver superior results in less time / Minimize waste, cost, and inefficiency in their firm’s operations / Move between radically different project scales while retaining efficient and effective processes
Leading in a VUCA World : Integrating Leadership, Discernment and Spirituality
Brings together works by specialists from different disciplines and continents to reflect on the nexus between leadership, spirituality and discernment, particularly with regard to a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). The book spells out, first of all, what our VUCA world entails, and how it affects businesses, organizations, and societies as a whole. Secondly, the book develops new perspectives on the processes of leadership, spirituality, and discernment, particularly in this VUCA context. These perspectives are interdisciplinary in nature, and are informed by e.g. management studies, leadership theory, philosophy, and theology.
Le raisonnement bayésien : Modélisation et inférence = Bayesian reasoning : Modeling and inference
Describes in detail the practice of the Bayesian statistical approach using many examples chosen for their educational interest. The first part gives the general principles of statistical modeling making it possible to supervise but also to come to the aid of the imagination of the apprentice modeler. By examining examples of increasing difficulty, the reader forges the keys to building their own model. The second part presents the most useful calculation algorithms for estimating the unknowns of the model. Each inference method is presented and illustrated by numerous application cases.
Lattice Boltzmann Modeling : An Introduction for Geoscientists and Engineers
Lattice Boltzmann models have a remarkable ability to simulate single- and multi-phase fluids and transport processes within them. A rich variety of behaviors, including higher Reynolds numbers flows, phase separation, evaporation, condensation, cavitation, buoyancy, and interactions with surfaces can readily be simulated. This book provides a basic introduction that emphasizes intuition and simplistic conceptualization of processes. It avoids the more difficult mathematics that underlies LB models. The model is viewed from a particle perspective where collisions, streaming, and particle-particle/particle-surface interactions constitute the entire conceptual framework. Beginners and those with more interest in model application than detailed mathematical foundations will find this a powerful "quick start" guide. Example simulations, exercises, and computer codes are included. Working code is provided on the Internet
Latinas/os in the United States : Changing the Face of América
This book also addresses important theoretical and methodological issues related to the study of Latinas/os and presents in-depth analyses (both quantitative and qualitative) of substantive issues relevant to this population, including migration, demographic patterns and processes, education, health, citizenship, political participation, religion, gender and sex roles, literary and cultural production, and the media. The authors seek to educate and increase awareness of the diversity that exists among the Latina/o population, and to carefully examine the social, economic, demographic, cultural, and political impacts and contributions that this growing population has had in the United States. The edited volume presents a holistic and multidisciplinary perspective of this group, and it critically documents how Latinas and Latinos have changed and will continue to change the face of América.
Laser Fabrication and Machining of Materials
Laser Fabrication and Machining of Materials introduces readers to the fundamental properties and physical phenomena of laser machining and its applications on the macro, micro, and nano scales. Examples of existing, emerging, and potential techniques are discussed, giving students and practicing engineers alike the opportunity to expand their use of lasers in such disciplines as mechanical processes, electronics, materials, and manufacturing.
Laser additive manufacturing: design, materials, processes and applications
Laser-based additive manufacturing (LAM) is a revolutionary advanced digital manufacturing technology developed in recent decades, which is also a key strategic technology for technological innovation and industrial sustainability. This technology unlocks the design and constraints of traditional manufacturing and meets the needs of complex geometry fabrication and high-performance part fabrication. A deeper understanding of the design, materials, processes, structures, properties and applications is desired to produce novel functional devices, as well as defect-free structurally sound and reliable LAM parts.The topics in this Special Issue reprint include macro- and micro-scale additive manufacturing with lasers, such as structure/material design, fabrication, modeling and simulation, in situ characterization of additive manufacturing processes and ex situ materials characterization and performance, with an overview that covers various applications in aerospace, biomedicine, optics and energy.
Language, Expressivity and Cognition
The book presents how language shapes communicative and cognitive processes but at the same time is also shaped by those processes. The chapters put forward a number of disciplinary and methodological perspectives encompassing insights from cognitive and social psychology, (critical) discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics. Both intralingual as well as contrastive, each chapter also engages with qualitative and quantitative methods.
Land-Use and Land-Cover Change : Local Processes and Global Impacts
The book presents recent estimates of the rates in changes of major land classes such as forest, cropland and pasture. Among the causative mechanisms behind land change, synergetic factor combinations are found to be more common than single key factor explanations. Aggregated globally, multiple impacts of local land changes are shown to significantly affect central aspects of Earth System functioning. Innovative developments and applications in the fields of modeling and scenario construction are presented. Finally, conclusions are drawn about the most pressing implications for the design of appropriate intervention policies, and on new directions and frontiers of research.
Landscapes Under Pressure : Theory and Practice of Cultural Heritage Research and Preservation
This book investigates the newly emerging scope of interests and project agendas to investigate and preserve cultural landscapes. It presents the historic, archaeological, ethnographic, and environmental traditions of cultural landscape study and the attempts to reconstruct and analyze the complex processes of cultural changes through prehistoric and historic times.The "guiding light" of the book is that the fullest understanding of a cultural landscape will materialize through interdisciplinary cooperation, which should involve an ecological approach with historical ecology as the guiding tool, applied archaeology, and environmental planning.
Landscapes of Lifelong Learning Policies across Europe : Comparative Case Studies
This book explores different landscapes of Lifelong Learning policies (LLP), producing case-based examinations of their institutional, discursive, and relational dimensions. Across Europe, young people develop their life courses amidst diverse living conditions and are confronted with a variety of institutional and structural arrangements that impact on their opportunities in education and labour. Considering the relevance of LLP in shaping those opportunities, the chapters draw from multi-level, mixed-methods research and offer original insights on the interplay of discourses and governance patterns in the processes of policy-making and deliverance. The book yields noteworthy insights into the widely differing realities across the European landscape, and also into the diverging ways young people deal with and actively participate in LLP.
Landscapes of a New Cultural Economy of Space
Aims to tie together various perspectives, insights and constructions pertaining to landscapes and landscape representations from different theoretical and methodological positions as well as from diverse geographical and historical contexts in order to elucidate and illustrate processes of cultural transformation inscribed in space.
Landscape theory in design
Introduces theoretical ideas to students without the use of jargon or an assumption of extensive knowledge in other fields, and in doing so, links these ideas to the processes of design. In five thematic chapters Susan Herrington explains: the theoretic groundings of the theory of philosophy, why it matters to design, an example of the theory in a work of landscape architecture from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, debates surrounding the theory and primary readings that can be read as companions to her text. An extensive glossary of theoretical terms also adds a vital contribution to students' comprehension of theories relevant to the design of landscapes and gardens.
Landscape Architecture as Storytelling : Learning Design Through Analogy
Introduces a comfortable approach to learning landscape architectural design free of design jargon and derived from their existing knowledge. A step-by-step process has readers consider their knowledge of language as metaphorically related to basic design and landscape design. Through information delivery and questioning processes, readers build on what they already know, their tacit understanding of language as applied to problem solving and storytelling. Everyone is a storyteller.
Land-Change Science in the Tropics : Changing Agricultural Landscapes
Land use and land-cover change research over the past decade has focused mainly on contemporary primary land-cover conversions in the tropics and sub-tropics, with considerable resources dedicated to the explanation and prediction of tropical deforestation and often ignoring the dynamism in the world’s agro-pastoral landscapes. This collection integrates cutting-edge research in the social, biogeophysical, and geographical information sciences to understand the human and environmental dynamics that change the type, magnitude and location of land uses and land covers in the changing countryside.This book describes the monitoring of land-cover changes, explains the processes through which land is altered, and describes the development of spatially-explicit models to predict land change. This book illustrates how practitioners have integrated knowledge from the three scientific realms - social, biophysical, and GIScience - that underpin land-change science.
