Open and Distance Education in Australia, Europe and the Americas : National Perspectives in a Digital Age
This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explores the similarities and differences between the ways in which they are organized and structured. It is the first book to make such comparisons and draw conclusions about the nature of open and distance education in the context of various national higher education systems. In a digital era with growing use of online education as well as open and distance education.
Open and distance education in Asia, Africa and the Middle East : National perspectives in a digital age
This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: China, India, Russia, Turkey, South Africa and South Korea. It describes how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of the national higher education systems in these countries. It also explores the similarities and differences between how their open and distance higher education systems are managed and structured. The book compare and draw conclusions about the nature of open and distance education in the context of various national higher education systems. In a digital era characterized by the growing use of online, open and distance education, this book will prove particularly valuable for policy-makers and senior administrators who want to learn about establishing or expanding open and distance education services. In addition, it offers a valuable reference guide for researchers, academics and students interested in understanding the different approaches to open and distance education.
Ontologies for Agents : Theory and Experiences
On the other hand, ontologies have established themselves as a powerful tool to enable kno- edge sharing, and a growing number of applications have bene?ted from the use of ontologies as a means to achieve semantic interoperability among heterogeneous, distributed systems. In principle ontologies and agents are a match made in heaven, that has failed to happen. What makes a simple piece of software an agent is its ability to communicate in a ”social” environment, to make autonomous decisions, and to be proactive on behalf of its user. Communication ultimately depends on und- standing the goals, preferences, and constraints posed by the user. Autonomy is theabilitytoperformataskwithlittleornouserintervention,whileproactiveness involves acting autonomously with no need for user prompting. Communication, but also autonomy and proactiveness, depend on knowledge. The ability to c- municate depends on understanding the syntax (terms and structure) and the semantics of a language. Ontologies provide the terms used to describe a domain and the semantics associated with them. In addition, ontologies are often comp- mented by some logical rules that constrain the meaning assigned to the terms. These constraints are represented by inference rules that can be used by agents to perform the reasoning on which autonomy and proactiveness are based.
Online Storage Systems and Transportation Problems with Applications : Optimization Models and Mathematical Solutions
This books covers the analysis and development of online algorithms involving exact optimization and heuristic techniques, and their application to solve two real life problems. The first problem is concerned with a complex technical system: a special carousel based high-speed storage system - Rotastore. It is shown that this logistic problem leads to an NP-hard Batch PreSorting problem which is not easy to solve optimally in offline situations. The second problem originates in the health sector and leads to a vehicle routing problem. Reasonable solutions for the offline case covering a whole day with a few hundred orders are constructed with a heuristic approach, as well as by simulated annealing. Optimal solutions for typical online instances are computed by an efficient column enumeration approach leading to a set partitioning problem and a set of routing-scheduling subproblems. The latter are solved exactly with a branch-and-bound method which prunes nodes if they are value-dominated by previous found solutions or if they are infeasible with respect to the capacity or temporal constraints.
Online hate speech in the European Union : A discourse-analytic perspective
open access under a CC BY 4.0 license and reports on research carried out as part of the European Union co-funded C.O.N.T.A.C.T. project which targeted hate speech and hate crime across a number of EU member states. It showcases the bearing that discourse analytic research can have on our understanding of this phenomenon that is a growing global cause for concern.
Online Business Security Systems
On-Line Business Security Systems, a professional book, applies the concept of synchronization to security of global heterogeneous and hetero-standard systems by modeling the relationship of risk access spots (RAS) between advanced and developing economy's network platforms. The proposed model is more effective at securing the electronic security gap between these economies in real life applications.
Oncologic and Cardiologic PET/CT-Diagnosis : An Interdisciplinary Atlas and Manual
Since 1999/2000 simultaneous imaging of anatomical features and metabolic activities using fused PET and CT images has complemented and in many cases even replaced what was originally done as separate analysis. – Is this a small revolution? – In fact, this new approach can be considered to be without a rival for imaging diagnosis. The complementary efforts of nuclear medicine physicians and radiologists have improved the diagnostic value of PET/CT scans. The successful use of PET/CT in the field of oncology has been documented world-wide, and in cardiology we can take advantage of the significant findings of PET diagnosis, particularly in the USA. New prospects are now available for paediatric oncology and molecular medicine.
Ocular Traumatology
All aspects of ophthalmic trauma from the lid to the optic nerve of both mechanical and nonmechanical trauma are covered in this unique book. The focus is on practical issues and incorporates cutting-edge approaches, such as temporary keratosprosthesis, artificial iris diaphragm, and prophylactic retinectomy. This book explains and answers not simply the “when”, the “what”, and the “how”, but also the “why” questions. The information is based on epidemiologic and clinical data from evaluation to management.
Oceans and Health: Pathogens in the Marine Environment
The importance of combating infectious diseases has received international attention, p- viding the opportunity for a multidisciplinary approach that combines medicine with other scientist candtechnological capabilities,notably information technology,nanotechnology,and biotechnology. In fact, it has been predicted that the future will bring a merging of these te- nologies with the cognitive and behavioral sciences.. The connection between infectious diseases and the oceans provides a paradigm for this perspective. A stark global context indisputably frames all human health issues in the twenty century: the world wide movement of people and goods. Throughout the past half century, international travel has skyrocketed; there are more than 500 million international arrivals per year. The greatest increase has taken place since the mid-1990s. The world has become integrated and global; consequently, the notion that it is possible to successfully eradicate a disease from the face of the planet has become simplistic. Infectious disease is a moving target and climate shifts will affect any disease that has an environmentally sensitive stage or vector.
Ocean Weather Forecasting : An Integrated View of Oceanography
This volume covers a wide range of topics and summarizes our present knowledge in ocean modeling, ocean observing systems, and data assimilation.
Occlusal splints for painful craniomandibular dysfunction
Bridges that gap, presenting a practical guide for the treatment of craniomandibular dysfunction (CMD)—a functional disorder that affects the muscles of mastication, temporomandibular joints, and/or occlusion—in patients with related pain. The first half of the book provides detailed but simple clinical instructions and examples of occlusal splint therapy, including splint fabrication and coordinative training for painful CMD, based entirely on a high level of evidence. The second half delves deeper into the etiology, advanced diagnostic techniques, neurobiology, and pathophysiology of painful CMD and splint therapy.
Nutrition, Health and Disease : A Lifespan Approach
Delivers an easy-to-read and student-friendly textbook on the changing demands for nutrients made by the body throughout the human lifespan.
Nutrition and Gastrointestinal Disease
Nutritional support of people with gastrointestinal impairment is critical to treatment and ultimately successful management. As such, gastroenterologists should be experts in nutrition and knowledgeable about the affects of nutrition on disease management. Nutritional and Gastrointestinal Disease fulfills that need, serving as a hands-on, practical reference in nutrition support for the clinical gastroenterologist and other clinicians with similar interests. The volume offers expert nutritional knowledge and management ideas as well as methodology for combating problems such as short bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease and obesity. Renowned authorities also investigate nutrition’s influence on such issues as liver failure and acute pancreatitis. While gastroenterology training programs around the world remain deficient in their nutrition curriculum, Nutritional and Gastrointestinal Disease provides a comprehensive and groundbreaking support for clinical gastroenterologists.
Numerical Techniques for Chemical and Biological Engineers Using MATLAB® : A Simple Bifurcation Approach
This book addresses the bifurcation characteristics of chemical and biological processes as the general case and treats systems with a unique steady state as special cases. It uses a system approach which is the most efficient for knowledge organization and transfer. The book develops mathematical models for many commercial processes utilizing the mass-, momentum-, and heat-balance equations coupled to the rates of the processes that take place within the boundaries of the system. The models are solved numerically through MATLAB codes with emphasis on the design and optimization of the chemical and biological industrial equipment and plants.
Numerical Solution of Partial Differential Equations on Parallel Computers
The scientific fields of Ma- ematics and Physics provide a powerful vehicle for such descriptions in terms of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). Formulated as such equations, physical laws can become subject to computational and analytical studies. In the computational setting, the equations can be discreti ed for ef?cient solution on a computer, leading to valuable tools for simulation of natural and man-made processes. Numerical so- tion of PDE-based mathematical models has been an important research topic over centuries, and will remain so for centuries to come. In the context of computer-based simulations, the quality of the computed results is directly connected to the model’s complexity and the number of data points used for the computations. Therefore, computational scientists tend to ?ll even the largest and most powerful computers they can get access to, either by increasing the si e of the data sets, or by introducing new model terms that make the simulations more realistic, or a combination of both. Today, many important simulation problems can not be solved by one single computer, but calls for parallel computing.
Numerical Simulation of Mechatronic Sensors and Actuators
The second edition of this book fully preserves the character of the first edition to combine the detailed physical modeling of mechatronic systems and their precise numerical simulation using the Finite Element (FE) method. Most of the text and general appearance of the previous edition were retained, while the coverage was extended and the presentation improved. A large part of the book describes the application of the developed numerical calculation schemes to industrial problems, e.g.: analysis and optimization of electrodynamic loudspeakers. In these parts, new computational methods are included, and last but not least, this new edition contains a new chapter on computational aeroacoustics to study the complex phenomenon of flow induced noise.
Numerical Simulation in Molecular Dynamics : Numerics, Algorithms, Parallelization, Applications
Particle models play an important role in many applications in physics, chemistry and biology. They can be studied on the computer with the help of molecular dynamics simulations. This book presents in detail both the necessary numerical methods and techniques (linked-cell method, SPME-method, tree codes, multipole technique) and the theoretical background and foundations. It illustrates the aspects modelling, discretization, algorithms and their parallel implementation with MPI on computer systems with distributed memory. Furthermore, detailed explanations are given to the different steps of numerical simulation, and code examples are provided.
Numerical Methods Using Java : For Data Science, Analysis, and Engineering
Covers a wide range of topics, including chapters on linear algebra, root finding, curve fitting, differentiation and integration, solving differential equations, random numbers and simulation, a whole suite of unconstrained and constrained optimization algorithms, statistics, regression and time series analysis. The mathematical concepts behind the algorithms are clearly explained, with plenty of code examples and illustrations to help even beginners get started. You will: Program in Java using a high-performance numerical library / Learn the mathematics for a wide range of numerical computing algorithms / Convert ideas and equations into code / Put together algorithms/ and classes to build your own engineering solution / Build solvers for industrial optimization problems / Do data analysis using basic and advanced statistics
Numerical Methods for Nonsmooth Dynamical Systems : Applications in Mechanics and Electronics
This book concerns the numerical simulation of dynamical systems whose trajectories may not be differentiable everywhere. They are named nonsmooth dynamical systems. They make an important class of systems, firstly because of the many applications in which nonsmooth models are useful, secondly because they give rise to new problems in various fields of science. Usually nonsmooth dynamical systems are represented as differential inclusions, complementarity systems, evolution variational inequalities, each of these classes being itself split into several subclasses.
Numerical Methods for General and Structured Eigenvalue Problems
The purpose of this book is to describe recent developments in solving eig- value problems, in particular with respect to the QR and QZ algorithms as well as structured matrices. Outline Mathematically speaking, the eigenvalues of a square matrix A are the roots of its characteristic polynomial det(A??I). An invariant subspace is a linear subspace that stays invariant under the action of A. In realistic applications, it usually takes a long process of simpli?cations, linearizations and discreti- tions before one comes up with the problem of computing the eigenvalues of a matrix. In some cases, the eigenvalues have an intrinsic meaning, e.g., for the expected long-time behavior of a dynamical system; in others they are just meaningless intermediate values of a computational method. The same applies to invariant subspaces, which for example can describe sets of initial states for which a dynamical system produces exponentially decaying states. Computing eigenvalues has a long history, dating back to at least 1846 when Jacobi [172] wrote his famous paper on solving symmetric eigenvalue problems. Detailed historical accounts of this subject can be found in two papers by Golub and van der Vorst [140, 327].



















