A Life Course Perspective on Health Trajectories and Transitions
This book examines health trajectories and health transitions at different stages of the life course, including childhood, adulthood and later life. It provides findings that assess the role of biological and social transitions on health status over time. The essays examine a wide range of health issues, including the consequences of military service on body mass index, childhood obesity and cardiovascular health, socio-economic inequalities in preventive health care use, depression and anxiety during the child rearing period, health trajectories and transitions in people with cystic fibrosis, and oral health over the life course.
A Legacy for Living Systems : Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics
This book represents a major attempt to revise this deficiency. Scholars from ecology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology and philosophy discuss how Bateson's thinking might lead to a fruitful reframing of central problems in modern science. Most important perhaps, Bateson's bioanthropology is shown to play a key role in developing the set of ideas explored in the new field of biosemiotics. The idea that organismic life is indeed basically semiotic or communicative lies at the heart of the biosemiotic approach to the study of life.The only book of its kind, this volume provides a key resource for the quickly-growing substratum of scholars in the biosciences, philosophy and medicine who are seeking an elegant new approach to exploring highly complex systems.
A History of Atmospheric CO2 and Its Effects on Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems
The authors address the future role of atmospheric CO2 and its likely effects on ecosystems. This book incorporates the advances of various earth science, environmental, and ecological fields into an overall account of global change and the changing dynamics of life on Earth.
A Changing World : Challenges for Landscape Research
Written primarily for researchers and advanced students in environmental and social sciences, this latest book in Springer’s Landscape Series looks at some of the emerging fields and new challenges in landscape research. These include: the role of value systems in perceiving, appreciating, and managing landscapes the ‘space’ and ‘place’ concept in landscape research GIS and remote sensing techniques for gathering and processing spatially and temporally explicit land cover, vegetation, and land use data methods of landscape history landscape genetics and genetic methods to test landscape connectivity and dispersal of plant and animal species
3D cell culture : Methods and protocols
Expands on the previous edition with discussions about the latest organoid models developed for many more organs; new hydrogels and devices for 3D culture; and the organoid systems that have been improved by incorporating more components of tissue microenvironments in the in vitro culture. The chapters in this book are organized into five parts and cover topics such as biofabrication, organoids, microfluidic systems, bioprinting, and image analysis. 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.
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.
Children in Tort Law Part II : Children as Victims
Since children are not as capable as adults to perceive the risks involved in many situations of daily life, they are at a high risk of suffering personal injuries, mainly resulting from home, school and traffic accidents. From the tort law perspective, this requires a specific treatment of children as victims. For the last few decades some legal systems have been trying to find new solutions for a better protection of children, while other legal systems still follow more traditional rules. After having tackled the problems concerning the position of children as tortfeasors in a previous book, in this book the same working team deals with the problems related to the position of children as victims. This book analyses both the traditional solutions found in some legal systems and the newer solutions offered by others and devotes specific attention to damage issues, apportionment of damage and insurance problems when the victim is a child.
Business criminal law: A primer for management and economics
Deals with business criminal law from the perspective of Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. It primarily addresses students in business and economics (master's programme) as well as business practitioners, but is also meant for lawyers and law students. As criminal law legislators exert considerable influence on economic life, raising and growing awareness in the area of criminal law seems compulsory for future managers and executives. This textbook approaches the legal field less normatively and rather in a practical and entrepreneurial way. Its contents are based on the master level class "Business Criminal Law
Asylum Determination in Europe : Ethnographic Perspectives
The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life and death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced.
An introduction to law
this book addresses the ways in which rules and the structures of law respond to and impact upon changes in economic and political life. The title has been extensively updated and explores recent high profile developments such as the Civil Partnership Act 2005 and the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill.
Managing Risk and Information Security : Protect to Enable
Examine the evolving enterprise security landscape and discover how to manage and survive risk. While based primarily on the author’s experience and insights at major companies where he has served as CISO and CSPO, the book also includes many examples from other well-known companies and provides guidance for a management-level audience. Managing Risk and Information Security provides thought leadership in the increasingly important area of enterprise information risk and security. It describes the changing risk environment and why a fresh approach to information security is needed. Because almost every aspect of an enterprise is now dependent on technology not only for internal operations but increasing as a part of product or service creation, the focus of IT security must shift from locking down assets to enabling the business while managing and surviving risk. This edition discusses business risk from a broader perspective, including privacy and regulatory considerations. It describes the increasing number of threats and vulnerabilities and offers strategies for developing solutions. These include discussions of how enterprises can take advantage of new and emerging technologies—such as social media and the huge proliferation of Internet-enabled devices—while minimizing risk.
Managed Software Evolution
This open access book presents the outcomes of the “Design for Future – Managed Software Evolution” .The different lifecycles of software and hardware platforms lead to interoperability problems in such systems. Instead of separating the development, adaptation and evolution of software and its platforms, as well as aspects like operation, monitoring and maintenance, they should all be integrated into one overarching process. Accordingly, the book is split into three major parts, the first of which includes an introduction to the nature of software evolution, followed by an overview of the specific challenges and a general introduction to the case studies used in the project. The second part of the book consists of the main chapters on knowledge carrying software, and cover tacit knowledge in software evolution, continuous design decision support, model-based round-trip engineering for software product lines, performance analysis strategies, maintaining security in software evolution, learning from evolution for evolution, and formal verification of evolutionary changes. In turn, the last part of the book presents key findings and spin-offs. The individual chapters there describe various case studies, along with their benefits, deliverables and the respective lessons learned. An overview of future research topics rounds out the coverage.
Linear and Generalized Linear Mixed Models and Their Applications
This book covers two major classes of mixed effects models—linear mixed models and generalized linear mixed models—and it presents an up-to-date account of theory and methods in analysis of these models as well as their applications in various fields. It offers a systematic approach to inference about non-Gaussian linear mixed models. Furthermore, it discusses the latest developments and methods in the field, incorporating relevant updates since publication of the first edition. These include advances in high-dimensional linear mixed models in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), advances in inference about generalized linear mixed models with crossed random effects, new methods in mixed model prediction, mixed model selection, and mixed model diagnostics.
Knowledge and Skill Chains in Engineering and Manufacturing : Information Infrastructure in the Era of Global Communications
Explores knowledge and skill chains in engineering and manufacturing in the age of global communications. Information infrastructure involves a range of activities from product planning, engineering, and manufacturing trough transportation, marketing, and repair/upgrade to returns and recycling/disposal. Distinct from the traditional engineering database, life-cycle support information has its own characteristic requirements, -- flexible extensibility, distributed architecture, multiple viewpoints, long-time archiving, and product usage information. Several authors address the architecture of the information infrastructure, its services and its requirements. Other papers focus on the knowledge and skill chains that develop in a variety of situations: the supply chain, the factory floor, the man-system interaction, etc. For each of these, state-of-the-art and state-of-research scenarios for various industrial sectors address both engineering and operations requirements in the current socio-economic environment.
JDF : Process Integration, Technology, Product Description
The arrival of PDF has successfully optimized certain elements of the production workflow – the next challenge facing the print media industry is to resolve the problem of non-networked software packages that exist in isolation. Businesses today need to identify process inefficiencies to ensure the successful process integration of the entire value added chain. The PDF document format and the vendor-independent JDF (Job Definition Format) provide the technical platform for devising new, fully integrated workflow solutions. Networking decisions involve virtually every department of a print service provider and lay down the direction of the company over the long term. These decisions offer opportunities, but they also harbor risks. If businesses are to make the right investment decisions, it is vital they have extensive background information on technical and business management issues. The authors provide focused information for decision makers looking for support in implementing networking projects successfully. This book is couched in straightforward language, explains and highlights relevant terms, and provides readers with numerous practical illustrations, graphics and checklists that they can apply to real-life applications.
Communication research into the digital society : Fundamental insights from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research
Media and communication have become ubiquitous in today’s societies andaffect all aspects of life. On an individual level, they impact how we learnabout the world, how we entertain ourselves, and how we interact withothers. On an organisational level, the interactions between media andorganisations, such as political parties, NGOs, businesses and brands, shapeorganisations’ reputation, legitimacy, trust and (financial) performance, aswell as individuals’ consumer, political, social and health behaviours. Atthe societal level, media and communication are crucial for shaping publicopinion on current issues such as climate change, sustainability, diversity,and well-being.
Citation Analysis in Research Evaluation
This book is written for members of the scholarly research community, and for persons involved in research evaluation and research policy. More specifically, it is directed towards the following four main groups of readers: – All scientists and scholars who have been or will be subjected to a quantitative assessment of research performance using citation analysis. – Research policy makers and managers who wish to become conversant with the basic features of citation analysis, and about its potentialities and limitations. – Members of peer review committees and other evaluators, who consider the use of citation analysis as a tool in their assessments. – Practitioners and students in the field of quantitative science and technology studies, informetrics, and library and information science. Citation analysis involves the construction and application of a series of indicators of the ‘impact’, ‘influence’ or ‘quality’ of scholarly work, derived from citation data, i.e. data on references cited in footnotes or bibliographies of scholarly research publications. Such indicators are applied both in the study of scholarly communication and in the assessment of research performance. The term ‘scholarly’ comprises all domains of science and scholarship, including not only those fields that are normally denoted as science – the natural and life sciences, mathematical and technical sciences – but also social sciences and humanities.
Charting a new course : Natural language processing and information retrieval : Essays in Honour of Karen Spärck Jones
This book celebrates the life and work of Karen Spärck Jones in her seventieth year. she is one of the major figures of 20th century and early 21st Century computing and information processing. It book consists of fifteen new and original chapters written by leading international authorities reviewing the state of the art and her influence in the areas in which Karen Spärck Jones has been active. Although she has a publication record which goes back over forty years, it is clear even the very early work reviewed in the book can be read with profit by those working on recent developments in information processing like bioinformatics and the semantic web.
Biomedical data mining for information retrieval : Methodologies, techniques, and applications
Discusses data mining, biomedical image processing, information retrieval with broad coverage of basic scientific applications. covers the topic of mining biomedical text, images and visual features towards information retrieval. Biomedical and health informatics is an emerging field of research at the intersection of information science, computer science, and healthcare and brings tremendous opportunities and challenges due to easily available and abundant biomedical data for further analysis. The aim of healthcare informatics is to ensure the high-quality, efficient healthcare, better treatment and quality of life by analyzing biomedical and healthcare data including patient’s data, electronic health records (EHRs) and lifestyle. Previously, it was a common requirement to have a domain expert to develop a model for biomedical or healthcare; however, recent advancements in representation learning algorithms allows us to automatically to develop the model. Biomedical image mining, a novel research area, due to the vast amount of available biomedical images, increasingly generates and stores digitally.
Bioinformatics research and development ; 2nd International Conference, BIRD 2008 Vienna, Austria, July 7-9, 2008 Proceedings
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Bioinformatics Research and Development Conference, BIRD 2008, held in Vienna, Austria in July 2008.



















