Search results for ""springer nature switzerland""

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.By 2050, human population is expected to reach 9.7 billion. The demand for increased food production needs to be met from ever reducing resources of land, water and other environmental constraints. Rice remains the staple food source for a majority of the global populations, but especially in Asia where ninety percent of rice is grown and consumed. Climate change continues to impose abiotic and biotic stresses that curtail rice quality and yields. Researchers have been challenged to provide innovative solutions to maintain, or even increase, rice production. Amongst them, the ‘green super rice’ breeding strategy has been successful for leading the development and release of multiple abiotic and biotic stress tolerant rice varieties. Recent advances in plant molecular biology and biotechnologies have led to the identification of stress responsive genes and signaling pathways, which open up new paradigms to augment rice productivity. Accordingly, transcription factors, protein kinases and enzymes for generating protective metabolites and proteins all contribute to an intricate network of events that guard and maintain cellular integrity. In addition, various quantitative trait loci associated with elevated stress tolerance have been cloned, resulting in the detection of novel genes for biotic and abiotic stress resistance. Mechanistic understanding of the genetic basis of traits, such as N and P use, is allowing rice researchers to engineer nutrient-efficient rice varieties, which would result in higher yields with lower inputs. Likewise, the research in micronutrients biosynthesis opens doors to genetic engineering of metabolic pathways to enhance micronutrients production. With third generation sequencing techniques on the horizon, exciting progress can be expected to vastly improve molecular markers for gene-trait associations forecast with increasing accuracy. This book emphasizes on the areas of rice science that attempt to overcome the foremost limitations in rice production. Our intention is to highlight research advances in the fields of physiology, molecular breeding and genetics, with a special focus on increasing productivity, improving biotic and abiotic stress tolerance and nutritional quality of rice.

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This book provides an in-depth and broad study on rural Latin America over a 60-year period. Using a case study approach of Mexico and Venezuela, peasants and lower rural classes are examined at the local, meso and national levels. Additionally, the study analyzes government policies, development, and leadership in each country. Latin America has tried to ride the waves of globalization, worldwide economic and environmental crises; the author examines Mexico and Venezuela's relations with the political hegemony of superpowers like the US, EU and China. The material will appeal to researchers, graduate students and policy makers in the fields of rural development, Latin American politics, and international relations.

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This open access book provides a comprehensive overview of the health inequities and human rights issues faced by sex workers globally across diverse contexts, and outlines evidence-based strategies and best practices. Sex workers face severe health and social inequities, largely as the result of structural factors including punitive and criminalized legal environments, stigma, and social and economic exclusion and marginalization. Although previous work has largely emphasized an elevated burden and gaps in HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) services in sex work, less attention has been paid to the broader health and human rights concerns faced by sex workers. This contributed volume addresses this gap. The chapters feature a variety of perspectives including academic, community, implementing partners, and government to synthesize research evidence as well as lessons learned from local-level experiences across different regions, and are organized under three parts: Burden of health and human rights inequities faced by sex workers globally, including infectious diseases (e.g., HIV, STIs), violence, sexual and reproductive health, and drug use Structural determinants of health and human rights, including legislation, law enforcement, community engagement, intersectoral collaboration, stigma, barriers to health access, im/migration issues, and occupational safety and health Evidence-based services and best practices at various levels ranging from individual and community to policy-level interventions to identify best practices and avenues for future research and interventions Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights is an essential resource for researchers, policy-makers, governments, implementing partners, international organizations and community-based organizations involved in research, policies, or programs related to sex work, public health, social justice, gender-based violence, women's health and harm reduction.

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This Open Access book tracks the latest trends in the theory, research, and practice of entertainment-education, the field of communication that incorporates social change messaging into entertaining media. Sometimes called edutainment, social impact television, narrative persuasion, or cultural strategy, this approach to social and behavior change communication offers new opportunities including transmedia and digital formats. However, making media can be a chaotic process. The realities of working in the field and the rigid structures of scholarly evaluation often act as barriers to honest accounts of entertainment-education practice. In this collection of essays, experienced practitioners offer unique insight into how entertainment-education works and present a balanced view of its potential pitfalls. This book gives readers an opportunity to learn from the successes and mistakes of the experts, taking a behind-the-scenes look at the business of making entertainment-education media.

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This textbook provides step-by-step protocols and detailed explanations for RNA Sequencing, ChIP-Sequencing and Epigenetic Sequencing applications. The reader learns how to perform Next Generation Sequencing data analysis, how to interpret and visualize the data, and acquires knowledge on the statistical background of the used software tools. Written for biomedical scientists and medical students, this textbook enables the end user to perform and comprehend various Next Generation Sequencing applications and their analytics without prior understanding in bioinformatics or computer sciences.

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This textbook, suitable for an early undergraduate up to a graduate course, provides an overview of many basic principles and techniques needed for modern data analysis. In particular, this book was designed and written as preparation for students planning to take rigorous Machine Learning and Data Mining courses. It introduces key conceptual tools necessary for data analysis, including concentration of measure and PAC bounds, cross validation, gradient descent, and principal component analysis. It also surveys basic techniques in supervised (regression and classification) and unsupervised learning (dimensionality reduction and clustering) through an accessible, simplified presentation. Students are recommended to have some background in calculus, probability, and linear algebra. Some familiarity with programming and algorithms is useful to understand advanced topics on computational techniques.

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Drawing upon research and practitioner narratives from management, leadership, organizational studies, entrepreneurship and sustainable business domains, this book explores the many pathways that enable emerging countries to transform knowledge into action to achieve economic and sustainable development. The authors take a holistic approach to ‘transforming knowledge’ that goes beyond the mere ‘application of knowledge’ to include the assimilation, adaptation, and contextualization of knowledge to suit the unique contexts, needs and conditions existing in emerging countries. They then presents success stories and case studies comprising innovative solutions for emerging economies that practitioners can utilize. Current research in management is highlighted by bringing together academics, practitioners, policy-makers and interest groups from diverse regions and perspectives.

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The first edition of this single volume on the theory of probability has become a highly-praised standard reference for many areas of probability theory. Chapters from the first edition have been revised and corrected, and this edition contains four new chapters. New material covered includes multivariate and ratio ergodic theorems, shift coupling, Palm distributions, Harris recurrence, invariant measures, and strong and weak ergodicity.

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This contributed volume reflects on the collective wisdom and ongoing efforts of the social work profession that has been in the forefront of the global pandemic of COVID-19. The contributors are seasoned social work academics, practitioners, administrators, and researchers. Working on the frontlines with patients and families, these social workers have garnered experiences and insights, and also have developed innovative ways to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus on the psychosocial well-being of their clients and themselves. The 36 reflections, experiences, and insights in this curated collection address the behavioral, mental health, socioeconomic, and other repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic that have impacted their client base, most of whom are vulnerable populations: Repurposed, Reassigned, Redeployed Safety Planning with Survivors of Domestic Violence: How COVID-19 Shifts the Focus COVID-19 and Moral Distress/Moral Anguish Therapeutic Support for Healthcare Workers in Acute Care: Our Voice Shared Trauma and Harm Reduction in the Time of COVID-19 Wholeheartedness in the Treatment of Shared Trauma: Special Considerations During the COVID-19 Pandemic The Role of Ecosocial Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Natural World Black Lives, Mass Incarceration, and the Perpetuity of Trauma in the Era of COVID-19: The Road to Abolition Social Work Teaching Social Work Practice in the Shared Trauma of a Global Pandemic The COVID-19 Self-Care Survival Guide: A Framework for Clinicians to Categorize and Utilize Self-Care Strategies and Practices Shared Trauma, Shared Resilience During a Pandemic: Social Work in the Time of COVID-19 is an early and essential work on the impact of the pandemic on the social work field with useful practice wisdom for a broad audience. It can be assigned in masters-level social work practice and elective courses on trauma, as well as inform both neophyte and experienced practitioners. It also would appeal to the general public interested in the work of social workers during a pandemic.

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This book analyses the economic history of the company and entrepreneurship in Spain from the 15th century to the present. It evaluates the economic theory, the formation of the figure of the entrepreneur, as well as the structure of the companies. This exploration of the businessmen in Spain over several centuries is something that has not been done until now. Joining the great Spanish historiographical debate about the existence or not of entrepreneurship, the book brings together research in very different historical contexts and junctures. It presents a selection of cases of companies and entrepreneurs from Spain, from different sectors, regions and periods, from boom to crisis, from the wine businessman to the railway sector, from private banking to the pioneers of the Spanish travel agency business. It will be of interest to academics and students in economic history, business and management history, as well as researchers in entrepreneurship & small business management.

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This textbook introduces graduate students in education and policy research to data and statistical methods in state-level higher education policy analysis. It also serves as a methodological guide to students, practitioners, and researchers who want a clear approach to conducting higher education policy analysis that involves the use of institutional- and state-level secondary data and quantitative methods ranging from descriptive to advanced statistical techniques. This book is unique in that it introduces readers to various types of data sources and quantitative methods utilized in policy research and in that it demonstrates how results of statistical analyses should be presented to higher education policy makers. It helps to bridge the gap between researchers, policy makers, and practitioners both within education policy and between other fields.Coverage includes identifying pertinent data sources, the creation and management of customized data sets, teaching beginning and advanced statistical methods and analyses, and the presentation of analyses for different audiences (including higher education policy makers).

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This book examines the concepts of subjectivity and selfhood developed in the oeuvre of Jean-Paul Sartre. Although Sartre is a prominent philosopher, the reception of his work is shrouded in misguided ideas concerning his alleged subjectivism. This book accurately positions Sartre in debates concerning the two themes which form a guiding thread throughout his work and remain immensely relevant in the philosophical landscape of today. Gusman expertly tracks and uncovers the nuances of the evolving notions of subjectivity and selfhood, paying particular attention to his claim that the Self is a ‘thing among things’ and to his views on narrative identity.Using as a framework the critical reception from thinkers in Sartre’s own tradition, the book also draws from the recent popularity of his thought in analytic philosophy of mind. Illuminating and impactful, this book provides an invaluable resource to scholars looking for a contemporary and up-to-date critical study of Sartre’s work.

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This book critically engages with how the conservation of tropical coral reefs is financed. Beginning with the context of tropical coral reef degradation and loss, alongside an overview of tropical ecology, global environmental policy and finance, the book reviews several conservation financing instruments. These include ecotourism, debt-for-nature swaps, impact investments, and government domestic budgetary expenditures. From the Great Barrier Reef, to the Coral Triangle, to the Mesoamerican Reef, tropical coral reef degradation and loss are serious global environmental issues, contributing to loss revenue and food insecurity for coastal communities, and species extinction. Yet, many leading companies, individuals, and governments are making a positive impact on tropical coral reef conservation through the use of conservation finance. Conservation of Tropical Coral Reefs, using 30 case studies which span 23 countries and 6 continents, tells the history of international conservation finance and provides a variety of options for individuals, businesses, and governments to support conservation financing projects.

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What is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor’s work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre – and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage.

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This book shows how clinical psychology has been deliberately used to label, control and oppress political dissidence under oppressive regimes and presents an epistemological and theoretical framework to help psychologists deal with the political dilemmas that surround clinical practice. Based on his own experience working as a clinical and community psychologist in Venezuela for almost twenty five years, the author recounts the controversial history of how the Bolivarian Revolution has used psychology to persecute and oppress political dissidents, recovers the experience of doing psychotherapy under oppressive regimes in other countries and stresses the importance of developing an ethically and politically aware clinical practice. The first part of the book presents the dilemmas psychotherapists have faced in different parts of the world, such as the former Soviet Union, USA, China, Spain, Hungary, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela when dealing with the intrusion of the political domain in clinical research and practice and the difficulties clinicians have had in dealing with these issues. The second part of the book presents an epistemological and theoretical framework from which these issues may be tackled effectively. The book helps raise awareness of the risks of framing psychotherapy as apolitical as well as the benefits of thinking of our lives as contextualized in our political settings. It draws from several theoretical options that have been useful to challenge traditional clinical theory and include the political in our clinical comprehensions. In particular Latin American Community Psychology, that has developed tools to favor awareness of political issues, has been used to expand the psychotherapeutic conversation.Politically Reflective Psychotherapy: Towards a Contextualized Approach will help clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and other social and mental health workers reflect on the challenges psychotherapy faces in a politically polarized society, showing how the political dimension can be incorporated into clinical practice.

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This open access book describes and reviews the development of the quality control mechanisms and methodologies associated with IEA’s extensive program of educational research. A group of renowned international researchers, directly involved in the design and execution of IEA’s international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), describe the operational and quality control procedures that are employed to address the challenges associated with providing high-quality, comparable data. Throughout the now considerable history of IEA’s international large-scale assessments, establishing the quality of the data has been paramount. Research in the complex multinational context in which IEA studies operate imposes significant burdens and challenges in terms of the methodologies and technologies that have been developed to achieve the stated study goals. The demands of the twin imperatives of validity and reliability must be satisfied in the context of multiple and diverse cultures, languages, orthographies, educational structures, educational histories, and traditions. Readers will learn about IEA’s approach to such challenges, and the methods used to ensure that the quality of the data provided to policymakers and researchers can be trusted. An often neglected area of investigation, namely the consequential validity of ILSAs, is also explored, examining issues related to reporting, dissemination, and impact, including discussion of the limits of interpretation. The final chapters address the question of the influence of ILSAs on policy and reform in education, including a case study from Singapore, a country known for its outstanding levels of achievement, but which nevertheless seeks the means of continual improvement, illustrating best practice use of ILSA data.

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This book contains 296 exercises and solutions covering a wide variety of topics in linear model theory, including generalized inverses, estimability, best linear unbiased estimation and prediction, ANOVA, confidence intervals, simultaneous confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and variance component estimation. The models covered include the Gauss-Markov and Aitken models, mixed and random effects models, and the general mixed linear model. Given its content, the book will be useful for students and instructors alike. Readers can also consult the companion textbook Linear Model Theory - With Examples and Exercises by the same author for the theory behind the exercises.

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This book reports on cutting-edge concepts related to Bourbaki’s notion of structures mères. It merges perspectives from logic, philosophy, linguistics and cognitive science, suggesting how they can be combined with Bourbaki’s mathematical structuralism in order to solve foundational, ontological and epistemological problems using a novel category-theoretic approach. By offering a comprehensive account of Bourbaki’s structuralism and answers to several important questions that have arisen in connection with it, the book provides readers with a unique source of information and inspiration for future research on this topic.

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This textbook for courses in Embedded Systems introduces students to necessary concepts, through a hands-on approach. It gives a great introduction to FPGA-based microprocessor system design using state-of-the-art boards, tools, and microprocessors from Altera/Intel® and Xilinx®. HDL-based designs (soft-core), parameterized cores (Nios II and MicroBlaze), and ARM Cortex-A9 design are discussed, compared and explored using many hand-on designs projects. Custom IP for HDMI coder, Floating-point operations, and FFT bit-swap are developed, implemented, tested and speed-up is measured. Downloadable files include all design examples such as basic processor synthesizable code for Xilinx and Altera tools for PicoBlaze, MicroBlaze, Nios II and ARMv7 architectures in VHDL and Verilog code, as well as the custom IP projects. Each Chapter has a substantial number of short quiz questions, exercises, and challenging projects. Explains soft, parameterized, and hard core systems design tradeoffs; Demonstrates design of popular KCPSM6 8 Bit microprocessor step-by-step; Discusses the 32 Bit ARM Cortex-A9 and a basic processor is synthesized; Covers design flows for both FPGA Market leaders Nios II Altera/Intel and MicroBlaze Xilinx system; Describes Compiler-Compiler Tool development; Includes a substantial number of Homework’s and FPGA exercises and design projects in each chapter.

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As readers head into the second fifty years of the modern critical study of blackness and black characters in Renaissance drama, it has become a critical commonplace to note black female characters’ almost complete absence from Shakespeare’s plays. Despite this physical absence, however, they still play central symbolic roles in articulating definitions of love, beauty, chastity, femininity, and civic and social standing, invoked as the opposite and foil of women who are “fair”. Beginning from this recognition of black women’s simultaneous physical absence and imaginative presence, this book argues that modern Shakespearean adaptation is a primary means for materializing black women’s often elusive presence in the plays, serving as a vital staging place for historical and political inquiry into racial formation in Shakespeare’s world, and our own. Ranging geographically across North America and the Caribbean, and including film and fiction as well as drama as it discusses remade versions of Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespearean Adaptation, Race, and Memory in the New World will attract scholars of early modern race studies, gender and performance, and women in Renaissance drama.

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This Open Access book explores heritage conservation ethics of post conflict and provides an important historical record of the possible reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in Danger in 2003 as “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley”. With the condition that most surface of the original fragments of the Buddha statues were lost due to acts of deliberate destruction, this publication explores a reference point for conservation practitioners and policy makers around the world as they consider how to respond to on-going acts of destruction of cultural heritage.Whilst there has been an emerging debate to the ethics and nature of heritage reconstruction, this volume provides a plethora of ideas and approaches concerning the future treatment of the Bamiyan Buddha statues. It also addresses a number of fundamental questions on potential heritage reconstruction: how it will be done; who will decide; and what it should be done for. Moreover when it comes to the inscribed World Heritage properties, how can reconstructed heritage using non-original materials be considered to retain authenticity? With a view to serving as a precedent for potential decisions taken elsewhere in the world for cultural properties impacted by acts of violence and destruction, this volume introduces academic researches, experiences and observations of heritage conservation theory and practice of heritage reconstruction. It also addresses the issue not merely from the point of a material conservation philosophy but within the context of holistic strategies for the protection of human rights and promotion of peace building.

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This unique and timely text is designed to help food science students learn to perform critical analysis of food processing technology and consider the incorporation of elements that touch on contemporary technological developments in the food sector. As the food industry adjusts to new consumer demands for safe and low processed foods, the time has come to harmonize product and process engineering with ‘relationship engineering’ from farm to fork. This increasingly allows the opportunity for food sector professionals to consider the existence of new drivers of food consumption. These newly discovered drivers are explored in great detail over the course of this book from industrial, economic and human resource viewpoints. Social Drivers In Food Technology presents a series of helpful case studies are presented covering six important food sectors: chocolate, coffee, yogurt, juice, baby food and snacks. These cases have been chosen in order to illustrate dynamic and innovative advances in food processing technology. The information provided over the course of this book has been gained through the thorough study of both scientific literature and organizational reports from food processing companies. The major economic aspects related to food technology are also outlined throughout the text. This multidisciplinary approach is motivated by the opportunity to contextualize the technological debate in strategy and organizational economics, contributing to the formation of human resources. This text is informed by the concept that one must look beyond the technology of the food processing sector and discuss opportunities that involve re-thinking product innovation and process, knowledge generation and human resource training. These innovations have been highlighted in food science & technology literature, but their economic and managerial implications have remained unexplored until now. With its informative case studies, helpful illustrations and quizzes and comprehensive, well-organized scope, Social Drivers In Food Technology is a much-needed textbook that will allow students to look at food processing technology from both industrial and economic perspectives and to consider the important human resource elements involved.

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Despite the ever-increasing interest in eye tracking, there is still no comprehensive work on the potential and applications of table-mounted and mobile head-mounted eye tracking solutions in travel and tourism. This volume bridges that gap, effectively linking eye tracking with travel and tourism. It presents, on the one hand, novel academic contributions on the concept of eye tracking, and on the other, practice-oriented case studies that illustrate the use and strategic value of eye tracking in travel and tourism. It provides concrete and novel insights into tourist behavior and the tourist consumer experience and, for the academic community, offers a comprehensive, scientifically based overview of the empirical, methodological, theoretical, and practical contributions of eye tracking research. Accordingly, the book will be of value to a diverse audience. It will be a useful resource for existing and future tourism businesses, allowing them to adopt proactive approaches in the design of tourism products. It will also stimulate further research in the field and inspire scholars and practitioners to combine their ideas and expertise, to look beyond supposedly fixed horizons, and to identify emerging opportunities.

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The systematic review is a rigorous method of collating and synthesizing evidence from multiple studies, producing a whole greater than the sum of parts. This textbook is an authoritative and accessible guide to an activity that is often found overwhelming. The authors steer readers on a logical, sequential path through the process, taking account of the different needs of researchers, students and practitioners. Practical guidance is provided on the fundamentals of systematic reviewing and also on advanced techniques such as meta-analysis. Examples are given in each chapter, with a succinct glossary to support the text. This up-to-date, accessible textbook will satisfy the needs of students, practitioners and educators in the sphere of healthcare, and contribute to improving the quality of evidence-based practice. The authors will advise some freely available or inexpensive open source/access resources (such as PubMed, R and Zotero) to help students how to perform a systemic review, in particular those with limited resources.

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This book offers a theoretical and substantive analysis of intra-Caribbean migration, perception of regionalism, and the construction of identities among Caribbean nationals. Through a multi-methods study in the 15 member countries of the Caribbean community, Oral Robinson explores how intra-Caribbean migrants experience living within different member countries, and how these experiences and perceptions influence ideas about citizenship, belonging, and identity. Responding directly to the lack of scholarship on how Caribbean nationals feel about integration and/or free movement within their own countries and other Caribbean countries, this volume attempts to understand Caribbean societies historically, theoretically, and methodologically; proposes bases of social identities in the Caribbean; and examines how intra-Caribbean migrants negotiate their identities and narrate their lived experiences as intra-Caribbean migrants. The book offers policy solutions based upon its findings, reconciling practice, theory, and migration policies in the Caribbean.

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This book presents a self-contained introduction to techniques from field theory applied to stochastic and collective dynamics in neuronal networks. These powerful analytical techniques, which are well established in other fields of physics, are the basis of current developments and offer solutions to pressing open problems in theoretical neuroscience and also machine learning. They enable a systematic and quantitative understanding of the dynamics in recurrent and stochastic neuronal networks. This book is intended for physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists and it is designed for self-study by researchers who want to enter the field or as the main text for a one semester course at advanced undergraduate or graduate level. The theoretical concepts presented in this book are systematically developed from the very beginning, which only requires basic knowledge of analysis and linear algebra.

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In this book we describe the magic world of mathematical models: starting from real-life problems, we formulate them in terms of equations, transform equations into algorithms and algorithms into programs to be executed on computers.A broad variety of examples and exercises illustrate that properly designed models can, e.g.: predict the way the number of dolphins in the Aeolian Sea will change as food availability and fishing activity vary; describe the blood flow in a capillary network; calculate the PageRank of websites.This book also includes a chapter with an elementary introduction to Octave, an open-source programming language widely used in the scientific community. Octave functions and scripts for dealing with the problems presented in the text can be downloaded from https://paola-gervasio.unibs.it/quarteroni-gervasioThis book is addressed to any student interested in learning how to construct and apply mathematical models.

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This book consolidates the latest research on the Hadean Eon - the first 500 million years of Earth history - which has permitted hypotheses of early Earth evolution to be tested, including geophysical models that include the possibility of plate tectonic-like behavior. These new observations challenge the longstanding Hadean paradigm – based on no observational evidence - of a desiccated, lifeless, continent-free wasteland in which surface petrogenesis was largely due to extraterrestrial impacts. The eon was termed “Hadean” to reflect such a hellish environment. That view began to be challenged in 2001 as results of geochemical analyses of greater than 4 billion year old zircons from Australia emerged. These data were consistent with the zircons forming in a world much more similar to today than long thought and interpreted to indicate that sediment cycling was occurring in the presence of liquid water. This new view leaves open the possibility that life could have emerged shortly after Earth accretion. The epistemic limitations under which the old paradigm persisted are closely examined. The book is principally designed as a monograph but has the potential to be used as a text for advanced graduate courses on early Earth evolution.

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Policy advocacy is an increasingly important function of many nonprofit organizations, as they seek broad social changes in their concerning issues. Their advocacy practices, however, have often been guided by their own past experiences, anecdotes from peer networks, and consultant advice. Most of their practices have largely escaped empirical and theoretical grounding that could better root their work in established theories of policy change. The first book of its kind, Nonprofits in Policy Advocacy bridges this gap by connecting real practices of on-the-ground policy advocates with the burgeoning academic literature in policy studies. In the process, it empirically identifies six distinct policy advocacy strategies, and their accompanying tactics, used by nonprofits. Case studies tell the stories of how advocates apply these strategies in a wide variety of issues including civil rights, criminal justice, education, energy, environment, public health, public infrastructure, and youth. This book will appeal to both practitioners and academicians, as each gains insights into the other’s views of policy change and the actions that produce it.

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This open access handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization. In addition, it answers practical and methodological questions in handling Russian data and a wide array of digital methods. The volume makes a timely intervention in our understanding of the changing field of Russian Studies and is an essential guide for scholars, advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Russia today.

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This book addresses one of the most important unsolved problems in artificial intelligence: the task of learning, in an unsupervised manner, from massive quantities of spatiotemporal visual data that are available at low cost. The book covers important scientific discoveries and findings, with a focus on the latest advances in the field. Presenting a coherent structure, the book logically connects novel mathematical formulations and efficient computational solutions for a range of unsupervised learning tasks, including visual feature matching, learning and classification, object discovery, and semantic segmentation in video. The final part of the book proposes a general strategy for visual learning over several generations of student-teacher neural networks, along with a unique view on the future of unsupervised learning in real-world contexts. Offering a fresh approach to this difficult problem, several efficient, state-of-the-art unsupervised learning algorithms are reviewed in detail, complete with an analysis of their performance on various tasks, datasets, and experimental setups. By highlighting the interconnections between these methods, many seemingly diverse problems are elegantly brought together in a unified way. Serving as an invaluable guide to the computational tools and algorithms required to tackle the exciting challenges in the field, this book is a must-read for graduate students seeking a greater understanding of unsupervised learning, as well as researchers in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and related disciplines.

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This book engages with the relationship between ruins, dilapidation, and abandonment and cultural events performed within such spaces. Following the author’s fieldwork in the UK, Bosnia Herzegovina, Poland, Germany, Greece, and Sicily, chapters describe, investigate, and reflect upon live performance events which have taken place in sites of decay and abandonment. The book’s main focus is upon modern economic ruins and ruins of warfare. Each chapter provides several case studies based upon the author’s own site visits and interviews with actors, directors, producers, curators, writers, and other artists. The book contextualises these events within the wider framework of Ruin Studies and provides brief summaries of how we might understand the ruin in terms of time, politics, culture, and atmospheres. The book is particularly preoccupied with artists’ reasons and motivations for placing performance events in ruined spaces and how these work dramaturgically.

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Written by the 2018 Mindel C. Sheps Award winner, this textbook offers a unique method for teaching how to model spatial (multiregional) population dynamics through models of increasing complexity. Each chapter in this programmed workbook starts with a descriptive text, followed by a sequence of exercises focused on particular multiregional models, of increasing complexity, and then ends with the solutions.It extends the current developments in the spatial analysis of social data towards improving our understanding of dynamics and interacting change across multiple populations in space. Frameworks for analyzing such dynamics were first proposed in multiregional demography, over 40 years ago. This book revisits these methods and then illustrates how they may be used to analyze spatial data and study spatial population dynamics.Topics covered include spatial population dynamics, population projections and estimations, spatial and age structure of migration flows and much more. As such this innovative textbook is a great teaching and learning tool for teachers, students as well as individuals who want to study demographic processes across space.

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This book uncovers properties of focus association with 'only' by examining the interaction between the particle and bare (or “evaluative”) gradable terms. Its empirical building blocks are paradigms involving upward-scalar terms like 'few' and 'rarely', and their downward-scalar antonyms 'many' and 'frequently', an area that has not been studied previously in the literature. The empirical claim is that associations of the former type give rise to unexpected readings, and the proposed theoretical explanation draws on the properties of the latter type of association. In presenting the details, the book deconstructs the so-called scalar presupposition of 'only' and derives it from constraints against its vacuous use. This view is then combined with a semantics of the evaluative adjectives 'many' and 'few' to explain why the unavailable (but expected) meanings of the given constructions are unavailable. The attested (but unexpected) readings of 'only+few/rarely' associations are derived from independently motivated LFs in which the degree expressions are existentially closed. Finally, the book provides new findings, based on the core proposal, about 'only if' constructions, and about the interaction between 'only' and other upward-scalar modified numerals (comparatives, and 'at most'). The book thus provides new data and a new theoretical view of the semantic properties of 'only', and connects it to the semantics of gradable expressions.

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This book describes methods and tools that empower information providers to build and maintain knowledge graphs, including those for manual, semi-automatic, and automatic construction; implementation; and validation and verification of semantic annotations and their integration into knowledge graphs. It also presents lifecycle-based approaches for semi-automatic and automatic curation of these graphs, such as approaches for assessment, error correction, and enrichment of knowledge graphs with other static and dynamic resources.Chapter 1 defines knowledge graphs, focusing on the impact of various approaches rather than mathematical precision. Chapter 2 details how knowledge graphs are built, implemented, maintained, and deployed. Chapter 3 then introduces relevant application layers that can be built on top of such knowledge graphs, and explains how inference can be used to define views on such graphs, making it a useful resource for open and service-oriented dialog systems. Chapter 4 discusses applications of knowledge graph technologies for e-tourism and use cases for other verticals. Lastly, Chapter 5 provides a summary and sketches directions for future work. The additional appendix introduces an abstract syntax and semantics for domain specifications that are used to adapt schema.org to specific domains and tasks.To illustrate the practical use of the approaches presented, the book discusses several pilots with a focus on conversational interfaces, describing how to exploit knowledge graphs for e-marketing and e-commerce. It is intended for advanced professionals and researchers requiring a brief introduction to knowledge graphs and their implementation.

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Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders, Islam and Turks in Belgium examines the interdependence between Muslim community and association. With a focus on social groups, religious structures and circles within Turkish populations, this book demonstrates how communal and associative movements operate through a combination of relationships of proximity and distance. Proximity is a way in which Muslim organisations establish religious, social, and cultural ties with communities. Distance, on the other hand, takes into account social, historical, and political elements from abroad, and refers to the relationship with the Muslim world more broadly. As this reciprocal web of relations gives rise to Islamic mobilisations, it leads to the emergence or persistence of different figures of authority within associations and communities who articulate traditional, charismatic, and bureaucratic legitimacies.This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the sociology of religion, migration, race, ethnicity and Islamic studies.

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This book explores the discourse by and about refugees and asylum seekers in relation to memory with a particular focus on the United Kingdom. A series of studies using different analytical approaches is undertaken, and together the studies shed light on this overlooked area of research. The studies or ‘facets’ presented in the monograph cover a range of contexts and discursive genres: a joint BBC/refugee-authored television documentary, refugees’ oral histories, creative life writing by asylum seekers, parliamentarians’ debates, a reworking of canonical texts and sites in a protest campaign, and non-fiction testimonies and fictional works by later generations of refugee background. The monograph introduces ‘facet methodology’ to memory studies, arguing that this approach could encourage interdisciplinary research in the field.

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This book explores the development of educational leadership within difficult contexts via the lens of a previously failing English secondary school in an area of urban poverty. Based on extensive interview data from 2012-2016, the authors demonstrate that the fundamental ethos underpinning the school’s improvement is a desire to meet the needs of young people in disadvantaged communities in order to equip them with the skills to allow them to transcend their situation. The authors posit that this school embodies the ‘comprehensive ideal’ of secondary education in England: that education should not be disadvantaged by background, and that the state should provide free and high quality education for all. This book will appeal to students and scholars of comprehensive education and schools in difficult contexts.

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​This book analyzes and evaluates the growing field of light-emitting nanoprobes as contrast agents for in vivo imaging and sensing. It is a comprehensive resource that critically analyzes the state of the art in an interdisciplinary manner, with a special focus on the shift of emission wavelengths into the near-infrared (NIR) spectral region (ranging from 0.7 to 2 microns), which has greatly contributed to the latest advances in biomedical imaging and sensing. This book discusses merits of different contrast agents at nanoscale, and how their unique chemical and structural properties lead to the emission and interaction of light within the NIR window. Both the NIR-emitting materials and various surface modification strategies governing their interactions with the biological system at the “nano” level are discussed. Furthermore, different experimental techniques and protocols for NIR-light-based in vivo imaging and sensing are addressed to shed light on further understanding of the advantages and limitations of each category of these nanoprobes. Assembles the state of the art heretofore appearing in scientific literature into a comprehensive, multi-perspective guidebook on near infrared-emitting nanomaterials in an assortment of biomedical applications; Explains the physical, chemical, and biological phenomena underlying near infrared-emitting nanomaterials for biomedical applications; Presents conceptual and experimental approaches surrounding a unique spectral range of light emission from nanosized contrast agents, while offering a clear explanation of basic and general phenomena regarding the interaction between light and biological tissues, such as absorption, scattering and autofluorescence.

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The fourth edition of Krishan Chawla's widely used textbook, Composite Materials, offers integrated and completely up-to-date coverage of composite materials. The book focuses on the triad of processing, structure, and properties, while providing a well-balanced treatment of the materials science and mechanics of composites. In this edition of Composite Materials, revised and updated throughout, increasing use of composites in industry (especially aerospace and energy) and new developments in the field are highlighted. New material on the advances in non-conventional composites (which covers polymer, metal and ceramic matrix nanocomposites), self-healing composites, self-reinforced composites, biocomposites and laminates made of metals and polymer matrix composites is included. Examples of practical applications in various fields are provided throughout the book, with extensive references to the literature. The book is intended for use in graduate and upper-division undergraduate courses and as a reference for the practicing engineers and researchers in industry and academia.

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This book aims to provide a friendly introduction to non-commutative geometry. It studies index theory from a classical differential geometry perspective up to the point where classical differential geometry methods become insufficient. It then presents non-commutative geometry as a natural continuation of classical differential geometry. It thereby aims to provide a natural link between classical differential geometry and non-commutative geometry. The book shows that the index formula is a topological statement, and ends with non-commutative topology.

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The vegetation addressed in this book is, biologically, one of the most diverse on Earth, with many characteristic taxa offering refuge and food sources for many resident and migratory animals. Yet the forests of Las Yungas remain poorly known from a floristic and vegetation point of view. This book seeks to fill that gap by studying the distribution of forest along an altitudinal but also a bioclimatic gradient. The richness in species demonstrates that these forests are substantially more diverse than other subtropical mountain woodlands. 103 diagnostic (characteristic or indicator) species were selected, of which 29 are dominant, 67 are exclusive, selective, preferential or differential, and 7 are stenoic. In addition, 13 communities were identified and characterized. These forests can be attributed to the Bolivian-Tucuman biogeographical province (South-Andean Region, Neotropical Sub-Kingdom). They are seasonal, semi-deciduous or evergreen micro- and mesowoodlands growing on foothills, hillsides, ravines, gorges and the edges of mountain ranges (terrestrial communities), as well as river terraces and beaches (riparian communities). Thanks to the range of new findings, the content presented here will benefit experts in related fields such as geographers, ecologists and botanists, but also teachers, nature guides, those involved in the management of forest or conservation areas, and policymakers.

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Since the latest crisis of capitalism broke out in 2008, Marx has been back in fashion, and sometimes it seems that his ideas have never been as topical, or as commanding of respect and interest, as they are today. This edited collection arises from one of the largest international conferences dedicated to the bicentenary of Marx’s birth. The volume contains 16 chapters authored by globally renowned scholars and is divided into two parts: I) On the Critique of Politics; II) On the Critique of Political Economy. These contributions, from multiple academic disciplines, offer diverse perspectives on why Marx is still so relevant for our times and make this book a source of great appeal for both expert scholars of Marx as well as students and general readers who are approaching his theories for the first time.

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Punjab was the arena of one of the first major armed conflicts of post-colonial India. During its deadliest decade, as many as 250,000 people were killed. This book makes an urgent intervention in the history of the conflict, which to date has been characterized by a fixation on sensational violence—or ignored altogether. Mallika Kaur unearths the stories of three people who found themselves at the center of Punjab’s human rights movement: Baljit Kaur, who armed herself with a video camera to record essential evidence of the conflict; Justice Ajit Singh Bains, who became a beloved “people’s judge”; and Inderjit Singh Jaijee, who returned to Punjab to document abuses even as other elites were fleeing. Together, they are credited with saving countless lives. Braiding oral histories, personal snapshots, and primary documents recovered from at-risk archives, Kaur shows that when entire conflicts are marginalized, we miss essential stories: stories of faith, feminist action, and the power of citizen-activists.

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This textbook introduces readers to the scientific basics of cardiovascular medicine and biology. It covers not only developmental but also cellular and molecular aspects of normally functioning vasculature and the heart; importantly, it also addresses the mechanisms leading to and involved in specific cardiovascular diseases. Though the main emphasis is on novel therapies and potential therapeutic targets, specific controversial topics like cardiac remodeling and regenerative capacities are also addressed. All chapters were written by lecturers from the Imperial College London, in collaboration with their students from the College’s BSc Programme in Medical Sciences with Cardiovascular Science. Bridging the gap between clinics and basic biology, the book offers a valuable guide for medical students, and for Master and PhD students in Cardiovascular Biomedicine.

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This book, written by an interdisciplinary team of authors, explores the transformation of organizations in today’s volatile, uncertain, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. It demonstrates the need to manage organizations in a dynamic way, and to revisit and in some cases reinvent working and leadership styles that seemed appropriate during past decades and centuries. In turn, the book puts forward a model based on three distinct pillars of organization and leadership to suit disruptive times: the concepts of 'Sustainable Purpose', 'Travelling Organization', and 'Connecting Resources'. These pillars challenge many of our traditional organizational patterns and meet the need for effective transformative approaches.

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This book explores the formative role of mobilities in the production of our close relationships, proposing that the tracks—both literal and figurative— we lay down in the process play a crucial role in generating and sustaining intimacy. Working with diaries, journals and literary texts from the mid- to late-twentieth century, the book pursues this thesis through three phases of the lifecourse: courtship (broadly defined), the middle years of long-term relationships and bereavement. Building upon the author’s recent research on automobility, the text’s case studies reveal the crucial role played by many different types of transport—including walking—in defining our most enduring relationships. Conceptually, the book draws upon the writings of the philosopher, Henri Bergson, the anthropologist, Tim Ingold and the geographer, David Seamon, engaging with topical debates in cultural and emotional geography (especially work on landscape, memory and mourning), mobilities studies and critical love studies.

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This book analyzes the economic reforms and political adjustments that took place in Cuba during the era of Raúl Castro’s leadership and its immediate aftermath, the first year of his successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel. Faced with economic challenges and a political crisis of legitimacy now that the Castro brothers are no longer in power, the Cuban Revolution finds itself at another critical juncture, confronted with the loss of Latin American allies and a more hostile and implacable US administration.

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