Search results for ""Apple Academic Press""

With the globalization of work and technological advancements in recent years, and with emphasis on service quality today, organizations have changed. Virtual work has emerged as the new employment relationship and has been embraced by employees and employers in many industries. This book explores the dynamics of changing organization structures, theories of leadership and trust, and how dimensions of self-efficacy works in this new work relationship. Organizational Behavior and Virtual Work: Concepts and Analytical Approaches shows the enormous impact of technology and globalization on employment relationships and also predicts how they will contribute to the changing dimensions of organizations in the future. With a unique blend of theory and application in the real world of virtual workers, the book presents the most recent research and developments in the relatively new and still emerging area of virtual work. It takes an in-depth critical look into the key factors affecting the virtual work environment with practical inputs of suggestions and recommendations. With the objective of presenting information about this new work scenario, this book attempts to unfold important human behavior processes in organizations. The volume presents a rare combination of the necessary concepts of human behavior in organizations along with the results of research in the field and also makes practical recommendations on virtual work programs.Key features include a unique blend of research with organizational behavior concepts and practical recommendations for workers, managers, and business executives.

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This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. Urban planners around the world are increasingly concerned with creating and maintaining cities that are healthy for both the environment and for individuals. Cities are at the forefront of the trend toward sustainable living, since they are the site of concentrated population, resource use, and greenhouse gas emissions, yet also have the tools and the resources to address climate change and environmental degradation. Part of the modern urban planner’s challenge is to impact individual behavior on a systemic, urban scale, since sustainable cities are made up of systems that encourage sustainable behavior.The articles chosen for this compendium cover many aspects of urban living on this individual yet systematic scale. Included are chapters that focus on: How individuals, households, and cities use resources and create greenhouse gas emissions How urban resources can be expanded to include waste streams Options for measuring and encouraging sustainable transportation Cities’ renewable and non-renewable energy demands Sustainable housing solutions Case studies and up-to-date research provide urban planners with new options for creating cities that will meet the demands of the twenty-first century. Also appropriate for graduate students who are preparing for careers related to urban planning, this compendium captures and integrates the current work being done in this vitally important field.

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This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. The number of tight oil and shale gas wells continues to rise primarily in the US, but also worldwide. The US has vast reserves of oil and natural gas, which now are commercially reachable as a result of advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies. But as hydraulic fracturing is increasingly used, concerns have been raised about potential stress on surface water and groundwater supplies from the withdrawal of water used in the process. Equally important is the growing volume of wastewater generated from hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells, requiring recycling, treatment, and disposal. Wastewater and Shale Formation Development: Risks, Mitigation, and Regulation examines four major issues, taking a scientific look from different perspectives at water use in shale gas development, potential environmental effects of wastewater from fracking, how to mitigate potential risks associated with wastewater from shale development, and regulatory approaches to the wastewater management problemWith chapters from researchers in the field, this compendium volume sheds light on the important issues and challenges surrounding natural gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing and may be of interest to researchers and public policymakers alike.

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Understanding chemical and solid materials and their properties and behavior is fundamental to chemical and engineering design. With some of the world’s leading experts describing their most recent research, this book describes the procedures for material selection and design to ensure that the most suitable materials for a given application are identified from the full range of materials, chemicals, and section shapes available. Several case studies have been developed to further illustrate procedures and to add to the practical implementation of the text.

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An accessible and enjoyable introduction to pathology and the mechanisms of disease, this book puts pathology into its historical, scientific and clinical context. Organized in four main themes - What is a Disease, Defense Against Disease, Circulatory Disorders and Disorders of Cell Growth - the text highlights key mechanisms and their interplay in producing symptoms, signs and disease. Supplemented throughout with colorful cartoons, and much-praised clinical scenarios, this entertaining look at pathology offers historical anecdotes and helpful key-points boxes.

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This groundbreaking book describes the Lean journey as it extends to a business area that is mission critical, yet has been virtually untouched by the Lean transformation. Lean for Sales: Bringing the Science of Lean to the Art of Selling provides sales professionals, and their management teams, with a structured, fact-based approach to boosting sales close rates and delivering improved business value to customers.The time-tested Lean selling techniques described in this book have been proven to deliver profound results. In fact, it is not uncommon for sales close rates to see a threefold increase over current rates as a result of using the techniques described in this book. After reading the book, you will understand how to integrate the science of Lean with the art of sales to: Create winning sales proposals Use Lean selling storyboards to confirm what is truly valuable to your client and their business Improve sales team collaboration Define and qualify a client’s unique business problems and goals Manage sales process performance using a multi-dimensional measurement system that looks beyond sales revenue to include client value and process effectiveness This book outlines an innovative and proven approach to creating a common language with your customers that is based on waste elimination, root cause analysis, and time to value. Making the management of the sales cycle fact-based, rather than leaving it to intuition, this Lean selling manual presents tools that will enable sales professionals, and their managers, to collect sales opportunity data early and discard those leads that will ultimately waste valuable time and resources.

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In recent years visual devices have proliferated, from the massive high-resolution, high-contrast screens to the tiny ones on mobile phones, with their limited dynamic range and color gamut. The wide variety of screens on which content may be viewed creates a challenge for developers. Adapting visual content for optimized viewing on all devices is called retargeting. This is the first book to provide a holistic view of the subject, thoroughly reviewing and analyzing the many techniques that have been developed for retargeting along dimensions such as color gamut, dynamic range, and spatial resolution.

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This book addresses six areas of policing: performance management, professional and academic partnerships, preventing and fighting crime and terrorism, immigrant and multicultural populations, policing the police, and cyber-security. The book contains the most current and ground-breaking research across the world of policing with contributors from over 20 countries. It is also a suitable reference or textbook in a special topics course. It consists of edited versions of the best papers presented at the IPES annual meeting in Budapest.

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In this book, Dr. Gabow, former CEO of Denver Health of 20 years, teams up with Philip Goodman, a 34-year veteran of Denver Health who directed the Lean System group, to share their Lean journey. The Lean Prescription: Powerful Medicine for Our Ailing Healthcare System tells the story of how Dr. Gabow led Denver Health to become the first healthcare organization to be awarded the Shingo Bronze Medallion Prize for Operational Excellence.Detailing the foundational Lean principles, the book provides readers with the benefit of the experience of an integrated healthcare system's successful seven-year Lean journey. This book grew out Gabow’s 40 years' experience as a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and leader of a large, urban public healthcare system.About 10 years into her 20 years as CEO of the healthcare system, she began to look at how one could actually make healthcare work right. After a year of study, she and her team concluded that Lean was exactly what healthcare needed. During the seven-year Lean journey that followed, Denver Health dramatically improved quality of care. Denver Health achieved a reduction of the expected mortality rate to the lowest among the academic health center members of the University Health System Consortium in 2011.The financial results were equally impressive. Denver Health realized almost $200 million of well-documented, hard financial benefit over seven years.This book provides authoritative guidance on how to effectively implement a Lean transformation in a healthcare system that includes hospitals, HMOs, community health centers, call centers, and paramedics. Providing an accessible explanation of the Lean philosophy and tools, the book includes helpful exercises and examples of Lean applications. The book goes beyond the hospital environment to the broader healthcare sector.In December 2015, Gabow and Goodman were awarded the Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award for the book. The Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award recognizes and promotes research and writing regarding new knowledge and understanding of lean and operational excellence.

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Police interviews with suspects and witnesses provide some of the most significant evidence in criminal investigations. Frequently challenging, they require special training and skills. This interaction process is further complicated when the suspect or witness does not speak the same language as the interviewer. A professional reference that can be used in police training or in any venue where an interpreter is used, Police Investigative Interviews and Interpreting: Context, Challenges, and Strategies provides solutions for the range of interview demands found in today’s multilingual environments. Topics include: What interpreting is, the skills required, and the role of interpreters in any job context Investigative interviewing in law enforcement Concerns about interpreter intervention and its impact on interview outcomes The value of word-based over meaning-based interpretation in police and legal contexts Nonlinguistic factors that can have an impact on the interpreting process The book explores the multi-faceted dynamics of conducting investigative interviews via interpreters and examines current investigative interviewing paradigms. It offers strategies to help interpreters and law enforcement officers and provides examples of interpreted interview excerpts to enable understanding. Although the subject matter and the examples in this book are largely limited to police interview settings, the underlying rationale applies to other professional areas that rely on interviews to collect information, including customs procedures, employer-employee interviews, and insurance claim investigations.This book is part of the CRC Press Advances in Police Theory and Practice Series.

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This book is part of a series of titles that are a spin-off of the Shingo Prize-winning book Leveraging Lean in Healthcare: Transforming Your Enterprise into a High Quality Patient Care Delivery System. Each book in the series focuses on a specific aspect of healthcare—including emergency departments, medical laboratories, outpatient clinics, ancillary services, and surgical services—that has demonstrated significant process and quality improvements after a Lean implementation.Because ambulatory care settings play a significant role in the healthcare delivery system, it is important to understand how Lean concepts and tools can be used to deliver high-quality, cost-effective care. Leveraging Lean in Outpatient Clinics: Creating a Cost Effective, Standardized, High Quality, Patient-Focused Operation provides a functional understanding of Lean processes and quality improvement techniques in an outpatient clinic environment.This book is an ideal guide for healthcare executives, leaders, process improvement team members, and inquisitive frontline workers who want to implement and leverage Lean in outpatient clinical settings. Supplying detailed descriptions of Lean tools and methodologies, it identifies powerful Lean solutions specific to the needs of outpatient facilities.The first section provides an overview of Lean concepts, tools, methodologies, and applications. The second section focuses on the application of Lean in the outpatient clinic environment. It presents illustrative examples of Lean deployments in primary care, GI, and preadmission testing clinics. The examples provide broad content which can be readily transferable to other outpatient clinic settings.Illustrating leadership’s role in achieving departmental goals, this book will provide you with a well-rounded understanding of how Lean can be applied to achieve significant improvements throughout the complete continuum of care.

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This book introduces different interconnection networks applied to different systems. Interconnection networks are used to communicate processing units in a multi-processor system, routers in communication networks, and servers in data centers. Queuing techniques are applied to interconnection networks to support a higher utilization of resources. There are different queuing strategies, and these determine not only the performance of the interconnection network, but also the set of requirements to make them work effectively and their cost. Routing algorithms are used to find routes to destinations and directions in what information travels. Additional properties, such as avoiding deadlocks and congestion, are sought. Effective routing algorithms need to be paired up with these networks. The book will introduce the most relevant interconnection networks, queuing strategies, and routing algorithm. It discusses their properties and how these leverage the performance of the whole interconnection system. In addition, the book covers additional topics for memory management and congestion avoidance, used to extract higher performance from the interconnection network.

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Healthcare organizations with sound human resources (HR) infrastructures are better able to hire, develop, promote, and retain employees who match up well with their specific needs. Using Data Management Techniques to Modernize Healthcare explains how to modernize your HR systems through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), information technology (IT), and other empirical methods. Identifying new technologies and processes that can help to reduce HR labor costs while increasing efficiency and quality of care, it examines the weaknesses that exist in the hiring and employee management practices of today’s healthcare organizations.With a focus on the systemic issues related to hiring and compensation, the book provides detailed information regarding HR protocols, IT related issues, and workplace culture. It suggests ways to speed up candidate reviews and explains how to use IT and AI to reduce the number of bad hires. Other topics covered include five key drivers of hospital growth, the digital revolution and its relevance to healthcare companies’ HR practices, and ideas you can use to increase employee satisfaction and retention.Providing helpful tips for modernizing HR processes that can save your healthcare organization time and money, the book begins with a historical overview of the growth of the hospital industry and the challenges it currently faces. Next, it discusses HR infrastructures and details methods for improving your hiring systems.The final part of the book covers employee development and promotion programs, the proper management and motivation of staff, and the unique HR and IT challenges facing rural hospitals. The book’s appendix includes copies of key checklists, figures, and tables found throughout the book.After reading this book, you will understand how to compare your current HR system to the authors' proposed 21st century model so that you can pinpoint the HR processes that must be retooled to modernize your system.

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There is a growing global interest in Africa and how to improve the quality of life of its people—and for good reason. The world can no longer afford to ignore the democratic changes that have occurred across the continent over the past two decades, changes with tremendous implications for professional education and training for the tasks of nation building. Public Administration Training in Africa: Competencies in Development Management presents research findings related to talent and competency development within the framework of public service institutional capacity building. The book focuses on public administration questions as they relate to training, development, and competency building that will strengthen public managers’ capacity to implement governance policies and work toward improving development management. It draws on unique national experiences to provide research and scholarship that advance the dialogue on training and development relevant to African culture and history while at the same time contributing to enhance the field of practice. In addition to offering detailed descriptions and analyses of unique national experiences, the book also integrates transnational issues of training and development and ties the discussions back to the body of knowledge and scholarship defining the field and discipline of public administration. As scholars and experts in their own right, the authors make a reasoned case for rethinking and re-examining training and development in Africa in light of the emerging governance approach to public administration. The comprehensive empirical descriptions and analyses of education and training contexts and cultures written by some of the best minds in the subfield give you the latest research findings and distill relevant experiential and theoretical knowledge, tools, and skills based on case analyses, including carrying out development activity in different cross-cultural contexts.

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Clausewitz Talks Business: An Executive's Guide to Thinking Like a Strategist distills the wisdom of Carl von Clausewitz's monumental 1832 classic On War—considered by many eminent scholars as the most distinguished Western work on war ever written. This book transposes Clausewitz's most enduring concepts on leadership and strategy to help today's executives and managers think like strategists.Tapping into the universal lessons of strategy, the book uncovers potential solutions to some of the most obstinate competitive problems. It supplies readers with an understanding that integrates historical references with modern business practice. Commentary is inserted at key points in Clausewitz's original text to interpret and transpose his core ideas and to demonstrate how they apply in today's increasingly competitive environment.Maintaining a focus on modern leadership and strategic planning, the book explains how the human element influences the outcome of a competitive confrontation. It provides tips on the physical and psychological dimensions of conflict, which include Clausewitz's discussions about dealing with the inevitable forces of friction, chance, and luck that operate in the "fog of war."In this book you will find timeless principles that will help you think more strategically. In particular, Clausewitz's lessons can be indispensable in the everyday management of your people and resources, especially when applied in competitive environments.By focusing on Clausewitz's writings on human behavior, leadership, and organizational culture, you will gain a better understanding of how you currently face up to competitive struggles, and in turn, will enhance your ability to apply appropriate strategies to outmaneuver the competitive obstacles on the horizon.

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Does your organization provide customer satisfaction or does it inspire customer loyalty? Which is more important? See how lessons learned from the service sector were applied to manufacturing and other diverse settings, including the nonprofit sector and even on one’s own home front.Exploring the Kano Model, The Customer-Driven Organization: Employing the Kano Model explains why just meeting customer needs is no longer enough for today’s organizations. It explains how to identify true customers—both internal and external.Readers will learn how to directly apply Kano principles in their own business environments or personal lives, to establish priorities, increase efficiency, improve communication, and expand on existing relationships.The book explains how to establish a value proposition for your organization and, more importantly, how and when to provide "delightful" service. Demonstrating how to incorporate the Kano philosophy into your day-to-day activities, this book is a must-read for any organization or individual looking to do more with less by achieving a truly customer-driven focus.

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In this new era of computing, where the iPhone, iPad, Xbox Kinect, and similar devices have changed the way to interact with computers, many questions have risen about how modern input devices can be used for a more intuitive user interaction. Interaction Design for 3D User Interfaces: The World of Modern Input Devices for Research, Applications, and Game Development addresses this paradigm shift by looking at user interfaces from an input perspective.The book is divided into four parts: Theory of input devices and user interfaces, with an emphasis on multi-touch interaction Advanced topics on reducing noise on input devices using Kalman Filters A collection of hands-on approaches that allows the reader to gain experience with some devices A case study examining speech as input Most of the chapters contain exercises that provide practical experience to enhance knowledge of the material in the related chapter. With its hands-on approach and the affordability of the required hardware, this book is an excellent flexible resource for both the novice and the expert in 3D user input device development. Researchers and practitioners will gain a much deeper understanding about user input devices and user interfaces. Game developers and software designers will find new techniques to improve their products by adding intuitive user interaction mechanisms to their games and applications. In addition to the resources provided in the book, its companion website, http://3DInputBook.com, provides additional resources, which include: additional exercises and project ideas, additional chapters, source code, and class instructors’ resources. The additional resources are provided to keep helping you with new research and new technology as it becomes available to help you stay up to date.

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Written for the new generation of hobbyists and aspiring game developers, HTML5 Game Development from the Ground Up with Construct 2 shows you how to use the sophisticated yet user-friendly HTML5-based game engine Construct 2 to develop and release polished, two-dimensional games on a multitude of different platforms. The book also covers the foundational knowledge of game analysis and design based on the author’s research and teaching experiences at DigiPen Institute of Technology, James Cook University, and other institutions.The author first helps you understand what really matters in games. He guides you in becoming a better game designer from the ground up, being able to play any game critically, and expressing your ideas in a clear and concise format.The book then presents step-by-step tutorials on designing games. It explains how to build an arcade-style game as well as a platformer integrating some physics elements. It also shows you how to create a more complex puzzle game—the author’s own published game, Turky on the Run. Lastly, the book discusses different ways to deploy and monetize games across several platforms, including Facebook, iOS, Android, and web-based marketplaces. Sample Construct 2 project files for the games designed in the book are available on the author’s website. Integrating hands-on guidance with theoretical game design concepts, this book gives you a solid foundation in game development. It will help you advance in your journey as an indie game developer.

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It is estimated that U.S. manufacturers are currently operating at only 65 percent effectiveness in implementing Lean production. Covering the fundamentals needed to be competitive in today’s marketplace, Beyond Lean Production: Emphasizing Speed and Innovation to Beat the Competition provides readers with the tools to help their organizations achieve 100 percent effectiveness in Lean production.Explaining that overseas factories can't compete with U.S. factories in speed of delivery to domestic customers, the book provides the understanding required to add speed and urgency in all that you do in the office and the factory. It explains how to eliminate waste so you can meet and even exceed your customers’ expectations regarding service, quality, and cost.The book is organized into two phases. The first phase, Holding Actions, covers the fundamentals needed to hold your position against the competition until you can implement the methods described in phase II of the book. It presents 12 little-known tools and strategic weapons that you can immediately put to use to improve on your current competitive position. Phase II, The Business Command Center, presents unique and powerful concepts that can be used with the fundamentals covered in phase I.Explaining how to use speed as a competitive weapon, the book will help you to remove the obstacles that interfere with continuous flow manufacturing. It presents the concept of circulatory management that can put a stop to the ever-increasing layers of management with decreasing ownership.By implementing the holding action and the business command center described in this book, you can significantly improve your odds of beating the competition at home and overseas.

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Change Management: Manage Change or It Will Manage You represents a substantial core guidance effort for Change Management practitioners. Organizations currently contend with increasingly higher levels of knowledge-driven competition. Many attempt to meet the challenge by investing in expensive knowledge-driven change management systems. Such systems are useless, and sometimes even harmful, for making strategic decisions because they do not distinguish between what is strategically relevant and what is not.This Management-for-Results Handbook focuses on identifying and managing the specific, critical knowledge assets that your organization needs to disrupt your competitors, including tacit experience of key employees, a deep understanding of customers’ needs, valuable patents and copyrights, shared industry practices, and customer- and supplier-generated innovations. The authors present two aspects of Change Management: (1) traditional Change Management as it impacts the project management team’s activities and (2) a suggested new approach to Change Management directed at changing the culture. The focus is to prepare the people impacted by the project and change activities to accept and adapt to the new/changed working conditions.The first half of the book deals with traditional Change Management, which covers the topics of remembering, understanding, and applying. The second half presents the authors’ new approach to changing the culture, which deals with analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

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Emergency Action for Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents, Second Edition is intended for the first responder to the scene of the release of a chemical or biological warfare agent. Formatted similarly to the Department of Transportation’s Emergency Response Guidebook and designed as a companion to the author’s Handbook of Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents, this book is divided into concise chapters that focus on the first few hours after the incident.Each chapter, or class index, is designed to give responders vital information on a specific group of agents. This is done rather than focusing on detailed information for individual agents because the specific agent(s) may not be identified until well into the response, long after many critical decisions have been made.Adding more than 100 additional pages of material, the second edition contains a wider library of agent classes that covers more hazardous materials. It also includes updated appendices that cover dissemination, the effects of weather and terrain, isolation, protective shelters, and manual decontamination. The book also provides a chemical/biological terrorism emergency response checklist.Addressing the immediate needs of first responders as they arrive at the scene of a chemical or biological warfare agent release, this book serves as a guide that gives critical information for key initial reactions without having to read through long explanations. It is an essential quick reference for first responders facing the release of chemical or biological warfare agents.

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Whether you work for an established company and want to trailblaze new products (intrapreneurship), or want to establish your own new venture (entrepreneurship), The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company and Stakeholders supplies invaluable guidance along with concrete action plans. In contrast to academic publications that merely emphasize accounting methods, this guide to intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship focuses squarely on the entrepreneur.Demystifying the process of starting a company from scratch, the book provides aspiring entrepreneurs with detailed guidance that is written in plain English. It explores what constitutes entrepreneurial timber and the leadership skills required to raise all the needed capital. If you are thinking of starting your own company or have already decided to take the plunge, this book will help you determine: If you have what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur The value of your idea before funding If you and your team possess the skills required to gain a market advantage How to raise capital effectively Explaining the critical importance of intellectual property to investors, the book covers the fundamentals of business valuations. It also explains how to write winning business proposals. While each chapter is designed to stand on its own, the book chapters are arranged in a manner that makes it easy for experienced entrepreneurs to jump from chapter to chapter as they please. Identifying the unique set of characteristics that are shared by successful entrepreneurs, this guide will be especially helpful to anyone looking to start new ventures that require a high degree of scientific knowledge.

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Program management in a technical environment is as much art as it is science. Effective program managers are able to combine management and leadership skills for the good of the program and the people entrusted to them. This book illuminates the entire life cycle of the program—from the customer’s original concept to successful completion. It includes many helpful ideas and insights into why programs and program managers can fail. Much more importantly, it provides insights about how program managers can succeed. Program Management in Defense and High Tech Environments is organized as a chronological "tale" of a program life cycle, with "side trips" that cover the important concepts of leadership, claims and claims avoidance, earned value measurement (EVM), communication basics, negotiations, and coaching. The book begins with an overview of program management, discussing the role of program managers, their required skills and experience, and the types of programs and contracts.The remainder of the book provides more detail on the program manager’s role and the environment in which he or she works. Understanding that academic explanations of program management activities can be dry, the author uses true-to-life stories to present the nuts and bolts of the work. These stories illustrate the science of program management and the art that is necessary for success.The book discusses many of the common program pitfalls. It explains how to detect and avoid scope creep—the unintended expansion of program scope. It details both internal and external scope creep and stresses the importance of constant vigilance to prevent cost overruns and schedule delays.Program Management in Defense and High Tech Environments is a comprehensive guide for early- and mid-career program managers to understand what they need to do to be successful. It is also a valuable resource for later-career program managers who want to learn through other program managers’ successes and failures.

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In today’s age of wireless and mobile computing, network and computer security is paramount. Case Studies in Secure Computing: Achievements and Trends gathers the latest research from researchers who share their insights and best practices through illustrative case studies.This book examines the growing security attacks and countermeasures in the stand-alone and networking worlds, along with other pertinent security issues. The many case studies capture a truly wide range of secure computing applications. Surveying the common elements in computer security attacks and defenses, the book: Describes the use of feature selection and fuzzy logic in a decision tree model for intrusion detection Introduces a set of common fuzzy-logic-based security risk estimation techniques with examples Proposes a secure authenticated multiple-key establishment protocol for wireless sensor networks Investigates various malicious activities associated with cloud computing and proposes some countermeasures Examines current and emerging security threats in long-term evolution backhaul and core networks Supplies a brief introduction to application-layer denial-of-service (DoS) attacks Illustrating the security challenges currently facing practitioners, this book presents powerful security solutions proposed by leading researchers in the field. The examination of the various case studies will help to develop the practical understanding required to stay one step ahead of the security threats on the horizon.This book will help those new to the field understand how to mitigate security threats. It will also help established practitioners fine-tune their approach to establishing robust and resilient security for next-generation computing systems.

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Health services are often fragmented along organizational lines with limited communication among the public health–related programs or organizations, such as mental health, social services, and public health services. This can result in disjointed decision making without necessary data and knowledge, organizational fragmentation, and disparate knowledge development across the full array of public health needs. When new questions or challenges arise that require collaboration, individual public health practitioners (e.g., surveillance specialists and epidemiologists) often do not have the time and energy to spend on them.Smart Use of State Public Health Data for Health Disparity Assessment promotes data integration to aid crosscutting program collaboration. It explains how to maximize the use of various datasets from state health departments for assessing health disparity and for disease prevention. The authors offer practical advice on state public health data use, their strengths and weaknesses, data management insight, and lessons learned. They propose a bottom-up approach for building an integrated public health data warehouse that includes localized public health data.The book is divided into three sections: Section I has seven chapters devoted to knowledge and skill preparations for recognizing disparity issues and integrating and analyzing local public health data. Section II provides a systematic surveillance effort by linking census tract poverty to other health disparity dimensions. Section III provides in-depth studies related to Sections I and II. All data used in the book have been geocoded to the census tract level, making it possible to go more local, even down to the neighborhood level.

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Is the art for your video game taking too long to create? Learning to create Pixel Art may be the answer to your development troubles. Uncover the secrets to creating stunning graphics with Pixel Art for Game Developers. The premier how-to book on Pixel Art and Pixel Art software, it focuses on the universal principles of the craft.The book provides an introduction to Pixel Art, its utility, foundational elements, and concepts such as light and shadow. It offers tutorials on creating animations and serves as a functional guide for the most common methodology in 2D game development.Gamers love the retro feel of Pixel Art, and lucky for you it is easy to create. You'll love the tiny file sizes that will reduce compile times and help your game run faster. Providing you with the skills to create the characters and environments needed for 2D games, this book will help you: Create tilesets to build game environments Understand light and shadow Work efficiently with pixels Use atmospheric and linear perspective Create professional-quality Pixel Art This book has chapters dedicated to theory as well as step-by-step tutorials, both of which describe the process explicitly. Whether you are an artist, programmer, indie developer, or certified public accountant, after reading this book, you'll understand the steps necessary to create production-quality Pixel Art graphics.Praise for the Book:Pixel Art and Pixel Art games are very popular and the technique is a great way for independent creators to create very good-looking games with limited resources. It’s frankly shocking that there hasn’t been a resource like this before ... a very timely book.—Chris Totten, George Mason University, Washington, DC, USA

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This book focuses mainly on the recent developments of all types of theoretical, mathematical, and computational conceptions, as well as modelling and simulation of specific research themes covering all scientific and technical disciplines from chemistry, physics, and engineering to biology and medicine. The book contains timely reviews and research covering fundamental and applied research aspects in all disciplines of natural sciences, including their historical representations and philosophical perspectives. The book discusses the fact that the largest and smallest values of the fukui function and local softness do not necessarily correspond to the softness and hardness regions of the molecules such as porphyrins. The authors have adopted two popular calculation procedures for this venture. One is the very old Hückel molecular orbital calculation, and the other is one of best semi-empirical AM-1 procedures for such systems. Our finding is that neither the fukui functions nor the local softnesses can predict the preferred donor sites of porphyrins toward metal ions.

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The field of bioscience methodologies in physical chemistry stands at the intersection of the power and generality of classical and quantum physics with the minute molecular complexity of chemistry and biology. This book provides an application of physical principles in explaining and rationalizing chemical and biological phenomena. It does not stick to the classical topics that are conventionally considered as part of physical chemistry; instead it presents principles deciphered from a modern point of view, which is the strength of this book.

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This new book—the first of its kind—examines the use of algorithmic techniques to compress random and non-random sequential strings found in chains of polymers. The book is an introduction to algorithmic complexity. Examples taken from current research in the polymer sciences are used for compression of like-natured properties as found on a chain of polymers. Both theory and applied aspects of algorithmic compression are reviewed. A description of the types of polymers and their uses is followed by a chapter on various types of compression systems that can be used to compress polymer chains into manageable units. The work is intended for graduate and postgraduate university students in the physical sciences and engineering.

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Control and automation of water systems in one of the branches of fluid mechanics and hydraulics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the millions of calculations required to simulate the interaction of liquids and gases with surfaces defined by boundary conditions. Advances in Control and Automation of Water Systems presents topical research in the study of control and automation of water systems.The editors use the simulation of a water hammer (or fluid hammer) as the basis for demonstrating computational techniques used for the processing and automation of water systems. The simulation shows and explains a variety of data analysis techniques and complex calculations that involve many elements of water systems, such as flow minimum and maximum pressure automation heat and mass transfer predicting failure and more. This book provides a broad understanding of the main computational techniques used for processing control and automation of water systems. The theoretical background to a number of techniques is introduced, and general data analysis techniques and examining the application of techniques in an industrial setting, including current practices and current research, are considered. The book also provides practical experience of commercially available systems and includes a small-scale water systems related projects.This book provides innovative chapters on the growth of educational, scientific, and industrial research activities among mechanical engineers and international academia in the water industry. New methods and novel applications of existing methods are discussed that further the understanding of the structural behavior of new and advanced systems. This book presents significant research reporting new methodologies and important applications in the fields of automation and control as well as the latest coverage of chemical databases and the development of new computational methods and efficient algorithms for hydraulic software and mechanical engineering.The research and development presented in the book will have significant potential applications in several disciplines of hydraulic and mechanical engineering.

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This title includes a number of Open Access chapters.A common tool in both research and agriculture, genetic engineering involves the direct manipulation of genes. Today’s areas of medical research include genetic engineering to produce vaccines against disease, pharmaceutical development, and the treatment of disease. In agriculture, genetic engineering is used to modify crops and domestic animals to increase their yields, aid in production, and enhance nutritive aspects. This important book covers new research and studies in genetic engineering in the areas of medicine and agriculture.

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This title includes a number of Open Access chapters.Advances in biochemistry directly influence medicine and the field of human health. The field of biochemistry is constantly changing with new discoveries being made all the time. This new book covers a range of advances in the field of biochemistry, including new research techniques and methods, a classification system, new research, and more.

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The science of chemistry is so broad that it is normally broken into fields or branches of specialization. The manufacture of drugs and dyes is one of the most practical industrial applications of chemistry. This collection presents the reader with a broad spectrum of chapters on drugs and dyes, thereby demonstrating key developments in this rapidly changing field. It examines dyes in chemical interaction and production of drugs for pharmaceutical use as well as in forensic work and in the production of materials.

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This book provides a review of innovative and novel biotechnological techniques that can be implemented to assess, analyze, and mitigate harmful pollutants and wastes that result from agricultural and industrial operations. It helps to meet the much-needed demand for improvement of low-cost technologies that tackle pollution problems scientifically for the safeguard of the environment, focusing on bioremediation solutions that also create useful and renewable forms of energy.The biotechnological interventions discussed in the volume include approaches involving genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and fluxomics. In addition, biological agents such as microalgae, bacteria, fungi, and bacteriophage, which can also prove to be helpful in the elimination of wastes, are explored. Topics in Environmental Biotechnology: Sustainable Remediation of Contamination in Different Environs include the associated consequences and hazards from agricultural and industrial waste and a variety of bioremediation measures, including the use of bioaugmentation, biosensors, challenges of biofuel production, and more.The book is directed to researchers, scientists, industrialists, farmers, agricultural waste management authorities, as well as to faculty and students, and aims to help implement these novel technologies for environmental stability.

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This unique volume shows how to tackle the challenges of diversity in the workplace. It addresses the need to keep the workforce engaged while taking into consideration the diverse backgrounds of employees. The book explores 12 themes of workforce diversity and culture, including differences of race, religion, gender, sexuality, income class, education level, marital status, generation/age, physical ability, and more. Focusing on the benefits of engaging a diverse workforce, the volume considers the issue through the different stages of the human resource process, including recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, demand forecasting, supply forecasting, job description and specification, job analysis and evaluation, training and development, career planning and development, succession planning, etc.Employing an abundance of case studies, the volume enables readers to comprehend what it means to have a diverse workforce and how to engage such a workforce for the betterment of the employees as well as the employer. The volume acts as a textbook for courses on diversity in human resource management as well as a valuable resource for HRM and other management professionals. The discussions and questions sections will be useful for faculty, and the short case studies are designed to keep students interested and engaged.

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This volume brings together innovative research, new concepts, and novel developments in the study of chemistry and biological activity of antioxidants. It is a collection of chapters on new scientific research and practical applications from chemists at several prestigious scientific institutions. It looks at recent significant research and reports on new methodologies and important applications in the field of chemical kinetics.

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The study of decision-making in foodservice is still a relatively new area of scholarly interest. The application of cost-benefit analysis and behavioral finance and economics in the foodservice context is rare. This volume, Financial Decision-Making in the Foodservice Industry: Economic Costs and Benefits,fills that gap and focuses on cost-benefit analysis, decision-making, behavioral finance, economic theories, and their application in foodservice and restaurant industry. The volume synthesizes these major themes by developing new theoretical foundations and presenting findings from the investigation of managerial practice. The authors cover an abundance of topical issues, including ethical obligations in foodservice, sustainability issues in the foodservice/restaurant industry, farm-to-school and local food expenditures in school foodservice settings, managerial traits and behavior in the foodservice industry, and more.

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This valuable volume addresses the growing consumer demand for novel functional food products and for high-value, nutritionally rich products by focusing on the sources and applications of bioactives from food. The chapters in the book describe functional properties and discuss applications of the selected food ingredients obtained from various sources, including culinary banana, phalsa, pseudocereals, roselle calyces, asparagus, and more.Several chapters address the resurgence of interest in pseudocereals due to their excellent nutritional and biological values, gluten-free composition, and the presence of some health-promoting compounds. The book also looks at utilizing industrial byproducts for making functional and nutraceutical ingredients. The chapters on prebiotics and probiotics highlight different functional properties, and a chapter on food allergens discusses advancements in detection and management in the food manufacturing industries.

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Phytochemicals from Medicinal Plants: Scope, Applications and Potential Health Claims explores the importance of medicinal plants and their potential benefits for human health. This book looks at bioactive compounds from medicinal plants, the health benefits of bioactive compounds, the applications of plant-based products in the food and pharmaceutical industries.The first section discusses available sources of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants, biochemistry, structural composition, potential biological activities, and how bioactive molecules are isolated from medicinal plants. The authors examine the applications of bioactive molecules from a health perspective, looking at the pharmacological aspects of medicinal plants, the phytochemical and biological activities of different natural products, and ethnobotany/and medicinal properties, and also present a novel dietary approach for disease management. The book goes on to examine the plant-based products are used and can be used in various sectors of the food and pharmaceutical industries.

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Here is an insightful compilation of contributions from scientists, healthcare experts, and doctors working actively to bring about wholesome healing to individuals, looking at cuttingedge holistic therapies. It includes chapters that deal with improving the general health of people from various walks of life, to treating some very challenging diseases. Various schools of treatments, exercise regimes, and meditations are discussed. Specific topics include the use of alternative therapy for human health and healing, including yoga, meditation, acupuncture, prayer, herbs, Ayurvedic treatment, and homoeopathy. The volume showcases some recent trends in treating various diseases that plague mankind, including superbugs, drug sideeffects, drug abuse, and myriad lifestyle-related diseases and syndromes.

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The functional foods market represents one of the fastest growing and most fascinating areas of investigation and innovation in the food sector. This new volume focuses on recent findings, new research trends, and emerging technologies in bioprocessing: making use of microorganisms in the production of food with health and nutritional benefits. The volume is divided into three main parts. Part I discusses functional food production and human health, looking at some newly emerged bioprocessing technological advances in the functional foods (chocolates, whey beverages) in conjunction their prospective health benefits. Part II, on emerging applications of microorganism in safe food production, covers recent breakthroughs in food safety in microbial bioprocessing. Chapters discuss spoilage issues, harmful/pathogenic microorganisms, genetically modified microorganisms, stability and functionality, and potential of food-grade microbes for biodegradation of toxic compounds, such as mycotoxins, pesticides, and polycyclic hydrocarbons. Chapters in Part III, on emerging scope and potential application in the dairy and food industry, explore and investigate the current shortcomings and challenges of the microbially mediated processes at the industrial level. The editors have brought together a group of outstanding international contributors at the forefront of bioprocessing technology to produce a valuable resource for researchers, faculty, students, food nutrition and health practitioners, and all those working in the dairy, food, and nutraceutical industries, especially in the development of functional foods.

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This new resource focuses on many recent advances in recycling and reuse of materials, outlining basic tools and novel approaches. It covers such important issues as e-waste recycling, bio-mass recycling, vermitechnology, recovery of metals, polymer recycling, environmental remediation, waste management, recycling of nanostructured materials, and more. Also included is coverage of new research in the use of laser spectroscopy, pyrolysis, and recycled biomaterials for biomedical applications.

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Sustainable Horticulture, Volume 2: Food, Health, and Nutrition addresses some of the most important topics facing horticulture around the world today. This volume, part of the two-volume compendium, focuses on research trends in sustainable horticulture that include postharvest management and processed food production from horticulture crops, crop protection and plant health management, and horticulture for human health and nutrition.Global food demand is expected to be double by 2050, while at the same time the production environment and natural resources are continually shrinking and deteriorating due to many complex factors. Horticulture, a major sector of agriculture, is vital to enhancing crop production and productivity in parity with agricultural crops to meet the emerging food demand. Implementing sustainable models of crop production is really an enormous endeavor. Promising technologies and management options are needed to increase productivity to meet the growing food demand despite deteriorating production environments.

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This volume, Engineering Technology and Industrial Chemistry with Applications, brings together innovative research, new concepts, and novel developments in the application of new tools for chemical and materials engineers. It provides a collection of innovative chapters on new scientific and industrial research from chemists and chemical engineers at several prestigious institutions. It looks at recent significant research and reports on new methodologies and important applications in the fields of chemical engineering as well as provides coverage of chemical databases, bringing together theory and practical applications.Highlighting theoretical foundations, real-world cases, and future directions, this authoritative reference source will be a valuable addition for researchers, practitioners, professionals, and students of chemistry material and chemical engineering.

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This new volume, Physical Chemistry for Engineering and Applied Sciences: Theoretical and Methodological Implications, introduces readers to some of the latest research applications of physical chemistry. The compilation of this volume was motived by the tremendous increase of useful research work in the field of physical chemistry and related subjects in recent years, and the need for communication between physical chemists, physicists, and biophysicists. This volume reflects the huge breadth and diversity in research and the applications in physical chemistry and physical chemistry techniques, providing case studies that are tailored to particular research interests. It examines the industrial processes for emerging materials, determines practical use under a wide range of conditions, and establishes what is needed to produce a new generation of materials.The chapter authors, affiliated with prestigious scientific institutions from around the world, share their research on new and innovative applications in physical chemistry. The chapters in the volume are divided into several areas, covering developments in physical chemistry of modern materials polymer science and engineering nanoscience and nanotechnology

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This volume covers a selection of important research in the multifaceted field of food toxicology. With more than seven billion people in the world today and counting, advances in food toxicology have a direct bearing on food safety issues that are of concern to all humanity for the foreseeable future. Massive globalization, industrialization, and commercialization have affected every aspect of food production, the food supply chain, and food consumption.This informative volume offers the global perspectives of scientists in important areas related to biomarkers and nanosensors in food toxicology, toxicology of nanomaterials, chemicals in sanitation and packaging, additives, mycotoxins, endocrine disruptors, radionuclides, toxic metals, and waste-burning residues in food. The book also emphasizes regulatory toxicology and includes an interesting example case study. The challenge of sustainable and safe food for everyone needs a multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial approach from related industries and governments alike. Food chemical safety is an underappreciated aspect of consumer safety, and this volume seeks to help fill that gap by providing informative research for food scientists and researchers and many others.

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Peanut Agriculture and Production Technology: Integrated Nutrient Management focuses on agricultural techniques and integrated nutrient management of peanuts (Arachis hypogaea L.). Peanuts are the second most important oil crop of India, occupying 5.7 million hectares, with an average production of 0.8 ton/ha, which is 23.5% of the India’s total oil seed production. Worldwide annual production of shelled peanuts was 42 million metric tons in 2014. It is the world’s 4th most important source of edible oil and the 3rd most important source of vegetable protein. The volume includes basic and advanced information on production, agrotechniques, and integrated nutrient management of Arachis hypogaea L. crop plant. It studies the physiology of the peanut, looking at the proper environmental conditions for optimal growth as well as under various subnormal conditions. It explores the methods of nitrogen application as well as the influence of different sowing dates and population densities to harvest its full yield potential. The book covers methods to achieve balanced nutrition, including using organic manures in groundnut farming to enhance yielding ability.The book will be a rich resource for those in agriculture, horticulture, and allied sciences, particularly for agricultural scientists in plant and crop physiology, agronomy, and soil science. Farm owners and managers of peanut crops and production will also benefit from the information provided in this volume.

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With contributions from a broad range of leading professors and scientists, this volume focuses on new areas of processing technologies in foods and plants to help meet the increasing food demand of the rapidly growing populations of the world. The first section of the book is devoted to emerging entrepreneurship and employment opportunities for rural peoples in food and agricultural processing, specifically beekeeping technology and honey processing; herbal formulations for treatment of dental diseases; and engineering interventions for the extraction of essential oils from plants. Part 2 contains three chapters that discuss technological interventions in foods and plants for human health benefits, looking particularly at coffee, tea, and green leaf vegetable processing technology. The volume goes to look at several management strategies in agricultural engineering, with a chapter on production technology of ethanol from various sources and its potential applications in various industries, including chemical, food, pharmaceutical as well as biofuel. Food grain storage structures are addressed as well, focusing on minimizing losses from microbial pests as well as insect pests during grain storage by utilizing different efficient storage structures The volume provides a valuable resource for students, instructors, and researchers of foods and plants processing technology. In addition, food and plant science professionals who are seeking recent advanced and innovative knowledge in processing will find this book helpful.

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