Search results for ""springer international publishing""

This book addresses major issues facing postal and delivery services throughout the world. Worldwide, there is currently a considerable amount of interest in postal and delivery economics. The industry is in a state of near crisis and drastic change is needed. The European Commission and member States are still wrestling with the problem of how to implement entry liberalization into postal markets, how to address digital competition, and how to maintain the universal service obligation (USO). The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 in the U.S. has perhaps created and exacerbated the problems faced by USPS. Post Offices (POs) have been slow to address the threat of electronic competition. On the other hand, e-commerce presents opportunities for POs to expand their presence in parcel delivery and perhaps help finance or redefine the USO. A major aim of this book is to address strategies POs can use to reinvent themselves for the digital age.This book compiles original essays by prominent researchers in the field, which will be selected and edited from papers presented at the 25th Conference on Postal and Delivery Economics held in Barcelona, Spain, May 24-27, 2017. That conference, and this volume, commemorates the memory of Michael Crew who organized twenty-four prior conferences and co-edited previous conference volumes. This book is a useful tool not only for graduate students and professors, but also for postal administrations, consulting firms, and Federal Government departments.

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This volume sheds new light upon the role of victims in the aftermath of violence. Victims are central actors in transitional justice, the politics of memory and conflict resolution, yet the analysis of their mobilisation and political influence in these processes has been neglected. After introducing and explaining the reasons for this limited interest, the book’s chapters focus on a range of settings and draw on different disciplines to offer insights into the interrelated themes of victimhood – victims, their individual and collective identities, and their role in and impact upon post-conflict societies – and the politics of victimhood – meaning how victimhood is defined, negotiated and contested, both socially and politically. Because it outlines a stimulating research agenda and challenges the view that victims are passive or apolitical, this interdisciplinary volume is a significant contribution to the literature and will be of interest to scholars from disciplines such as law, anthropology, political science, human rights, international studies, and to practitioners.

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This book covers the complete field of pulmonary pathology - neoplastic and non-neoplastic - from Acinic cell tumor in the lung to Wegener`s Granulomatosis. The alphabetically arranged entries, each of which provides a detailed description of a specific pathological disease pattern, allow readers to quickly and easily find the information they need.

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This pioneering edited collection explores the question of how organizations manage the future. Moving away from traditional research which focuses on the past, the editors problematize the future as an inherent but under-examined part of organizing. Arguing that the future acts as both a driver of and a performative result of organizing, the book asks how organizations conceptualize and deal with the future and what processes are in place to handle things to come. With empirical research examining the practices, discourses and concepts that play key roles, organizations and their approaches are scrutinized. A timely compendium of theoretical discussion and practical implications on the relevance of the future, this book is essential reading for those interested in organization, sociology and management studies.

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Designing a habitat for the lunar surface? You will need to know more than structural engineering. There are the effects of meteoroids, radiation, and low gravity. Then there are the psychological and psychosocial aspects of living in close quarters, in a dangerous environment, far away from home. All these must be considered when the habitat is sized, materials specified, and structure designed.This book provides an overview of various concepts for lunar habitats and structural designs and characterizes the lunar environment - the technical and the nontechnical. The designs take into consideration psychological comfort, structural strength against seismic and thermal activity, as well as internal pressurization and 1/6 g. Also discussed are micrometeoroid modeling, risk and redundancy as well as probability and reliability, with an introduction to analytical tools that can be useful in modeling uncertainties.

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This book provides information on a range of issues related to prostate cancer survivorship, including; psychosexual care, health related quality of life, treatment, follow-up care, new psychosexual pathways, and acute and chronic co-morbidities. The book also covers the needs and challenges in survivorship care, the requirements of care, the future of survivorship care, and role of patient conferences. This book aims to give oncologists, urologists, and specialist nurses help in how to manage patients in the prostate cancer survivorship phase. This guidance is based on real life experiences handling prostate cancer survivorship, and is developed further through utilising the views of both health care professionals and patients.

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This comprehensive treatment of multivariable calculus focuses on the numerous tools that MATLAB® brings to the subject, as it presents introductions to geometry, mathematical physics, and kinematics. Covering simple calculations with MATLAB®, relevant plots, integration, and optimization, the numerous problem sets encourage practice with newly learned skills that cultivate the reader’s understanding of the material. Significant examples illustrate each topic, and fundamental physical applications such as Kepler’s Law, electromagnetism, fluid flow, and energy estimation are brought to prominent position. Perfect for use as a supplement to any standard multivariable calculus text, a “mathematical methods in physics or engineering” class, for independent study, or even as the class text in an “honors” multivariable calculus course, this textbook will appeal to mathematics, engineering, and physical science students. MATLAB® is tightly integrated into every portion of this book, and its graphical capabilities are used to present vibrant pictures of curves and surfaces. Readers benefit from the deep connections made between mathematics and science while learning more about the intrinsic geometry of curves and surfaces. With serious yet elementary explanation of various numerical algorithms, this textbook enlivens the teaching of multivariable calculus and mathematical methods courses for scientists and engineers.

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This book provides a basic, initial resource, introducing science and engineering students to the field of optimization. It covers three main areas: mathematical programming, calculus of variations and optimal control, highlighting the ideas and concepts and offering insights into the importance of optimality conditions in each area. It also systematically presents affordable approximation methods. Exercises at various levels have been included to support the learning process.

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This book provides users with cutting edge methods and technologies in the area of big data and visual analytics, as well as an insight to the big data and data analytics research conducted by world-renowned researchers in this field. The authors present comprehensive educational resources on big data and visual analytics covering state-of-the art techniques on data analytics, data and information visualization, and visual analytics. Each chapter covers specific topics related to big data and data analytics as virtual data machine, security of big data, big data applications, high performance computing cluster, and big data implementation techniques. Every chapter includes a description of an unique contribution to the area of big data and visual analytics. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and professionals working in the area of big data, data analytics, and information visualization. Advanced-level students studying computer science will also find this book helpful as a secondary textbook or reference.

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This book addresses a conundrum for the international development community: The law of development cooperation poses major constraints on delivering aid where it is needed most. The existence of a state with an effective government is a basic condition for the transfer of aid, making development cooperation with ‘fragile’ nations particularly challenging. The author explores how international organizations like the World Bank have responded by adopting formal and informal rules to engage specifically with countries with weak or no governments. Von Engelhardt provides a critical analysis of the discourse on fragile states and how it has shaped the policy decision-making of international organizations. By demonstrating how perceptions of fragility can have significant consequences both in practice and in law, the work challenges conventional research that dismisses state fragility as a phenomenon beyond law. It also argues that the legal parameters for effective global policy play a crucial role, and offers a fresh approach to a topic that is central to international security and development.

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This book highlights the increase in thyroid tumors and NET and demonstrates the growing importance of circulating markers in diagnosis as well as treatment and follow-up. Dramatic technical improvements have heightened the clinical impact of well-established, conventional biochemical markers. In addition, more recent genetic and molecular approaches have provided innovative molecular markers. In this context, effective communication between clinicians and laboratory physicians/scientists is essential in allowing all those involved to fully profit from these exciting advances. In this comprehensive, up-to-date book, authors from different laboratory and clinical areas link laboratory and clinical topics. Analytical problems such as interferences, false-negative and false-positive results are discussed in depth, and flow-charts offer insights into identifying and avoiding them. Illustrated clinical cases detail the clinical role and limitations of different tumor markers. Lastly, it explores health technology assessment and economic issues. This is a valuable resource for endocrinologists, oncologists, nuclear medicine physicians, scientists and technologists who want to keep abreast of the latest developments.

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This work explores essential debates on globalization and world-systems analysis. It begins with a review of theoretical insights from world-systems analysis and explains the evolution of its terminology. The book subsequently seeks to answer several important questions: When did globalization begin and what insights into contemporary globalization may be gained from older forms? How does globalization differ in different places, and how can different instances of globalization be compared? Who is affected by globalization, how are they affected, and how do these effects vary, if at all, over time and space?As world-systems analysis and studies of globalization require interdisciplinary expertise, the contributing authors draw on many fields, including anthropology, economics, geography, philosophy, political science, sociology, and world history. The book’s overall goal is to facilitate the dialogue between approaches that, at times, seem to “talk at cross-purposes,” and to extend an invitation to scholars from many different areas to explore globalization.

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Written for those who want to develop their knowledge of requirements engineering process, whether practitioners or students.Using the latest research and driven by practical experience from industry, Requirements Engineering gives useful hints to practitioners on how to write and structure requirements. It explains the importance of Systems Engineering and the creation of effective solutions to problems. It describes the underlying representations used in system modeling and introduces the UML2, and considers the relationship between requirements and modeling. Covering a generic multi-layer requirements process, the book discusses the key elements of effective requirements management. The latest version of DOORS (Version 7) - a software tool which serves as an enabler of a requirements management process - is also introduced to the reader here.Additional material and links are available at: http://www.requirementsengineering.info

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This handbook offers a critical assessment of the African agenda for conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding; the challenges and opportunities facing Africa’s regional organisations in their efforts towards building sustainable peace on the continent; and the role of external actors, including the United Nations, Britain, France, and South Asian troop-contributing countries. In so doing, it revisits the late Ali Mazrui’s concept of Pax Africana, calling on Africans to take responsibility for peace and security on their own continent. The creation of the African Union, in 2002, was an important step towards realising this ambition, and has led to the development of a new continental architecture for more robust conflict management. But, as the volume’s authors show, the quest for Pax Africana faces challenges. Combining thematic analyses and case studies, this book will be of interest to both scholars and policymakers working on peace, security, and governance issues in Africa.

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This book shares unique perspectives on the successful global evolution and future ambitions of Chinese consumer companies. It presents an unprecedented collection of one-on-one interviews with some of the most influential leaders in China, whose companies offer diverse products and services. Further, the book offers future business leaders encouragement and guidance on how to ride the consumer wave in China. It also investigates some of the foremost current trends, revealing the best opportunities for companies to succeed on the Chinese market. Written by a successful business leader, this book is a timely must-read for anyone seeking to understand Chinese consumers, the Chinese market and what makes Chinese entrepreneurs tick – helping them learn how to do business “Made for China”.

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This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research Program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Offering readers a closer look at design thinking, its innovation processes and methods, it covers topics ranging from how to design ideas, methods and technologies, to creativity experiments and creative collaboration in the real world, and the interplay between designers and engineers. But the topics go beyond this in their detailed exploration of design thinking and its use in IT systems engineering fields, and even from a management perspective. The authors show how these methods and strategies actually work in companies, and introduce new technologies and their functions. Furthermore, readers learn how special-purpose design thinking can be used to solve thorny problems in complex fields. Thinking and devising innovations are fundamentally and inherently human activities – so is design thinking. Accordingly, design thinking is not merely the result of special courses nor of being gifted or trained: it’s a way of dealing with our environment and improving techniques, technologies and life. This edition offers a historic perspective on the theoretical foundations of design thinking. Within the four topic areas, various frameworks, methodologies, mindsets, systems and tools are explored and further developed. The first topic area focuses on team interaction, while the second part addresses tools and techniques for productive collaboration. The third section explores new approaches to teaching and enabling creative skills and lastly the book examines how design thinking is put into practice. All in all, the contributions shed light and provide deeper insights into how to support the collaboration of design teams in order to systematically and successfully develop innovations and design progressive solutions for tomorrow.

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This book analyses the conflicts that emerged from the Brazilian labour movement’s active participation in a rapidly changing political environment, particularly in the context of the coming to power of a party with strong roots in the labour movement. While the close relations with the Workers' Party (PT) have shaped the labour movement’s political agenda, its trajectory cannot be understood solely with reference to that party’s electoral fortunes. Through a study of the political trajectory of the Brazilian labour movement over the last three decades, the author explores the conditions under which the labour movement has developed militant and moderate strategies.

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Providing a comprehensive overview of the current orthopedic uses of intramedullary devices, this practical, well-illustrated guide opens with a review of the history of limb lengthening from the early external fixator up to Ilizarov’s monumental discoveries, with a summary of the biology of new bone formation in a widening distraction gap. This is followed by post-Ilizarov developments with external fixators designed to ease application and increase patient tolerance of such devices, as well as a discussion of the intramedullary lengthening devices from the earliest mechanical distractors to the most modern implants, detailing the surgical principles, pre-operative planning and specific operative techniques for each. Concluding chapters focus on preventing and dealing with complications from the surgery and day-to-day post-operative management. A unique feature of the book is a cross-section atlas of the upper and lower limbs that will assist surgeons to avoid impaling neurovascular structures during the minimally invasive portions of operative insertion of the implants.Intramedullary Limb Lengthening: Principles and Practice is an ideal, on-the-spot resource for orthopedic surgeons, residents and trainees treating pediatric and adult limb deformities and length deficiencies, as well as physical therapists and other health care providers who manage such patients post-operatively.

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This book is a useful reference in the field of urbanism. It explains how the contemporary city and landscape have been shaped by certain twentieth century visions that have carried over into the twenty-first century. Aimed at both students and professionals, this collection of essays on diverse subjects and cases does not attempt to establish universal interpretations; it rather highlights some outstanding episodes that help us understand why the planning culture has given way to other forms of urbanism, from urban design to strategic urbanism or landscape urbanism. Compared with global interpretations of urbanism based on socioeconomic history or architectural historiography, Urban Visions. From Planning Culture to Landscape Urbanism, aims to present the discipline couched in international contemporary debate and adopt a historic and comparative perspective. The book’s contents pertain equally to other related disciplines, such as architecture, urban history, urban design, landscape architecture and geography.Foreword by Rafael Moneo.

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A concise guide for ophthalmologists detailing tuberculosis, which can cause disease in multiple organs throughout the body, including the eye. Tuberculosis is an infection caused by mycobacterium tuberculosis, which can cause disease in multiple organs throughout the body, including the eye. This can also affect any part of the eye (intraocular, superficial, or surrounding the eye), with or without systemic involvement and Ocular Tuberculosis is a text devoted to in-depth coverage of this topic.Written and edited by international leaders in the field, discussing detailed and practical information on everything from clinical features, ocular imaging studies, and pathology, to investigations, treatment, and surgical management of this disease, Ocular Tuberculosis is a truly comprehensive text.

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This book examines how digital technology is being used to assist the artists and designers. The computer is able to store data and reproduce designs, thus facilitating the speed-up of the iterative process towards a final design which meets the objectives of the designer and the requirements of the user. Collaborative design enables the sharing of information across digital networks to produce designed objects in virtual spaces. Augmented and virtual reality techniques can be used to preview designs before they are finalized and implemented. Art and design have shaped the values, social structures, communications, and the culture of communities and civilisations. The direct involvement of artists and designers with their creative works has left a legacy enabling subsequent generations to understand more about their skills, their motivations, and their relationship to the wider world, and to see it from a variety of perspectives. This in turn causes the viewers of their works to reflect upon their meaning for today and the lasting value and implications of what has been created. Art installations are harnessing modern technology to process information and to display it. Such environments have also proved useful in engaging users and visitors with real-time images and interactive art.

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This book introduces readers to additive technology and its application in different business sectors. It explores the fundamental impact additive has on technology, particularly on operations, innovation, supply chains, the environment and customer relations. Subsequently, on the basis of a broad survey of the best technology adopters, it offers advice on how to enhance business value by implementing the technology in different industrial and commercial environments.Additive manufacturing (AM) is a new area of manufacturing that has already brought about phenomenal changes to industry and business models. It affects nearly all aspects of the managerial and organizational thinking that was applied to conventional manufacturing. Currently, the technology is being adopted in manufacturing areas that involve high-value products with complex geometries, and small to medium production volumes. It boosts the productivity of new product development processes by slashing costs, reducing time and promoting creativity and innovativeness. Further, it shrinks supply chains by bringing firms closer to their customers. This unique book offers abundant empirical and practical evidence confirming the value of this new technology.

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This book provides details and collective information on working principle, process mechanism, salient features, and unique applications of various advanced manufacturing techniques and processes belong. The book is divided in three sessions covering modern machining methods, advanced repair and joining techniques and, finally, sustainable manufacturing. The latest trends and research aspects of those fields are highlighted.

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This textbook on computational statistics presents tools and concepts of univariate and multivariate statistical data analysis with a strong focus on applications and implementations in the statistical software R. It covers mathematical, statistical as well as programming problems in computational statistics and contains a wide variety of practical examples. In addition to the numerous R sniplets presented in the text, all computer programs (quantlets) and data sets to the book are available on GitHub and referred to in the book. This enables the reader to fully reproduce as well as modify and adjust all examples to their needs.The book is intended for advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate students as well as for data analysts new to the job who would like a tour of the various statistical tools in a data analysis workshop. The experienced reader with a good knowledge of statistics and programming might skip some sections on univariate models and enjoy the various mathematical roots of multivariate techniques.The Quantlet platform quantlet.de, quantlet.com, quantlet.org is an integrated QuantNet environment consisting of different types of statistics-related documents and program codes. Its goal is to promote reproducibility and offer a platform for sharing validated knowledge native to the social web. QuantNet and the corresponding Data-Driven Documents-based visualization allows readers to reproduce the tables, pictures and calculations inside this Springer book.

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This edited volume discusses the theoretical, practical and methodological issues surrounding changes in journalism in the digital era. The chapters explore how technological innovations have transformed journalism and how an international comparative perspective can contribute to our understanding of the topic. Journalism is examined within Anglo-American and European contexts as well as in Asia and Africa, and comparative approaches and methods for journalism studies in the digital age are evaluated. In so doing, the book offers a thorough investigation of changes in journalistic norms, practices and genres in addition to providing an international and comparative perspective for understanding these changes and what they mean to journalism. Written by both leading scholars and media practitioners in the field, the articles in this collection are based on theoretical frameworks and empirical data, drawn from content analysis of newspaper and online coverage, in-depth interviews with news practitioners, observation on the websites of news organisations and analysis of journalists on Twitter. The result is a cohesive compilation that offers the reader an up-to-date and comprehensive understanding of digital developments in journalism and comparative journalism studies.

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This instant gold standard title is a major contribution to the field of clinical medical ethics and will be used widely for reference and teaching purposes for years to come. Throughout his career, Mark Siegler, MD, has written on topics ranging from the teaching of clinical medical ethics to end-of-life decision-making and the ethics of advances in technology. With more than 200 journal publications and 60 book chapters published in this area over the course of his illustrious career, Dr. Siegler has become the pre-eminent scholar and teacher in the field. Indeed his work has had a profound impact on a range of therapeutic areas, especially internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, oncology, and medical education.Having grown steadily in importance the last 30 years, clinical ethics examines the practical, everyday ethical issues that arise in encounters among patients, doctors, nurses, allied health workers, and health care institutions. The goal of clinical ethics is to improve patient care and patient outcomes, and almost every large hospital now has an ethics committee or ethics consultation service to help resolve clinical ethical problems; and almost every medical organization now has an ethics committee and code of ethics. Most significantly, clinical ethics discussions have become a part of the routine clinical discourse that occurs in outpatient and inpatient clinical settings across the country. This seminal collection of 46 landmark works by Dr. Siegler on the topic is organized around five themes of foundational scholarship: restoring and transforming the ethical basis of modern clinical medicine, the doctor-patient relationship, education and professionalism, end-of-life care, and clinical innovation. With introductory perspectives by a group of renowned scholars in medicine, Clinical Medical Ethics: Landmark Works of Mark Siegler, MD explains the field authoritatively and comprehensively and will be of invaluable assistance to all clinicians and scholars concerned with clinical ethics.

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The new edition of this book provides a comprehensive review of the basic tests available in gastroenterology. Chapters examine widely-used modern techniques such as ultrasonography for Crohn’s disease, capsule endoscopy, elastography and video proctosigmoidoscopy among others. Fully updated to reflect the recent advances in the field in the last 20 years, this volume evaluates investigations for their current clinical usefulness in the management of patients. The reader will benefit from a critical analysis describing those older tests which have proved their worth alongside the newer procedures which have been introduced. Emphasis is placed on those techniques of which the authors have personal experience. The book is designed for trainees and clinicians without special expertise in gastroenterology, as well as being a shelf manual for the gastroenterologist and the staff of gastroenterology investigation units.

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This book provides the reader with some thermochemistry notes. The intention is to provide a simple, easy to understand text which serves as a complimentary material to more complex books. It also provide students and those beginning in the field with several application examples used in different areas of materials processing. The book presents fully solved problems, some quite often found in major metallurgical operations.

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This book considers representations of wealth and the wealthy in videogames. The introduction explores the estrangement of wealth from everyday life in the contemporary west, and argues that videogames have contributed to modern life by dramatizing the economic anxieties of our age — in particular, those anxieties that relate to the Global Great Recession. A review of historical titles reveals that such and related efforts draw in significant ways from the literary tradition of sentimental romance, where wealth and the wealthy have long been associated with notions of the underworld or hell. The relevance of this tradition to contemporary titles is explored through a careful analysis of romantic themes and concerns with significance to acts of exchange. The Wealth of Virtual Nations will appeal to students with an interest in narrative theory, game design, literature, economics, and the humanities. It will also be of interest to the videogame industry.

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The book discusses the emerging topic of comprehensive energy management in electric vehicles from the viewpoint of academia and from the industrial perspective. It provides a seamless coverage of all relevant systems and control algorithms for comprehensive energy management, their integration on a multi-core system and their reliability assurance (validation and test). Relevant European projects contributing to the evolvement of comprehensive energy management in fully electric vehicles are also included.

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This volume applies the science of complexity to study coupled human-environment systems (CHES) and integrates ideas from the social sciences of climate change into a study of rural development amid flooding and urbanization in the Poyang Lake Region (PLR) of China. Author Qing Tian operationalizes the concept of sustainability and provides useful scientific analyses for sustainable development in less developed rural areas that are vulnerable to climatic hazards.The book uses a new sustainability framework that is centered on the concept of well-being to study rural development in PLR. The PLR study includes three major analyses: (1) a regional assessment of human well-being; (2) an empirical analysis of rural livelihoods; and (3) an agent-based computer model used to explore future rural development. These analyses provide a meaningful view of human development in the Poyang Lake Region and illustrate some of the complex local- and macro-level processes that shape the livelihoods of rural households in the dynamic process of urbanization. They generate useful insights about how government policy might effectively improve the well-being of rural households and promote sustainable development amid social, economic, and environmental changes.This case study has broader implications. Rural populations in the developing world are disproportionally affected by extreme climate events and climate change. Furthermore, the livelihoods of rural households in the developing world are increasingly under the influences of macro-level forces amid urbanization and globalization. This case study demonstrates that rural development policies must consider broader development dynamics at the national (and even global) level, as well as specific local social and environmental contexts. By treating climate as one of many factors that affect development in such places, we can provide policy recommendations that synergistically promote development and reduce climatic impacts and therefore facilitate mainstreaming climate adaptation into development.

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This book, part of the new wave of political sociology in EU studies, examines the dialectics of construction/deconstruction of the European civil service through a succession of empirically grounded case studies. Breaking with the usual representations of ‘Eurocrats’, it sheds light on a hidden aspect of the current European crisis: a crisis of social reproduction which affects the European civil service in a heavy context of management reforms, enlargements, institutional changes and the euro crisis. This in turn has a number of consequences in terms of internal tensions, power, and more broadly, the capacity of EU institutions to create convergence between diverging national and economic interests, and to embody a European future.European Civil Service in (Times of) Crisis will be of interest to students and scholars across a wide range of disciplines, including politics, sociology and public administration, to practitioners working in and with the EU institutions, as well as those wishing to know more about the EU.

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This management book presents value-driven business process management as a successful discipline to turn strategy into people- and technology-based execution, quickly and at minimal risk. It shows how to achieve high performance successfully in a digital business environment. Static business models do not keep pace with the dynamic changes in our digital world. Organizations need a management approach that fits this environment and capitalizes on its opportunities while minimizing the related risks. They need to execute their business strategy fast and reliably. In effect, they have to know how and when to modify or enhance their business processes, which processes are the best candidates for intervention, and how to move rapidly from strategy to execution. This means organizations need to establish business process management as a real management discipline. The importance of process innovation, digital technology and people aspects, process governance, internationalization, emerging processes and the unique situation in mid-market organizations are some of the key topics discussed in this book. It ends with a comprehensive case study and a discussion about what process engineers can learn from jazz musicians.

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This textbook is designed with the needs of today’s student in mind. It is the ideal textbook for a first course in elementary differential equations for future engineers and scientists, including mathematicians. This book is accessible to anyone who has a basic knowledge of precalculus algebra and differential and integral calculus. Its carefully crafted text adopts a concise, simple, no-frills approach to differential equations, which helps students acquire a solid experience in many classical solution techniques. With a lighter accent on the physical interpretation of the results, a more manageable page count than comparable texts, a highly readable style, and over 1000 exercises designed to be solved without a calculating device, this book emphasizes the understanding and practice of essential topics in a succinct yet fully rigorous fashion. Apart from several other enhancements, the second edition contains one new chapter on numerical methods of solution.The book formally splits the "pure" and "applied" parts of the contents by placing the discussion of selected mathematical models in separate chapters. At the end of most of the 246 worked examples, the author provides the commands in Mathematica® for verifying the results. The book can be used independently by the average student to learn the fundamentals of the subject, while those interested in pursuing more advanced material can regard it as an easily taken first step on the way to the next level. Additionally, practitioners who encounter differential equations in their professional work will find this text to be a convenient source of reference.

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This textbook provides an exciting new addition to the area of network science featuring a stronger and more methodical link of models to their mathematical origin and explains how these relate to each other with special focus on epidemic spread on networks. The content of the book is at the interface of graph theory, stochastic processes and dynamical systems. The authors set out to make a significant contribution to closing the gap between model development and the supporting mathematics. This is done by: Summarising and presenting the state-of-the-art in modeling epidemics on networks with results and readily usable models signposted throughout the book; Presenting different mathematical approaches to formulate exact and solvable models; Identifying the concrete links between approximate models and their rigorous mathematical representation; Presenting a model hierarchy and clearly highlighting the links between model assumptions and model complexity; Providing a reference source for advanced undergraduate students, as well as doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and academic experts who are engaged in modeling stochastic processes on networks; Providing software that can solve differential equation models or directly simulate epidemics on networks. Replete with numerous diagrams, examples, instructive exercises, and online access to simulation algorithms and readily usable code, this book will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers from different backgrounds and academic levels. Appropriate for students with or without a strong background in mathematics, this textbook can form the basis of an advanced undergraduate or graduate course in both mathematics and other departments alike.

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This book provides the reader with up-to-date information on important advances in the understanding of breast cancer and innovative approaches to its management. Current and emerging perspectives on genetics, biology, and prevention are first discussed in depth, and individual sections are then devoted to pathology, imaging, oncological surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, medical oncology, and radiotherapy. In each case the focus is on the most recent progress and/or state of the art therapies and techniques. Further topics to receive detailed consideration include particular conditions requiring multidisciplinary approaches, the investigation of new drugs and immunological agents, lifestyle and psychological aspects, and biostatistics and informatics. The book will be an excellent reference for practitioners, interns and residents in medical oncology, oncologic surgery, radiotherapy, pathology, and human genetics, researchers, and advanced medical students.

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In this book I argue for an approach that conceives human rights as both moral and legal rights. The merit of such an approach is its capacity to understand human rights more in terms of the kind of world free and reasonable beings would like to live in rather than simply in terms of what each individual is legally entitled to. While I acknowledge that every human being has the moral entitlement to be granted living conditions that are conducive to a dignified life, I maintain, at the same time, that the moral and legal aspects of human rights are complementary and should be given equal weight. The legal aspect compensates for the limitations of moral human rights the observance of which depends on the conscience of the individual, and the moral aspect tempers the mechanical and inhumane application of the law. Unlike the traditional or orthodox approach, which conceives human rights as rights that individuals have by virtue of their humanity, and the political or practical approach, which understands human rights as legal rights that are meant to limit the sovereignty of the state, the moral-legal approach reconciles law and morality in human rights discourse and underlines the importance of a legal framework that compensates for the deficiencies in the implementation of moral human rights. It not only challenges the exclusively negative approach to fundamental liberties but also emphasizes the necessity of an enforcement mechanism that helps those who are not morally motivated to refrain from violating the rights of others. Without the legal mechanism of enforcement, the understanding of human rights would be reduced to simply framing moral claims against injustices. From the moral-legal approach, the protection of human rights is understood as a common and shared responsibility. Such a responsibility goes beyond the boundaries of nation-states and requires the establishment of a cosmopolitan human rights regime based on the conviction that all human beings are members of a community of fate and that they share common values which transcend the limits of their individual states. In a cosmopolitan human rights regime, people are protected as persons and not as citizens of a particular state.

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The aim of the book is to present original and though-provoking essays in human paleontology and prehistory, which are at the forefront of human evolutionary research, in honor of Professor Yoel Rak (a leading scholar in paleoanthropology).​ ​The volume presents a collection of original papers contributed by many of Yoel's friends and colleagues from all over the globe. Contributions from experts around the globe fall roughly into three broad categories: Reflections on some of the broad theoretical questions of evolution, and especially about human evolution; the early hominins, with special emphasis on Australopithecus afarensis and Paranthropus; and the Neanderthals, that contentious group of our closest extinct relatives. Within and across these categories, nearly every paper addresses combinations of methodological, analytical and theoretical questions that are pertinent to the whole human evolutionary time span. This book will appeal most to scholars and advanced students in paleoanthropology, human paleontology and prehistoric archaeology.

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This fifth edition provides information on techniques needed to analyze foods for chemical and physical properties. The book is ideal for undergraduate courses in food analysis and is also an invaluable reference to professionals in the food industry. General information chapters on regulations, labeling, sampling, and data handling provide background information for chapters on specific methods to determine chemical composition and characteristics, physical properties, and objectionable matter and constituents. Methods of analysis covered include information on the basic principles, advantages, limitations, and applications. Sections on spectroscopy and chromatography along with chapters on techniques such as immunoassays, thermal analysis, and microscopy from the perspective of their use in food analysis have been expanded. Instructors who adopt the textbook can contact the editor for access to a website with related teaching materials.

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This book gives a unified presentation of the research performed in the field of multiscale modelling in sheet metal forming over the course of more than thirty years by the members of six teams from internationally acclaimed universities. The first chapter is devoted to the presentation of some recent phenomenological yield criteria (BBC 2005 and BBC 2008) developed at the CERTETA center from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. An overview on the crystallographic texture and plastic anisotropy is presented in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is dedicated to multiscale modelling of plastic anisotropy. The authors describe a new hierarchical multi-scale framework that allows taking into account the evolution of plastic anisotropy during sheet forming processes. Chapter 4 is focused on modelling the evolution of voids in porous metals with applications to forming limit curves and ductile fracture. The chapter details the steps needed for the development of dissipation functions and Gurson-type models for non-quadratic anisotropic plasticity criteria like BBC 2005 and those based on linear transformations. Chapter 5 describes advanced models for the prediction of forming limit curves developed by the authors. Chapter 6 is devoted to anisotropic damage in elasto-plastic materials with structural defects. Finally, Chapter 7 deals with modelling of the Portevin-Le Chatelier (PLC) effect. This volume contains contributions from leading researchers from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, Clausthal University of Technology, Germany, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran, the University of Bucharest, Romania, and the Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy, Romania. It will prove useful to postgraduate students, researchers and engineers who are interested in the mechanical modeling and numerical simulation of sheet metal forming processes.

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This multi-disciplinary collection brings together work by scholars from Britain, America and Canada on the popular, personal and institutional histories of pregnancy. It follows the process of reproduction from conception and contraception, to birth and parenthood. The contributors explore several key themes: narratives of pregnancy and birth, the patient-consumer, and literary representations of childbearing. This book explores how these issues have been constructed, represented and experienced in a range of geographical locations from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Crossing the boundary between the pre-modern and modern worlds, the chapters reveal the continuities, similarities and differences in understanding a process that is often, in the popular mind-set, considered to be fundamental and unchanging.

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This book will cover several topics to elaborate how proteomics may enhance agricultural productivity. These include crop and food proteomics, farm animal proteomics, aquaculture, microorganisms and insect proteomics. It will also cover several technical advances, which may address the current need for comprehensive proteome analysis.An emerging field of the proteomics aim is to integrate knowledge from basic sciences and to translate it into agricultural applications to solve issues related to economic values of farm animals, crops, food security, health, and energy sustainability. Given the wealth of information generated and to some extent applied in agriculture, there is the need for more efficient and broader channels to freely disseminate the information to the scientific community.

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This book sheds light on cross-industry and industry-specific trends in today’s digital economy. Prepared by a group of international researchers, experts and practitioners under the auspices of SAP’s Digital Thought Leadership & Enablement team within SAP’s Business Transformation Services (BTS) unit, the book furthermore presents relevant use cases in digital transformation and innovation. The book argues that breakthrough technologies have matured and hit scale together, enabling five defining trends: hyper-connectivity, supercomputing, cloud computing, a smarter world, and cyber security. It presents in detail how companies are now reimagining their products and services, business models and processes, showcasing how every business today is a digital business. Digitalization, defined as the process of moving to a digital business, is no longer a choice but an imperative for all businesses across all industries and regions. Taking a step toward becoming a digital enterprise is demanding and challenging. The dimensions of customer centricity, leadership and strategy, business models, including offerings (products and services), processes, structure and governance, people and skills, culture, and technology foundation can serve as orientation for digitalization. The articles in this book touch on all dimensions of this digital innovation and transformation framework and offer possible answers to some of the pressing questions that arise when practitioners seek to digitalize their business.

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This is the first textbook on a generally applicable control strategy for turbulence and other complex nonlinear systems. The approach of the book employs powerful methods of machine learning for optimal nonlinear control laws. This machine learning control (MLC) is motivated and detailed in Chapters 1 and 2. In Chapter 3, methods of linear control theory are reviewed. In Chapter 4, MLC is shown to reproduce known optimal control laws for linear dynamics (LQR, LQG). In Chapter 5, MLC detects and exploits a strongly nonlinear actuation mechanism of a low-dimensional dynamical system when linear control methods are shown to fail. Experimental control demonstrations from a laminar shear-layer to turbulent boundary-layers are reviewed in Chapter 6, followed by general good practices for experiments in Chapter 7. The book concludes with an outlook on the vast future applications of MLC in Chapter 8. Matlab codes are provided for easy reproducibility of the presented results. The book includes interviews with leading researchers in turbulence control (S. Bagheri, B. Batten, M. Glauser, D. Williams) and machine learning (M. Schoenauer) for a broader perspective. All chapters have exercises and supplemental videos will be available through YouTube.

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This book provides semester-length coverage of electronics for embedded systems, covering most common analog and digital circuit-related issues encountered while designing embedded system hardware. It is written for students and young professionals who have basic circuit theory background and want to learn more about passive circuits, diode and bipolar transistor circuits, the state-of-the-art CMOS logic family and its interface with older logic families such as TTL, sensors and sensor physics, operational amplifier circuits to condition sensor signals, data converters and various circuits used in electro-mechanical device control in embedded systems. The book also provides numerous hardware design examples by integrating the topics learned in earlier chapters. The last chapter extensively reviews the combinational and sequential logic design principles to be able to design the digital part of embedded system hardware.

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The book provides an overview of the floods and major hydrological changes that occurred in the medieval Hungarian kingdom (covering the majority of the Carpathian Basin) between 1000 and 1500 AD. The analysis was based on contemporary documentary evidence presented for the first time and the results of archaeological and scientific investigations. Beyond the evidence on individual flood events, the book includes a comprehensive overview of short-, medium-, and long-term changes detected in a hydrologically sensitive environment during the transition period between the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. It also discusses the possible causes (including climate and human intervention) and the consequences for the physical and human environment, namely the related hydro-morphological changes, short- and long-term social response, and human perception issues.

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In this book, leading world authorities on brain edema and neurological disorders/injuries and experts in preconditioning join forces to discuss the latest progress in basic sciences, translational research, and clinical management strategies relating to these conditions. The range of topics covered is wide, including microglia, energy metabolism, trace metals and ion channels, vascular biology, cellular treatment, hemorrhagic stroke, novel technological advances, anesthesia and medical gases, pediatric brain edema, neuroimaging, behavioral assessment, clinical trials, peripheral to central signaling pathways, preconditioning translation, and animal models for preconditioning and brain edema research. The book comprises presentations from Brain Edema 2014, the joint meeting of the 16th International Conference on Brain Edema and Cellular Injury and the 3rd Symposium on Preconditioning for Neurological Disorders, held in Los Angeles on September 27–30, 2014.

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This book provides a comprehensive view of rational suicide in the elderly, a group that has nearly twice the rate of suicide when chronically ill than any other demographic. Its frame of reference does not endorse a single point-of-view about the legitimacy of rational suicide, which is evolving across societies with little guidance for geriatric mental health professionals. Instead, it serves as a resource for both those clinicians who agree that older people may rationally commit suicide and those who believe that this wish may require further assessment and treatment. The first chapters of the book provides an overview of rational suicide in the elderly, examining it through history and across cultures also addressing the special case of baby boomers. This book takes an ethical and philosophical look at whether suicide can truly be rational and whether the nearness of death in late-life adults means that suicide should be considered differently than in younger adults. Clinical criteria for rational suicide in the elderly are proposed in this book for the first time, as well as a guidelines for the psychosocial profile of an older adult who wants to commit rational suicide. Unlike any other book, this text examines the existential, psychological, and psychodynamic perspectives. A chapter on terminal mental illness and a consideration of suicide in that context and proposed interventions even without a diagnosable mental illness also plays a vital role in this book as these are key issues in within the question of suicide among the elderly. This book is the first to consider all preventative measures, including the spiritual as well as the psychotherapeutic, and pharmacologic. A commentary on modern society, aging, and rational suicide that ties all of these elements together, making this the ultimate guide for addressing suicide among the elderly.Rational Suicide in the Elderly is an excellent resource for all medical professionals with potentially suicidal patients, including geriatricians, geriatric and general psychiatrists, geriatric nurses, social workers, and public health officials.

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