Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer International Publishing AG

The convergence of 1) the intensification of space exploration and 2) the increasing understanding of the world at the atomic and molecular level, nanotechnology, has resulted in a synergy of discoveries and innovations. The result of this synergy may result in leaps in the exploration beyond the surface of the earth but also improve life on our home planet.The content describes the challenge of escaping the earth¿s surface, remaining in orbits around our planet, and landing and surviving on worlds away. The associated space environments and variables are covered in general terms and not in an encyclopedic manner. Discoveries in the nanotechnology arena as they can be applied to space exploration are also covered in an understandable manner.This book is a must for people who are working in the ¿space¿ industry who need to know not only more about the many aspects of their industry but also must understand nano-scale implications for the future. Likewise, participants in the nanotechnology arena who want to understand the challenges of space exploration will find critical information in this text.

This book presents an overview of engineering as it relates to humanitarian engineering, service-learning engineering, peace engineering, or engineering for community-led development, programs that are often grouped under Engineering for Good or Engineering for Change. By placing ¿community¿ at the center of these endeavors, this book invites readers and practitioners to strive for sustainable community development (SCD). This 2nd edition is centered on new concepts of community-led development and includes topics on the history of engineers and development, the problems of using industry-based practices when designing for communities, how engineers can prepare to work with communities, and listening in community development. Two case studies are provided to highlight the book¿s concepts using first-hand experiences of engineers engaged with communities¿one of engineers developing a windmill for a community in India, and a second of an engineer mapping communities in Honduras for improved water management. The book concludes with student perspectives and experiences from a curricular model focused on engineering for sustainable community development. Overall, the text invites engineers to reflect and prepare themselves for global careers that involve international development in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. This 2nd edition places community-led practices at the heart of these endeavors. The book is for engineering faculty, students and practicing engineers, involved in current or future community collaborations. The authors wrote this book with a goal to help readers critically reflect on their own practices and perceptions. Readers learn to question past, current, and future frameworks in the project of development, and are encouraged to adopt practices of community-led development. This 2nd edition is aimed at engineering students who, as future global engineers, are faced with opportunities and challenges when working with communities. As funding for renewable energy, ¿green jobs,¿ and community-based initiatives continue to increase, engineers will need to rely on the social and historical concepts presented in this book.

This book presents a new management model that has evolved in Silicon Valley. This book imbibes latest results from a year-long study of Google's approaches to management, and finds similar principles being applied at companies including, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tesla Motors, and Apigee.

This textbook introduces bioinformatics to students in mathematics with no biology background assumed and it provides solid mathematical tools for biology students along with an understanding of how to implement them in bioinformatics problems. In addition to the basics, the text offers new approaches to understanding biological sequences. The concise presentation distinguishes itself from others on the subject, discussing and providing principles that relate to current open problems in bioinformatics as well as considering a variety of models. The convex hull principle is highlighted, opening a new interdisciplinary research area at the intersection of biology, mathematics, and computer science. Prerequisites include first courses in linear algebra, probability and statistics, and mathematical analysis. Researchers in mathematics, biology, and math-biology, will also find aspects of this text useful. This textbook is written based on the authors' research works that have been published in various journals along with the lecture notes used when teaching bioinformatics courses at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at Tsinghua University. The content may be divided into two parts. The first part includes three chapters, introducing some basic concepts. Chapter 1 provides biological background in molecular biology for mathematicians. Chapter 2 describes biological databases that are commonly used. Chapter 3 is concerned with alignment methods including global/local alignment, heuristic alignment, and multiple alignment. The second part consisting of five chapters, describes several bioinformatics principles using a rigorous mathematical formulation. Chapter 4 introduces the time-frequency spectral principle and its applications in bioinformatics. In Chapters 5 and 6, two strategies are used, the graphical representation and the natural vector method, to represent biological sequences, and conduct sequence comparison and phylogenetic analysis without alignment. Chapter 7 presents the convex hull principle and shows how it can be used to mathematically determine whether a certain amino acid sequence can be a protein. The last chapter summarizes additional mathematical ideas relating to sequence comparisons, such as new feature vectors and metrics. This part focuses on the governing principle in biology and provides plenty of alignment-free methods, which cannot be found in any other book.

This open access book, the Community of Practice led by the VPH Institute, the Avicenna Alliance, and the In Silico World consortium has brought together 138 experts in In Silico Trials working in academia, the medical industry, regulatory bodies, hospitals, and consulting firms. Through a consensus process, these experts produced the first attempt to define some Good Simulation Practices on how to develop, evaluate, and use In Silico Trials. Good Simulation Practice constitutes an indispensable guide for anyone who is planning to engage at any title with In Silico Trials.

Professional investment portfolio management is increasingly utilizing sophisticated statistical and computer techniques to better control risks and improve performance. This book provides new quantitative tools and technology for securities professionals to help boost the performance of their investment portfolios offered to clients. Unlike other books in this area, the authors utilize revolutionary asset pricing methods and models to analyze data for U.S. stocks and show how to apply them to the problem of creating highly diversified portfolios that are efficient in terms of returns per unit risk.

A common question posed to PhD students from friends and family is, "What will you do after?" But many students are too focused on the PhD itself and have not yet had a chance to sufficiently think about post-PhD life. This book is a collection of 31 interviews with those who have completed a PhD and are now in a non-academic role. Interviewees provide background into their PhD topic and discuss how they transitioned to their current position, including what additional training was necessary and how their PhD training has helped them succeed. In these interviews, two broad non-academic career paths are explored: academic-adjacent careers use research expertise through industry, policy, and publishing; and skill-transfer careers, applying transferable abilities like critical thinking. Recognising a PhD need not lead to a faculty career opens possibilities to leverage doctoral skills in impactful new contexts.

Research data sharing has traditionally been addressed to other peer researchers. Nowadays there is general awareness that putting research at the disposal of society is beneficial and necessary. However, the popularization of science is a hard endeavor. It must deal with transmission of transcendental knowledge with the appealing adornment of a good story, but avoiding the risk of falling into banality. This book consists in a series of individual stories delving into the world of biology and medicine. Some topics included in this volume consist in the explanation of basic biological concepts like the origin of modern eukaryotic cells, the importance of mutations as the driving force behind evolution, the molecular ins and outs of the nervous system, or the relevance of microorganisms to humans and science including food and energy industries. Others rather lean to a more biomedical perspective and constitute popular cases that have been, to some extent, trending in global media outlets: the divulgation of some current under-reckoned non-infectious pandemics like obesity and chronic pain, the presence of longer-living populations around the world named blue zones, the American (and African) opioid crisis, or the discovery and development of CRISPR-Cas as a promising genetic editing tool. All chapters are depicted with accompanying illustrations thoroughly elaborated by professionals of Fine Arts to make it easier to understand for the non-experts¿ but may perhaps also proof that the scientific method and multidisciplinary work are not unique to natural sciences, but also shared by other apparently distant disciplines like arts.

This fully revised and updated new edition of the definitive text/reference on computer network and information security presents a comprehensive guide to the repertoire of security tools, algorithms and best practices mandated by the technology we depend on.

Sensory marketing is a way to differentiate businesses from their competition while influencing customers and their behaviour. At its best, sensory marketing guides or helps customers to make certain choices in a way that they are unaware of what actually influenced their choices. Although it sounds like an attractive way to ¿nudge¿ customers, it is a highly demanding practice that also involves risks and ethical concerns. This textbook delves into the world of sensory marketing in a physical retail setting and offers a comprehensive and coherent view of various sensory cues and their capacity to drive our behaviour through stimulating our senses and creating sensory experiences. It particularly highlights the meaning of the multisensory nature of retail stores and emphasises how cues tend to affect us in combination rather than separately as single cues. After reading this book, you will be able to: · Identify various cues in a retailing setting · Categorise cues into different groups · Explain how cues affect consumers when they make their daily choices· Understand the multisensory nature of retail stores and the meaning of cue (in)congruence· Describe how consumers are likely to respond differently to cue combinations than single cues· Apply cues in practice and assess their outcomes. Ideal reading for students taking classes in consumer behaviour, shopper marketing, retail marketing and store design among others, it contains more than 30 global examples from various retail companies, self-reflective questions and decisions-based questions to aid learning.

¿Machine Learning Crash Course for Engineers is a reader-friendly introductory guide to machine learning algorithms and techniques for students, engineers, and other busy technical professionals. The book focuses on the application aspects of machine learning, progressing from the basics to advanced topics systematically from theory to applications and worked-out Python programming examples. It offers highly illustrated, step-by-step demonstrations that allow readers to implement machine learning models to solve real-world problems. This powerful tutorial is an excellent resource for those who need to acquire a solid foundational understanding of machine learning quickly.

This book exposes practitioners and decision-makers to the theory and application of river ice processes to gain a better understanding of these processes for modelling and ice flood hazard and risk assessment. It focuses on the following processes of the surface water ice: river freeze-up and flooding, mid-winter ice-cover breakup and flooding and end-of-winter ice-cover breakup and ice jamming. The reader will receive a fundamental understanding of the physical processes of each component and how they are applied in monitoring, modelling and flood hazard/risk assessment of river ice during the entire winter season, from freeze-up to potential mid-winter breakup and concluding with springtime ice-cover breakup and ice-jam flooding. Spreadsheet, geographical information system (GIS) and modelling exercises accompany each component to reinforce the theoretical principles learned. Step-by-step tutorial videos allow the reader to better engage with the book and learn the material faster.

This book was designed to help gastroenterologists take care of their patients with challenging problems. Every day in practice we face patients with issues that are not simple to master. Oftentimes we search out some guidance from ¿the experts,¿ and, if they are available, we will curbside them, either by phone or in person. This text is written from the standpoint of a community gastroenterologist curbsiding his academic cohorts with his challenging cases. We present a patient with a difficult GI problem and ask the academic expert how he, or she, would manage the case. We have provided over a hundred examples of problem cases and asked the experts at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) for help in their management. These cases run the gamut, including general GI, motility disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, advanced therapeutics, hepatology and functional GI disorders. The main objective of this book is to compile the most clinically useful questions, present them to experts who frequently deal with these problems, and then wrap up their knowledge within one clinically useful text. If a community gastroenterologist had endless access to an academic panel of GI experts, these are the questions they might ask. There are hundreds of useful clinical pearls between the pages of this book which should help anyone taking care of patients with GI problems. While the text may be targeted particularly toward practicing community gastroenterologists, it certainly can be of benefit to GI fellows in training, academic gastroenterologists, and general internists and surgeons with a strong interest in gastroenterology as well as APPs.

This volume offers a wealth of results written by experts from interdisciplinary fields, contributing on a diversity of topics targeting marine and maritime environmental sustainability in coastal and ocean-related areas. The reader will benefit from the diversity and breadth of topical coverage as well as concepts conveyed from a variety researchers. The book serves as an open knowledge platform combining naval architecture and marine engineering, ecology, biomedical informatics, public health, architecture engineering and building physics, nanotechnology as well as advanced technologies, innovation and related fields. The broad range of topics cover ecology, shipping, and health related issues. Specifically, the book presents chapters on the following:· Shipping and ecology· Topics of ocean wildlife and mega-fauna protection· Big Data and sustainable applications for healthy and safe coastal cities· Smart sustainable humanitarian assistance methods using large vessels · Smart coastal city tourist activity, mobility management· Urban climate condition mitigation· Historical analysis of the case of disease outbreaks onboard ships· Monitoring, simulating and decision making while developing housing at sea, such as in cruise-ships· Conducting feasibility assessment for outbreak prevention following real-time, systematic disease detection on cruise ships· Technological approaches for cruise ship disease propagation monitoring· Scenario testing for sensors and actuators deployment to prevent and mitigate epidemics on cruise ships, as well as methods for improving biological safety on ships using nanotechnology The book is expected to engage researchers in multidisciplinary areas as well as students and interested readers.

This open access book sets out simple solutions to managing complex catastrophes. It focusses on four kinds of crises ¿ climate change, crime-war cascades, epidemics and financial crises. These catastrophes are conceived as complex and prone to cascade effects. This book is optimistic in explaining that there are identifiable simple institutions that international society can strengthen and some simple principles that can help humankind to control the expanding gamut of complex catastrophes that confront the planet including simple, stable institutions and regulatory bodies. It draws on a wide range of current and past crises and challenges, from the Cold War to COVID-19, and from Weapons of Mass Destruction to restorative diplomacy with States like China, to provide an urgent and timely path forward. It speaks to those interested in criminology, public policy and international relations, political science, sociology, public health and economics.

This book presents a comprehensive portrait of trust in medicine and oncology. Trust is vital to medical care. It is linked to treatment recommendation adherence, continuity of care, and even treatment efficacy under certain scenarios, and is distinct from other commonly measured patient-reported outcomes that are used to drive medical practice, such as patient satisfaction. Cancer care highlights many of the issues with trust that all clinicians confront and brings to light the interplay of technology, rapidly advancing treatments, and readily available information consumed by patients and families that may complicate clinician-patient communication.Each chapter highlights a different aspect of trust in the medical setting, many of which are specific to oncology. For example, trust is fundamental to the first encounter with an oncologist. The anatomy of that encounter is explored. The elements of trust are investigated, from the institutional or fiduciary perspective to the nuances of the personal and individual encounters with patients. Several key factors are relevant to trust within these encounters, such as the patient¿s background, attachment style, and perception of ethically responsible commitment. Further chapters cover topics like the proliferation of false information, health inequities, and patient-centered care.The Complex Role of Patient Trust in Oncology will be of great interest to oncologists, psychiatrists, internists, and any healthcare professional interested in the role of trust in patient care.

While most managers are primarily concerned with being able to make decisions quickly, manage meetings efficiently and drive innovation, there is often little time for reflection in a business world where opinions must be formed and decisions taken on the hoof. It often seems counterintuitive to stop the clock and take time to think things through. Philosophy, on the other hand, addresses the basic questions of our existence, our identity, our role in the world and the models for living that might inspire our actions. By understanding philosophy, it becomes more possible to provide meaning to many of our management practices and to business at large, while enhancing self-satisfaction and happiness at work.This latest book from Professor Santiago Iniguez presents a collection of management ideas inspired by renowned philosophers. It provides a framework, as well of a series of business situations, for analyzing decisions from the perspective of values and principles. With insights on topics such as, how to gain respect at work, how to cultivate an optimistic outlook and how to shrug off failure, it offers timeless advice for managers that can be applied for their personal and professional development.Offering a unique perspective and valuable insights on what leadership is, and the relevance of values and principles to becoming a successful, recognized manager, this book presents a thoughtful guide to anyone who wants to install meaning into their management practices and their lives.

There is a foundational crisis in financial theory and professional investment practice: There is little, if any, credible evidence that active investment strategies and traditional institutional quantitative technologies are able to provide superior risk-adjusted, cost-adjusted return over investment relevant horizons.Economic and financial theory has been in error for more than fifty years and is the fundamental cause of the persistent ineffectiveness of professional asset management. Contemporary sociological and economic theory, agent-based modeling, and an appreciation of the social context for preference theory provides a rational and intuitive framework for understanding financial markets and economic behavior. The author narrates his long-term experience in the use and limitations of traditional tools of quantitative asset management as an institutional asset manager in practice and as a quantitative analyst and strategist on Wall Street. Monte Carlo simulation methods, modern statistical tools, and U.S. patented innovations are introduced to redefine portfolio optimality and procedures for enhanced professional asset management. A new social context for expected utility theory leads to a novel understanding of modern equity markets as a financial intermediary for purchasing power constant time-shift investing uniquely appropriate for meeting investor long-term investment objectives. This book addresses the limitations and indicated resolutions for more useful financial theory and more reliable asset management technology. In the process, it traces the major historical developments of theory and institutional asset management practice and their limitations over the course of the 20th century to the present, including Markowitz and the birth of modern finance, CAPM theory and emergence of institutional quantitative asset management, CAPM and VM theory limitations and ineffective iconic tools and strategies, and innovations in statistical methodologies and financial market theory.

Data has become an indispensable success factor for every company. However, the road towards a data-driven organization is paved with numerous challenges. This book presents a process model for the path to a data-driven company and provides recommendations for the design of all relevant fields of action: Which structures need to be created? Which systems and processes have proven beneficial? How can the quality of the data be ensured and what requirements exist for a data-driven organization in the areas of governance and communication? And last but not least: How can employees be brought along on the journey and what implications does the data-driven organization have for our corporate culture? The book presents an orientation and action framework for the strategic and operational design of a data-driven organization and is valuable for managers who are involved in data management in companies and organizations.

This book explains how taxonomy can be used to describe and connect social actors in an integral way. Integral communication refers to a specific way of open information exchange which uses all qualities and preferences of subjects in conversation and allows anonymous feedback exchange, which enhances trust, learning and development. The role of integral communication is to promote perceptiveness, collaboration, personal development, and organizational learning among all the actors involved.In this book, the authors propose a new original way of digital communication that uses tags and their metadata to describe qualities and preferences of a particular node in the network. Although most social networks, sharing platforms and e-government frameworks are already applying taxonomies and social tagging to define user identity, none of them is focused on tags exclusively, while within an integral communication framework they represent the basic element of user definition and networking. In addition, other social platforms rarely allow anonymous feedback exchange, and they are usually not focused on the personal development of their end-users. Aside from helping actors present their attributes and preferences, integral communication promotes teamwork, sustainability, trust, organisational learning, and personalized communication with AI machines.After reading this book, readers will learn how to harness the power of integral networking and understand why anonymous feedback is a critical element for learning and development.

Net Zero is not enough. We have dithered so long about climate change that, by now, we would need to go to negative-emissions territory, well before 2050, to keep global warming under the iconic 1.5°C target. The national commitments made so far fall short of what is needed, and so do the investments envisioned. But even with the best of intentions, it is hard for policymakers and potential investors to discern where, in the profusion of initiatives and technologies, it would make sense to focus their attention and resources.This is where this book comes in. It offers a clear-eyed view of how far along the decarbonization path six key sectors of the economy are¿namely energy, utilities, transportation, industry, buildings, and agriculture¿and which areas and technologies within each sector are promising in terms of investments to advance the cause. Furthermore, a special chapter on Africa spotlights a continent that is simultaneously one of the worst affected by climate change, the most likely to see its greenhouse gas emissions increase¿and the one with the greatest potential for solving the West's, and the world¿s, energy transition and economic growth conundrum.As such, the book serves as a concise guide both to the state of the battle against global warming, and for investors, professionals, and policymakers to find their way through the maze of options.

This Open Access book presents an in-depth portrait of the use and impact of digital technologies by learners ages 5-18 years in their everyday lives. The portrait is framed by the ecological-systems theory and situated across four domains: home, leisure time, education, and civic participation. Various methodological approaches are used in innovative ways to analyze data collected in a large-scale EU Horizon 2020 project. The purpose of this edited collection is to shed light on both beneficial and harmful effects of digital technology from a perspective that children are active agents who are empowered to accentuate the positives of digital technology use and over common challenges that inhibit digital competence with support from education stakeholders.This is an open access book.

¿This open access book explores how legal proceedings in and out-of-court can be matched to the complex problems underlying disputes concerning child custody, residence and contact between parents. It focusses in particular on Nordic experiences of in and out-of-court mechanisms as means of resolving custody disputes. The contributors are internationally renowned and experienced researchers from the legal, psychological, and sociological fields who provide empirical as well as legal perspectives. They examine central legal, ethical and knowledge-based dilemmas in custody dispute proceedings. The findings speak to an international audience and suggest ways how to best realize the interests of the child. It transcends disciplinary, institutional, and jurisdictional boundaries in search of new knowledge.

This book provides a unique tour of university mathematics with the help of Python. Written in the spirit of mathematical exploration and investigation, the book enables students to utilise Python to enrich their understanding of mathematics through: Calculation: performing complex calculations and numerical simulations instantly Visualisation: demonstrating key theorems with graphs, interactive plots and animations Extension: using numerical findings as inspiration for making deeper, more general conjectures. This book is for all learners of mathematics, with the primary audience being mathematics undergraduates who are curious to see how Python can enhance their understanding of core university material. The topics chosen represent a mathematical overview of what students typically study in the first and second years at university, namely analysis, calculus, vector calculus and geometry, differential equations and dynamical systems, linear algebra, abstract algebra and number theory, probability and statistics. As such, it can also serve as a preview of university mathematics for high-school students. The prerequisites for reading the book are a familiarity with standard A-Level mathematics (or equivalent senior high-school curricula) and a willingness to learn programming.For mathematics lecturers and teachers, this book is a useful resource on how Python can be seamlessly incorporated into the mathematics syllabus, assuming only basic knowledge of programming.

This book charts the history of how Irish-born nuns became involved in education in the Anglophone world. It presents a heretofore undocumented study of how these women left Ireland to establish convent schools and colleges for women around the globe. It challenges the dominant narrative that suggests that Irish teaching Sisters, also commonly called nuns, were part of the colonial project, and shows how they developed their own powerful transnational networks. Though they played a role in the education of the ¿daughters of the Empire¿, they retained strong bonds with Ireland, reproducing their own Irish education in many parts of the Anglophone world.

This book discusses the impact of the process of accession to the European Union (EU) ¿ i.e. Europeanisation ¿ on the formulation of the ethnic identity of Bosnian Serbs and the political identity of Republika Srpska (RS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The centrepiece of the book is an examination of how it is possible that the expected effect of Europeanisation on ethnic identities in a post-conflict environment ¿ a transformation of ethnic identities through desecuritisation ¿ does not materialise in the case of BiH and the RS. The book starts from the assumption that the political elite in the RS uses Europeanisation as a context for the securitization of two sources of threats ¿ the internal and external Other. This prevents the transformation of ethnic identities in BiH, and as a result also the desecuritisation of antagonisms among the ethnic groups of BiH. The results show that any attempt at a more active engagement by the EU and international community was interpreted by the RS political elite as Bosniak agenda aimed against the RS. In this respect, the book demonstrates that BiH¿s EU accession process or a clearer EU perspective alone in scrutinized critical junctures did not outweigh the potential costs for the RS political elite if reforms aimed at creating a more functional BiH were to succeed. In all three analysed critical junctures, the political elite in RS presented motions for a more functional BiH as attempts to centralise the country and framed them as the beginning of the end for the RS as a political entity.

This open access book explores the increasing role of psychoactive substances in contemporary everyday life, focussing on women's use. Drawing on an ethnographic study in Sweden, it uses cultural studies and queer phenomenology to analyse the women¿s narratives of drug use relating to themes that encompass social, legal, cultural, embodied and gendered perspectives on drugs in the contemporary Western world. It examines topics such as stigma, happiness, children, the body, gifts, the drug market, medication, sickness and health and also the orientation of themselves towards others, to social and cultural norms, to drug laws and to the substances. It discusses how drug related spaces and directions be analysed in terms of gender and class, and how, in turn, the directions of contemporary society and culture can be affected by drug use. It speaks to academics in Sociology, Criminology, Ethnology, Gender studies, Law and History.

This book develops a theoretical approach to social stratification and applies it to the development of the official system of state honours in Britain. It examines both class and status, and sets out an innovative framework for understanding social status ¿ an important but often ignored and misunderstood dimension of social stratification. It is shown that a system of peerages, knighthoods, and other state-based royal honours emerged from feudal patterns of political rule and became an unplanned framework of social integration in the UK that has, since the nineteenth century, decayed and been challenged by alternative criteria of status. The book explores the class basis of the rise and decay of royal honours and includes a review of contemporary attempts to reconstruct and renew a system of social honour that reflects contemporary relations of power and class in Britain. It will be of interest to scholars and students of class, social inequality and British social structure.