Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Netherlands

Plant tissue culture has a long history, dating back to the work of Gottlieb Haberlandt and others at the end of the 19th century, but the associated concepts and techniques have reached a level of usefulness and application which has never been greater. The technical innovations have given new insights into fundamental aspects of plant differentiation and development, and have paved the way to the identification of strategies for the genetic manipula- tion of plants. It is the aim of this manual to deliver a broad range of these techniques in a form which is accessible to students and research scientists of diverse backgrounds, including those with little or no previous experience. The themes of the manual aim to reflect those research areas which have been advanced by tissue culture technology. As was the case for the sister volume Plant Molecular Biology Manual, the objective has been from the start to produce a manual which is at home on the laboratory bench. The plastic-covered, ring-bound format has proved to be most popular and is retained here. Equally, the emphasis has been on producing a collection of detailed step-by-step protocols, each supplemented with an introductory text and practical footnotes, to provide the next best thing to a supervisor at one's shoulder.

Cellular and Molecular Control of Neuronal Migration provides an up-to-date collection of reviews on the molecular and cellular principles of neuronal migration in the mammalian brain. Over the last decades a rich catalogue of signaling molecules controlling neuronal migration has been compiled, and within this book an international panel of experts provides up-to-date discussions of the state of knowledge how these distinct signaling pathways regulate various aspects of neuronal migration. This book introduces the reader to the latest discoveries and concepts of neuronal migration enabled through the application of most sophisticated methods and cutting edge experimental approaches.Cellular and Molecular Control of Neuronal Migration also provides an update on the underlying cellular and molecular basis of neurodevelopmental migration disorders in human patients for all interested neuroscientists and clinicians.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally and presents a major challenge to policy makers and clinicians alike. Recent research has suggested that obesity has its origins in early life and that early diet can programme a developing fetus' and young infant's future susceptibility to obesity.  This volume contains recent findings presented at the International Conference on Early Nutrition Programming and Health Outcomes in Later Life: Obesity and Beyond - a satellite meeting of the 15th European Congress on Obesity, held in Budapest in April 2007. Basic scientific research, data from epidemiological studies and clinical trial results were all presented during the programme.This volume includes articles discussing the evidence for an effect of early nutrition programming on later obesity and cardiovascular risk; the growing evidence for an intergenerational cycle of obesity; the role of maternal leptin in programming appetite; possible cellular mechanisms for altered energy balance, including mitochondrial programming and the effects of regulators of metabolism; and how epigenetic changes might be the fundamental underlying mechanism explaining programming effects. Consumer understanding of the concept of early nutrition programming and the extent to which early nutrition programming is taken into account in infant feeding policies are also discussed.

Advances in Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering includes a set of rigorously reviewed world-class manuscripts addressing and detailing state-of-the-art research projects in the areas of Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Systems Engineering and Sciences.Advances in Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering includes selected papers from the conference proceedings of the International Conference on Systems, Computing Sciences and Software Engineering (SCSS 2007) which was part of the International Joint Conferences on Computer, Information and Systems Sciences and Engineering (CISSE 2007).

This book presents a comprehensive scientific overview of the components and processes that underpin the biological characteristics of soil fertility. It demonstrates the interdependence of soil biological fertility with physical and chemical characteristics of soil. The book highlights the enormous diversity of life in soil and the resulting effects that management of land can have on the contribution of this diverse community to soil fertility in an agricultural context. It is becoming more relevant to explore soil biological processes in terms of their contribution to soil fertility. However, dilemmas do arise. Some agricultural chemicals may either overshadow or enhance biological contributions to soil fertility. The challenge is to select land management practices that improve the capacity of biological processes to contribute to soil physical and chemical fertility while increasing the sustainability of farming systems for particular soils and climates. Case studies of sustainable farming systems in relation to soil biological fertility are discussed and a global perspective is given about sustainability of soil management in relation to international agreements and environmental issues. This book is aimed at agricultural and environmental research scientists, agricultural extension officers and university students in a range of disciplines, including soil science (and subdisciplines of soil biology, root pathology, root symbioses, soil chemistry and soil physics), plant science, agronomy, animal science, land management and environmental science, who wish to gain an overview of the biological processes that contribute to soil fertility and have the potential to influence the production of food for humans and animals. It would also be of interest to leading farmers who are interested in understanding soil processes in their production systems. Soil biological fertility is often ignored but its central importance to sustainable use of land in agriculture makes it relevant to scientists and students in all disciplines related to agricultural production and environmental land management.

This is the ?rst volume of a series of edited books whose aim is to collect contributed papers in a framework that can serve as a dictionary of names of individuals who have made contributions to the discipline of MMS (Me- anism and Machine Science). This dictionary project has the peculiarity that, through descriptions of the ideas and work of these individuals, the papers will illustrate mainly technical developments in the historical evolution of the individual ?elds that today de?ne the scope of MMS. Thus the core of each contribution will be a survey of biographical notes describing the efforts and experiences of these people. Finding appropriate technical experts as authors for such papers and - couraging them to write them has been a challenge; it is a demanding and time-consuming effort to produce such in-depth articles that delve deeply into the historical background of their topics of expertise. This ?rst volume of the dictionary project has been possible thanks to the invited authors who have enthusiastically shared the initiative and have spent time and effort in prep- ing papers that have the novel characteristics of survey and historical notes. The papers in this volume cover the wide ?eld of the History of Mechanical Engineering with speci?c focus on MMS. I believe that a reader who takes advantage of the papers in this book, as well as future ones, will ?nd further satisfaction and motivation for her or his work (historical or not).

At the beginning of the 1990s the world was watching with anxiety at South Africa. Would the country be able to get rid of the despicable apartheid regime without bloodshed? Could a civil war be avoided? And would it be possible to develop a democratic society without having to build up a whole new set of social institutions? The latter concern certainly referred to the educational sector that was steered at each level by a number of separate Ministries of Education, i. e. one for each identified race group. Given the developments in other countries in the region as well as elsewhere in the world the prospects were not too hopeful. In addition, many especially white South Africans left the country the weeks before the first elections, and the stories of violence and contradictions between the various political groups in the country dominated for a while the international press' coverage of the pre-94-election situation. However, ten years after the first democratic elections in 1994 it is fair to say that South Africa has gone through a far-reaching transformation that is characterised by a remarkably low level of political violence. The general impression of the transformation suggests that the country has managed to change rather smoothly most of its social institutions, without dramatically affecting the continuity in the operations and performance of these institutions. This also refers to higher education.

Karen Sparck Jones is one of the major figures of 20th century and early 21st Century computing and information processing. Her ideas have had an important influence on the development of Internet Search Engines. Her contribution has been recognized by awards from the natural language processing, information retrieval and artificial intelligence communities, including being asked to present the prestigious Grace Hopper lecture. She continues to be an active and influential researcher. Her contribution to the scientific evaluation of the effectiveness of such computer systems has been quite outstanding.This book celebrates the life and work of Karen Sprck Jones in her seventieth year. It consists of fifteen new and original chapters written by leading international authorities reviewing the state of the art and her influence in the areas in which Karen Sprck Jones has been active. Although she has a publication record which goes back over forty years, it is clear even the very early work reviewed in the book can be read with profit by those working on recent developments in information processing like bioinformatics and the semantic web.

This volume contains a collection of contributions to the science of language, focusing on the study of word length in particular. Within a synergetic framework, the word turns out to be a central linguistic unit, as is clearly outlined in the Editor's preface. The book's first chapter is an extensive introduction to the history and state of the art of word length studies.The studies included unify contributions from three important linguistic fields, namely, linguistics and text analysis, mathematics and statistics, and corpus and data base design, which together give a comprehensive approach to the quantitative study of text and language and word length studies. The broad spectrum of word length studies covered within this volume will be of interest to experts working in the fields of general linguistics, text scholarship and related fields, and, understanding language as one example of complex semiotic systems, the volume should be of interest for scholars from other fields as well.

Cyberspace security is a critical subject of our times. On one hand the development of Internet, mobile communications, distributed computing, computer software and databases storing essential enterprise information has helped to conduct business and personal communication between individual people. On the other hand it has created many opportunities for abuse, fraud and expensive damage. This book is a selection of the best papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop dealing with the Subject of Cyberspace Security and Defense. The level of the individual contributions in the volume is advanced and suitable for senior and graduate students, researchers and technologists who wish to get some feeling of the state of the art in several sub-disciplines of Cyberspace security.Several papers provide a broad-brush description of national security issues and brief summaries of technology states. These papers can be read and appreciated by technically enlightened managers and executives who want to understand security issues and approaches to technical solutions. An important question of our times is not "e;Should we do something for enhancing our digital assets security"e;, the question is "e;How to do it"e;.

In the late 1980s, Peptide Societies were established in Europe, the United States, and Japan, and more recently, in the Asian and the Pacific Rim regions including Australia, China, and Korea. At the time of the establishment of the American, European and Japanese Peptide Societies, the International Liaison Organizing Committee representing these Peptide Societies, along with the Australian Peptide Society, began discussions for holding international confer ences which would supercede or be held in lieu of the numerous individual meetings, held by the peptide societies of each individual country or region. The representative of the Chinese Peptide Society participated in these discus sion in the International Liaison Organizing Committee at the meeting of the American Peptide Symposium in Nashville, in June 1997. After lengthy discus sions over several years, we agreed to organize and host the International Peptide Symposium in Japan. The First International Peptide Symposium (IPS'97) was held on November 30-December 5, 1997, in Kyoto, and was co sponsored by four Peptide Societies. The attendance at this Symposium was 550 participants, including representatives from 32 different countries. We were very pleased with this outcome and anticipate an even larger attendance for forthcoming Symposia in future years. The revolution and advances in science and technology during the past two decades has caused traditional peptide chemistry to expand to peptide science, spreading from physical science to biology, pharmacology, and medicine.

Hydroinformatics systems are systems that combine computational hydraulic modelling with information systems (including knowledge-based systems). They are gaining rapid acceptance in the areas of environmental planning, design and management. The present book focuses exclusively on sewage systems, starting with their planning and then going on to discuss their design, operation and rehabilitation. The very experienced authors discuss business and information needs in the management of urban drainage, tools for collecting and archiving such data, and their use in modelling catchment hydrology, sewer systems hydraulics, wastewater quality, wastewater treatment plant operation, and receiving waters. The control and operation of sewer systems in real time is described, followed by a discussion of their maintenance and rehabilitation. Intelligent decision support systems for managing the urban drainage business process are presented. Audience: Researchers into sewer design, municipal engineers, planners and managers interested in an innovative approach to all aspects of the planning, design and operation of sewer systems.

Diamond-based composites, with their advantages of hardness, high Young's modulus and the like, have demonstrated new and unusual features, such as stability to high temperatures and pressure shocks and a large internal surface that can be controlled to offer customised electrical, magnetic and optical properties, leading to efficient filters, absorbents, sensors and other tools for environmental control and monitoring. The current book covers the synthesis of materials, their characterization and properties, trends in high pressure and high temperature technologies, low pressure technologies, basic principles of DBC material science, and future developments in electronics, optics, industrial tools and components, biotechnology, and medicine. Wide band-gap materials are considered, ranging from molecular clusters, nanophase materials, growth, processing and synthesis. The processing of composite based materials can be classified into six basic methods: in situ growth, high pressure/high temperature catalytic conversion; mix and sinter (c-BN plus metal-ceramic polymer mix); direct sintering; direct polymorphic conversion; shock detonation; and SHS sintering.

After an introduction by J.G. Bednorz, describing the discovery of high Tc superconductivity and its consequences, the book goes on to describe modern research, dealing with general problems, new materials and structures, phase separation, electronic homogeneities and related problems, and applications. Specific systems dealt with include the La-cuprates. the Bi-cuprates and the Y-cuprates and related compounds.

Accurate assessment of environmental hazards and related risks is a primary prerequisite for effective environmental health protection, at both the individual and collective level. National and regional policies on environmental health need to be guided by knowledge about the risks to the populations involved; as the Environmental Action Plan for Europe notes, 'priority setting requires the comparative assessment of risks to health of different environmental factors against the cost of controlling them.' In recent years this has assumed particular importance, for with the encouragement of the World Health Organisation (WHO), all countries in Europe are committed to producing National Environmental Health Action Plans (NEHAPs), which will define priorities and targets for environmental health and the actions needed to achieve them. Reliable information on risks is clearly fundamantal to this process. Individual risk assessment is no less important in this context. Much of the responsibility and capacity to improve public health lies ultimately in the choices (e.g. about diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, sexual activities, sporting activities, travel mode, place of residence and occupation) which we make as individuals. If we are to improve and protect our own health, therefore, and in so doing play our personal role in achieving the targets set by these Plans, we need to be guided by a clear understanding of the risks involved.

A great number of nuclear submarines are due to be decommissioned before 2000. The political decisions surrounding the disposal of nuclear compartments, radioactive wastes and spent fuel differ appreciably between the countries that own the boats. The decision makers involved thus need help in comparing and assessing alternative options for the decommissioning of their nuclear submarine fleets. The present volume offers such assistance, with its discussions of the risks associated with long-term water storage of the boats, radioactive and chemical contamination, spent fuel and waste management, and handling and recycling reactor compartments.

The workshop on "e;Optical Properties of Low Dimensional Silicon sL Structures"e; was held in Meylan, France on March, I yd, 1993. The workshop took place inside the facilities of France Telecom- CNET. Around 45 leading scientists working on this rapidly moving field were in attendance. Principal support was provided by the Advanced Research Workshop Program of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). French Delegation a l'Armement and CNET gave also a small financial grant, the organisational part being undertaken by the SEE and CNET. There is currently intense research activity worldwide devoted to the optical properties of low dimensional silicon structures. This follow the recent discovery of efficient visible photoluminescence (PL) from highly porous silicon. This workshop was intended to bring together all the leading European scientists and laboratories in order to reveal the state of the art and to open new research fields on this subject. A large number of invited talks took place (12) together with regular contribution (20). The speakers were asked to leave nearly 1/3 of the time to the discussion with the audience, and that promoted both formal and informal discussions between the participants.

The NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "e;Nanomagnetic Devices"e; was held in Miraflores de la Sierra, Madrid, Spain, from 14 to 19 September 1992. This book contains 21 invited articles related to suggestive and relevant aspects of Magnetism. The NATO Advanced Research Workshop was Co-directed by R.C. O'Handley, B. Heinrich and A. Hernando. The organisers as well as the participants are gratefully acknowledged to the NATO Science Committee. I also wish to thank the publishers for their advice and help in organizing the book. xi DESIDERATA OF STORAGE DEVICES C.E. YEACK-SCRANTON IBM Corporation, E02/005 5600 Cottle Road San Jose, CA 95139 USA ABSTRACT. Typical requirements on cost, capacity, and performance of today's magnetic storage devices and industry trends in these attributes are given. Scaling components, devices, and materials is shown to be a key factor in further improvement, Challenges to continued scaling are reviewed, particularly as they relate to magnetic nano-structures, materials, and characterization techniques.

A recent major development in high technology, and one which bears considerable industrial potential, is the advent of low-dimensional semiconductor quantum structures. The research and development activity in this field is moving fast and it is thus important to afford scientists and engineers the opportunity to get updated by the best experts in the field. The present book draws together the latest developments in the fabrication technology of quantum structures, as well as a competent and extensive review of their fundamental properties and some remarkable applications. The book is based on a set of lectures that introduce different aspects of the basic knowledge available, it has a tutorial content and could be used as a textbook. Each aspect is reviewed, from elementary concepts up to the latest developments. Audience: Undergraduates and graduates in electrical engineering and physics schools. Also for active scientists and engineers, updating their knowledge and understanding of the frontiers of the technology.

This book presents the proceedings and the outcomes of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on Integrated Technologies for Environmental Monitoring and Information Production, which was held in Marmaris, Turkey, between September 10- 14, 200 I. With the contribution of 45 experts from 20 different countries, the ARW has provided the opportunity to resolve the basic conflicts that tend to arise between different disciplines associated with environmental data management and to promote understanding between experts on an international and multidisciplinary basis. The prevailing universal problem in environmental data management (EDM) systems is the significant incoherence between data collection procedures and the retrieval of information required by the users. This indicates the presence of problems still encountered in the realization of; (1) delineation of objectives, constraints, institutional aspects of EDM; (2) design of data collection networks; (3) statistical sampling; (4) physical sampling and presentation of data; (5) data processing and environmental databases; (6) reliability of data; (7) data analysis and transfer of data into information; and (8) data accessibility and data exchange at local, regional and global scales. Further problems stem from the lack of coherence between different disciplines involved in EDM, lack of coordination between responsible agencies on a country basis, and lack of coordination on an international level regarding the basic problems and relevant solutions that should be sought.

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Cesme, Izmir, Turkey, 27 June-8 July, 1988