Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Netherlands

Asian river basins are undergoing rapid transformation.  This volume considers the implications of the environmental change-development nexus for water management, river health and hazard awareness.  As Biswas and Tortajada (2011) have recently commented, water management in Asia will likely change more in the next twenty years than in the last 2000 years. Critical environmental trends include decreasing flows of water and sediment due to dam construction and increased water extraction, land use change (especially forest removal), encroachment and degradation of floodplain and wetland environments, increased water demand and concerns about water security, urban expansion and associated pollution of rivers and contamination of groundwater reserves.  These challenges are being reframed by new approaches to water management which represent a transition from engineering-dominated approaches towards integrated water management, from  technology transfer to adaptive technologies.  The volume comprises an introduction and five chapters. Brierley and Callum reframe approaches to river repair within emerging theories of in ecology and earth science which regard nature as a complex adaptive system replete with inherent uncertainties. These ideas are mirrored in the four case study chapters which deal with water governance in the Mekong Basin (Hirsch); hybrid adoption of water resource technologies in India (Barbanente et al.); determination of sediment dynamics in Java Rijsdijk); and ecological conservation imperatives in the headwaters of the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers in western China (Li et al.).

In this volume, I have collected several papers which were presented at the international conference called "Venice-2/Symposium on Applied and In­ dustrial Mathematics". Such a conference was held in Venice, Italy, between June 11 and 16,1998, and was intended as the follow-up of the very successful similar event (called "Venice-1/Symposium on Applied and Industrial Math­ ematics"), that was also organized in Venice in October 1989. The Venice-1 conference ended up with a Kluwer volume like this one. I am grateful to Kluwer for having accepted to publish the present volume, the aim of which is to update somehow the state-of-the-art in the field of Ap­ plied Mathematics as well as in that of the nowadays rather more developed area of Industrial Mathematics. The most of the invited (key-note) speakers contributed to this volume with a paper related to their talk. There are, in addition·, a few significant contributed papers, selected on the basis of their quality and relevance to the present-time research activities. The topics considered in the conference range from rather general sub­ jects in applied and numerical analysis, to more specialized subjects such as polymers and disordered media, granular flow, semiconductor mathematics, superconductors, elasticity, tomography and other inverse problems, financial modeling, photographic sciences, etc. The papers collected in this volume provide a selection of them. It is clear from the previous list that some attention has been paid to relatively new and emerging fields.

This book documents research conducted on the analysis of urban growth and sprawl by using remote sensing data and GIS techniques. The research was conducted between 1980-2010 in the city of Kolkata, India. The aim of the research was to use metrics that were less demanding in terms of data and computation than normal metrics. However, it has been found that most of them were inferior in capturing insights of urban sprawl. For this book, some of these metrics have therefore been modified and new ones are proposed. The research focuses on problems associated with the analysis of urban growth by using remote sensing data from a technological perspective.

This book analyses situations of coexistence and confrontation of agricultural and food models according to four major dimensions of territorial development: the tension between specialisation and diversification; innovation; adaptation; and food transition. New agricultural and food models are being deployed in territories around the world in response to criticisms of the old forms of agriculture and food production, and in order to meet new challenges. These models embody archetypes of the observed diversity, actors¿ projects or new norms.A number of conceptual studies and case studies from France and other countries allow us to understand the interactions between these models (confrontation, complementarity, co-evolution, hybridisation, etc.), taking us well beyond the characterisation of their diversity and the evaluation of their relative performances. The coexistence and confrontation of these models build up their capacity for radical change.The book asks original questions about the analytical framework, its methodological challenges and the expected outcomes for the support of agricultural and food development in rural and urban territories. It is intended for researchers, teachers, students and professionals interested in territorial development.Pierre Gasselin, Sylvie Lardon, Claire Cerdan, Salma Loudiyi and Denis Sautier are the scientific coordinators of this book. They are geographers and economists at CIRAD, INRAE and VetAgro Sup, where they conduct research on the transformation of agriculture, food systems and territories in France and other countries. This book is the result of a collective research process involving 36 authors from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Burkina Faso, France, Japan, Switzerland and Vietnam.Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, author of the Foreword, is Professor Emeritus of Rural Sociology at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands and Associate Professor of Agricultural Sociology at the China Agricultural University in Beijing. He has conducted extensive research on processes of agricultural transition and on dynamics of rural development.

THE SENSE OF SMELL The nose is normally mistakenly assumed to be the organ of smell reception. It is not. The primary function of the nose is to regulate the temperature and humidity of inspired air, thereby protecting the delicate linings of the lungs. This is achieved by the breathed air passing through narrow passageways formed by three nasal turbinates in each nostril. The turbinates are covered by spongy vascular cells which can expand or contract to open or close the nasal pathways. The olfactory receptors, innervated by the 1st cranial nerve, are located at the top of the nose. There are about 50 million smell receptors in the human olfactory epithelia, the total size of which, in humans, is about that of a small postage stamp, with half being at the top of the left and half at the top of the right nostril. The receptive surfaces of olfactory cells are ciliated and extend into a covering layer of mucus. There is a constant turnover of olfactory cells. Their average active life has been estimated to be about 28 days.

The XIXth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union was held in New Delhi, India, from November 19 to 28, 1985. It was dedicated to the memory of a former IAU President, Professor M. K. V. Bappu, who tragically passed away on August 19, 1982. On the occasion of the Delhi General Assembly, the IAU Minor Planet Center announced that Minor Planet (asteroid) No. 2596 henceforth will carry the name Vainu Sappu. The full text of the announcement reads: "e;(2596) VAINU BAPPU = 1979 KN (diameter about 8 kilometers, period 5 years 4 months, mean distance from the Sun around 450 million kilometers) Discovered 1979, May 19, by R. M. West at the European Southern Observatory. Named in memory of Manali f

Knowledge of cardiac ion channels and transporters has advanced remarkably in the last two decades with the development of patch-clamp and molecular biological techniques. This textbook offers a comprehensive overview of structures and functions of ion channels and transporters in the heart. Readers are first introduced to the molecular biology and electrophysiology of all the important ion channels. After discussing their developmental changes, the pharmacology and pathophysiology of clinically-relevant ion channels are reviewed. Molecular aspects of the cardiac excitation-contraction coupling and intracellular Ca2+ regulation by ion transporters are also described. The book will be useful to electrophysiologists, cardiac physiologists and pharmacologists, and molecular biologists interested in ion channels at all levels. For research specialists, the book will provide a perspective of the field. The book can be used as a reference source for working scientists in the fields of ion channels, biophysics, cardiac electrophysiology, and pharmacology. It is aimed at graduate and medical students, designed for use as a textbook for graduate and medical courses.

Machine learning is a novel discipline concerned with the analysis of large and multiple variables data. It involves computationally intensive methods, like factor analysis, cluster analysis, and discriminant analysis. It is currently mainly the domain of computer scientists, and is already commonly used in social sciences, marketing research, operational research and applied sciences. It is virtually unused in clinical research. This is probably due to the traditional belief of clinicians in clinical trials where multiple variables are equally balanced by the randomization process and are not further taken into account. In contrast, modern computer data files often involve hundreds of variables like genes and other laboratory values, and computationally intensive methods are required. This book was written as a hand-hold presentation accessible to clinicians, and as a must-read publication for those new to the methods.

The technique of imaging spectrometry has now passed its infancy and entered into a new phase of application oriented research. Advanced sensor systems (such as Nasa/JPL's AVIRIS) have become available for international research programmes (MAC Europe 1991), new imaging spectrometers are under development in several European countries or have already passed their acceptance tests, and first high spectral resolution imaging systems are already operated by private industry. On European level, the EARSEC programme of the Joint Research Centre has provided considerable financial investments for the development of an imaging spectrometer which covers the reflective and important parts of the emissive spectrum (DAIS-7915), and the European Space Agency has initiated an important airborne remote sensing campaign (EMAC 1994/95) in which imaging spectrometry will constitute one of the most important components. The increasing sensor capabilities also reflect the fact that imaging spectrometry has advanced in many application fields of earth remote sensing. Progress has been made in the development of data pre-proeessing methods, spectral signature modeling and semi-empirical approaches for retrieving surface parameters. It therefore appeared important to further disseminate information about new approaches in the application-oriented analysis of imaging spectrometry data. This volume presents the lectures of the second EUROCOURSE on imaging spectrometry which was held in November 1992 at the Joint Research Centre (a first course on "e;Fundamentals and Prospective Applications"e; of imaging spectrometry had been organised in October 1989, the lectures being published as EUROCOURSES in Remote Sensing, vol. 2).

Whether you are a researcher, or practising engineer, or even non-familiar with power amplifiers student, it is a good idea to look into Advanced Design Techniques for RF Power Amplifiers.Its main aim is to provide the reader with a deep analysis of theoretical aspects, modelling, and design strategies of RF high-efficiency power amplifiers. Advanced Design Techniques for RF Power Amplifiers begins with an analytical review of current state of the problem. Then it moves to the theoretical analysis of BJT class-F power amplifier near transition frequency and presents the necessary realization conditions. The next part concerns the practical verification and demonstration of the theoretical results. It is followed by the part devoted to the output networks of high-efficiency power ampifiers. The novel type of photonic band-gap structure providing improved characteristics both in the pass and stop bands is proposed. Finally, the fifth-harmonic peaking class F power amplifier design based on the above structure is presented. Advanced Design Techniques for RF Power Amplifiers can be used as a guide by scientists and engineers dealing with this subject and as a text book to graduate and postgraduate students. The latter will find the comprehensive nonlinear power amplifiers simulation tutorial in the Appendix. It provides an excellent quick start for beginners, although the main contents is intended for a skilled reader.

One of the goals of the Journal of Elasticity: The Physical and Ma- ematical Science of Solids is to identify and to bring to the attention of the research community in the physical and mathematical sciences extensive expositions which contain creative ideas, new approaches and currentdevelopmentsinmodellingthebehaviourofmaterials. Fracture has enjoyed a long and fruitful evolution in engineering, but only in - cent years has this area been considered seriously by the mathematical science community. In particular, while the age-old Gri?th criterion is inherently energy based, treating fracture strictly from the point of view of variational calculus using ideas of minimization and accounting for the singular nature of the fracture ?elds and the various ways that fracture can initiate, is relatively new and fresh. The variational theory of fracture is now in its formative stages of development and is far from complete, but several fundamental and important advances have been made. The energy-based approach described herein establishes a consistent groundwork setting in both theory and computation. While itisphysicallybased,thedevelopmentismathematicalinnatureandit carefully exposes the special considerations that logically arise rega- ing the very de?nition of a crack and the assignment of energy to its existence. The fundamental idea of brittle fracture due to Gri?th plays a major role in this development, as does the additional dissipative feature of cohesiveness at crack surfaces, as introduced by Barenblatt. Thefollowinginvited,expositoryarticlebyB. Bourdin,G. Francfort and J. -J. Marigo represents a masterful and extensive glimpse into the fundamentalvariationalstructureoffracture.

As the title suggests, this monograph features the physicochemical behavior and supramolecular organization of polymers. The book consists of four chapters dealing with solution properties, viscoelastic behavior, physicochemical aspects at interfaces and supramolecular structures of polymeric systems. The classical treatment of the physicochemical behavior of polymers is presented in such a way that the book will meet the requirements of a beginner in the study of polymeric systems in solution and in some aspects of the solid state, as well as those of the experienced researcher in other types of materials. Physicochemical behavior and Supramolecular Organization of Polymers is ultimately, a contribution to the chemistry of materials; it is a powerful reference tool for students and scientists working both in polymer chemistry, polymer physics and materials science.