Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Netherlands

The present sixth volume of ISSI Space Sciences Series is the outcome of the most ambitious study project of ISSI hitherto, that on 'Source and Loss Processes of Magnetospheric Plasma'. The goal has been to produce a fully integrated book on the subject, which gives an authoritative overview of all aspects of the topic in a well organized form, useful and readable both for active researchers in the field and for young scientists who are starting their research in space physics. In order to represent the full diversity of experience and perspective that exists in the science community, some 50 leading scientists from allover the world were invited to participate in the project and contribute to the text. With the scientific competence well in hand, the dominating problem in producing the book has been to achieve a degree of consistency in style, nomenclature, notations and format, as well as good cross referencing. To what degree we have succeeded in reaching our goal of delivering a volume that will be useful to the community in both its comprehensiveness and readability remains to be decided by the readers. The book is the outcome of a three year long process. In December 1995 the study project on 'Source and Loss Processes of Magnetospheric Plasma' was se- lected by ISSI after consultations with several groups of senior representatives of the space physics community.

For bacteria ..."e;the times are achanging"e;... The genomes of over 60 different bacteria have now been sequenced, and we know a lot about the important research organism Escherichia coli, the important industrial organism Bacillus subtilis, and about important plant and human pathogens. It will not take long before we know all the gene products and their functions of a few of these bacteria. Some of us already begin to think about a digital model E. coli or Bacillus cell. For that end we need to know all the physiological activities and metabolic routes of the cell. But in addition we like to know how things work at the molecular level and how protein and membranes as well as other (macromolecular) structures work together to carry out specific cell functions.Protein Secretion Pathways in Bacteria describes all the known folding and targeting routes of inner and outer membrane proteins as well as of proteins that are secreted by several specific export routes. The book gives detailed molecular information about the structures that are important for the different mechanisms involved. This is a valuable contribution to the understanding of how rather simple and yet complex bacterial cells work.

Cardiac output has always been a subject of interest to both clinicians and researchers in different branches of medicine and surgery. In the last decade more attention has also been paid to its application in pediatrics, neonatology, fetal medicine and pregnancy. Better understanding of the peripheral circulation has provided more insight into the patholophysiology of different diseases. Many cardiac and non-cardiac disorders affect cardiac outputs. Monitoring of the changes in cardiac output is also important in the acutely ill patient. There are several methods to measure cardiac output, each with advantages and pitfalls. This book deals with all relevant aspects of cardiac output in eight parts: part one describes the methods of measuring cardiac output and a comparison between the catheterisation based and the noninvasive techniques, while part two describes the changes in cardiac output due to physiological causes. Part three describes cardiac output in cardiac diseases and systemic hypertension. Cardiac output in acutely ill patients is discussed in part four. Effect of cardiac medications, temporary atrial pacing, permanent pacing, pharmacologic stress testing and anesthesia are covered in detail in part six, while changes in cardiac output in noncardiac diseases are described in part seven. Finally great attention has been paid in part eight to the regional circulation including cerebral, coronary, skeletal and splanchnic circulations. A separate chapter discusses in detail the dynamics of blood flow. This book will be useful both to the cardiologists as well as to physicians in other fields of surgery and medicine and to their trainees. Readers will find this book an interesting and a useful reference on the topic of cardiac output.

Although there has been much progress in developing theories, models and systems in the areas of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Vision Processing (VP), there has heretofore been little progress on integrating these two subareas of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This book contains a set of edited papers addressing theoretical issues and the grounding of representations in NLP and VP from philosophical and psychological points of view. The papers focus on site descriptions such as the reasoning work on space at Leeds, UK, the systems work of the ILS (Illinois, U.S.A.) and philosophical work on grounding at Torino, Italy, on Schank's earlier work on pragmatics and meaning incorporated into hypermedia teaching systems, Wilks' visions on metaphor, on experimental data for how people fuse language and vision and theories and computational models, mainly connectionist, for tackling Searle's Chinese Room Problem and Harnad's Symbol Grounding Problem. The Irish Room is introduced as a mechanism through which integration solves the Chinese Room. The U.S.A., China and the EU are well reflected, showing the fact that integration is a truly international issue. There is no doubt that all of this will be necessary for the SuperInformationHighways of the future.

Desertification (land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting mainly from adverse human impacts) is the main environmental problem of dry lands, which occupy more than 40 per cent of the total global land area. The phenomenon threatens about 3.6 billion hectares and currently affects the livelihood of about 900 million people. Thl! world is now losing annually about 1.5 million hectares of total irrigated lands (240 million hectares) due mostly to salinization, mainly in drylands. Salt affected soils are widely distributed throughout the arid and semi-arid regions, and particularly severe in China (7 million ha), India (20 million ha), Pakistan (3.2 million ha), USA (5.2 million ha), as well as Near East, southern Europe and elsewhere. Demands on production have increased the pressure on existing productive land and moved the limits of production onto increasingly marginal lands. Wise land-use practices have yet to be developed for such conditions. The Executive Director of UNEP reported to the Governing Council in February 1992 concerning the "e;Status of Desertification and Implementation of the United Nations Plan of Action to Comtat Desertification (PACD)"e;. The Report concludes that major efforts to implement the PACD had gJne into supporting measures rather than concrete corrective field operations. Little evidence of progrl!ss was found in irrigated croplands, rainfed croplands or rangelands. It was recommended that every piece of land should be used in keeping with its ecological characteristics, natural capabilities and constraints.