Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer US

As a clinical discipline blood transfusion encompasses enormous vista, vary­ ing from biotechnology to molecular biology, from plasma products, cell biology and growth factors to interleukines. Growth of knowledge in this field has been rapid, and expertise is now required to be mastered and renewed in translating these ideas for patient care. Various types of cells could be harvested - progenitor stem cells derived from bone marrow or from circulating blood as a source for transplants; in the hemostatic armoury platelets could be used prophylactically; granulocytes and mononuclear cells are available for treatment of infections or immune modulations. However, their therapeutic use carries potential complications including graft versus host disease and CMV-infection. Prevention of such complications by irradiation and by removal of immunocompetent leukocytes are important issues. Thus, production of such therapeutic materials ought to address the issues at the earliest, to eliminate those problems while adhering to the con­ cept of high quality; the impact of storing platelets for longer periods by using improved plastic containers or storing almost indefinitely in frozen state should be explored. Rapid progress in cell culture techniques and bio­ technology have enriched the transfusion medicine armoury with lympho­ kines, interferons and cell colony growth factors which have great potentials for enhancement of basic knowledge as well as considerable therapeutic applications in patients.

In any study of hermit crabs, correct identification to species level is of considerable importance. Whereas a number of identification guides to this group have been published during the last 50 years, none can be considered comprehensive enough for identifying all species inhabiting the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean sea. The present guide is the first of its kind to provide taxonomic keys to all known species from these regions. Detailed illustrations, synonyms, taxonomic descriptions and distributions are given for all species belonging to the Diogenidae and Paguridae; these families include the majority of the species. The various specialized terms used in hermit crab taxonomy are fully explained and illustrated and a comprehensive bibliography is provided to papers relevant to the regions.

The first International Meeting on Apheresis was held in Dyon in 1984. At the congress it became clear that both the technical and therapeutic sides developed very rapidly and it appeared fruitful to bring together the investigators of the different countries working in the areas. At that time immunology had come to pervade many clinical specialities, and hemapheresis, especially plasmapheresis was considered a therapeutic tool in many immunological diseases which hitherto had proved to be fatal. New methods to identify certain antibodies and circulating immune complexes in the serum and the possibilities to remove them from the blood by several techniques (filtration, centrifugation, immunoabsorp­ tion) led to an almost uncontrolled use of plasma exchange in a variety of diseases. Since then the technical possibilities of this technique were further recognized, as was the impact of immunology on many diseases, and the possibilities to collect specific components for therapeutic pur­ poses. But also we became aware of the limited contributions of anec­ dotal data on successes or failures of apheresis as adjuvant treatment. Therefore international prospective studies were initiated to make critical assessment possible of apheresis in various diseases.

Engineers who play a major role in hazardous waste management, must have full understanding of technical, regulatory, economic, permitting, institutional and public policy issues. This reference book provides this information, providing data and techniques that can be applied to analyzing, designing and developing effective hazardous waste management solutions.

Following the great success of the first edition, this thoroughly revised and updated volume continues to provide a highly practical and comprehensive review of the sugar confectionery manufacturing industry. The authors, who are internationally recognized experts in their fields, draw on many years experience in providing a digestible account. Divided into sections covering the production and properties of raw materials, manufacturing processes, and other technical aspects of the subject, many of the original chapters have been totally rewritten and reorganized to reflect today's market.

Thickening and gelling agents are invaluable for providing high quality foods with consistent properties, shelf stability and good consumer appeal and acceptance. Modern lifestyles and consumer demands are expected to increase the requirements for these products. Traditionally, starch and gelatin have been used to provide the desired textural properties in foods. Large-scale processing technology places greater demands on the thickeners and gelling agents employed. Modified starches and specific qualities of gelatin are required, together with exudate and seed gums, seaweed extracts and, most recently, microbial polysaccharides, to improve product mouthfeel properties, handling, and stability characteristics. These hydrocolloids have been established as valuable food additives as a result of extensive practical experience with different products. Nevertheless, the last few years have produced much additional research data from sophisticated new analytical methods. Information on the fine structure of these complex molecules has given a tremendous insight into the three-dimensional conformation of hydro- colloids and their behaviour in solution. Critical components within the biopolymer have been identified which provide particular thickening, suspending, stabilising, emulsifying and gelling properties. Contributions for this book have been provided by senior development managers and scientists from the major hydrocolloid suppliers in the US and Europe. The wealth of practical experience within this industry, together with chemical, structural and functional data, has been collated to provide an authoritative and balanced view of the commercially significant thickening and gelling agents in major existing and potential food applications.

This book provides comprehensive information on all aspects of consumer affective testing, including principles, application and implementation of consumer affective tests, data collection, statistical analysis, and interpretation of results. New approaches not previously covered in the literature include: 1) methodologies for testing of young children and the elderly and issues related to testing with individuals in these age groups, 2) an in-depth discussion of the development and maintenance of a consumer database, 3) qualitative consumer research methods, 4) simulated supermarket setting tests, and 5) use of mobile laboratory in consumer tests.

Lattices are geometric objects that can be pictorially described as the set of intersection points of an infinite, regular n-dimensional grid. De- spite their apparent simplicity, lattices hide a rich combinatorial struc- ture, which has attracted the attention of great mathematicians over the last two centuries. Not surprisingly, lattices have found numerous ap- plications in mathematics and computer science, ranging from number theory and Diophantine approximation, to combinatorial optimization and cryptography. The study of lattices, specifically from a computational point of view, was marked by two major breakthroughs: the development of the LLL lattice reduction algorithm by Lenstra, Lenstra and Lovasz in the early 80's, and Ajtai's discovery of a connection between the worst-case and average-case hardness of certain lattice problems in the late 90's. The LLL algorithm, despite the relatively poor quality of the solution it gives in the worst case, allowed to devise polynomial time solutions to many classical problems in computer science. These include, solving integer programs in a fixed number of variables, factoring polynomials over the rationals, breaking knapsack based cryptosystems, and finding solutions to many other Diophantine and cryptanalysis problems.

Elucidates the fundamental mathematical structures of inverse problems, analyzing both the information content and the solution of some inverse problems in which the information content of the coefficients and the source term of a given differential equation is not too large. In order to be accessib

ATP plays a central role in the two leading causes of cardiac morbidity and mortality in the western world: ischemia and heart failure. We are in our infancy applying what is known about biology and chemistry of ATP toward developing effective therapies for these diseases. In this volume, the current understanding of the chemistry and biology of ATP specifically in the cardiomyocyte is presented. New insights into ATP have been gleaned using biophysical techniques allowing dynamic measurement of chemical events in the intact beating heart and using new animal models in which cardiac proteins are either over expressed, deleted or harbor specific mutations. This book provides a summary of the basic understanding and includes illustrations of why ATP and the Heart is important to both the clinician and scientist.

Advances in technology are making massive data sets common in many scientific disciplines, such as astronomy, medical imaging, bio-informatics, combinatorial chemistry, remote sensing, and physics. To find useful information in these data sets, scientists and engineers are turning to data mining techniques. This book is a collection of papers based on the first two in a series of workshops on mining scientific datasets. It illustrates the diversity of problems and application areas that can benefit from data mining, as well as the issues and challenges that differentiate scientific data mining from its commercial counterpart. While the focus of the book is on mining scientific data, the work is of broader interest as many of the techniques can be applied equally well to data arising in business and web applications. Audience: This work would be an excellent text for students and researchers who are familiar with the basic principles of data mining and want to learn more about the application of data mining to their problem in science or engineering.

These books, with of a total of 40 chapters, are a comprehensive and complete introductory text on the synthesis, characterization, and applications of nanomaterials. They are aimed at graduate students and researchers whose background is chemistry, physics, materials science, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and biomedical science. The first part emphasizes the chemical and physical approaches used for synthesis of nanomaterials. The second part emphasizes the techniques used for characterizing the structure and properties of nanomaterials, aiming at describing the physical mechanism, data interpretation, and detailed applications of the techniques. The final part focuses on systems of different nanostructural materials with novel properties and applications.

Higher transmission speeds, larger traffic volumes and the unpredictable characteristics of new applications, coupled with new end-user functions and features and variability of bandwidth, demand new networking methods, technologies and algorithms. These new directions are explored in Control and Performance in Packet, Circuit, and ATM Networks, which includes discussions of static flow, fluid flow, dynamic flow, learning automata, neural networks, fuzzy logic and much more. These techniques are used in performance evaluation, control and optimization of communications networks. Each of the methods achieves a different goal, and understanding them helps in the evaluation of different aspects of control and performance in communication networks. The book combines queuing theory with static-flow models and static optimization methods in order to analyze the behavior of communication networks. In addition, it reviews queuing theory and static optimization methods for the study of control problems in telecommunication networks. A valuable reference that can also be used as a text for an advanced course on the subject.

Medical Image Databases covers the new technologies of biomedical imaging databases and their applications in clinical services, education, and research. Authors were selected because they are doing cutting-edge basic or technology work in relevant areas. This was done to infuse each chapter with ideas from people actively investigating and developing medical image databases rather than simply review the existing literature. The authors have analyzed the literature and have expanded on their own research. They have also addressed several common threads within their generic topics. These include system architecture, standards, information retrieval, data modeling, image visualizations, query languages, telematics, data mining, and decision supports. The new ideas and results reported in this volume suggest new and better ways to develop imaging databases and possibly lead us to the next information infrastructure in biomedicine. Medical Image Databases is suitable as a textbook for a graduate-level course on biomedical imaging or medical image databases, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Taking Complexity Seriously applies the advanced policy analysis technique of triangulation to what is now the world's most complex public policy challenge: sustainable development. One central problem of public policy analysis has been to find new ways of analyzing issues of increasing complexity and uncertainty. Triangulation is perhaps the best example of these novel techniques, as it uses various methods, databases, theories, and approaches to converge on what to do about the complex issue in question. Taking Complexity Seriously uses four different theoretical approaches (Girardian economics, cultural theory, critical theory, and the local justice framework) to triangulation in order to converge on answers to four major policy questions: What is sustainable development? Why is it an issue? What needs to be done? What can actually be done? These four approaches are used to analyze the sustainable development controversy that recently arose in the pages of Science magazine and the journal Ecological Applications. These different approaches prove highly potent in defamiliarizing conventional wisdom about sustainable development. Ultimately the different approaches will converge on novel answers to the four questions. The practical implications of these conclusions are drawn out at the end of Taking Complexity Seriously in a detailed case study of ecosystem management.

Kevin M. Passino When confronted with a control problem for complicated physical process, a control engineer usually follows a predetermined design procedure. This procedure often begins with the engineer seeking to understand the process and the primary control objectives. A simple example ofa control problem is an automobile "e;cruise control"e; that provides the automobile with the capability of regulating its own speed at a driver-specified set-point (e. g. , 55 mph). One solution to the automotive cruise control problem involves adding an electronic controller that can sense the speed of the vehicle via the speedometer and actuate the throttle position so as to regulate the vehicle speed at the driver-specified value. Such speed regulation must be accurate even if there are road grade changes, head-winds, or variations in the number of passengers in the automobile. After gaining an intuitive understanding of the plant's dynamics and establishing the design objectives, the control engineer typically solves the cruise control problem by using an established design procedure. In particular, this control engineering design methodology involves: 1. Modeling/understanding the plant, 2. Construction of a controller to meet specifications (such as stability, rise-time, overshoot, and steady state error), 3. Analysis to make sure that the system will meet the performance objectives (e. g. , we might use mathematical, simulation-based, or experimental analysis), and 4. Iterating on the design until it is possible to "e;commission"e; the control system.

In this book, the author considers separable programming and, in particular, one of its important cases - convex separable programming. Some general results are presented, techniques of approximating the separable problem by linear programming and dynamic programming are considered. Convex separable programs subject to inequality/ equality constraint(s) and bounds on variables are also studied and iterative algorithms of polynomial complexity are proposed. As an application, these algorithms are used in the implementation of stochastic quasigradient methods to some separable stochastic programs. Numerical approximation with respect to I1 and I4 norms, as a convex separable nonsmooth unconstrained minimization problem, is considered as well. Audience: Advanced undergraduate and graduate students, mathematical programming/ operations research specialists.