This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of...
This book is written by world-recognized experts in the fields of applied superconductivity and superconducting accelerator magnet technologies. It provides a contemporary review and assessment of the experience in research and development of high-field accelerator dipole magnets based on Nb3Sn superconductor over the past five decades. The reader ...
Recent years have seen spectacular advances in the field of circadian biology. These have attracted the interest of researchers in many fields, including endocrinology, neurosciences, cancer, and behavior. By integrating a circadian view within the fields of endocrinology and metabolism, researchers will be able to reveal many, yet-unsuspected aspe...
This book summarizes the findings of the VUELCO project, a multi-disciplinary and cross-boundary research funded by the European Commission's 7th framework program. It comprises four broad topics:1. The global significance of volcanic unrest2. Geophysical and geochemical fingerprints of unrest and precursory activity3. Magma dynami...
Using longitudinal data from the Swiss Household Panel to zoom in on continuity and change in the life course, this book describes how the lives of the Swiss population have changed in terms of health, family circumstances, work, political participation, and migration over the last sixteen years. What are the different trajectories in terms of mobi...
This book defines the new field of "Bioeconomy" as the sustainable and innovative use of biomass and biological knowledge to provide food, feed, industrial products, bioenergy and ecological services. The chapters highlight the importance of bioeconomy-related concepts in public, scientific, and political discourse. Using an interdiscipli...
This book reports on a novel and comprehensive approach to the uptake of ICT in Schools. It focuses on key questions, pedagogically sound ways of introducing ICT, new technical artifacts supporting the approach, the evaluation in a large-scale validator, and future work. While many innovations in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) have emerged over...
This second volume of ReConFort, published open access, addresses the decisive role of constitutional normativity, and focuses on discourses concerning the legal role of constitutional norms. Taken together with ReConFort I (National Sovereignty), it calls for an innovative reassessment of constitutional history drawing on key categories to convey ...
This book presents fresh ethnographic work from the regions of Africa and Melanesia—where the popularity of charismatic Christianity can be linked to a revival and transformation of witchcraft. The volume demonstrates how the Holy Spirit has become an adversary to the reconfirmed presence of witches, demons, and sorcerers as manifestations of evi...
This book presents the findings from on-site research into radioactive cesium contamination in various agricultural systems affected by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in March 2011. This third volume in the series reports on studies undertaken at contaminated sites such as farmland, forests, and marine and freshwater environment...
This in-depth survey of salutogenesis shows the breadth and strengths of this innovative perspective on health promotion, health care, and wellness. Background and historical chapters trace the development of the salutogenic model of health, and flesh out the central concepts, most notably generalized resistance resources and the sense of coherence...
This book presents methods to evaluate sustainable development using economic tools. The focus on sustainable development takes the reader beyond economic growth to encompass inclusion, environmental stewardship and good governance. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework for outcomes. In illustrating the SDGs, the book employs thr...
This book describes marked advances in imaging technology that have enabled the visualization of phenomena in ways formerly believed to be completelyimpossible. These technologies have made major contributions to the elucidation of the pathology of diseases as well as to their diagnosis and therapy. The volume presents various studies from molecula...
This book provides a critical account of the third sector and its future in Europe. It offers an original conceptualization of the third sector in its European manifestations alongside an overview of its major contours, including its structure, sources of support, and recent trends. It also assesses the impact of this sector in Europe which conside...
This book investigates child poverty from a philosophical perspective. It identifies the injustices of child poverty, relates them to the well-being of children, and discusses who has a moral responsibility to secure social justice for children....
This book offers low-cost and rapid molecular assays for the characterization of mutant plant germplasm. Detailed protocols are provided for the desiccation of plant tissues; the extraction of high-quality DNA for downstream applications; the extraction of single-strand-specific nucleases for single nucleotide polymorphism; and small insertion/dele...
Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided.The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the di...
The Privacy Engineer's Manifesto: Getting from Policy to Code to QA to Value is the first book of its kind, offering industry-proven solutions that go beyond mere theory and adding lucid perspectives on the challenges and opportunities raised with the emerging "personal" information economy.
The authors, a uniquely skilled team of...
Sustainable development is the 21st Century's wicked problem. After 40 years into this agenda have reversed only few unsustainable trends we hear the call for aparadigm shift, transformation, radical change or system innovations in order to finally change course. But what does this actually mean? And how do we put it into practice?
This book ...
Despite the emphasis of the European Regional Policy on territorial cohesion, regional disparities have been increasing within Europe in the past years. The metropolitan areas in almost all countries are considerably growing while regions outside of agglomerations are stagnating or even declining. Against this background this book aims to provide a...
This book describes the differences in US census coverage, also referred to as "differential undercount", by showing which groups have the highest net undercounts and which groups have the greatest undercount differentials, and discusses why such undercounts occur. In addition to focusing on measuring census coverage for several demograph...
This book focuses on nuclear engineering education in the post-Fukushima era. It was edited by the organizers of the summer school held in August 2011 in University of California, Berkeley, as part of a collaborative program between the University of Tokyo and UC Berkeley. Motivated by the particular relevance and importance of social-scientific ap...
This compact open access reference delves beyond popular concepts of educated consumers and an informed public by examining the science behind deliberative engagement. Using data from four longitudinal studies, the authors assess public engagement methods in deliberative discussions of ethical, legal, and social issues concerning innovations in nan...
The book serves both as a reference for
various scaled models with corresponding dimensionless numbers, and as a
resource for learning the art of scaling.
A special feature of the book is the emphasis on how to create software
for scaled models, based on existing software for unscaled models.
Scaling (or non-dimensionalization) is a
mathematical...
Flow of ions through voltage gated channels can be represented theoretically using stochastic differential equations where the gating mechanism is represented by a Markov model. The flow through a channel can be manipulated using various drugs, and the effect of a given drug can be reflected by changing the Markov model. These lecture notes provide...
As cities develop, more land is converted into impervious surfaces, which do not allow water to infiltrate. Careful urban planning is needed to ensure that the hydrologic cycle and water quality of the catchment areas are not affected. There are techniques that can attenuate peak flow during rain events and reduce the amount of metals, nutrients, a...
This book provides a comprehensive overview of volcanic crisis research, the goal being to establish ways of successfully applying volcanology in practice and to identify areas that need to be addressed for future progress. It shows how volcano crises are managed in practice, and helps to establish best practices. Consequently the book brings toge...
This book addresses the various disciplinary aspects of nature-based solutions in flood risk management on private land. In recent decades, water management has been moving towards nature-based solutions. These are assumed to be much more multi-purpose than traditional "grey infrastructures" and seem to be regarded as a panacea for many e...
This book presents detailed pathways to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2050, globally and across ten geographical regions. Based on state-of-the-art scenario modelling, it provides the vital missing link between renewable energy targets and the measures needed to achieve them. Bringing together the latest research in climate science, renewable en...
This book compares the lessons learned from a wetland-perspective approach to the changing climate and the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) with regard to environmental conservation. Examples from Germany and Poland are discussed due to the efficiency of their respective implementations of water conservation policies. Although th...
This book asks just how climate-smart our food really is. It follows an average day's worth of food and drink to see where it comes from, how far it travels, and the carbon price we all pay for it. From our breakfast tea and toast, through breaktime chocolate bar, to take-away supper, Dave Reay explores the weather extremes the world's fa...
This book contains the research report of the Collaborative Research Center "Micro Cold Forming" (SFB 747) of the University of Bremen, Germany. The topical research focus lies on new methods and processes for a mastered mass production of micro parts which are smaller than 1mm (by forming in batch size higher than one million). The targe...