This volume focuses on the etiology and morphogenesis of congenital heart diseases. It reviews in detail the early development and differentiation of the heart, and later morphologic events of the cardiovascular system, covering a wide range of topics such as gene functions, growth factors, transcription factors and cellular interactions that are i...
The book uses an economic lens to identify the main features of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), its likely impact, and the challenges associated with its implementation. Drawing upon theory and concepts from agricultural development, institutional, and resource economics, this book expands and formalizes the conceptual foundations of CSA. Focusing...
The goal of this book is to develop an approach to clinical health care ethics that is more accessible to, and usable by, health professionals than the now-dominant approaches that focus, for example, on the application of ethical principles. The book elaborates the view that health professionals have the emotional and intellectual resources to ...
This book provides original, up-to-date case studies of "ethics dumping" that were largely facilitated by loopholes in the ethics governance of low and middle-income countries. It is instructive even to experienced researchers since it provides a voice to vulnerable populations from the forementioned countries. Ensuring the ethical conduc...
This book examines the current state of elective placements of medical undergraduate students in developing countries and their impact on health care education at home. Drawing from a recent case study of volunteer deployment in Uganda, the authors provide an in-depth evaluation of the impacts on the students themselves and the learning outcomes as...
This book draws on award-winning cross-generational research comparing the complex and life-changing processes of settlement among Albanian migrants and their adolescent children in three European cities: London (UK), Thessaloniki (Greece), and Florence (Italy). Building on key concepts from the social sciences and migration studies, such as identi...
This book is the first comprehensive guideline for the beryllium-7 (Be-7) technique that can be applied to evaluate short-term patterns and budgets of soil redistribution in agricultural landscapes. While covering the fundamental and basic concepts of the approach, this book distinguishes itself from other publications by offering step-by-step inst...
This book describes the coming about and first results of the AiREAS "healthy city" cooperative in the city of Eindhoven and Province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. AiREAS is an initiative focused on the multidisciplinary co-creation of healthy cities using the core human value of human health and air quality as guiding principle fo...
This book explores if and how Russian policies towards the Far East region of the country – and East Asia more broadly – have changed since the onset of the Ukraine crisis and Russia's annexation of Crimea. Following the 2014 annexation and the subsequent enactment of a sanctions regime against the country, the Kremlin has emphasized the e...
The aim of this book is to document for the first time the dimensions and requirements of effective integrated groundwater management (IGM). Groundwater management is a formidable challenge, one that remains one of humanity's foremost priorities. It has become a largely non-renewable resource that is overexploited in many parts of the world. I...
At a time when contemporary challenges seem to many to be insurmountable, this book offers an optimistic view of the future and provides a road map for societies to get there. Drawing upon extensive research and many years as a thought leader in environmental and sustainability issues in Japan and internationally, Hiroshi Komiyama analyzes the most...
How can we design more sustainable industrial and urban systems that reduce environmental impacts while supporting a high quality of life for everyone? What progress has been made towards reducing resource use and waste, and what are the prospects for more resilient material-efficient economies? What are the environmental and social impacts of glob...
The Gulf of Mexico is an open and dynamic marine ecosystem rich in natural resources but heavily impacted by human activities, including agricultural, industrial, commercial and coastal development. Nutrients and pollutants from coastal communities and dozens of rivers flow into the Gulf, including material from the Mississippi River watershed, whi...
This open access volume examines experiences of contemporary Latvian migrants, thereby focusing on reasons for emigration, processes of integration in their host countries, and – in the case of return migration - re-integration in their home country. In the context of European migration, the book describes the case of Latvia, which is interesting...
S-BPM stands for "subject-oriented business process management" and focuses on subjects that represent the entities (people, programs etc.) that are actively engaged in processes. S-BPM has become one of the most widely discussed approaches for process professionals. Its potential particularly lies in the integration of advanced informati...
The objective of this report is to examine the extent to which countries in Latin America and the Caribbean participate in global value chains and what are the drivers of such participation. Production processes have been increasingly fragmented worldwide. For example, the production of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner involves 43 suppliers located in 13...
Phylogenetic diversity is now a key concept for biodiversity conservation due to its link to option value, evolutionary potential and to the possibility of guiding conservation across scales. Present facilities for obtaining molecular sequences and metagenomes are powering this research field, rendering available detailed information of phylogeneti...
This book presents twelve unique studies on mediation from researchers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, respectively. Each study highlights important aspects of mediation, including the role of children in family mediation, the evolution and ambivalent application of restorative justice in the Nordic countries, the confusion of roles in cour...
Тhis book offers a concise, practice-oriented reference-guide to the field of ocean wave energy. The ten chapters highlight the key rules of thumb, address all the main technical engineering aspects and describe in detail all the key aspects to be considered in the techno-economic assessment of wave energy converters. Written in an easy-to-underst...
The Gulf of Mexico is an open and dynamic marine ecosystem rich in natural resources but heavily impacted by human activities, including agricultural, industrial, commercial and coastal development. Nutrients and pollutants from coastal communities and dozens of rivers flow into the Gulf, including material from the Mississippi River watershed, whi...
This book presents a selection of the best contributions to the Digital Cities 9 Workshop held in Limerick in 2015, combining a number of the latest academic insights into new collaborative modes of city making that are firmly rooted in empirical findings about the actual practices of citizens, designers and policy makers. It explores the affordanc...
This book offers something for everyone working with market segmentation: practical guidance for users of market segmentation solutions; organisational guidance on implementation issues; guidance for market researchers in charge of collecting suitable data; and guidance for data analysts with respect to the technical and statistical aspects of mark...
This book demonstrates the application of simulation modelling and network analysis techniques in the field of Roman studies. It summarizes and discusses the results of a 5-year research project carried out by the editors that aimed to apply spatial dynamical modelling to reconstruct and understand the socio-economic development of the Dutch part o...
This book summarizes the vast amount of research related to teaching and learning probability that has been conducted for more than 50 years in a variety of disciplines. It begins with a synthesis of the most important probability interpretations throughout history: intuitive, classical, frequentist, subjective, logical propensity and axiomatic vie...
This book provides a unique synthesis of concepts and tools to examine natural resource, socio-economic, legal, policy and institutional issues that are important for managing urban growth into the future. The book will particularly help the reader to understand the current issues and challenges and develop strategies and practices to cope with fut...
Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology attempts to provide concise, critical reviews of timely advances, philosophy and significant areas of accomplished or needed endeavor in the total field of xenobiotics, in any segment of the environment, as well as toxicological implications....
Rethinking the Internet of Things was a 2014 Jolt Award Finalist, the highest honor for a programming book. And the amazing part is that there is no code in the book.
Over the next decade, most devices connected to the Internet will not be used by people in the familiar way that personal computers, tablets and smart phones are. Billions of inter...
This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses t...
Learn to design, implement, measure, and improve DevOps programs that are tailored to your organization. This concise guide assists leaders who are accountable for the rapid development of high-quality software applications.
In DevOps for Digital Leaders, deep collective experience on both sides of the dev - ops divide informs the global thought l...
This book addresses the issue of diffusing sustainable energy access inlow- and middle-income contexts.
Access to energy is one of the greatest challenges for many people living in low-income and developing contexts, as around 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity.Distributed Renewable Energy systems (DRE) are considered a promising approa...
This book examines the modern role of the European School system within the European Union, at a time when the global economy demands a new vision for contemporary education. The European schools are currently in a state of crisis: their 60-year-old tradition of bilingual and multilingual education is being strained by rapid EU expansion and the re...
This book examines health trajectories and health transitions at different stages of the life course, including childhood, adulthood and later life. It provides findings that assess the role of biological and social transitions on health status over time.The essays examine a wide range of health issues, including the consequences of military servic...