The first description of skin lesions resembling those caused by Mycobacterium ulcer-ans, dates back to the late nineteenth century, when the missionary physician Albert Cook [1] recorded a range of chronic, necrotizing skin ulcers in patients in Uganda. In the 1950s and 1960s a larger case series of patients with similar ulcers was detected in today’s Nakasongola district in Uganda [2, …
Think of your to-do list at work. Chances are the most important tasks require you to work with others - and the success of those endeavors depends on the effectiveness of your collaboration. According to management expert Leigh Thompson, collaboration that is conscious, planned, and focused on generating new ideas builds excitement and produces what she calls a "creative conspiracy". Teams …
At that time I had just published research indicating that the overwhelming majority of patients who had undergone multiple surgeries on noses that the patients already knew were normal had a 90% likelihood of childhood abuse or neglect, and that the chance of making those patients happy in one operation was only 3%.1 , 2 These are the desperate people tha…
he World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that, worldwide, approximately 900,000 individuals develop each year hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of liver cancer [1]. Overall, 69.8% of all HCC cases occur in males, with a male-to-female ratio of 2.66. Accordingly, HCC is the fifth most frequent incident cancer type in men, the ninth in women, and the …
There is a general perception amongst veterinary students and sheep producers that there are limited opportunities for a ‘sheep vet’ because individual sheep are generally of low value and the cost of veterinary involvement is too high. It is quite true that the value of individual sheep in commercial flocks is generally too low for sheep diseases with a low incidence to attr…
THE NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF MEAT I 13The Mediterranean Diet is the result of millennia of exchanges of food and cul-tures between people from all the coun-tries bordering the Mediterranean basin. This model, known to be one of the health-iest and most balanced, in the twentieth century has characterised the eating hab-its of the inhabitants of the Mediterrane-an region, o…
The main consequence of osteoporosis is that it is a condition in which bone mass is depleted and bone structure is destroyed to the degree that bone becomes fragile and prone to fractures. For affected patients, these ‘fragility fractures’ are associated with substantial pain and suffering, disability and even death, along with substantial costs to society. The problems creat…
Technical politics is the name for disputes over technology design involving social actors with different values, interests and ideas about the future shape of society. Such disputes are surely as old as technology itself but in the modern, industrial period they tended to involve quite narrow sections of society, and the resultant technology served very spe-cifi…
Women present a historic and worrying gap in science and technology-related disciplines, generally knowns as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics), except in the case of health professions. A holistic approach isneeded to support policymakers worldwide in bridging the gender gap in STEM, inwhich higher education institutions have a crucial role. Promoting this active impli-cat…
Puberty is a time of tumultuous transition from childhood to adulthood. This trans-formative developmental spurt is activated by rapid physical changes, hormonal development and the explosive activity of neurons. My book will describe both this physical development and the typically adolescent “state of mind”– somethingthat can remain active long after adolescence is over. When t…
The IoT European Platforms Initiative (IoT-EPI) projects are address-ing the topic of Internet of Things and Platforms for Connected Smart Objects and aim to deliver an IoT extended into a web of platforms for connected devices and objects that supports smart environments, businesses, services and persons with dynamic and adaptive configu-ration capabilities. The specific areas of …
This chapter sets out the aims of this book and explains themethods and approaches applied in its production. It alsoaspires to be a guide, offering readers instructions as to howbest to use the book. We therefore strongly encourage allreaders to read this chapter carefully, so as to gain a clearerunderstanding of all the different aspects analysed in thisbook. This chapter also provides essent…
For thousands of years the oceans have been highly prized and have providedus with efficient transport and a plentiful supply of food. Therefore, it seemsobvious that our modern society should continue to use the oceans andmaximize the benefits. There might be great treasures of valuable materials,new bio-compounds and endless energy. However society is reluctant tochange an…
The water I want to well is the deep language making meaning that deepens the way we think about autistic perception. The well is the way we rapaciously answer the way that neurotypicality speaks about arrangement of art attention and autistic importance that people don’t really want and I think that the water is required for easy language and should not sta…
The point of this story is not to marvel at the way in which an artificial object, intrinsically linked to science and human exploration, can gradually become alien to us. In popular parlance, the alien is that which is strange, inhuman and sometimes hostile. It is often used to describe the possible residents of other planetary bodies, perhaps beyond the edge of our solar system. Our desire to…
Robots have the connotation of a futuristic technology. In fact, however, theyhave been around for quite a while: Simple self-operating machines,so-calledautomata, existed already in ancient Greece, and the manufacturing tradi-tion continued on into medieval times (Truitt, 2015). In the fifteenth century,Leonardo da Vinci drew plans for a humanoid robot (Moran, 2006), and inthe eighteenth centu…
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is a multidisciplinary research field that integrates disciplines such as engineering, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and more1. Collaboration between different disciplines is necessary to achieve goals (such as developing robotic systems for human-aware navigation), but can be com-plicated as each discipline has a different jargon, uses different methods, and …
The ascomycete fungus Clonostachys rosea was reported as an aggressive mycoparasite in the late 1950s (Barnett and Lilly, 1962), and initial attempts to use it for biological control of plant diseases soon followed (Shigo, 1958). Since then, there has been a wealth of new knowledge emerging concerning the ecology, physiology and genetics of C. rosea, as well as concerning …
Communication in noisy reverberant environments is an immense challenge forour auditory attention. Referred to as the ?cocktail-party effect?, it has beenin the interest of research since Cherry [26] reported his initial study askingparticipants to selectively listen to one ear while ignoring the speech from adistracting speaker in the other ear. Using dichotic-listening paradigms, manydifferen…
The discovery of radiation belts dates back to the dawn of the space age when theknowledge of the physical properties of the magnetosphere was still in its infancy. InFebruary 1958 the first U.S. satelliteExplorerI1carried a Geiger–Müller instrumentthat was designed to measure cosmic radiation. It indeed did so until the space craft reached the altitude of about 700 km when the instrument my…
The aftermath of a global pandemic, warfare in Eastern Europe, increas-ingly uncertain supply chains, spiralling cost of living, populist politics and the consequences of disastrous climate change: all these challenges bring the uncertainty of a hostile world into our most immediate focus. What was once only known through history or television news reporting from a different continent is now–…
MEC provides a distributed computing environment by placing compute and storageresources closer to the consumer or enterprise end user. The termMECwas first intro-duced in 2013, when Nokia Siemens Networks and IBM developed a platform calledApplication Service Platform for Networks to allow mobile operators to deploy, run,and integrate applications at the edge of the network [2]. In 2014, the M…
The energy sector accounts for three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions presently, and consequently, efforts to mitigate the consequences of climate change rely massively on improving the condition of our energy consumption, production and transportation. While many declarations for net-zero futures have been made, it requires a lot of efforts at …
Pregnancy is a special time that can bring many questions. We hope that this book will help you learn about how to take care of yourself and your growing baby. We suggest that you read this book and talk with your health care provider, your family, your partner, and friends about what you have learned and questions you may have. Learning to be a father and/or a partner takes time. A partner can…
The present has made a pressing matter of the future. The crises of the present—climate change, biodiversity crises, the foreseeable scarcity of resources, energy consumption, and (more) pandemics—have thrown human existence, or at least the specific lifestyles we cultivate, into question. One probable future that looms on the horizon is of particular concern: if pro-ducts continue to be ma…
The first global story concerns Finland’s entry to the world of global capitalism and the benefits of accommodating a huge international company. It also looks at the other side of the coin, a Nordic welfare state dependent on one field of technology and the special interests of one dominant actor with an Anglo-Saxon busi-ness mindset. In that context, ideas and argumentat…
Air distribution affects air quality, thermal environment, and work efficiency. The goal of ventilation is to provide occupants with clean air for breathing and thermal comfort. In essence, ventilation means controlling air movement in rooms or built environments. It is the science of studying the interaction of natural convection and organized cur…
After 50 years of debate on this crucial question, the evidence is increas-ingly strong in favor of “yes.” In the well-known study “Corporate Purpose and Financial Performance,”1 Gartenberg, Prat and Serafeim demonstrate, with a large data sample from more than 900 companies and half a million employees, that companies can achieve better results if they inc…
Water is not only the beginning of all things, as the old Greeks had alreadyrealized, but without water, no life on earth is possible, and clean water is also aprecondition for any form of sustainable development. There is enough availablefreshwater on earth (about 91,000 km3) to supply every individual on earth (about7.5 billion in 2020) approx. 12,000l, more than enough to live decently. Howe…
While at medical school in north China during the sec-ond Sino-Japanese war (1936–45), Professor Ma chose to specialise in traditional medicine. As a medical graduate in revolutionary China, he was then allocated a position teaching physiology in Peking Medical College (Beiyi Xueyuan ????), which allowed him ample time for reading the medical classics, a pursuit that he found suited him bette…
This book is about the challenges and opportunities that countries face inusing their extractive industries to achieve inclusive development. Its focus ison the developing world, both low-income countries (LICs) and middle-income countries (MICs), drawing upon the experiences of high-incomecountries (HICs) when relevant. Extractive industries have shaped the econ-omies, societies, and politics …
With a roller coaster history of economic boom followed by crushing bust, the Central African Copperbelt has come to epitomise Africa’s faltering ‘Industrial Revolution’.1 Throughout the twentieth century, its large-scale industrial copper mines attracted people, capital and power across national and continental boundaries. Following a protracted period of expansion after 1945,…
nterest of scientists has been deviating since 20th century, from the use of animals intheir experimental work towards substituting with‘Alternatives’, thus reducing the useof live animals in experiments. This‘Alternative’concept is principally the‘Replacement’alternative that was indicated in the book;‘The Principles of HumaneExperimental Technique’written by Russell and Burch …
In the past few years, there has been a significant increase in the use and development of KGs and their various applications. These KGs are designed to store world knowledge, represented as triples (i.e., .) consisting of entities, relations, and other entities, with each entity referring to a distinct real-world object, and each relation repre…
Levees are typically very long structures built above the natural ground level to either channel water or prevent it from flowing through. Excluding those built along canals, levees are designed to protect certain areas against river or marine flooding. This handbook only addresses riverine flood protection levees that pro-vide partial or total protection against floodplain inundation.As we wil…
Traditional concrete has a limited fluidity and needs to be actively compacted. Its performance has now been scientifically surpassed by highly technological mixtures based on multiple blends of powders combined with specially designed admixtures, showing rheological properties that make the fresh material self-compacting [1]. In spite of its many advantages (reduced energy consumpti…
n an era where environmental sustainability and resource scarcity are becoming increasingly critical concerns, innovative approaches to wastewater treatment and energy recovery have gained significant attention. The convergence of nanotechnology and biotechnology has paved the way for revolutionary solutions that address these challenges in unprecedented ways. This book Nanobiohybrids for Advan…
Many processes in nature and technology are influenced by droplet dynamics. Theseinclude ubiquitous phenomena and applications, such as rain clouds or fuel injec-tion into combustion chambers, but also highly advanced devices such as rocketengines or spray based production processes in the pharmaceutical industry. Dueto their omnipresence, droplets have been the focus of scientific interest for…
The farming and agricultural robotics industries are inextricably linked. This connection is reinforced every year at the FIRA International Forum of Agricultural Robots, where, inevitably, there are new players and new problems, bigger goals and better solutions.As the circumstances change, the innovators, disruptors, regulators and users change, too. This growth depends on everyone’s abilit…
The Earth, our home planet, was “born” some 4.5 billion years ago. Vol-canic and hot, the planet was rotating and cooling. In volcanic eruptions, gases such as CO2, CO, NOx and water vapour were released. Additionally, some atmospheric components including water (vapour) came from the Earth’s bombardment by meteors and comets. After a solid surface was formed whose temperature cooled down…
After providing an overview of the drones’industry history and its future evolutionfrom a technological point of view as a prologue to the book, in thisfirst chapter acontextualisation of the AiRT project is presented. We start by setting out theidentification of the problems on which the proposal was based, its objectives,methodology and work plan development, including the main achievements…
The discovery of ammonia synthesis from the elements forms the basis of dis-cussion for many topics including fertilizer and food, environmental protection,the repercussions of scientific research, and economic transformation, as well asother industrial, political, and social events. The story in this book focuses on thedevelopment of the natural sciences and de…
The global petrochemical industry is at a crossroads. As an essential modern industry but also a major polluter, it faces threats to its core business. Petro-chemicals surround us in thousands of everyday products, yet they pose health and climate risks across every stage of their lifecycle. On the eve of the covid-19 pandemic, the petrochemical industry was facing mounting public pres-sure t…
The new concept of health, developed in the recent years, considers the person’s well-being more heterogeneously. A new model that considers the relationship between human health and the environment has strongly emerged during the last three decades. Our state of well-being is continually threatened by a series of internal and external disturbin…
Chemical monitoring provides a quantitative assessment of individual organiccontaminant concentrations in a water sample but does not account for thepresence of unknown compounds such as transformation products, untargetedchemicals (i.e., not previously known to be present) or for interactions amongchemicals. Bioanalytical monitoring, also called effect-based monitoring (EBM),is complementary t…
Afifth edition of Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology is very gratifying, and again we have the pleasure of thanking all of our colleagues in teaching who continue to use our textbook and of welcoming new teachers and students. Changes have been made in the content of the book to keep the material as current as possible. Most of these are small changes, such as a new cell organelle, the protea…
Bring meaning and joy to all your days with this internationally best-selling guide to the Japanese concept of ikigai - the happiness of always being busy - as revealed by the daily habits of the world's longest-living people. "Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years." (Japanese proverb) According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai - a reason for living. And ac…
In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs - a real-life Tony Stark - and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new makers. Elon Musk spotlights the technology and vision of Elon Musk, the renowne…
Memories are an integral part of being human. They haunt us, we cherish them, and in our lives we collect more of them with each new experience. Without memory, you would not be able to maintain a relationship, drive your car, talk to your children, read a poem, watch television, or do much of anything at all. Memory: A Very Short Introduction explores the fascinating intricacies of human memor…
Civil engineering has made an inestimable contribution to modern life, providing the crucial expertise behind our vast transportation systems and the wide array of built structures where we work, study, and play. In this Very Short Introduction, engineer David Muir Wood turns a spotlight on a field that we often take for granted. He sheds light on the nature and importance of civil engineering …