This open book focuses on processing, modeling, and visualization of anisotropy information, which are often addressed by employing sophisticated mathematical constructs such as tensors and other higher-order descriptors. It also discusses adaptations of such constructs to problems encountered in seemingly dissimilar areas of medical imaging, physi...
This open book examines recent advances in how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have elicited widespread debate over their benefits and drawbacks for humanity. The emergent technologies have for instance implications within medicine and health care, employment, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, and armed conflict. While there has been...
This open book critiques real world learning across both the curriculum and extracurricular activities. Drawing on disciplines as diverse as business, health, fashion, sociology and geography, the editors and authors employ a cross-disciplinary approach to examine how this concept is being applied in higher education. Divided into three parts, the ...
This open book shares the experiences of Tropical Legumes III (TLIII) project in facilitating access to seed of improved legume varieties to smallholder farmers through innovation platforms. It highlights practices and guiding principles implemented in eight developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This book details key processes ...
This open book offers a selection of research papers and case studies presented at the 3rd international conference "Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions", held in December 2019 in Bolzano, Italy, and explores the concept of smart and sustainable planning, including top contributions from academics, policy makers, consult...
This open book summarizes the first two decades of the NII Testbeds and Community for Information access Research (NTCIR). NTCIR is a series of evaluation forums run by a global team of researchers and hosted by the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Japan. The book is unique in that it discusses not just what was done at NTCIR, but also how ...
This open book is an outcome of the collaboration between the Soil and Water Management & Crop Nutrition Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, Austria, and the German Science Foundation research unit DASI...
The essays in this open access volume identify the key ingredients for success in capitalizing on public investments in scientific projects and the development of large-scale research infrastructures.Investment in science – whether in education and training or through public funding for developing new research tools and technologies – is a cruc...
This open volume provides readers with an open access protocol collection and wide-ranging recommendations for preclinical renal MRI used in translational research. The chapters in this book are interdisciplinary in nature and bridge the gaps between physics, physiology, and medicine. They are designed to enhance training in renal MRI sciences and ...
This edited volume is an open title and assembles both the historical consciousness and transformation of the MENA region in various disciplinary and topical facets. At the same time, it aims to go beyond the MENA region, contributing to critical debates on area studies while pointing out transregional and cultural references in a broad and compara...
This open volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies.
The use and utility of deterrence in...
This open book reviews the water-agro-food and socio-eco-system of the Seine River basin (76,000 km2), and offers a historical perspective on the river's long-term contamination. The Seine basin is inhabited by circa 17 million people and is impacted by intensive agricultural practices and industrial activities. These pressures have gradually ...
This open volume of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation offers the first comprehensive legal and regulatory analysis of the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD). The IDD came into force on 1 October 2018 and regulates the distribution of insurance products in the EU. The book examines the main changes accompanying the ...
This open methodological book summarises existing analysing techniques using data from PIAAC, a study initiated by the OECD that assesses key cognitive and occupational skills of the adult population in more than 40 countries. The approximately 65 PIAAC datasets that has been published worldwide to date has been widely received and used by an inter...
This open book carefully explores the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate in Western Europe. Relying on different indicators, it demonstrates an important transformation in the class basis of social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the working-class vote is strongly fragmented and social de...
This open book, like Rayleigh's classic Theory of Sound, focuses on experiments and on approximation techniques rather than mathematical rigor. The second edition has benefited from comments and corrections provided by many acousticians, in particular those who have used the first edition in undergraduate and graduate courses. For example, pha...
Written by a group of international experts in the field and the result of over ten years of collaboration, it allows students and readers to gain to gain a detailed understanding of scar and wound treatment - a topic still dispersed among various disciplines. The content is divided into three parts for easy reference. The first part focuses on the...
This open book is among the first cross-disciplinary works about Manufacturing 4.0. It includes chapters about the technical, the economic, and the social aspects of this important phenomenon. Together the material presented allows the reader to develop a holistic picture of where the manufacturing industry and the parts of the society that depend ...
This open volume aims to methodologically improve our understanding of biodiversity by linking disciplines that incorporate remote sensing, and uniting data and perspectives in the fields of biology, landscape ecology, and geography. The book provides a framework for how biodiversity can be detected and evaluated - focusing particularly on plants -...
This open book aims to show which factors have been decisive in the rise of successful countries. Never before have so many people been so well off. However, prosperity is not a law of nature; it has to be worked for. A liberal economy stands at the forefront of this success - not as a political system, but as a set of economic rules promoting comp...
Organic waste composting is another excellent example to demonstrate the power and the benefits of nexus thinking. Even though organic waste composting itself is not a new topic, those who want to start a new project or align an ongoing project with nexus thinking, find it difficult to gather the necessary information. With nine case studies from f...
This open book describes the Reading Success project, in which a 5-step, assessment-to- intervention process, based on the Simple View of Reading, was used within a primary school setting in Australia to better support those students who struggle with reading. It provides an easily accessible overview of each step of the process involved in impleme...
This open book explores the enactment, impact and implications of the Prevent Duty across a range of educational contexts. In July 2015 the UK became the first country to place a specific legal requirement on those working in education to contribute to efforts to 'prevent people from being drawn into terrorism'. Drawing on extensive re...
This open book aims to clarify the term „evidence-based medicine" (EBM) from a philosophy of science perspective. The author, Marie-Caroline Schulte discusses the importance of evi-dence in medical research and practice with a focus on the ethical and methodological prob-lems of EBM. The claims that EBM can herald a new theory of epistemolog...
This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2020, held in Leiden, The Netherlands, in September 2020.
The 60 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 111 submissions. The were organized in topica...
This open book brings together oral histories that record the experiences of individuals with intellectual disabilities in Shanghai as they participate in their careers. Employees with intellectual disabilities describe their experiences seeking, attaining, and maintaining employment. Their managers, colleagues, and family members also provide keen...
This open book focuses on robot introspection, which has a direct impact on physical human - robot interaction and long-term autonomy, and which can benefit from autonomous anomaly monitoring and diagnosis, as well as anomaly recovery strategies. In robotics, the ability to reason, solve their own anomalies and proactively enrich owned knowledge is...
This open book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2020, which was planned to be held during June 8-12, 2020, at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was postponed until an undetermined date.XP is the premier agile software devel...
This open access book offers a practical guide into research ethics for undergraduate students in the social sciences. A step-by-step approach of the most viable issues, in-depth discussions of case histories and a variety of didactical tools will aid the student to grasp the issues at hand and help him or her develop strategies to deal with them.T...
This open short reader discusses the emerging patterns of sedentary migration versus mobility of the highly-skilled thereby providing a comprehensive overview of the recent literature on highly-skilled migration. Highly-skilled migrations are arguably the only non-controversial migrant category in political and public discourse. The common percepti...
This open book explores ways to leverage information technology and machine learning to combat disease and promote health, especially in resource-constrained settings. It focuses on digital disease surveillance through the application of machine learning to non-traditional data sources. Developing countries are uniquely prone to large-scale emergin...
This open book sets out the stress-system model for functional somatic symptoms in children and adolescents. The book begins by exploring the initial encounter between the paediatrician, child, and family, moves through the assessment process, including the formulation and the treatment contract, and then describes the various forms of treatment th...