Modern information and communication technologies, together with a cultural upheaval within the research community, have profoundly changed research in nearly every aspect. Ranging from sharing and discussing ideas in social networks for scientists to new collaborative environments and novel publication formats, knowledge creation and dissemination...
This book explores the implications of acknowledging uncertainty and black swans for regulation of high-hazard technologies, for stakeholder acceptability of potentially hazardous activities and for risk governance. The conventional approach to risk assessment, which combines the likelihood of an event and the severity of its consequences, is poorl...
This book sheds new light on a selection of big data scenarios from an interdisciplinary perspective. It features legal, sociological and economic approaches to fundamental big data topics such as privacy, data quality and the ECJ's Safe Harbor decision on the one hand, and practical applications such as smart cars, wearables and web tracking ...
Machine learning techniques provide cost-effective alternatives to traditional methods for extracting underlying relationships between information and data and for predicting future events by processing existing information to train models. Efficient Learning Machines explores the major topics of machine learning, including knowledge discovery, cla...
This book written by international experts in the field of educational innovation is a guide for universities to become world-class universities. It contributes to the current international intellectual debate on the future of higher education. It also tells the story of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and its effort to become a ...
A series of reforms have greatly improved the efficiency, reliability, and environmental performance of the Chinese power sector. However, significant challenges remain: rapidly rising electricity demand, concerns about power system reliability and energy security, environmental degradation and climate change. China's government explicitly set...
This book offers a theory for the analysis of how children learn and are taught about whole numbers. Two meanings of numbers are distinguished – the analytical meaning, defined by the number system, and the representational meaning, identified by the use of numbers as conventional signs that stand for quantities. This framework makes it possible ...
This book presents Nils Petter Gleditsch, a staff member of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) since 1964, a former editor of the Journal for Peace Research (1983-2010), a former president of the International Studies Association (2008-2009) and the recipient of several academic awards as a pioneer in the scientific analysis of war and pea...
This book presents nine outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico...
This book presents the roles and mechanisms of signal transduction triggered by nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) stimulation in neuroprotection against toxic effects of risk factors of neurodegenerative diseases. Accumulating evidence suggests that nAChRs in the CNS play important roles not only in excitatory neurotransmission but also in...
This timely book addresses the conflict between globalism and nationalism. It provides a liberal communitarian response to the rise of populism occurring in many democracies. The book highlights the role of communities next to that of the state and the market. It spells out the policy implications of liberal communitarianism for privacy, freedom o...
It constitutes a unique source of knowledge and guidance for all healthcare workers who care for patients with sepsis and septic shock in resource-limited settings. More than eighty percent of the worldwide deaths related to sepsis occur in resource-limited settings in low and middle-income countries. Current international sepsis guidelines cannot ...
It explores the diverse phenomena which are challenging the international law of the sea today, using the unique perspective of a simultaneous analysis of the national, individual and common interests at stake. This perspective, which all the contributors bear in mind when treating their own topic, also constitutes a useful element in the effort to...
Actors and the Art of Performance: Under Exposure combines the author's two main biographical paths: her professional commitment to the fields of both theatre and philosophy. The art of acting on stage is analysed here not only from the theoretical perspective of a spectator, but also from the perspective of the actor. The author draws on her ...
The overall aim of this book, an outcome of the European FP7 FET Open NESS project, is to contribute to the ongoing effort to put the quantitative social sciences on a proper footing for the 21st century. A key focus is economics, and its implications on policy making, where the still dominant traditional approach increasingly struggles to capture ...
This is the first machine-generated scientific book in chemistry published by Springer Nature. Serving as an innovative prototype defining the current status of the technology, it also provides an overview about the latest trends of lithium-ion batteries research.This book explores future ways of informing researchers and professionals. State-of-th...
Beginning and experienced programmers will use this comprehensive guide to persistent memory programming. You will understand how persistent memory brings together several new software/hardware requirements, and offers great promise for better performance and faster application startup times - a huge leap forward in byte-addressable capacity compar...
The Assessment in Legal Education book series offers perspectives on assessment in legal education across a range of Common Law jurisdictions. Each volume in the series provides:
Information on assessment practices and cultures within a jurisdiction.A sample of innovative assessment practices and designs in a jurisdiction.Insights into how assessm...
The Chinese Economic Transformation, the 19th volume in the China Update book series, provides an opportunity for young economists to share their views on various issues relating to the Chinese economic transformation. More than half of the contributors to this book are female scholars. Some of the contributors are rising stars in the studies of th...
Over the last few years, members of the O'Reilly community have increasingly turned their attention to hardware. It's getting much easier to design, prototype, build and market hardware, and it's getting easier to integrate software and hardware into fluid packages of intelligence, beauty, and intuitive design. Hardware and software ...
Just how strong is the movement of big data analytics to the cloud? This report, based on a survey by O'Reilly data analyst John King, reveals that the desire among corporations to adopt big data-as-a-service is gaining momentum-and that many organizations with big data cloud experience are likely to expand their use.
King's recent sur...
If you've ever written a non-trivial JavaScript application, you know that creating a code base that's easy to maintain and scales well over time is no small feat. The complexity only grows as the project becomes larger. While it's impossible to plan for every change that could possibly happen over the life of a project, you can help...
How do we evaluate ambiguous concepts such as wellbeing, freedom, and social justice? How do we develop policies that offer everyone the best chance to achieve what they want from life? The capability approach, a theoretical framework pioneered by the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen in the 1980s, has become an increasingly influential way to ...
Consciousness is widely perceived as one of the most fundamental, interesting and difficult problems of our time. However, we still know next to nothing about the relationship between consciousness and the brain and we can only speculate about the consciousness of animals and machines.
Human and Machine Consciousness presents a new foundation fo...
Whether you're a business executive or a seasoned developer, something has led you on the quest to learn more about graphs - and what they can do for you.
This ebook will take those new to the world of graphs through the basics of graph technology, including: Using the intuitive Cypher query language; The importance of data relationships; K...
In a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness? Through a collection of essays and case studies, leading visionaries and practitioners both inside and outside of government share their ideas on how to...
Recent reductions in public funding for audiovisual products have led to dramatic changes in the industry. The lack of interaction between the industry and capital markets has made sourcing funds for audiovisual products especially difficult.
This book explains why the distance between the audiovisual and financial markets exists, and considers th...
Conviviality has lately become a catchword not only in academia but also among political activists. This open access book discusses conviviality in relation to the adjoining concepts cosmopolitanism and creolisation. The urgency of today's global predicament is not only an argument for the revival of all three concepts, but also a reason to br...
This free book focuses on the molecular mechanism of congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension, offering new insights into the development of pulmonary circulation and the ductus arteriosus. It describes in detail the molecular mechanisms involved in the development and morphogenesis of the heart, lungs and ductus arteriosus, covering a r...
This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how c...
This book collects 4 keynote and 15 theme lectures presented at the 2nd European Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (2ECEES), held in Istanbul, Turkey, from August 24 to 29, 2014. The conference was organized by the Turkish Earthquake Foundation - Earthquake Engineering Committee and Prime Ministry, Disaster and Emergency Managemen...
This book provides insight into the implementation of Life Cycle approaches along the entire business value chain, supporting environmental, social and economic sustainability related to the development of industrial technologies, products, services and policies; and the development and management of smart agricultural systems, smart mobility syste...