Computer ScienceScience & MathematicsEconomics & FinanceBusiness & ManagementPolitics & GovernmentHistoryPhilosophy
Cloud Design Patterns
Cloud applications have a unique set of characteristics. They run on commodity hardware, provide services to untrusted users, and deal with unpredictable workloads. These factors impose a range of problems that you, as a designer or developer, need to resolve. Your applications must be resilient so that they can recover from failures, secure to pro...
The Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching
This book provides a practical philosophy for promoting students' sophisticated thinking from Early Childhood to PhD in ways that explicitly interconnect across the years of education. It will help teachers, academics and the broader learning and teaching community to understand and implement these connections by introducing a conceptual frame...
Building Cloud Apps with Microsoft Azure
This book walks you through a patterns-based approach to building real-world cloud solutions. The patterns apply to the development process as well as to architecture and coding practices. Developers who are curious about developing for the cloud, are considering a move to the cloud, or are new to cloud development will find here a concise overv...
Building Real-World Cloud Apps with Windows Azure
This book walks you through a patterns-based approach to building real-world cloud solutions. The patterns apply to the development process as well as to architecture and coding practices. Developers who are curious about developing for the cloud, considering a move to the cloud, or are new to cloud development will find here a concise overview ...
Games and Rules
Why do we play games and why do we play them on computers? The contributors of Games and Rules take a closer look at the core of each game and the motivational system that is the game mechanics. Games are control circuits that organize the game world with their (joint) players and establish motivations in a dedicated space, a "Magic Circle,&qu...
Environmental Valuation with Discrete Choice Experiments
This open book offers up-to-date advice and practical guidance on how to undertake a discrete choice experiment as a tool for environmental valuation. It discusses crucial issues in designing, implementing and analysing choice experiments. Compiled by leading experts in the field, the book promotes discrete choice analysis in environmental valuatio...
The GEO Handbook on Biodiversity Observation Networks
Biodiversity observation systems are almost everywhere inadequate to meet local, national and international (treaty) obligations. As a result of alarmingly rapid declines in biodiversity in the modern era, there is a strong, worldwide desire to upgrade our monitoring systems, but little clarity on what is actually needed and how it can be assembled...
Responsive Open Learning Environments
This book presents the outcomes of four years of educational research in the EU-supported project called ROLE (Responsive Online Learning Environments). ROLE technology is centered around the concept of self-regulated learning that creates responsible learners, who are capable of critical thinking and able to plan their own learning processes. ROL...
Ranaviruses
The first book of its kind, this work discusses the global extent of ranaviruses, principles of ranavirus ecology and evolution. The research included provides guidance on designing ranavirus surveillance studies to determine risk. Ranaviruses are are double-stranded DNA viruses that cause hemorrhagic disease in amphibians, reptiles, and fish. Rana...
Contemporary Bioethics
This book discusses the common principles of morality and ethics derived from divinely endowed intuitive reason through the creation of al-fitr' a (nature) and human intellect (al-'aql). Biomedical topics are presented and ethical issues related to topics such as genetic testing, assisted reproduction and organ transplantation are discuss...
Managing Risk and Information Security
Examine the evolving enterprise security landscape and discover how to manage and survive risk. While based primarily on the author's experience and insights at major companies where he has served as CISO and CSPO, the book also includes many examples from other well-known companies and provides guidance for a management-level audience. Man...
Secondary Analysis of Electronic Health Records
This open book trains the next generation of scientists representing different disciplines to leverage the data generated during routine patient care. It formulates a more complete lexicon of evidence-based recommendations and support shared, ethical decision making by doctors with their patients. Diagnostic and therapeutic technologies continue ...
Food Price Volatility and Its Implications for Food Security and Policy
This book provides fresh insights into concepts, methods and new research findings on the causes of excessive food price volatility. It also discusses the implications for food security and policy responses to mitigate excessive volatility. The approaches applied by the contributors range from on-the-ground surveys, to panel econometrics and innova...
The Gene Ontology Handbook
This book provides a practical and self-contained overview of the Gene Ontology (GO), the leading project to organize biological knowledge on genes and their products across genomic resources. Written for biologists and bioinformaticians, it covers the state-of-the-art of how GO annotations are made, how they are evaluated, and what sort of analyse...
Marginality
This volume presents new insights on marginality, i.e. the situation of people living on the edge of socio-economic and ecological systems. The marginality concept leads to different development policies. While the prevalence of poverty declined by about 50 percent in the past two decades, any further reduction of poverty will be more difficult, be...
Economic Evaluation of Sustainable Development
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...
The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment
This open access volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region. It comprises important scientific research on the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable mountain development and will serve as a basis for evidence-based decision-making to safeguard the environment and advance people's w...
Musical Haptics
This book offers an original interdisciplinary overview of the role of haptic feedback in musical interaction. Divided into two parts, part I examines the tactile aspects of music performance and perception, discussing how they affect user experience and performance in terms of usability, functionality and perceived quality of musical instruments. ...
Enabling Things to Talk
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging network superstructure that will connect physical resources and actual users. It will support an ecosystem of smart applications and services bringing hyper-connectivity to our society by using augmented and rich interfaces. Whereas in the beginning IoT referred to the advent of barcodes and Radio Freque...
Ray Tracing Gems
This book is a must-have for anyone serious about rendering in real time. With the announcement of new ray tracing APIs and hardware to support them, developers can easily create real-time applications with ray tracing as a core component. As ray tracing on the GPU becomes faster, it will play a more central role in real-time rendering. Ray Tracing...
Alternatives to Animal Testing
This book presents recent advances in the pure sciences that are of significance in the quest for alternatives to the use of animals in research and describes a variety of practical applications of the three key guiding principles for the more ethical use of animals in experiments – replacement, reduction, and refinement, collectively known as th...
Autonomous Driving
This book takes a look at fully automated, autonomous vehicles and discusses many open questions: How can autonomous vehicles be integrated into the current transportation system with diverse users and human drivers? Where do automated vehicles fall under current legal frameworks? What risks are associated with automation and how will society respo...
Self-Reported Population Health: An International Perspective based on EQ-5D
The EQ-5D instrument, as a standardized, cross-culturally validated measure of self-assessed health has a hugely important role in understanding population health within and across countries. Over the past two decades a wealth of international population health survey data have been accumulated by the EuroQol Group from research conducted in many c...
S-BPM in the Wild
This is the first book to present field studies on the application of subject-oriented business process management (S-BPM). Each case presents a specific story and focuses on an essential modeling or implementation issue, and most end with implications or suggestions for further studies. Significant variables and success factors are identified that...
Market Segmentation Analysis
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...
Qualitative Freedom - Autonomy in Cosmopolitan Responsibility
In the light of growing political and religious fundamentalism, this book defends the idea of freedom as paramount for the attempt to find common ethical ground in the age of globality. The book sets out to examine as yet unexhausted ways to boost the resilience of the principle of liberalism. Critically reviewing the last 200 years of the philosop...
Drones and the Creative Industry
This open access, interdisciplinary book presents innovative strategies in the use of civil drones in the cultural and creative industry. Specially aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the book offers valuable insights from the fields of marketing, engineering, arts and management. With contributions from experts representing varied ...
Early Childhood Policies and Systems in Eight Countries
This report provides an overview of policy strategies on early childhood education settings (from birth to primary schooling) in eight countries. Data were collected using a policy questionnaire addressed to and completed by the National Research Coordinator(s) (NRC) of Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Poland, the Russian Federat...
Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty
This book focuses on both the theory and practice associated with the tools and approaches for decisionmaking in the face of deep uncertainty. It explores approaches and tools supporting the design of strategic plans under deep uncertainty, and their testing in the real world, including barriers and enablers for their use in practice. The book broa...
Sepsis Management in Resource-limited Settings
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 ...
Dynamic Spectrum Management
This open access book, authored by a world-leading researcher in this field, describes fundamentals of dynamic spectrum management, provides a systematic overview on the enabling technologies covering cognitive radio, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, and offers valuable guidance for designing advanced wireless communications systems. This b...
A Byte of Python
Python is one of those rare languages which can claim to be both simple and powerful. You will find yourself pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to concentrate on the solution to the problem rather than the syntax and structure of the language you are programming in. A Byte of Python is a free book on programming using the Python language...

1 2