Open Access Books - Technology - 2021
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PublicationData Science for Economics and Finance( 2021)Sergio Consoli, Diego Reforgiato Recupero, Michaela Saisana (editors)This open access book covers the use of data science, including advanced machine learning, big data analytics, Semantic Web technologies, natural language processing, social media analysis, time series analysis, among others, for applications in economics and finance. In addition, it shows some successful applications of advanced data science solutions used to extract new knowledge from data in order to improve economic forecasting models. The book starts with an introduction on the use of data science technologies in economics and finance and is followed by thirteen chapters showing success stories of the application of specific data science methodologies, touching on particular topics related to novel big data sources and technologies for economic analysis (e.g. social media and news); big data models leveraging on supervised/unsupervised (deep) machine learning; natural language processing to build economic and financial indicators; and forecasting and nowcasting of economic variables through time series analysis. This book is relevant to all stakeholders involved in digital and data-intensive research in economics and finance, helping them to understand the main opportunities and challenges, become familiar with the latest methodological findings, and learn how to use and evaluate the performances of novel tools and frameworks. It primarily targets data scientists and business analysts exploiting data science technologies, and it will also be a useful resource to research students in disciplines and courses related to these topics. Overall, readers will learn modern and effective data science solutions to create tangible innovations for economic and financial applications.
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PublicationOpen Signals and Systems Laboratory Exercises( 2021)Andrew K. Bolstad, Julie A. DickersonOpen Signals and Systems Laboratory Exercises is a collection of lab assignments that have been used in EE 224: Signals and Systems I in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. These lab exercises have been curated, edited, and presented in a consistent format to improve student learning.
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PublicationAutomated Deduction – CADE 28( 2021)André Platzer, Geoff Sutcliffe (editors)This open access book constitutes the proceeding of the 28th International Conference on Automated Deduction, CADE 28, held virtually in July 2021.The 29 full papers and 7 system descriptions presented together with 2 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 76 submissions. CADE is the major forum for the presentation of research in all aspects of automated deduction, including foundations, applications, implementations, and practical experience. The papers are organized in the following topics: Logical foundations; theory and principles; implementation and application; ATP and AI; and system descriptions.
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PublicationBenefit/Cost-Driven Software Development( 2021)Jo Erskine HannayThis open access book presents a set of basic techniques for estimating the benefit of IT development projects and portfolios. It also offers methods for monitoring how much of that estimated benefit is being achieved during projects.Readers can then use these benefit estimates together with cost estimates to create a benefit/cost index to help them decide which functionalities to send into construction and in what order. This allows them to focus on constructing the functionality that offers the best value for money at an early stage.Although benefits management involves a wide range of activities in addition to estimation and monitoring, the techniques in this book provides a clear guide to achieving what has always been the goal of project and portfolio stakeholders: developing systems that produce as much usefulness and value as possible for the money invested. The techniques can also help deal with vicarious motives and obstacles that prevent this happening. The book equips readers to recognize when a project budget should not be spent in full and resources be allocated elsewhere in a portfolio instead. It also provides development managers and upper management with common ground as a basis for making informed decisions.
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PublicationUncertainty in Mechanical Engineering( 2021)Peter F. Pelz, Peter Groche (Editors)This open access book reports on methods and technologies to describe, evaluate and control uncertainty in mechanical engineering applications. It brings together contributions by engineers, mathematicians and legal experts, offering a multidisciplinary perspective on the main issues affecting uncertainty throughout the complete system lifetime, which includes process and product planning, development, production and usage. The book is based on the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Uncertainty in Mechanical Engineering (ICUME 2021), organized by the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 805 of the TU Darmstadt, and held online on June 7–8, 2021. All in all, it offers a timely resource for researchers, graduate students and practitioners in the field of mechanical engineering, production engineering and engineering optimization. This work is licensed under a CC BY
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PublicationAtlas of Fallen Dust in Kuwait( 2021)Ali Al-DousariThis open access book serves as an atlas of deposited dust and dust storms in Kuwait in relation to local and global regions. It features a wealth of maps and images of dust storm trajectories in the region, together with detailed descriptions of the chemical and physical properties of fallen dust, including the amount, particle size, statistical parameters, spectra absorption, dust mineralogy, trace and major elements, organic matter, associated pollen, and radionuclides and connected pollutants. Given its scope, the book is a valuable resource for a broad range of researchers, including geologists, chemists, environmentalists, botanists, air quality specialists, nanotechnology scientists, and solar energy experts.
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PublicationCarbon Capture( 2021)Syed Abdul Rehman Khan (Editor)This book differs from others on the subject of pollution and carbon emissions by focusing on environmental issues at domestic levels. It presents important information on the far-ranging effects of greenhouse gases on the environment and examines potential solutions to controlling carbon emissions.
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PublicationDesign of Cities and Buildings - Sustainability and Resilience in the Built Environment( 2021)Samad M.E. Sepasgozar, Sara Shirowzhan, Sharifeh Sargolzae, José David Bienvenido Huertas (Editors)This book envisions the most appropriate design strategies that guarantee the adequate environmental performance of buildings during phases of design and construction as well as use. It focuses on relevant issues related to the production of sustainable buildings and the socio-cultural integration aspects of new architectural designs in urban settings. The book also addresses the design features of historic buildings.
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PublicationMesoscale Analysis of Hydraulics( 2021)Weilin XuThis open access book presents a series of complicated hydraulic phenomena and related mechanism of high-speed flows in head-head dam. According to the basic hydraulic theory, detailed experiments and numerical simulations, microscopic scale analysis on cavitation bubbles, air bubbles, turbulent eddy vortices and sand grains are examined systemically. These investigations on microscopic fluid mechanics, including cavitation erosion, aeration protection, air–water flow, energy dissipation and river-bed scouring, allow a deep understanding of hydraulics in high-head dams. This book provides reference for designers and researchers in hydraulic engineering, environment engineering and fluid mechanics. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC
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PublicationSmart Technologies for Precision Assembly( 2021)Svetan Ratchev (editors)This open access book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 5.5 International Precision Assembly Seminar, IPAS 2020, held virtually in December 2020. The 16 revised full papers and 10 revised short papers presented together with 1 keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers address topics such as assembly design and planning; assembly operations; assembly cells and systems; human centred assembly; and assistance methods in assembly.
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PublicationEnvironmental Sustainability - Preparing for Tomorrow( 2021)Syed Abdul Rehman KhanThis book examines the global challenges of air pollution and its consequences at domestic and international levels. Industrialization and logistical operations are the critical factors of carbon emissions, damaging fauna and flora. In addition, air pollution adversely affects human health. As such, this book discusses possible solutions to mitigate air pollution both domestically and internationally.
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PublicationGreen Computing Technologies and Computing Industry in 2021( 2021)Albert Sabban (Editor)The book presents innovations in green computing technologies. A large number of computing devices and cellular phones being produced and discarded is hurtling us toward a global environmental disaster. In the last fifty years, the earth has experienced rapid changes in climate, increasingly severe droughts, rising seawater levels, seawater acidification, increased depletion of groundwater reserves, and the global rise of temperature. Green computing technologies are crucial in protecting our universe from environmental hazards and pollution. Over four sections, this book examines green computing industries and technologies. Chapters cover such topics as wideband systems, Internet connectivity, the environment, and more.
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PublicationA Visual Atlas for Soil Micromorphologists( 2021)Eric P. Verrecchia, Luca TrombinoThis open access atlas is an up-to-date visual resource on the features and structures observed in soil thin sections, i.e. soil micromorphology. The book addresses the growing interest in soil micromorphology in the fields of soil science, earth science, archaeology and forensic science, and serves as a reference tool for researchers and students for fast learning and intuitive feature and structure recognition. The book is divided into six parts and contains hundreds of images and photomicrographs. Part one is devoted to the way to sample properly soils, the method of preparation of thin sections, the main tool of soil micromorphology (the microscope), and the approach of soil micromorphology as a scientific method. Part two focuses on the organisation of soil fragments and presents the concept of fabric. Part three addresses the basic components, e.g. rocks, minerals, organic compounds and anthropogenic features. Part four lists all the various types of pedogenic features observed in a soil, i.e. the imprint of pedogenesis. Part five gives interpretations of features associated with the main processes at work in soils and paleosols. Part six presents a view of what the future of soil micromorphology could be. Finally, the last part consists of the index and annexes, including the list of mineral formulas. This atlas will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students, who will find it a convenient tool for the self-teaching of soil micromorphology by using comparative photographs.
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PublicationAnisotropy Across Fields and Scales( 2021)Evren Özarslan, Thomas Schultz, Eugene Zhang, Andrea Fuster (editors)This open access 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, physical sciences, and engineering. Featuring original research contributions as well as insightful reviews for scientists interested in handling anisotropy information, it covers topics such as pertinent geometric and algebraic properties of tensors and tensor fields, challenges faced in processing and visualizing different types of data, statistical techniques for data processing, and specific applications like mapping white-matter fiber tracts in the brain.The book helps readers grasp the current challenges in the field and provides information on the techniques devised to address them. Further, it facilitates the transfer of knowledge between different disciplines in order to advance the research frontiers in these areas.This multidisciplinary book presents, in part, the outcomes of the seventh in a series of Dagstuhl seminars devoted to visualization and processing of tensor fields and higher-order descriptors, which was held in Dagstuhl, Germany, on October 28–November 2, 2018.
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PublicationModeling Excitable Tissue( 2021)Aslak Tveito, Kent-Andre Mardal, Marie E. Rognes (editors)This open access volume presents a novel computational framework for understanding how collections of excitable cells work. The key approach in the text is to model excitable tissue by representing the individual cells constituting the tissue. This is in stark contrast to the common approach where homogenization is used to develop models where the cells are not explicitly present. The approach allows for very detailed analysis of small collections of excitable cells, but computational challenges limit the applicability in the presence of large collections of cell
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PublicationAssessing Environmental Risk of Oil Spills with ERA Acute( 2021)Cathrine Stephansen, Anders Bjørgesæter, Odd Willy Brude, Ute Brönner, Tonje Waterloo Rogstad, Grethe Kjeilen-Eilertsen, … Christian Collin-HansenThis open access book introduces readers to a new methodology for assessing the risks to the marine environment following accidental oil spills. The methodology will soon be implemented on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and will be complemented by guidelines for its use in a regulatory framework. The brief book is intended to provide international readers with a basic grasp of what the ERA Acute methodology consists of, what its applications are, and the underlying impact and restoration models used in its development. The content is divided into three main parts: an introduction and overview of risk management applications for generalists at the management level, a model overview for generalist scientists, and a more detailed final section for risk assessment professionals, which presents the results of the validation and sensitivity testing.
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PublicationFostering Transformative Change for Sustainability in the Context of Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SEPLS)( 2021)Maiko Nishi, Suneetha M. Subramanian, Himangana Gupta, Madoka Yoshino, Yasuo Takahashi, Koji Miwa, Tomoko Takeda (editors)This open access book is a compilation of case studies that provide useful knowledge and lessons that derive from on-the-ground activities and contribute to policy recommendations, focusing on the relevance of social-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) to “transformative change.” The concept of “transformative change” has been gaining more attention to deal with today’s environmental and development problems, whereas both policy and scientific communities have been increasingly calling for transformative change toward sustainable society. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has planned to start the so-called “assessment on transformative change” if approved by the IPBES plenary to be held in 2021. At present, the idea of transformative change, including its scope, methodologies, approaches and strategies, are yet to be clarified. By bringing together all of the different concerns and interests in the land/seascape, SEPLS approaches could provide practical and experience-based insights for understanding and gauging transformative change and identifying determinants of such change. This book explores how SEPLS management relates to the idea of transformative change to further the discussion of sustainable transitions in advancing sustainability science. The introductory chapter is followed by case study chapters offering real-world examples of transformative change as well as a synthesis chapter clarifying the relevance of the case study findings to policy and academic discussions. It will be of interest to scholars, policymakers and professionals in the fields related to sustainable development.
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PublicationMeasuring Emission of Agricultural Greenhouse Gases and Developing Mitigation Options using Nuclear and Related Techniques( 2021)Mohammad Zaman, Lee Heng, Christoph Müller (editors)This open access 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 DASIM (Denitrification in Agricultural Soils: Integrated control and Modelling at various scales) and other institutes. It presents protocols, methodologies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for measuring GHGs from different agroecosystems and animals using isotopic and related techniques that can also be used to validate climate-smart agricultural practices to mitigate GHGs. The material featured is useful for beginners in the field wanting an overview of the current methodologies, but also for experts who need hands-on descriptions of said methodologies. The book is written in form of a monograph and consists of eight chapters.
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PublicationSustainable Land Management in a European Context( 2021)Thomas Weith, Tim Barkmann, Nadin Gaasch, Sebastian Rogga, Christian Strauß, Jana Zscheischler(editors)This open access book presents and discusses current issues and innovative solution approaches for land management in a European context. Manifold sustainability issues are closely interconnected with land use practices. Throughout the world, we face increasing conflict over the use of land as well as competition for land.Drawing on experience in sustainable land management gained from seven years of the FONA programme (Research for Sustainable Development, conducted under the auspices of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research), the book stresses and highlights co-design processes within the “co-creation of knowledge”, involving collaboration in transdisciplinary research processes between academia and other stakeholders. The book begins with an overview of the current state of land use practices and the subsequent need to manage land resources more sustainably. New system solutions and governance approaches in sustainable land management are presented from a European perspective on land use. The volume also addresses how to use new modes of knowledge transfer between science and practice. New perspectives in sustainable land management and methods of combining knowledge and action are presented to a broad readership in land system sciences and environmental sciences, social sciences and geosciences.This book received the Gerd Albers Award. The prize is awarded by the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP).
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PublicationThe Seine River Basin( 2021)Nicolas Flipo, Pierre Labadie, Laurence Lestel (editors)This open access 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 affected its hydrological, chemical and ecological functioning, leading to a maximum chemical degradation between the 1960s and the 1990s. Over the last three decades, while major water-quality improvements have been observed, new issues (e.g. endocrine disruptors, microplastics) have also emerged. The state of the Seine River network, from the headwaters to estuary, is increasingly controlled by the balance between pressures and social responses. This socio-ecosystem provides a unique example of the functioning of a territory under heavy anthropogenic pressure during the Anthropocene era. The achievements made were possible due to the long-term PIREN Seine research program, established in 1989 and today part of the French socio-ecological research network “Zones Ateliers”, itself part of the international Long-term Socio-economic and Ecological Research Network (LTSER).