Showcases the excellent data science environment in Python. Provides examples for readers to replicate, adapt, extend, and improve. Covers the crucial knowledge needed by geographic data scientist.

Image synthesis across and within medical imaging modalities is an active area of research with broad applications in radiology and radiation oncology. This book covers the principles and methods of medical image synthesis, along with state-of-the-art research. First, various traditional non-learning-based, traditional machine-learning-based, and recent deep-learning-based medical image synthesis methods are reviewed. Second, specific applications of different inter- and intra-modality image synthesis tasks and of synthetic image-aided segmentation and registration are introduced and summarized, listing and highlighting the proposed methods, study designs, and reported performances with the related clinical applications of representative studies. Third, the clinical usages of medical image synthesis, such as treatment planning and image-guided adaptive radiotherapy, are discussed. Last, the limitations and current challenges of various medical synthesis applications are explored, along with future trends and potential solutions to solve these difficulties. The benefits of medical image synthesis have sparked growing interest in a number of advanced clinical applications, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-only radiation therapy treatment planning and positron emission tomography (PET)/MRI scanning. This book will be a comprehensive and exciting resource for undergraduates, graduates, researchers, and practitioners.

This book is a compilation of selected papers from the 1st Belt and Road Webinar Series on Geotechnics, Energy and Environment, March - May 2021. The book comprises selected research related to advances in geo-environmental engineering. Topics covered include rock mechanics, sustainable materials, frozen soils, geotechnical innovations in megacities. The research is related to the sustainable infrastructure development for countries in China's Belt and Road Initiative. The contents of the volume will prove useful to researchers and professionals working in geotechnical and geological engineering domains.

Giving Voice to Values, under the leadership of Mary Gentile, has fundamentally changed the way business ethics and values-driven leadership is taught and discussed in academic and corporate settings worldwide. This book shifts attention to the future of Giving Voice to Values (GVV) and provides thought pieces from practitioners and leading experts in business ethics and the professions on the possibilities for sustaining its growth and success. These include the creation of new teaching materials, reaching different audiences, and expanding the ways in which GVV is making a difference in classrooms and the workplace and acting as a catalyst for organizational and societal change. The book closes with a reflective chapter by Mary Gentile, looking back at where GVV has been and looking ahead to where GVV might go.

This book covers three main types of agricultural systems: the use of robotics, drones (unmanned aerial vehicles), and satellite-guided precision farming methods. Some of these are well refined and are currently in use, while others are in need of refinement and are yet to become popular. The book provides a valuable source of information on this developing field for those involved with agriculture and farming and agricultural engineering. The book is also applicable as a textbook for students and a reference for faculty.

Provides a global perspective on drought prediction and management and a synthesis of the recent state of knowledge. Covers a wide range of topics from essential concepts and advanced techniques for forecasting and modeling drought to societal impacts, consequences, and planning Presents numerous case studies with different management approaches from different regions and countries. Addresses how climate change impacts drought, the increasing challenges associated with managing drought, decision making, and policy implications. Includes contributions from hundreds of experts around the world.

Agriculture is one of the oldest and most global human enterprises, and as the world struggles with sustainable practices and policies, agricultural chemistry has a clear role to play. This book highlights the ways in which science in agriculture is helping to achieve global sustainability in the 21st century, and demonstrates that this science can and should be a leading contributor in discussion on environmental science and chemistry. The four drivers of this subject are presented, those being economic, environmental, regulatory and scientific, and help showcase agricultural chemistry as a dynamic subject that is contributing to this necessity of global sustainability in the 21st century.

This book argues that river basins represent a particular structural setting in international relations with the potential for generating a dynamic of cooperation among the involved countries. The volume applies the concept of regional cooperation to international river basins to highlight their relevance as a particular space in international relations, emphasising both the inter-connectivity and transnationalism of international river basins. It addresses the challenges related to resource distribution between up and down stream countries, showcasing a variety of examples of cooperation and conflictual relations within various international river basins. Case studies are drawn from across the globe and include the Mekong, the Indus, the Euphrates-Tigris and the Danube international river basins. Each chapter outlines the different aspects which support or undermine cooperation in each case, taking into consideration key areas surrounding resource sharing, national development, environmental considerations and national security. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars with an interest in international river basins, regional cooperation, water resource competition, international relations and environmental politics.

This book reviews the spaceborne and airborne remote sensing of clouds including cloud lidar and radar data analysis, snow and soil reflectance spectroscopy, and single light scattering by nonspherical scatterers. Providing deep insights into the latest technologies, it is a valuable resource for scientists and postgraduate students alike.

There is broad consensus on the need to shift to a new paradigm of lifestyles and economic development, given the un-sustainability of current patterns. Given this, research on consumer behavior is to play a crucial role in shedding light on the motives underpinning the adoption of responsible behaviors. Stemming from a thorough discussion of existing approaches, this book argues that the perspective of analysis has to be modified. First, acknowledging that a profile of the responsible consumer does not exist since all of us can be more or less sustainable and environment-friendly: the sustainability of an individual should not be considered as given, being something dynamic that changes according to both subjective and contextual factors. Moreover, the book hypothesises that integrating dimensions and perspectives that have been so far overlooked by mainstream research will help deconstruct responsible behaviors adopting a flexible and holistic approach. Relevant policy implications are discussed, and empirical research on responsible behaviors is illustrated. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of consumer behavior, sustainable consumption, environmental psychology and environmental studies in general.

This book helps business leaders see how employees, companies, and missions all interact with each other, as well as with society at large, in systems and subsystems at various levels. It helps leaders learn how to connect the dots, becoming customer-centric in everything they do and then spreading the same goals down to their supply chains. The book discusses what is, and what is not, leadership, covering such topics as statistics-based management, process-improvement, and human resources. The author accomplishes this through a blend of Lean culture and managerial theory, as well as his military experience. In addition, the author contrasts many opposing subjects, such as efficiencies of scale versus efficiencies of build, automation versus process improvement, process innovation versus product innovation, technical versus tactical proficiency, and pull versus push production. With most books focused on Lean initiatives, there is a tremendous amount of benefit involved in creating customer value while reducing waste, but this book takes a holistic approach, blending in modern managerial theory, team leadership skills, and economics. The result is a book that changes how the reader approaches business. Essentially, the purpose of this book is to blend modern management theories with the culture of Lean (and perhaps a sprinkling of economics) to show current business leaders how to create organizations that are as customer-oriented and highly efficient in delivering value as possible. If one thinks of each role in an organization as a spot on an assembly line, where everything each person does creates output someone else uses, the question becomes whether or not each person's activities maximize the effectiveness of others. Do we, as organizations, set ourselves up for success or for failure? Most companies, if they answer honestly, would say, "A little bit of both." This book is about helping those companies improve.

This book presents a comprehensive selection of applications employed in environmental remote sensing using optical and thermal infrared satellite-sensors aiming to map natural resources, crops, groundwater, surface water, aquatic ecosystem, land degradation, air quality, renewable energy, regional resources, and climate-related geophysical processes. The technologies presented in this book also include satellite images, space-borne radar sensors focusing on the most versatile one, data from synthetic aperture radar (SAR), scatterometers and radar altimeters in Egypt. This volume also presents a thorough explanation of the remote sensing role showing physical fundamentals of the climate change phenomenon including gas emissions, and the impact on resources concerning the sustainable development of Egypt. Besides, the book includes an analysis of oil pollution in both Mediterranean and Red Seas This book is intended for environmental policymakers working in Egypt as well as scientists working with remote sensing technologies in highly populated arid regions.

The Fast and The Furious: Drivers, Speed Cameras and Control in a Risk Society presents a sociological and criminological perspective critical to understanding the driver's role at the centre of road safety interventions. Such an approach is, it is argued, as crucial to an understanding of attempts to reduce road crashes, deaths and injuries as approaching such questions from an engineering or educational perspective. The book offers an explanation for the continued debate about one road safety intervention - the speed camera - by situating that debate within contemporary literature about the 'risk society' (Beck, 1992) and more broadly understood experiences of risk faced on a daily basis by drivers. Rather than a focus on risk as something that can be objectively assessed, measured and managed separately from the social context in which it is encountered, it suggests that 'risk' is something that permeates this particular debate from every angle. The book achieves its aims by utilising sociological and criminological perspectives to investigate issues such as: - the social context in which it is possible for drivers to reject official scientific expertise about crash causation and camera effectiveness - the self-defined 'respectability' of the population being problematised and its juxtaposition with a 'proper' police focus on 'real criminals' - the reconceptualisation of law-breaking as risk-taking rather than inherently 'wrong' behaviour and its consequences for the enforcement of laws based on risk assessment - the experience of being controlled by technology and of receiving what is essentially 'automated justice'. These and other issues are explored and suggested as illuminating of both the real concerns underpinning this debate and potentially instructive for future attempts to control risky behaviour both within and beyond a road safety context.

This book focuses on the design methodologies of various quantum circuits, DNA circuits, DNA-quantum circuits and quantum-DNA circuits. It considers the merits and challenges of multivalued logic circuits in quantum, DNA, quantum-DNA and DNA-quantum computing. Multiple-Valued Computing in Quantum Molecular Biology: Arithmetic and Combinational Circuits is Volume 1 of a two-volume set. From fundamentals to advanced levels, this book discusses different multiple-valued logic DNA-quantum and quantum-DNA circuits. The text consists of four parts. Part I introduces multiple-valued quantum computing and DNA computing. It contains the basic understanding of multiple-valued quantum computing, multiple-valued DNA computing, multiple-valued quantum-DNA computing and multiple-valued DNA-quantum computing. Part II examines heat calculation, speed calculation, heat transfer, data conversion and data management in multi-valued quantum, DNA, quantum-DNA and DNA-quantum computing. Part III discusses multiple-valued logic operations in quantum and DNA computing such as ternary AND, NAND, OR, NOR, XOR, XNOR and multiple-valued arithmetic operations such as adder, multiplier, divider and more. Quantum-DNA and DNA-quantum multiple-valued arithmetic operations are also explained in this section. Part IV explains multiple-valued quantum and DNA combinational circuits such as multiple-valued DNA-quantum and quantum-DNA multiplexer, demultiplexer, encoder and decoder. This book will be of great help to researchers and students in quantum computing, DNA computing, quantum-DNA computing and DNA-quantum computing researchers.

1) Original book with chapters written by Brazilian researchers and colleagues from Universities in the Global North; 2) New and interdisciplinary interpretations of democracy, development, and sustainability; 3) Word Political Economy theoretical frontier linking class, race, and gender conflicts; 4) Challenges’ diagnoses and proposal of solutions for the future of the World Political Economy after the Covid-19 crisis.

An undeniably rich and thorough guide to satellite communication engineering, Satellite Communication Engineering, Second Edition presents the fundamentals of information communications systems in a simple and succinct way. This book considers both the engineering aspects of satellite systems as well as the practical issues in the broad field of information transmission. Implementing concepts developed on an intuitive, physical basis and utilizing a combination of applications and performance curves, this book starts off with a progressive foundation in satellite technology, and then moves on to more complex concepts with ease. What's New in the Second Edition: The second edition covers satellite and Earth station design; global positioning systems; antenna tracking; links and communications systems; error detection and correction; data security; regulations and procedures for system modeling; integration; testing; and reliability and performance evaluation. Provides readers with the systems building blocks of satellite transponders and Earth stations, as well as the systems engineering design procedure Includes the tools needed to calculate basic orbit characteristics such as period, dwell time, coverage area, propagation losses; antenna system features such as size, beamwidth, aperture-frequency product, gain, tracking control; and system requirements such as power, availability, reliability, and performance Presents problem sets and starred sections containing basic mathematical development Details recent developments enabling digital information transmission and delivery via satellite Satellite Communication Engineering, Second Edition serves as a textbook for students and a resource for space agencies and relevant industries.

This book presents an unbiased, comprehensive examination of the state of knowledge for life cycle assessments (LCAs) of natural gas-fired electricity, covering a suite of environmental impact categories. An exploration of the life cycle environmental impacts of gas-fired electricity is used to introduce the field of LCA, advancements in methods and data, and the limitations thereof. Natural gas, particularly as a fuel for electricity generation, serves as a dichotomy within energy and environmental systems analysis. While the cleanest burning fossil fuel, it is not without impacts, making it an excellent case study for introducing life cycle assessment. This book introduces readers to the field of LCA using natural gas-fired electricity as a case study, as well as providing a comprehensive review of the state of the art in life cycle data, research, and scientific debate related to this product system. The author also elucidates data and methodological challenges inherent to the field of LCA, exemplified using published research. The text explores how to conduct LCA, describing the analysis from the perspective of a numerator and denominator. With each chapter, the complexity of undertaking a LCA of gas-fired power is unravelled beyond a simple fraction to the expansive network of infrastructure examined in this type of research. Students, instructors, LCA practitioners, and energy professionals will benefit from not only the introduction to data and methods, but also this useful summary of the state of the art in the field. Policymakers and the interested public can learn more about the implications of LCA results for decision-support and the commentary about the economics of natural gas and its role as a bridge fuel. This book provides not only a useful reference, but also a springboard for researchers and experts interested in specializing in LCA, natural gas, or both.

The depletion of land resources is one of the greatest challenges for mankind in this millennium. Shrinking land resources, weather aberrations, deterioration of land quality, and the globalization and liberalization of market economies have become intertwined to influence the sustainable management of land resources and land use plans. This important volume, Sustainable Management of Land Resources: An Indian Perspective, addresses these challenges. This comprehensive volume, covering important research, much of it gathered with the use of new technology, tools, and applications, is organized into four sections: (add bullets) land resource inventory and characterization geospatial technologies in land resource mapping and management soil nutrient status and management land use planning and livelihood security The volume looks at how scientists translate their knowledge and experience in sustainable land resources and management into implementable policy decisions, with a particular focus on India. Since India is an agrarian economy, the land resources assume a very critical role affecting the livelihood of a vast majority of populace in the country. The information gathered-and the methods by which it is gathered-is applicable globally. This comprehensive publication will be highly useful for the researchers, academicians, extension workers, policymakers, planners, officials of land resources survey, planning and management institutions/agencies/departments, and others.

The indiscriminate use of chemical substances in industrial processes and anthropogenic activities, have resulted in the release of these compounds into aquatic ecosystems through municipal, hospital and industrial discharges, producing various undesired effects on the environment and on species of ecological interest. These compounds, such as metals, pesticides, emerging pollutants and other substances are persistent and susceptible to biotic and/or abiotic transformations, yielding metabolites that can be more toxic than the original compounds. In this book, researchers from diverse environmental science disciplines share their experiences in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, and critically examine the problem of contaminants in aquatic ecosystems in Latin America, as well as the risks presented by their presence.

This book relates to the analysis and the development of methods to for a nerve-machine interface. Peripheral nerves, both somatic and autonomic, carry signals related to control and the status of the organs. Nerves are made up of many fascicles, each surrounded by protective membranes. The goal is to provide a theoretical and experimental understanding of how one can recover neural signals from the various fascicles or selectively control the activation of these fascicles.

This book focuses on crisis management in forest industry of Russia. It is about the present, and the future, with a short retrospective about the past of the forest industry in Russia. It includes forecasting too and description of some of the best practices of developed countries to be implemented in Russia to overcome the crisis. The main theme of the book is smart innovations and innovative activities introduced and also those which are required in the forest industry of Russia. The book considers the effectiveness of innovations and institutional changes in the forest industry, which are an important direction of innovation activities required all together with technological and economic breakthrough with ecological aspects in priority. The necessity to implement the modern innovation system in the forest industry based on institutional changes is substantiated and thoroughly explained with successful examples of ongoing and future up-to-date smart innovations. The development of the forest innovation system is suggested for sustainable forest industry management; the key components of which are technological, product, institutional, and ecological innovations, as well as, innovative entrepreneurship. Realization of the innovation system for technological and intellectual improvement requires good scientific and personnel provision, anticipation of markets and tendencies of development for some decades ahead. The implied advanced technologies in the forest industry also include IT-, nano-, and biotechnologies. The success stories of the leading Russian and international companies in the forest industry of Russia are studied attentively in the book. The book presents a profound methodical and theoretical substantiation for the further implementation of the smart innovations and of the successful experience of the industry leading companies.

Complex Systems lie at the heart of a variety of large-scale phenomena of great significance - global warming, ice ages, water, poverty, pandemics - and this text uses these case studies as motivations and contexts to explore complex systems and related topics of nonlinear dynamics and power-law statistics. Although detailed mathematical descriptions of these topics can be challenging, the consequences of a system being nonlinear, power-law, or complex are in fact quite accessible. This book blends a tutorial approach to the mathematical aspects of complex systems together with a complementary narrative on the global/ecological/societal implications of such systems. Nearly all engineering undergraduate courses focus on mathematics and systems which are small scale, linear, and Gaussian. Unfortunately there is not a single large-scale ecological or social phenomenon that is scalar, linear, and Gaussian. This book offers insights to better understand the large-scale problems facing the world and to realize that these cannot be solved by a single, narrow academic field or perspective. Instead, the book seeks to emphasize understanding, concepts, and ideas, in a way that is mathematically rigorous, so that the concepts do not feel vague, but not so technical that the mathematics get in the way. The book is intended for students in technical domains such as engineering, computer science, physics, mathematics, and environmental studies. This second edition adds nine new examples, over 30 additional problems, 50 additional figures, and three new chapters offering a detailed study of system decoupling, extensive solutions to chapter problems, and a timely discussion on the complex systems challenges associated with COVID-19 and pandemics in general.

Automotive Technician Training is the definitive student textbook for automotive engineering. It covers all the theory and technology sections that students need to learn in order to pass levels 1, 2 and 3 automotive courses. It is recommended by the Institute of the Motor Industry and is ideal for courses and exams run by other awarding bodies. This revised edition overhauls the coverage of general skills and advanced diagnostic techniques, and includes a new chapter about electric and hybrid vehicles and advanced driver-assistance systems. Information and activities are set out in sequence to meet teacher and learner needs, as well as qualification requirements. The book has been written to be used on its own or as part of a blended-learning approach. It also includes links to interactive activities, assessments and video footage on the IMI eLearning platform, for which a separate subscription is required.

A continually evolving discipline, human reliability assessment (HRA) has elements of controversy from the definition of terms to the application of appropriate methods for the representation of human failure probability. The idea that human error is a random event is falling out of favor and the concept that humans can be set up to fail or succeed depending on context is gaining credibility. An in-depth exploration of current theories, Human Reliability Assessment Theory and Practice demonstrates how to model, change, and apply new approaches to a number of different high-risk industries. The book covers data and data sources, choice of methods, training of individuals, use of simulators for HRA purposes, and the relationship between psychology, human factors, accident analyses, and human reliability. Author Anthony Spurgin has been in the forefront of HRA development for the past 20 years and has contributed to developing human reliability methods and tools that have been applied to the enhancement of nuclear power plant and space vehicle safety. He explores reactor performance and the demands it makes on operators to ensure plant safety. He also covers the roles of plant management in the decision-making applied to both design and operation. The book includes a number of accident studies that illustrate the key roles of operators and managers in accident mitigation and control. The heart of HRA will always be to find creative ways of helping designers, management, operators, and authorities increase the safety and profitability of technological systems. Drawing on his personal experience, Spurgin reviews HRA from the viewpoint of the operator. The book uses examples from the nuclear industry, always on the forefront of safety, and translates how to apply the concepts to other high risk industries.