Recent achievements in hardware and software developments have enabled the introduction of a revolutionary technology: in-memory data management. This technology supports the flexible and extremely fast analysis of massive amounts of data, such as diagnoses, therapies, and human genome data. This book shares the latest research results of applying in-memory data management to personalized medicine, changing it from computational possibility to clinical reality. The authors provide details on innovative approaches to enabling the processing, combination, and analysis of relevant data in real-time. The book bridges the gap between medical experts, such as physicians, clinicians, and biological researchers, and technology experts, such as software developers, database specialists, and statisticians. Topics covered in this book include - amongst others - modeling of genome data processing and analysis pipelines, high-throughput data processing, exchange of sensitive data and protection of intellectual property. Beyond that, it shares insights on research prototypes for the analysis of patient cohorts, topology analysis of biological pathways, and combined search in structured and unstructured medical data, and outlines completely new processes that have now become possible due to interactive data analyses.

The book covers nonlinear physical problems and mathematical modeling, including molecular biology, genetics, neurosciences, artificial intelligence with classical problems in mechanics and astronomy and physics. The chapters present nonlinear mathematical modeling in life science and physics through nonlinear differential equations, nonlinear discrete equations and hybrid equations. Such modeling can be effectively applied to the wide spectrum of nonlinear physical problems, including the KAM (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM)) theory, singular differential equations, impulsive dichotomous linear systems, analytical bifurcation trees of periodic motions, and almost or pseudo- almost periodic solutions in nonlinear dynamical systems.

Computational biology is an interdisciplinary field that applies mathematical, statistical, and computer science methods to answer biological questions, and its importance has only increased with the introduction of high-throughput techniques such as automatic DNA sequencing, comprehensive expression analysis with microarrays, and proteome analysis with modern mass spectrometry. In Computational Biology, expert practitioners present a broad survey of computational biology methods by focusing on their applications, including primary sequence analysis, protein structure elucidation, transcriptomics and proteomics data analysis, and exploration of protein interaction networks. As a volume in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology (TM) series, this work provides the kind of detailed description and implementation advice that is crucial for getting optimal results. Authoritative and easy to use, Computational Biology is an ideal guide for all scientists interested in quantitative biology.

Since 9/11 and the U.S. anthrax attacks, public, and policy concerns about the security threats posed by biological weapons has increased significantly. As a result, there are now active international deliberations about what restrictions should be placed on the openness of scientific research. "Biotechnology, Security and the Search for Limits" examines these security implications for life science research as well as the methodological issues associated with conducting social research. In doing so the book considers the place of biological and social research in creating and responding to societal problems through drawing on diverse academic traditions such as discourse analysis, social problems studies, philosophy, action research, science and technology studies, politics, and public policy.

The contributors to this volume share the assumption that popular narrative, when viewed with an evolutionary lens, offers an incisive index into human nature. In theory, narrative art could take a near infinity of possible forms. In actual practice, however, particular motifs, plot patterns, stereotypical figures, and artistic devices persistently resurface, indicating specific predilections frequently at odds with our actual living conditions. Our studies explore various media and genres to gauge the impact of our evolutionary inheritance, in interdependence with the respective cultural environments, on our aesthetic appreciation. As they suggest, research into mass culture is not only indispensable for evolutionary criticism but may also contribute to our understanding of prehistoric selection pressures that still influence modern preferences in popular narrative. Contributions by David Andrews, James Carney, Mathias Clasen, Brett Cooke, Tamas David-Barrett, Tom Dolack, Kathryn Duncan, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo, Joe Keener, Alex C. Parrish, Todd K. Platts, Anna Rotkirch, Judith P. Saunders, Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, Dirk Vanderbeke, and Sophia Wege.

Polyester-Based Biocomposites highlights the performance of polyester-based biocomposites reinforced with various natural fibres extracted from leaf, stem, fruit bunch, grass, wood material. It also addresses the characteristics of polyester-based biocomposites reinforced with rice husk fillers and various nanoparticles. The book explores the widespread applications of fibre-reinforced polymer composites ranging from the aerospace sector, automotive parts, construction and building materials, sports equipment, and household appliances. Investigating the advantages of natural fibres, such as superior damping characteristics, low density, biodegradability, abundant availability at low cost and non-abrasive to tooling, the book discusses what makes them a cost-effective alternative reinforcement material for composites in certain applications. The book serves as a useful reference for researchers, graduate students, and engineers in the field of polymer composites.

The human hand and its dexterity in grasping and manipulating objects are some of the hallmarks of the human species. For years, anatomic and biomechanical studies have deepened the understanding of the human hand's functioning and, in parallel, the robotics community has been working on the design of robotic hands capable of manipulating objects with a performance similar to that of the human hand. However, although many researchers have partially studied various aspects, to date there has been no comprehensive characterization of the human hand's function for grasping and manipulation of everyday life objects. This monograph explores the hypothesis that the confluence of both scientific fields, the biomechanical study of the human hand and the analysis of robotic manipulation of objects, would greatly benefit and advance both disciplines through simulation. Therefore, in this book, the current knowledge of robotics and biomechanics guides the design and implementation of a simulation framework focused on manipulation interactions that allows the study of the grasp through simulation. As a result, a valuable framework for the study of the grasp, with relevant applications in several fields such as robotics, biomechanics, ergonomics, rehabilitation and medicine, has been made available to these communities.

Die Behandlung der Leguminosen in der Chemotaxonomie der Pflanzen wird mit Band XIb-1 fortgesetzt. In ihm werden die von den Caesalpinioideae und Mimosoideae bekannt gewordenen Naturstoffe im Rahmen der natA1/4rlichen Klassifikation der Familie besprochen. Der Teilband enthAlt A1/4ber 2000 Literaturhinweise sowie ein eigenes Pflanzennamen- und Stichwortregister. Hegnauer's Chemotaxonomie is an indispensable handbook for all those scientific disciplines concerned with not only systematic botany, but all aspects of the plant world. Both text and bibliography reflect our present knowledge of the particularities of plant metabolism. The last volume of Chemotaxonomy of Plants treats Leguminosae in three parts. XIa.: General aspects. XIB-1: Phytochemistry and chemotaxonomy of Caesalpinioideae and Mimosoideae. XIb-2: Phytochemistry and chemotaxonomy of Papilionoideae (in preparation). These three volumes form a valuable tool for everyone with an interest in the Leguminosae. They are not only relevant to plant taxonomists, plant physiologists, and natural product chemists but also to ecologists, agriculturists, nutritional scientists, pharmacists, pharmacologists and ethnobotanists. The cosmopolitan Leguminosae cover approximately 600 genera and 13000 species including many economically and ethnobotanically important plants. Each of the three volumes devoted to Leguminosae contains a taxonomic index, a subject index and over 2000 references.

Provides an introduction to renewable energy for scientists and engineers, addressing the science and technology of all types of renewable energy in detail, as well as nonrenewables. Includes new chapters covering population dynamics and statistics. Self-study problems have been added for each chapter. Incorporates more worked examples. Completely up-to-date, covering such areas as hydraulic fracturing, integration of renewable energy to power grid, and cost.

Over the past years, the chem(o)informatics field has further evolved and new application areas have opened up, for example, in the broadly defined area of chemical biology. In Chemoinformatics and Computational Chemical Biology, leading investigators bring together a detailed series of reviews and methods including, among others, system-directed approaches using small molecules, the design of target-focused compound libraries, the study of molecular selectivity, and the systematic analysis of target-ligand interactions. Furthermore, the book delves into similarity methods, machine learning, probabilistic approaches, fragment-based methods, as well as topics that go beyond the current chemoinformatics spectrum, such as knowledge-based modeling of G protein-coupled receptor structures and computational design of siRNA libraries. As a volume in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology (TM) series, this collection provides detailed descriptions and implementation advice that are exceedingly relevant for basic researchers and practitioners in this highly interdisciplinary research and development area. Cutting-edge and unambiguous, Chemoinformatics and Computational Chemical Biology serves as an ideal guide for experts and newcomers alike to this vital and dynamic field of study.

Not another textbook, but a valuable tool for doctors and microbiologists wanting to know how to set up a PCR diagnostic microbiology laboratory according to current regulatory standards and perform assays supplied with patient clinical diagnostic criteria and easy to follow protocols. Whether laboratories are using commercial kits or in-house methods developed in their own laboratories or adopted from published methods, all clinical microbiology laboratories need to be able to understand, critically evaluate, perform and interpret these tests according to rigorous and clinically appropriate standards and international guidelines. The cost and effort of development and evaluation of in-house tests is considerable and many laboratories do not have the resources to do so. This compendium is a vehicle to improve and maintain the clinical relevance and high quality of diagnostic PCR. It is a unique collection of; guidelines for PCR laboratory set up and quality control, test selection criteria, methods and detailed step by step protocols for a diagnostic assays in the field of molecular microbiology. The structure of the book provides the PCR fundamentals and describes the clinical aspects and diagnosis of infectious disease. This is followed by protocols divided into; bacteria, virus, fungi and parasites, and susceptibility screens. The inclusion of medical criteria and interpretation adds value to the compendium and benefits clinicians, scientists, researchers and students of clinical diagnostic microbiology

This book is about inductive databases and constraint-based data mining, emerging research topics lying at the intersection of data mining and database research. The aim of the book as to provide an overview of the state-of- the art in this novel and - citing research area. Of special interest are the recent methods for constraint-based mining of global models for prediction and clustering, the uni?cation of pattern mining approaches through constraint programming, the clari?cation of the re- tionship between mining local patterns and global models, and the proposed in- grative frameworks and approaches for inducive databases. On the application side, applications to practically relevant problems from bioinformatics are presented. Inductive databases (IDBs) represent a database view on data mining and kno- edge discovery. IDBs contain not only data, but also generalizations (patterns and models) valid in the data. In an IDB, ordinary queries can be used to access and - nipulate data, while inductive queries can be used to generate (mine), manipulate, and apply patterns and models. In the IDB framework, patterns and models become "?rst-class citizens" and KDD becomes an extended querying process in which both the data and the patterns/models that hold in the data are queried.

This BASS book Series publishes selected high-quality papers reflecting recent advances in the design and biostatistical analysis of biopharmaceutical experiments - particularly biopharmaceutical clinical trials. The papers were selected from invited presentations at the Biopharmaceutical Applied Statistics Symposium (BASS), which was founded by the first Editor in 1994 and has since become the premier international conference in biopharmaceutical statistics. The primary aims of the BASS are: 1) to raise funding to support graduate students in biostatistics programs, and 2) to provide an opportunity for professionals engaged in pharmaceutical drug research and development to share insights into solving the problems they encounter. The BASS book series is initially divided into three volumes addressing: 1) Design of Clinical Trials; 2) Biostatistical Analysis of Clinical Trials; and 3) Pharmaceutical Applications. This book is the third of the 3-volume book series. The topics covered include: Targeted Learning of Optimal Individualized Treatment Rules under Cost Constraints, Uses of Mixture Normal Distribution in Genomics and Otherwise, Personalized Medicine - Design Considerations, Adaptive Biomarker Subpopulation and Tumor Type Selection in Phase III Oncology Trials, High Dimensional Data in Genomics; Synergy or Additivity - The Importance of Defining the Primary Endpoint, Full Bayesian Adaptive Dose Finding Using Toxicity Probability Interval (TPI), Alpha-recycling for the Analyses of Primary and Secondary Endpoints of Clinical Trials, Expanded Interpretations of Results of Carcinogenicity Studies of Pharmaceuticals, Randomized Clinical Trials for Orphan Drug Development, Mediation Modeling in Randomized Trials with Non-normal Outcome Variables, Statistical Considerations in Using Images in Clinical Trials, Interesting Applications over 30 Years of Consulting, Uncovering Fraud, Misconduct and Other Data Quality Issues in Clinical Trials, Development and Evaluation of High Dimensional Prognostic Models, and Design and Analysis of Biosimilar Studies.

"Food Plant Safety: UV Applications for Food and Non-Food Surfaces" discusses the fundamental principles of ultraviolet (UV) light technology, and gives practical recommendations on UV processes and systems design for specific processing operations, as well as how microbial efficacy of UV light can improve the quality of existing product lines.

Innovative research of ultraviolet light for food applications has been growing worldwide. With increased consumer demand for fresher, minimally processed but safe foods, comes the need for novel technologies to meet that demand. Ultraviolet technology has been taking its niche in food production as a non-chemical treatment to control and enhance safety of processing plants and storage facilities.

This concise resource covers the fundamentals of this promising technology and its applications; it will benefit a broad audience of professionals in food engineering, processing, and product development, as well as graduate level students.

Focuses on plant processing operations in the food industry

Presents the benefits of UV light technology applications for air quality, and safety of non-food and food contact surfaces

Covers the cost benefits and energy and environmental advantages of using UV technologies

This book is the first work that systematically describes the procedure of data mining and knowledge discovery on Bioinformatics databases by using the state-of-the-art hierarchical feature selection algorithms. The novelties of this book are three-fold. To begin with, this book discusses the hierarchical feature selection in depth, which is generally a novel research area in Data Mining/Machine Learning. Seven different state-of-the-art hierarchical feature selection algorithms are discussed and evaluated by working with four types of interpretable classification algorithms (i.e. three types of Bayesian network classification algorithms and the k-nearest neighbours classification algorithm). Moreover, this book discusses the application of those hierarchical feature selection algorithms on the well-known Gene Ontology database, where the entries (terms) are hierarchically structured. Gene Ontology database that unifies the representations of gene and gene products annotation provides the resource for mining valuable knowledge about certain biological research topics, such as the Biology of Ageing. Furthermore, this book discusses the mined biological patterns by the hierarchical feature selection algorithms relevant to the ageing-associated genes. Those patterns reveal the potential ageing-associated factors that inspire future research directions for the Biology of Ageing research.

This book covers the statistical models and methods that are used to understand human genetics, following the historical and recent developments of human genetics. Starting with Mendel's first experiments to genome-wide association studies, the book describes how genetic information can be incorporated into statistical models to discover disease genes. All commonly used approaches in statistical genetics (e.g. aggregation analysis, segregation, linkage analysis, etc), are used, but the focus of the book is modern approaches to association analysis. Numerous examples illustrate key points throughout the text, both of Mendelian and complex genetic disorders. The intended audience is statisticians, biostatisticians, epidemiologists and quantitatively- oriented geneticists and health scientists wanting to learn about statistical methods for genetic analysis, whether to better analyze genetic data, or to pursue research in methodology. A background in intermediate level statistical methods is required. The authors include few mathematical derivations, and the exercises provide problems for students with a broad range of skill levels. No background in genetics is assumed.

The key element of any fluorescence sensing or imaging technology is the fluorescence reporter, which transforms the information on molecular interactions and dynamics into measurable signals of fluorescence emission. This book, written by a team of frontline researchers, demonstrates the broad field of applications of fluorescence reporters, starting from nanoscopic properties of materials, such as self-assembled thin films, polymers and ionic liquids, through biological macromolecules and further to living cell, tissue and body imaging. Basic information on obtaining and interpreting experimental data is presented and recent progress in these practically important areas is highlighted. The book is addressed to a broad interdisciplinary audience.

This volume focuses on contributions from both the mathematics and life science community surrounding the concepts of time and dynamicity of nature, two significant elements which are often overlooked in modeling process to avoid exponential computations. The book is divided into three distinct parts: dynamics of genomes and genetic variation, dynamics of motifs, and dynamics of biological networks. Chapters included in dynamics of genomes and genetic variation analyze the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary processes that shape the structure and function of genomes and those that govern genome dynamics. The dynamics of motifs portion of the volume provides an overview of current methods for motif searching in DNA, RNA and proteins, a key process to discover emergent properties of cells, tissues, and organisms. The part devoted to the dynamics of biological networks covers networks aptly discusses networks in complex biological functions and activities that interpret processes in cells. Moreover, chapters in this section examine several mathematical models and algorithms available for integration, analysis, and characterization. Once life scientists began to produce experimental data at an unprecedented pace, it become clear that mathematical models were necessary to interpret data, to structure information with the aim to unveil biological mechanisms, discover results, and make predictions. The second annual "Bringing Maths to Life" workshop held in Naples, Italy October 2015, enabled a bi-directional flow of ideas from and international group of mathematicians and biologists. The venue allowed mathematicians to introduce novel algorithms, methods, and software that may be useful to model aspects of life science, and life scientists posed new challenges for mathematicians.

This book provides the most updated information of how membrane lipids mediate protein signaling from studies carried out in animal and plant cells. Also, there are some chapters that go beyond and expand these studies of protein-lipid interactions at the structural level. The book begins with a literature review from investigations associated to sphingolipids, followed by studies that describe the role of phosphoinositides in signaling and closing with the function of other key lipids in signaling at the plasma membrane and intracellular organelles.

ss-barrel outer membrane channel proteins (OMP) are useful as robust and flexible models or components in nanotechnology. Over the last decade biotechnological techniques allowed to expand the natural characteristics of OMPs by modifying their geometry and properties. The present book is oriented towards a broad group of readers including graduate students and advanced researchers. It gives a general introduction to the field of OMP based nano-component development as well as the state of the art of the involved research. On the example of the E. coli FhuA the transformation of an OMP into a tailored nano-channel will be outlined. An exhaustive description of the scientific strategy, including protein selection, analytical methods and "in-silico" tools to support the planning of protein modifications for a targeted application, consideration on the production of a custom made OMP, and an overview on technological applications including membrane/polymersome technology, will be provided.

This book focuses on the data mining, systems biology, and bioinformatics computational methods that can be used to summarize biological networks. Specifically, it discusses an array of techniques related to biological network clustering, network summarization, and differential network analysis which enable readers to uncover the functional and topological organization hidden in a large biological network. The authors also examine crucial open research problems in this arena. Academics, researchers, and advanced-level students will find this book to be a comprehensive and exceptional resource for understanding computational techniques and their applications for a summary of biological networks.

The rapidly developing field of systems biology is influencing many aspects of biological research and is expected to transform biomedicine. Some emerging offshoots and specialized branches in systems biology are receiving particular attention and are becoming highly active areas of research. This collection of invited reviews describes some of the latest cutting-edge experimental and computational advances in these emerging sub-fields of systems biology. In particular, this collection focuses on the study of mammalian embryonic stem cells; new technologies involving mass-spectrometry proteomics; single cell measurements; methods for modeling complex stochastic systems; network-based classification algorithms; and the revolutionary emerging field of systems pharmacology.

This book develops a new approach called parameter advising for finding a parameter setting for a sequence aligner that yields a quality alignment of a given set of input sequences. In this framework, a parameter advisor is a procedure that automatically chooses a parameter setting for the input, and has two main ingredients: (a) the set of parameter choices considered by the advisor, and (b) an estimator of alignment accuracy used to rank alignments produced by the aligner. On coupling a parameter advisor with an aligner, once the advisor is trained in a learning phase, the user simply inputs sequences to align, and receives an output alignment from the aligner, where the advisor has automatically selected the parameter setting. The chapters first lay out the foundations of parameter advising, and then cover applications and extensions of advising. The content * examines formulations of parameter advising and their computational complexity, * develops methods for learning good accuracy estimators, * presents approximation algorithms for finding good sets of parameter choices, and * assesses software implementations of advising that perform well on real biological data. Also explored are applications of parameter advising to * adaptive local realignment, where advising is performed on local regions of the sequences to automatically adapt to varying mutation rates, and * ensemble alignment, where advising is applied to an ensemble of aligners to effectively yield a new aligner of higher quality than the individual aligners in the ensemble. The book concludes by offering future directions in advising research.

Microbiome and the Eye: What's the connection? highlights how alterations in the gut and eye microbiomes can lead to systemic immune alterations with subsequent effects on the eye. The book is divided into two sections, one highlighting how alterations in the gut microbiome impact various components of health outside the gut, with a focus on the immune system and inflammatory mediators, and the second focusing on studies on a variety of ocular diseases, including ocular surface diseases/dry eye, keratitis, uveitis, glaucoma, and retinopathy to gut dysbiosis. With its translational approach, the book is suitable for both researchers and clinicians. The book will help readers understand the mechanisms in which gut and eye microbiome composition may influence health in multiple compartments, with a focus on eye diseases.