Risk assessment has been extensively developed in several scientific fields, such as environmental science, economics, and civil engineering, among others. In the aftermath of the SPS and GATT agreements on the use of risk analysis framework in food trade, signed in the 1990s, international organisations and governments adopted risk assessment as a science-based process to ensure food safety along the food chain. The food industry can also benefit from the use of this approach for food process optimisation and quality assurance. Risk Assessment Methods for Biological and Chemical Hazards in Food introduces the reader to quantitative risk assessment methods encompassing general concepts to specific applications to biological and chemical hazards in foods. In the first section, the book presents food risk assessment as methodology and addresses, more specifically, new trends and approaches such as the development of risk rating methods, risk metrics, risk-benefit assessment studies and quality assessment methods. Section II is dedicated to biological hazards. This section identifies the most relevant biological hazards along the food chain and provides an overview on the types of predictive microbiology models used to describe the microbial response along the food chain. Chapter 12 specifically deals with cross contamination and the quantitative methods that can be applied to describe this relevant microbial process. The development and application of dose-response models (i.e. mathematical function describing the relationship between pathogen dose and health response) are also covered in this section. In Section III, the book translates risk assessment concepts into the area of chemical hazards, defining the process steps to determine chemical risk and describing the uncertainty and variability sources associated with chemicals. Key Features: Presents new trends and approaches in the field of risk assessment in foods Risk assessment concepts are illustrated by practical examples in the food sector Discusses how quantitative information and models are integrated in a quantitative risk asssment framework Provides examples of applications of quantitative chemical risk assessment in risk management The book, written by renowned experts in their field, is a comprehensive collection of quantitative methods and approaches applied to risk assessment in foods. It can be used as an extensive guide for food safety practitioners and researchers to perform quantitative risk assessment in foods

The Theraphosidae are the most famous and diverse mygalomorph spiders, and include some of the largest arachnids on earth. Their unique defense mechanisms, predatory tactics, reproductive strategies and ecological adaptations are displayed by a wide range of terrestrial, burrowing and arboreal species. These arachnids are familiar to the general public thanks to horror movies and a growing interest in tarantulas as pets; however, scientific information on the group is scattered throughout the literature and not easily available. This book reviews all major aspects of New World Theraphosid tarantulas and provides in-depth information on their evolution, taxonomy, behavior, physiology, ecology, reproduction, conservation and biogeography. As a comprehensive guide to the biology of tarantulas, it will appeal to researchers, students and terrarium hobbyists alike.

This book focuses on the food safety challenges in the vegetable industry from primary production to consumption. It describes existing and innovative quantitative methods that could be applied to the vegetable industry for food safety and quality, and suggests ways in which such methods can be applied for risk assessment. Examples of application of food safety objectives and other risk metrics for microbial risk management in the vegetable industry are presented. The work also introduces readers to new preservation and packaging methods, advanced oxidative processes (AOPs) for disinfection, product shelf-life determination methods, and rapid analytic methods for quality assessment based on chemometrics applications, thus providing a quantitative basis for the most important aspects concerning safety and quality in the vegetable sector.

This handbook discusses developments and the future of gout treatment, which looks promising. Gout has been a well-known disease for over 2000 years, and is the most common cause of joint inflammation in adult males. It has become apparent that no therapeutic target based on hyperuricemia outcome had been defined. Very few controlled trials were available to test the efficacy and safety of treatments, and no research on diagnosis and management had been done despite data showing that patients with gout were generally improperly treated even in the hands of specialists. In the last 10 years, good-quality evidence on gout impact and management has grown exponentially, renal transporters have been recently identified, and a number of new drugs have been approved or are under current development.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Digital-Forensics and Watermarking, IWDW 2013, held in Auckland, New Zealand, during October 2013. The 24 full and 13 poster papers, presented together with 2 abstracts, were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on steganography and steganalysis; visual cryptography; reversible data hiding; forensics; watermarking; anonymizing and plate recognition.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Digital-Forensics and Watermarking, IWDW 2012, held in Shanghai, China, during October/November 2012. The 42 revised papers (27 oral and 15 poster papers) were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on steganography and steganalysis; watermarking and copyright protection; forensics and anti-forensics; reversible data hiding; fingerprinting and authentication; visual cryptography.

Predictive microbiology is a recent area within food microbiology, which studies the responses of microorganisms in foods to environmental factors (e.g., temperature, pH) through mathematical functions. These functions enable scientists to predict the behavior of pathogens and spoilage microorganisms under different combinations of factors. The main goal of predictive models in food science is to assure both food safety and food quality. Predictive models in foods have developed significantly in the last 20 years due to the emergence of powerful computational resources and sophisticated statistical packages. This book presents the concepts, models, most significant advances, and future trends in predictive microbiology. It will discuss the history and basic concepts of predictive microbiology. The most frequently used models will be explained, and the most significant software and databases (e.g., Combase, Sym'Previus) will be reviewed. Quantitative Risk Assessment, which uses predictive modeling to account for the transmission of foodborne pathogens across the food chain, will also be covered.

129 6.2 Representation of hints. 131 6.3 Monotonicity hints .. . 134 6.4 Theory ......... . 139 6.4.1 Capacity results 140 6.4.2 Decision boundaries 144 6.5 Conclusion 145 6.6 References....... ... 146 7 Analysis and Synthesis Tools for Robust SPRness 147 C. Mosquera, J.R. Hernandez, F. Perez-Gonzalez 7.1 Introduction.............. 147 7.2 SPR Analysis of Uncertain Systems. 153 7.2.1 The Poly topic Case . 155 7.2.2 The ZP-Ball Case ...... . 157 7.2.3 The Roots Space Case ... . 159 7.3 Synthesis of LTI Filters for Robust SPR Problems 161 7.3.1 Algebraic Design for Two Plants ..... . 161 7.3.2 Algebraic Design for Three or More Plants 164 7.3.3 Approximate Design Methods. 165 7.4 Experimental results 167 7.5 Conclusions 168 7.6 References ..... . 169 8 Boundary Methods for Distribution Analysis 173 J.L. Sancho et aZ. 8.1 Introduction ............. . 173 8.1.1 Building a Classifier System . 175 8.2 Motivation ............. . 176 8.3 Boundary Methods as Feature-Set Evaluation 177 8.3.1 Results ................ . 179 8.3.2 Feature Set Evaluation using Boundary Methods: S- mary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 182 . . .

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 10th International Workshop on Digital-forensics and Watermarking (IWDW 2011) held in Atlantic City, NJ, USA, during October 23-26, 2011. The 37 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 59 submissions. Conference papers are organized in 6 technical sessions, covering the topics of steganography and steganalysis, watermarking, visual cryptography, forensics, anti-forensics, fingerprinting, privacy and security.

It is our pleasure to present in this volume the proceedings of the 7th Inter- tional Workshopon InformationHiding (IH 2005), held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, during June 6-8, 2005. The workshop was organized by the Department of Computer Science and Multimedia, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). Continuing the tradition of previous workshops, we sought a balanced p- gram, containing talks on various aspects of data hiding, anonymous commu- cation, steganalysis, and watermarking.Although the protection of digital int- lectual property has up to now motivated most of our research, there are many other upcoming ?elds of application. We were delighted to see that this year's workshop presented numerous new and unconventional approaches to infor- tion hiding. The selection of the program was a very challenging task. In total, we - ceived 90 submissions from 21 countries. At this point we want to thank all authors who submitted their latest work to IH 2005-and thus assured that the Information Hiding Workshop continues to be the top forum of our community.

129 6.2 Representation of hints. 131 6.3 Monotonicity hints .. . 134 6.4 Theory ......... . 139 6.4.1 Capacity results 140 6.4.2 Decision boundaries 144 6.5 Conclusion 145 6.6 References....... ... 146 7 Analysis and Synthesis Tools for Robust SPRness 147 C. Mosquera, J.R. Hernandez, F. Perez-Gonzalez 7.1 Introduction.............. 147 7.2 SPR Analysis of Uncertain Systems. 153 7.2.1 The Poly topic Case . 155 7.2.2 The ZP-Ball Case ...... . 157 7.2.3 The Roots Space Case ... . 159 7.3 Synthesis of LTI Filters for Robust SPR Problems 161 7.3.1 Algebraic Design for Two Plants ..... . 161 7.3.2 Algebraic Design for Three or More Plants 164 7.3.3 Approximate Design Methods. 165 7.4 Experimental results 167 7.5 Conclusions 168 7.6 References ..... . 169 8 Boundary Methods for Distribution Analysis 173 J.L. Sancho et aZ. 8.1 Introduction ............. . 173 8.1.1 Building a Classifier System . 175 8.2 Motivation ............. . 176 8.3 Boundary Methods as Feature-Set Evaluation 177 8.3.1 Results ................ . 179 8.3.2 Feature Set Evaluation using Boundary Methods: S- mary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 182 . . .

The multi-volume set LNAI 12975 until 12979 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, ECML PKDD 2021, which was held during September 13-17, 2021. The conference was originally planned to take place in Bilbao, Spain, but changed to an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 210 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 869 submissions. The volumes are organized in topical sections as follows: Research Track: Part I: Online learning; reinforcement learning; time series, streams, and sequence models; transfer and multi-task learning; semi-supervised and few-shot learning; learning algorithms and applications. Part II: Generative models; algorithms and learning theory; graphs and networks; interpretation, explainability, transparency, safety. Part III: Generative models; search and optimization; supervised learning; text mining and natural language processing; image processing, computer vision and visual analytics. Applied Data Science Track: Part IV: Anomaly detection and malware; spatio-temporal data; e-commerce and finance; healthcare and medical applications (including Covid); mobility and transportation. Part V: Automating machine learning, optimization, and feature engineering; machine learning based simulations and knowledge discovery; recommender systems and behavior modeling; natural language processing; remote sensing, image and video processing; social media.

The multi-volume set LNAI 12975 until 12979 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, ECML PKDD 2021, which was held during September 13-17, 2021. The conference was originally planned to take place in Bilbao, Spain, but changed to an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 210 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 869 submissions. The volumes are organized in topical sections as follows: Research Track: Part I: Online learning; reinforcement learning; time series, streams, and sequence models; transfer and multi-task learning; semi-supervised and few-shot learning; learning algorithms and applications. Part II: Generative models; algorithms and learning theory; graphs and networks; interpretation, explainability, transparency, safety. Part III: Generative models; search and optimization; supervised learning; text mining and natural language processing; image processing, computer vision and visual analytics. Applied Data Science Track: Part IV: Anomaly detection and malware; spatio-temporal data; e-commerce and finance; healthcare and medical applications (including Covid); mobility and transportation. Part V: Automating machine learning, optimization, and feature engineering; machine learning based simulations and knowledge discovery; recommender systems and behavior modeling; natural language processing; remote sensing, image and video processing; social media.

The multi-volume set LNAI 12975 until 12979 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases, ECML PKDD 2021, which was held during September 13-17, 2021. The conference was originally planned to take place in Bilbao, Spain, but changed to an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 210 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 869 submissions. The volumes are organized in topical sections as follows: Research Track: Part I: Online learning; reinforcement learning; time series, streams, and sequence models; transfer and multi-task learning; semi-supervised and few-shot learning; learning algorithms and applications. Part II: Generative models; algorithms and learning theory; graphs and networks; interpretation, explainability, transparency, safety. Part III: Generative models; search and optimization; supervised learning; text mining and natural language processing; image processing, computer vision and visual analytics. Applied Data Science Track: Part IV: Anomaly detection and malware; spatio-temporal data; e-commerce and finance; healthcare and medical applications (including Covid); mobility and transportation. Part V: Automating machine learning, optimization, and feature engineering; machine learning based simulations and knowledge discovery; recommender systems and behavior modeling; natural language processing; remote sensing, image and video processing; social media.

Risk assessment has been extensively developed in several scientific fields, such as environmental science, economics, and civil engineering, among others. In the aftermath of the SPS and GATT agreements on the use of risk analysis framework in food trade, signed in the 1990s, international organisations and governments adopted risk assessment as a science-based process to ensure food safety along the food chain. The food industry can also benefit from the use of this approach for food process optimisation and quality assurance. Risk Assessment Methods for Biological and Chemical Hazards in Food introduces the reader to quantitative risk assessment methods encompassing general concepts to specific applications to biological and chemical hazards in foods. In the first section, the book presents food risk assessment as methodology and addresses, more specifically, new trends and approaches such as the development of risk rating methods, risk metrics, risk-benefit assessment studies and quality assessment methods. Section II is dedicated to biological hazards. This section identifies the most relevant biological hazards along the food chain and provides an overview on the types of predictive microbiology models used to describe the microbial response along the food chain. Chapter 12 specifically deals with cross contamination and the quantitative methods that can be applied to describe this relevant microbial process. The development and application of dose-response models (i.e. mathematical function describing the relationship between pathogen dose and health response) are also covered in this section. In Section III, the book translates risk assessment concepts into the area of chemical hazards, defining the process steps to determine chemical risk and describing the uncertainty and variability sources associated with chemicals. Key Features: Presents new trends and approaches in the field of risk assessment in foods Risk assessment concepts are illustrated by practical examples in the food sector Discusses how quantitative information and models are integrated in a quantitative risk asssment framework Provides examples of applications of quantitative chemical risk assessment in risk management The book, written by renowned experts in their field, is a comprehensive collection of quantitative methods and approaches applied to risk assessment in foods. It can be used as an extensive guide for food safety practitioners and researchers to perform quantitative risk assessment in foods

This book focuses on the food safety challenges in the vegetable industry from primary production to consumption. It describes existing and innovative quantitative methods that could be applied to the vegetable industry for food safety and quality, and suggests ways in which such methods can be applied for risk assessment. Examples of application of food safety objectives and other risk metrics for microbial risk management in the vegetable industry are presented. The work also introduces readers to new preservation and packaging methods, advanced oxidative processes (AOPs) for disinfection, product shelf-life determination methods, and rapid analytic methods for quality assessment based on chemometrics applications, thus providing a quantitative basis for the most important aspects concerning safety and quality in the vegetable sector.

This book constitutes the revised post-conference proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on Digital Forensics and Watermarking, IWDW 2016, held in Beijing, China, in September 2016. The 45 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 70 submissions. The contributions are organized in topical sections on digital forensics, visual cryptography, reversible data hiding, and steganography and steganalysis.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 14th International Workshop on Digital-Forensics and Watermarking, IWDW 2015, held in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2015. The 35 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The contributions are organized in topical sections named: digital forensics; steganography and steganalysis; digital watermarking; reversible data hiding; and visual cryptography.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Digital-Forensics and Watermarking, IWDW 2014, held in Taipei, Taiwan, during October 2014. The 32 full and 14 poster papers, presented together with 1 keynote speech, were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on forensics; watermarking; reversible data hiding; visual cryptography; and steganography and steganalysis.

From the cabinets of wonder of the Renaissance to the souvenir collections of today, selecting, accumulating, and organizing objects are practices that are central to our notions of who we are and what we value. Collecting, both private and institutional, has been instrumental in the consolidation of modern notions of the individual and of the nation, and numerous studies have discussed its complex political, social, economic, anthropological, and psychological implications. However, studies of collecting as practiced in colonized cultures are few, since the role of these cultures has usually been understood as that of purveyors of objects for the metropolitan collector. Collecting from the Margins: Material Culture in a Latin American Context seeks to counter the historical understanding of collecting that posits the metropolis as collecting subject and the colonial or postcolonial society as supplier of collectible objects by asking instead how collecting has been practiced and understood in Latin America. Has collecting been viewed or portrayed differently in a Latin American context? Does the act of collecting, when viewed from a Latin American perspective, unsettle the way we have become accustomed to think about it? What differences, if any, arise in the activity of collecting in colonized or previously colonial societies? Spanning the period after the independence wars until the 1980s, this collection of ten essays addresses a broad range of examples of collecting practices in Latin America. Collecting during the nineteenth century is addressed in discussions of the creation of the first national museums of Argentina and Colombia in the post-independence period, as well as in analyses of the private collections of modernistas such as Enrique Gomez Carrillo, Ruben Dario, Jose Asuncion Silva, and Delmira Agustini at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The practice of collecting in the twentieth century is discussed in analyses of the self-described revolutionary practices of Oswald de Andrade, Augusto de Campos and the films of Ruy Guerra, as well as the polemical collections of Pablo Neruda, and the unsettling collections portrayed in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

From the cabinets of wonder of the Renaissance to the souvenir collections of today, selecting, accumulating, and organizing objects are practices that are central to our notions of who we are and what we value. Collecting, both private and institutional, has been instrumental in the consolidation of modern notions of the individual and of the nation, and numerous studies have discussed its complex political, social, economic, anthropological, and psychological implications. However, studies of collecting as practiced in colonized cultures are few, since the role of these cultures has usually been understood as that of purveyors of objects for the metropolitan collector. Collecting from the Margins: Material Culture in a Latin American Context seeks to counter the historical understanding of collecting that posits the metropolis as collecting subject and the colonial or postcolonial society as supplier of collectible objects by asking instead how collecting has been practiced and understood in Latin America. Has collecting been viewed or portrayed differently in a Latin American context? Does the act of collecting, when viewed from a Latin American perspective, unsettle the way we have become accustomed to think about it? What differences, if any, arise in the activity of collecting in colonized or previously colonial societies? Spanning the period after the independence wars until the 1980s, this collection of ten essays addresses a broad range of examples of collecting practices in Latin America. Collecting during the nineteenth century is addressed in discussions of the creation of the first national museums of Argentina and Colombia in the post-independence period, as well as in analyses of the private collections of modernistas such as Enrique Gomez Carrillo, Ruben Dario, Jose Asuncion Silva, and Delmira Agustini at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The practice of collecting in the twentieth century is discussed in analyses of the self-described revolutionary practices of Oswald de Andrade, Augusto de Campos and the films of Ruy Guerra, as well as the polemical collections of Pablo Neruda, and the unsettling collections portrayed in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.