Metagenomics has taken off as one of the major cutting-edge fields of research. The field has broad implications for human health and disease, animal production and environmental health. Metagenomics has opened up a wealth of data, tools, technologies and applications that allow us to access the majority of organisms that we still cannot access in pure culture (an estimated 99% of microbial life). Numerous research groups are developing tools, approaches and applications to deal with this new field, as larger data sets from environments including the human body, the oceans and soils are being generated. See for example the human microbiome initiative (HMP) which has become a world-wide effort and the Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) surveys. The number of publications as measured through PubMed that are focused on metagenomics continues to increase. The field of metagenomics continues to evolve with large common datasets available to the scientific community. A concerted effort is needed to collate all this information in a centralized place. By having all the information in an Encyclopedia form, we have an opportunity to receive seminal contributions from the leaders in the field and at the same time provide this information to a significant number of junior and senior scientists, via colleges, libraries, and just through online access. This format also allows scientists in the developing world to have continued access to this growing field. It is anticipated that the Encyclopedia will also be used by many other groups including, clinicians, undergraduate and graduate level students, as well as ethical and legal groups associated with or interested in the issues surrounding metagenome science.

This book is the "Study Book" of ICMI-Study no. 20, which was run in cooperation with the International Congress on Industry and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM). The editors were the co-chairs of the study (Damlamian, Straesser) and the organiser of the Study Conference (Rodrigues). The text contains a comprehensive report on the findings of the Study Conference, original plenary presentations of the Study Conference, reports on the Working Groups and selected papers from all over world. This content was selected by the editors as especially pertinent to the study each individual chapter represents a significant contribution to current research.

Software-based cryptography can be used for security applications where data traffic is not too large and low encryption rate is tolerable. But hardware methods are more suitable where speed and real-time encryption are needed. Until now, there has been no book explaining how cryptographic algorithms can be implemented on reconfigurable hardware devices. This book covers computational methods, computer arithmetic algorithms, and design improvement techniques needed to implement efficient cryptographic algorithms in FPGA reconfigurable hardware platforms. The author emphasizes the practical aspects of reconfigurable hardware design, explaining the basic mathematics involved, and giving a comprehensive description of state-of-the-art implementation techniques.

When the post-war relationship between Spain and America began, Hitler's old ally was an unlikely candidate for US influence. The Cold War changed all this. Soon there were US bases on Spanish territory and a political conjuring trick was under way. This volume examines the public diplomacy strategies that the US government employed to accomplish an almost impossible mission: to keep a warm relationship with a tyrant without drifting apart from his opponents, and to somehow pave the way for a transition to democracy. The book's focus on the perspective of soft power breaks new ground in understanding US-Spanish relations. In so doing, it offers valuable lessons for understanding how public diplomacy has functioned in the past and can function today and tomorrow in transitions to democracy.

The aim of this book is to investigate comfort control inside buildings, and how this can be achieved through low energy consumption. It presents a comprehensive exploration of the design, development and implementation of several advanced control systems that maintain users' comfort (thermal and indoor air quality) whilst minimizing energy consumption. The book includes a detailed account of the latest cutting edge developments in this area, and presents several control systems based on Model Predictive Control approaches. Real-life examples are provided, and the book is supplemented by illustrations, tables, all of which facilitate understanding of the text.

Energy consumption in buildings (residential and non-residential) represents almost the half of the total world energy consumption, and they are also responsible for approximately 35% of CO2 emissions. For these reasons, the reduction of energy consumption associated with the construction and use of buildings, and the increase of energy efficiency in their climatic refurbishment are frequently studied topics in academia and industry. As the productivity of users is directly related to their comfort, a middle ground needs to be found between comfort of users and energy efficiency. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to develop innovation and technology which can provide comfortable environments with minimum energy consumption. This book is intended for researchers interested in control engineering, energy and bioclimatic buildings, and for mechanical and process control engineers. It also accessible to postgraduate students embarking on a career in this area, particularly those studying architecture.

This monograph is framed within the context of off-road mobile robotics. In particular, it discusses issues related to modelling, localization, and motion control of tracked mobile robots working in planar slippery conditions. Tracked locomotion constitutes a well-known solution for mobile platforms operating over diverse challenging terrains, for that reason, tracked robotics constitutes an important research field with many applications (e.g. agriculture, mining, search and rescue operations, military activities). The specific topics of this monograph are: historical perspective of tracked vehicles and tracked robots; trajectory-tracking model taking into account slip effect; visual-odometry-based localization strategies; and advanced slip-compensation motion controllers ensuring efficient real-time execution. Physical experiments with a real tracked robot are presented showing the better performance of the suggested novel approaches to known techniques.

Keywords: longitudinal slip, visual odometry, slip-compensation control, robust predictive control, trajectory tracking.

Related subjects: Robotics Mechanical Engineering Mechanics Computer Science Artificial Intelligence - Applications

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A discussion of challenges related to the modeling and control of greenhouse crop growth, this book presents state-of-the-art answers to those challenges. The authors model the subsystems involved in successful greenhouse control using different techniques and show how the models obtained can be exploited for simulation or control design; they suggest ideas for the development of physical and/or black-box models for this purpose. Strategies for the control of climate- and irrigation-related variables are brought forward. The uses of PID control and feedforward compensators, both widely used in commercial tools, are summarized. The benefits of advanced control techniques-event-based, robust, and predictive control, for example-are used to improve on the performance of those basic methods. A hierarchical control architecture is developed governed by a high-level multiobjective optimization approach rather than traditional constrained optimization and artificial intelligence techniques. Reference trajectories are found for diurnal and nocturnal temperatures (climate-related setpoints) and electrical conductivity (fertirrigation-related setpoints). The objectives are to maximize profit, fruit quality, and water-use efficiency, these being encouraged by current international rules. Illustrative practical results selected from those obtained in an industrial greenhouse during the last eight years are shown and described. The text of the book is complemented by the use of illustrations, tables and real examples which are helpful in understanding the material. Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth will be of interest to industrial engineers, academic researchers and graduates from agricultural, chemical, and process-control backgrounds.

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.

The Mathematics of Darwin 's Legacy presents a general overview of mathematical models in the context of evolution. It covers a wide range of topics such as population genetics, population dynamics, speciation, adaptive dynamics, game theory, kin selection, and stochastic processes. Written by leading scientists working at the interface between evolutionary biology and mathematics the book is the outcome of a conference commemorating Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, and the 150th anniversary of the first publication of his book "On the origin of species." Its chapters vary in format between general introductory and state-of-the-art research texts in biomathematics, in this way addressing both students and researchers in mathematics, biology and related fields. Mathematicians looking for new problems as well as biologists looking for rigorous description of population dynamics will find this book fundamental.

This book shows the promising future and essential issues on the storage of the supercritical gases, including hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide, by adsorption with controlling the gas-solid interaction by use of designed nanoporous materials. It explains the reason why the storage of these gases with adsorption is difficult from the fundamentals in terms of gas-solid interaction. It consists of 14 chapters which describe fundamentals, application, key nanoporous materials (nanoporous carbon, metal organic frame works, zeolites) and their storage performance for hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. Thus, this book appeals to a wide readership of the academic and industrial researchers and it can also be used in the classroom for graduate students focusing on clean energy technology, green chemistry, energy conversion and storage, chemical engineering, nanomaterials science and technology, surface and interface science, adsorption science and technology, carbon science and technology, metal organic framework science, zeolite science, nanoporous materials science, nanotechnology, environmental protection, and gas sensors.

This Research Note presents several contributions and mathematical studies in fluid mechanics, namely in non-Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids and on the Navier-Stokes equations in unbounded domains. It includes review of the mathematical analysis of incompressible and compressible flows and results in magnetohydrodynamic and electrohydrodynamic stability and thermoconvective flow of Boussinesq-Stefan type. These studies, along with brief communications on a variety of related topics comprise the proceedings of a summer course held in Lisbon, Portugal in 1991. Together they provide a set of comprehensive survey and advanced introduction to problems in fluid mechanics and partial differential equations.

The digital era has dramatically changed the ways that researchers search, produce, publish, and disseminate their scientific work. These processes are still rapidly evolving due to improvements in information science, new achievements in computer science technologies, and initiatives such as DML and open access journals, digitization projects, scientific reference catalogs, and digital repositories. These changes have prompted many mathematicians to play an active part in the developments of the digital era, and have led mathematicians to promote and discuss new ideas with colleagues from other fields, such as technology developers and publishers. This book is a collection of contributions by key leaders in the field, offering the paradigms and mechanisms for producing, searching, and exploiting scientific and technical scholarship in mathematics in the digital era.

This volume comprises selected, revised papers from the Joint CIM-WIAS Workshop, TAAO 2017, held in Lisbon, Portugal, in December 2017. The workshop brought together experts from research groups at the Weierstrass Institute in Berlin and mathematics centres in Portugal to present and discuss current scientific topics and to promote existing and future collaborations. The papers include the following topics: PDEs with applications to material sciences, thermodynamics and laser dynamics, scientific computing, nonlinear optimization and stochastic analysis.

This book provides insight into current research topics in finance and banking in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In this volume, authors present empirical research on liquidity risk discussed in the context of Basel III and its implications. Chapters also investigate topics such as bank efficiency and new bank business models from a business diversification perspective, the effects on financial exclusion and how liquidity mismatches are related with the bank business model. This book will be of value to those with an interest in how Basel III has had a tangible impact upon banking processes, particularly with regard to maintaining liquidity, and the latest research in financial business models.

This Research Note presents several contributions and mathematical studies in fluid mechanics, namely in non-Newtonian and viscoelastic fluids and on the Navier-Stokes equations in unbounded domains. It includes review of the mathematical analysis of incompressible and compressible flows and results in magnetohydrodynamic and electrohydrodynamic stability and thermoconvective flow of Boussinesq-Stefan type. These studies, along with brief communications on a variety of related topics comprise the proceedings of a summer course held in Lisbon, Portugal in 1991. Together they provide a set of comprehensive survey and advanced introduction to problems in fluid mechanics and partial differential equations.

This book provides insight into current research topics in finance and banking in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Expert authors authoritatively analyse how banks finance their activities and resolve funding issues. Chapters specifically discuss financial instruments such as corporate bonds, IPOs, sukuks and microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) in light of the importance of institutional funding gaps. The decision-making process within the banking industry with regard to long-range financial decisions and dividend policies is also discussed.

This book provides insight into current research topics in finance and banking in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Expert authors authoritatively analyse how banks finance their activities and resolve funding issues. Chapters specifically discuss financial instruments such as corporate bonds, IPOs, sukuks and microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) in light of the importance of institutional funding gaps. The decision-making process within the banking industry with regard to long-range financial decisions and dividend policies is also discussed.

This book provides insight into current research topics in finance and banking in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In this volume, authors present empirical research on liquidity risk discussed in the context of Basel III and its implications. Chapters also investigate topics such as bank efficiency and new bank business models from a business diversification perspective, the effects on financial exclusion and how liquidity mismatches are related with the bank business model. This book will be of value to those with an interest in how Basel III has had a tangible impact upon banking processes, particularly with regard to maintaining liquidity, and the latest research in financial business models.

This book is the “Study Book� of ICMI-Study no. 20, which was run in cooperation with the International Congress on Industry and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM). The editors were the co-chairs of the study (Damlamian, Straesser) and the organiser of the Study Conference (Rodrigues). The text contains a comprehensive report on the findings of the Study Conference, original plenary presentations of the Study Conference, reports on the Working Groups and selected papers from all over world. This content was selected by the editors as especially pertinent to the study each individual chapter represents a significant contribution to current research.