Water Scarcity, Contamination, and Management presents new and updated material, including case studies, step-by-step guidance on key procedures and protocols, and timely topics such as climate change and integrated water resource management. This book is divided into three key sections. Section 1-Water Resource Scarcity-focuses on sustainable development and management of water resources and techniques and methods for improving water use efficiency. Section 2-Contamination of Water Resources-focuses on understanding the quality of water resources, migration of pollutant sources, geochemical processes, groundwater depletion, and seasonal variations in contaminant concentration, water resources' quality status, and associated human health risks. Section 3-Water Resource Management-considers a consolidated and coordinated approach to find the solution to water resource issues. Presenting a comprehensive overview of the water management field, the book serves as a valuable reference for students, professors, scholars, researchers, and consultants in the fields of water resources, civil engineering, environmental science and engineering, and hydrology.

Quantum Crystallography is a novel scientific discipline combining quantum chemistry methods and crystal structure determination. The current book describes quantum-mechanical approaches to obtain crystallographic data of enhanced value and explains how they correlate with real diffraction and scattering experiments. In particular, the book covers DFT, Clinton equations, KEM and QTAIM methods and their applications in crystallographic studies.

This book presents statistical processes for health care delivery and covers new ideas, methods and technologies used to improve health care organizations. It gathers the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Health Care Systems Engineering (HCSE 2017), which took place in Florence, Italy from May 29 to 31, 2017. The Conference provided a timely opportunity to address operations research and operations management issues in health care delivery systems. Scientists and practitioners discussed new ideas, methods and technologies for improving the operations of health care systems, developed in close collaborations with clinicians. The topics cover a broad spectrum of concrete problems that pose challenges for researchers and practitioners alike: hospital drug logistics, operating theatre management, home care services, modeling, simulation, process mining and data mining in patient care and health care organizations.

The work presented in this thesis established the existence of wobbling at low spin and low deformation in the Z~60, N~76 nuclear region. This opens the region to further searches for wobbling and shows that wobbling is not confined to a particular quasiparticle orbital, spin or deformation. While deformed nuclei usually have axial shape, triaxial shapes have been predicted at low to moderate spins in certain regions of the nuclear chart (e.g. Z~60, N~76 and Z~46, N~66). Observation of one of the fingerprints of triaxiality, chirality and wobbling, guarantees that the nucleus is axially asymmetric. While chirality has been observed in numerous nuclei from many regions of the nuclear chart, wobbling, prior to this work, had only been observed at high spins in super deformed bands in five nuclei confined to the Z~70, N~90 region. Additionally, this dissertation establishes a new interpretation for the wobbling phenomenon. It shows for the first time that the nucleon aligns to the short axis, which explains the decrease in wobbling energies with angular momentum seen on this and all previous wobbling nuclei while still explaining the observed B(E2out)B(E2in) ratios. This is a new phenomenon, which is in contrast to the increase of the wobbling energies predicted by Bohr and Mottelson.

The International Conference on Health Care Systems Engineering (HCSE) provided a timely opportunity to discuss statistical analysis and operations management issues in health care delivery systems. The conference took place in Milan between May 22nd and 24th, 2013. Scientists and practitioners discussed new ideas, methods and technologies for improving the operation of health care organizations. The event and this resulting volume emphasize research in the field of health care systems engineering developed in close collaboration with clinicians. Topics applicable to researchers and practitioners include: hospital drug logistics, operating theatres, modelling and simulation in patient care and healthcare organizations, home care services.

In this volume, scientists and practitioners write about new methods and technologies for improving the operation of health care organizations. Statistical analyses play an important role in these methods with the implications of simulation and modeling applied to the future of health care. Papers are based on work presented at the Second International Conference on Health Care Systems Engineering (HCSE2015) in Lyon, France. The conference was a rare opportunity for scientists and practitioners to share work directly with each other. Each resulting paper received a double blind review. Paper topics include: hospital drug logistics, emergency care, simulation in patient care, and models for home care services.

This book focuses on the use of farm level, micro- and macro-data of cooperative systems and networks in developing new robust, reliable and coherent modeling tools for agricultural and environmental policy analysis. The efficacy of public intervention on agriculture is largely determined by the existence of reliable information on the effects of policy options and market developments on farmers' production decisions and in particular, on key issues such as levels of agricultural and non-agricultural output, land use and incomes, use of natural resources, sustainable-centric management, structural change and the viability of family farms. Over the last years, several methods and analytical tools have been developed for policy analysis using various sets of data. Such methods have been based on integrated approaches in an effort to investigate the above key issues and have thus attempted to offer a powerful environment for decision making, particularly in an era of radical change for both agriculture and the wider economy.

Knowledge Management and Organizational Memories presents models, methods, and techniques for building, managing and using corporate memories. These models incorporate knowledge bases, ontologies, documents, FAQs, workflow systems, case-based reasoning systems, multi-agent systems, and CSCW. The book is divided into five parts: methods; knowledge-based approaches; ontologies and documents; case-based reasoning approaches; and distributed and collaborative approaches.

Food Chains: Quality, Safety and Efficiency in a Challenging World addresses the many issues facing European food producers and other food chain stakeholders, who endeavour to improve their competitive position in a highly competitive world food market.

The Food Chain is one of the main economic pillars in Europe, providing employment and opportunities for economic development in rural areas. It is therefore imperative to continuously monitor the changes that affect the sector, in order to allow stakeholders to respond promptly and effectively to the new market conditions. Adjusting to the new market involves new technology, globalization, demographic and social changes within a challenging market environment. In order to adopt these new market parameters, food chain stakeholders need to adapt their activities in order to gain in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Food Economics - Acta Agriculture Scandinavica, Section C.

Hidden forces--memories of past poor or hurtful relationships--drive repressed feelings and emotions that are often outside our awareness. Though we want to love and be loved, to nurture and be nurtured, those forces can wreak havoc and sabotage relationships, destroying couples and even whole families. The scenario is so common, explains therapist Matta, that often people get divorced "without even fully understanding why," or knowing what is was that came between them. In many cases, what it was were lingering but unconscious memories of lessons learned as far back as childhood. These lessons may have no true bearing or justification in the current relationship, yet they can strongly affect it, fueling marital games, extra-marital affairs, addictions, poor parenting practices and a host of other harmful actions. This disturbing, yet fascinating text shows us why some people carry a psychological need to sabotage their intimate relationships. It reveals how, in cases where children are involved during marital sabotage, it is the most sensitive child who bears the symptoms of the unhealthy family, showing behaviors from acting-out to developing mental illness. Perhaps more frightening, these hidden forces and unconscious factors can be passed from generation to generation, creating a trail of failed relationships. Matta argues that we can learn to recognize these "imprints" and move past them to build or keep rewarding relationships. His book makes us aware, and gives us the tools to break the cycle.

Unarguably, preserving the ecosystem, securing sustainability and understanding the dynamics of agro-food chains have all become vital policy objectives with several interlinked dimensions. The main objectives of this book are to draw the attention of researchers, policymakers and businesspeople to the relation between agro-food chains and the ecosystem, and to demonstrate the importance of building resilient agro-food chains that take into account climate change and environmental challenges. Agro-food chains as they function today can serve as powerful tools for promoting sustainable forms of agriculture, consumption and production that are embedded in a viable ecosystem. The book addresses a range of environmental, methodological and societal issues from a transaction perspective, while also providing extensive background information on the topic, and outlining future applications and research directions.

Since manufacturing has acquired industrial relevance, the problem of adequately sizing manufacturing plants has always been discussed and has represented a di?cult problem for the enterprises, which prepare strategic plans to competitively operate in the market. Manufact- ing capacity is quite expensive and its exploitation and planning must be carefully designed in order to avoid large wastes, or to preserve the survival of enterprises in the market. Indeed a good choice of ma- facturing capacity can result in improved performance in terms of cost, innovativeness, ?exibility, quality and service delivery. Unfortunately the capacity planning problem is not easy to solve because of the lack of clarity in the decisional process, the large number of variables involved, the high correlation among variables and the high level of uncertainty that inevitably a?ects decisions. The aim of this book is to provide a framework and speci?c methods and tools for the selection and con?guration of capacity of Advanced Manufacturing Systems (AMS). In particular this book de?nes an - chitecture where the multidisciplinary aspects of the designofAMSare properly organized and addressed. The tool will support the decisi- maker in the de?nition of the con?guration of the system which is best suited for the particular competitive context where the ?rm operates or wants tooperate. Thisbookisofinterest for academic researchers in the ?eldofind- trial engineering and particularly indicated in the areas of operations and manufacturing strategy.

This book provides an up-to-date assessment of sustainable agri-food systems and rural development in the Mediterranean countries. It examines and reviews the impact of EU and national policies on environmental and trade issues in agricultural and rural organizations in the southern and eastern Mediterranean region. The book also reflects key socio-economic and political issues such as resource management, income distribution, employment and migration trends, and sustainability aspects. It demonstrates technical and methodological tools used for the analysis and explains their application. The book presents the collective work of a research consortium funded by an EU (FP7) project.

How does food restore the fragmented world of migrants and the displaced? What similar processes are involved in challenging, maintaining or reinforcing divisions between groups coexisting in the same living place? Food Identities at Home and on the Move examines how 'home' is negotiated around food in the current worldwide context of uncertainty, mobility and displacement. Drawing on empirical approaches to heritage, identity and migration studies, the contributors analyse the relationship between food and the various understandings of home and dwelling. With case studies on sushi around the world, food as heritage in the Afghan diaspora and Mexican foodways in Chicago, these chapters offer novel readings on the convergence of food and migration studies, the anthropology of space and place and the field of mobility by focusing on how entangled stories of food and home are put on display for constructing the present and imagining the future.