Plant tissue culture and advanced biotechnologies have proven to be influential tools that complement conventional breeding and accelerate development of many medicinal plants. Various approaches, such as pathway engineering, precursor feeding, transformation, elicitation with biotic and abiotic elicitors and scaling up in bioreactors, have been explored to improve the production of secondary metabolites from different medicinal plants. This book provides a comprehensive description of various studies, carried out on in vitro culture and hairy root cultures of Catharanthus roseus, Silybum marianum and Digitalis species which have been considered as alternative sources for the production of anti-tumour compounds, flavonolignans and cardenolides. Specific focus is on elicitation strategy for increasing production of bioactive compounds of C. roseus L., S. marianum and Digitalis species to overcome the constrains of conventional propagation. This book is valuable for researchers or students working on medicinal plants, phytochemistry, and plant tissue culture. It also serves as a reference for the pharmaceutical industry.

Plant tissue culture and advanced biotechnologies have proven to be influential tools that complement conventional breeding and accelerate development of many medicinal plants. Various approaches, such as pathway engineering, precursor feeding, transformation, elicitation with biotic and abiotic elicitors and scaling up in bioreactors, have been explored to improve the production of secondary metabolites from different medicinal plants. This book provides a comprehensive description of various studies, carried out on in vitro culture and hairy root cultures of Catharanthus roseus, Silybum marianum and Digitalis species which have been considered as alternative sources for the production of anti-tumour compounds, flavonolignans and cardenolides. Specific focus is on elicitation strategy for increasing production of bioactive compounds of C. roseus L., S. marianum and Digitalis species to overcome the constrains of conventional propagation. This book is valuable for researchers or students working on medicinal plants, phytochemistry, and plant tissue culture. It also serves as a reference for the pharmaceutical industry.

The book investigates the feasibility of constructing a software multi-agent based monitoring and classification system and utilizing it to provide an automatic and accurate classification of end users developing applications in the spreadsheet domain. The agents function autonomously to provide continuous and periodic monitoring of excel spreadsheet workbooks by content. Resulting in, the development of the MultiAgent classification System (MACS) that is in compliance with the specifications of the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA). However, different technologies have been brought together to build MACS. The strength of the system is the integration of the agent technology with the FIPA specifications together with other technologies, which are Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Oracle Data Mining (ODM). The Microsoft's .NET Widows Service based agents were utilized to develop the monitoring agents of MACS, the .NET WCF services together with SOA approach allowed the distribution and communication between agents over the WWW. ODM was used to automate the classification phase of MACS.

Laser Ablation attached to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is widely accepted as a rapid and sensitive technique for trace element analysis of solid materials. Three different instruments are used: 1- a-The double focusing ICP-MS (JMS-PLASMAX2) is used for the analysis of rare earth elements in minerals as (monazite), and for rocks as (standard samples BCR-2, AGV-2), Also lead and strontium isotope ratios in tourmaline sample solution. b- A quadrupole (ELAN6000, Perkin Elmer) mass spectrometer. It was applied for the analysis of single grains of tourmaline sample for Sr and Pb isotope ratios and fused pellets for trace elements composition for different samples 2- Energy dispersive Scanning Electron microscope used for the analysis of zircon fused pellets and single grains. Rutherford back scattering spectrometer for the analysis of zircon fused pellets to ensure the homogeneity of the fused pellets, and LA-HR-ICP-MS (PLASMAX2) for trace elements in zircon fused pellets. 3- Ion exchange and ion chromatograph GBC for the separation of transition and rare earth elements in geological samples.

Recently, series compensation is widely used in transmission. However, this creates several problems to conventional protection approaches.This book presents a comprehensive distance and overcurrent protection approach for series compensated transmission line using support vector machine (SVM).SVM is considered as a new powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) technique. In a short period of time, SVM has been applied to numerous applications such as transformer faultdiagnosis, power system disturbances, relay coordination, transient stability of power system and fault classification of transmission line. This is due to the advantages of SVM over traditional approaches. The SVMs are trained with different kernel functions with different parameter values to get the most optimized model. Simulation studies have been considered for different operating conditions, including wide variations of load angle, fault inception angle, fault resistance and fault location.In addition to series compensated transmission line protection studies, the book also includes fault analysis of high voltage transmission linewithout compensation.

Due to safety requirements to protect workers against hazardous gases and dust, wearing protective air-purifying respiratory devices tends to increase heat load on the workers. To the best author's knowledge no study assessed protective air-purifying respiratory devices in the harsh weather and tried to recommend one(s) in the heat. The goal of this project was to study the effect of different types of air-purifying respiratory devices (six devices) and different levels of heat stresses on the worker physiological indices and exertion ratings. Participates (sixteen young male) were exercised on an ergometer bike in a laboratory while wearing different respiratory types at different workloads, room temperature and humidity levels. Their effects related to the participants' body functions (e.g., heart rate, aural canal temperature and blood pressure), and their exertion ratings were measured. Results revealed that with wearing masks in the hot environments, all physiological indices as well as exertion ratings were significantly increased. The best respiratory device type that is available in the market is determined.

Trade between the United States and the eighteen countries of the Middle East and North Africa continues to grow at a steady pace, particularly with those countries that have signed free trade agreements with the US. This insightful and timely book examines US bilateral free trade agreements with a cross section of Middle Eastern countries. Economists discuss this topic generally, but few published works focus on the consistency of US bilateral free trade agreements with the relevant legal norms in the Middle East, other regional agreements and the multilateral trading system. Four central questions are at the heart of this book's illuminating analysis: 1. Are US bilateral free trade agreements consistent with international legal norms? 2. Are these agreements consistent with Middle Eastern norms on regional integration? 3. Are the agreements consistent with Islamic norms on trade liberalization? 4. Are the agreements consistent with local norms on intellectual property, environmental protection and labour standards?