Mainstream economics traditionally restricts the analysis of the labor market to purely monetary factors, such as earnings, leaving aside many other characteristics which might affect the desirability of certain jobs. By contrast, this original book aims to explore the alternatives and problems faced by researchers in quantifying and measuring a broader notion of job quality. The main objective is to analyze the different approaches to measurement and to analyze both the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods within a European context. Specifically, the book presents a unique new index of job quality and applies it to the EU Member States. The index proves particularly useful to measure the differences in job quality by country, occupation, gender and age. Based on solid theory and data, this book will prove essential for postgraduate students, researchers and academics of labor economics, sociology, industrial relations, and European studies as it presents a coherent discussion of the concept and components of job quality, and of the difficulties of measuring it. The book also proposes a new aggregate index of job quality that can contribute to the evaluation of European employment policies and performance that will appeal to European policy circles.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems, held in Alicante, Spain, in June 2011. The 11 revised full papers and 11 revised short papers presented together with 23 poster papers, 1 invited talk and 6 papers of the NLDB 2011 doctoral symposium were carefully reviewed and selected from 74 submissions. The papers address all aspects of Natural Language Processing related areas and present current research on topics such as natural language in conceptual modeling, NL interfaces for data base querying/retrieval, NL-based integration of systems, large-scale online linguistic resources, applications of computational linguistics in information systems, management of textual databases NL on data warehouses and data mining, NLP applications, as well as NL and ubiquitous computing.

The practitioner or researcher often faces complex alternatives when selecting a method to characterize properties governing a soil process. After years of research and development, environmental and agricultural professionals now have an array of methods for characterizing soil processes. Well-established methods, however, may not be suitable for the specific conditions of a study since many soil characteristics are intrinsically variable. An objective, integrated approach for soil characterization is needed to more effectively quantify parameters. Soil-Water-Solute Process Characterization goes beyond technical guidance and addresses the complicating factors such as spatial and temporal variability of soil processes, scale issues, soil structure, and the trade-offs between methods. It focuses on advanced methods for the monitoring and modeling of mass transfer processes in soil. Expert contributors present limitations to well-known methods and alternatives, discussing their practical applications for characterization efforts, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, and focusing on a reduced set of selected techniques. Three in-depth sections cover everything from multidisciplinary approaches for assessing subsurface non-point source pollution to techniques for characterizing water and energy balances at the soil-plant-atmosphere interface, field methods for monitoring soil water status, and computer models for characterizing the effect of chemicals in soil. This single-source reference is transforming method selection and our understanding of the principles, advantages, and limitations of the available monitoring techniques. Written in a simple and straightforward manner, Soil-Water-Solute Process Characterization is a detailed cookbook and a useful, practical reference for students, practitioners, and researchers.

This volume contains the papers presented at NLDB 2009, the 14th Inter- tional Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems held June 24-26, 2009, at the University of the Saarland and the German - search Center for Arti?cial Intelligence in Saarbruc ken, Germany. In addition to reviewed submissions, the program also included contributions to the doctoral symposiumheldduring NLDB2009aswellastwoinvitedtalks.Thesetalksc- ered some of the currently hot topics in the use of natural languagefor accessing information systems. Wereceived51submissionsasregularpapersforthemainconference,2extra submissions as posters, and 3 short papers for the doctoral symposium. Each paper for the main conference was assigned four reviewers, taking into account preferences expressed by the ProgramCommittee members as much as possible. Within the review deadline, we received at least three reviews for almost all submissions. After the review deadline, the Conference Organizing Committee members and the Program Committee Chair acted as meta-reviewers. This task included studying the reviews and the papers, speci?cally those whose assessment made them borderline cases, and discussing con?icting opinions and their impact on theassessmentofindividualpapers.Finally,themeta-reviewerswroteadditional reviews for the few papers which received less than three reviews, as well as for papers which received reviews with considerably con?icting assessments.

This book presents findings and results from the recent European Union Company survey of Operating hours, Working times and Employment (EUCOWE) in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. The EUCOWE-project is the first standardised company survey covering all sizes of firms and all sectors of the economy. It is the most comprehensive analysis yet published on Operating Hours, Capacity Utilisation, Working Times and Employment in the EU.

NLDB 2005, the 10th International Conference on Applications of Natural L- guage to Information Systems, was held on June 15-17, 2005 at the University of Alicante, Spain. Since the ?rst NLDB conference in 1995 the main goal has been to provide a forum to discuss and disseminate research on the integration of natural language resources in information system engineering. The development and convergence of computing, telecommunications and information systems has already led to a revolution in the way that we work, communicate with each other, buy goods and use services, and even in the way that weentertainandeducate ourselves.The revolutioncontinues, andoneof its results is that large volumes of information will increasingly be held in a form which is more natural for users than the data presentation formats typical of computer systems of the past. Natural language processing (NLP) is crucial in solving these problems, and language technologies will make an indispensable contribution to the success of information systems. We hope that NLDB 2005 was a modest contribution to this goal. NLDB 2005 contributed to advancing the goals and the high international standing of these conferences, largely due to its Program Committee, composed of renowned researchers in the ?eld of natural language processing and inf- mation system engineering. Papers were reviewed by three reviewers from the Program Committee. This clearly contributed to the signi?cant number of - pers submitted(95).Twenty-ninewereacceptedasregularpapers, while18were accepted as short paper

The last two decades have seen electrospinning of nanofibers performed mainly from solutions of toxic organic solvents. The increase in demand for scaling up electrospinning in recent years therefore requires an environmentally friendly process free of organic solvents. This book addresses techniques for clean and safe electrospinning in the fabrication of green nanofibers and their potential applications.

EsTAL - Espana " for Natural Language Processing - continued on from the three previous conferences: FracTAL, held at the Universit' e de Franch-Comt' e, Besan, con (France) in December 1997, VexTAL, held at Venice International University, Ca ' Foscari (Italy), in November 1999, and PorTAL, held at the U- versidade do Algarve, Faro (Portugal), in June 2002. The main goals of these conferences have been: (i) to bring together the international NLP community; (ii) to strengthen the position of local NLP research in the international NLP community; and (iii) to provide a forum for discussion of new research and - plications. EsTAL contributed to achieving these goals and increasing the already high international standing of these conferences, largely due to its Program Comm- tee,composedofrenownedresearchersinthe?eldofnaturallanguageprocessing and its applications. This clearly contributed to the signi?cant number of papers submitted (72) by researchers from (18) di?erent countries. The scope of the conference was structured around the following main topics: (i)computational linguistics research (spoken and written language analysis and generation; pragmatics, discourse, semantics, syntax and morphology; lexical - sources; word sense disambiguation; linguistic, mathematical, and psychological models of language; knowledge acquisition and representation; corpus-based and statistical language modelling; machine translation and translation aids; com- tationallexicography),and(ii)monolingualandmultilingualintelligentlanguage processing and applications (information retrieval, extraction and question - swering; automatic summarization; document categorization; natural language interfaces; dialogue systems and evaluation of systems).

The practitioner or researcher often faces complex alternatives when selecting a method to characterize properties governing a soil process. After years of research and development, environmental and agricultural professionals now have an array of methods for characterizing soil processes. Well-established methods, however, may not be suitable for the specific conditions of a study since many soil characteristics are intrinsically variable. An objective, integrated approach for soil characterization is needed to more effectively quantify parameters.

Soil-Water-Solute Process Characterization goes beyond technical guidance and addresses the complicating factors such as spatial and temporal variability of soil processes, scale issues, soil structure, and the trade-offs between methods. It focuses on advanced methods for the monitoring and modeling of mass transfer processes in soil. Expert contributors present limitations to well-known methods and alternatives, discussing their practical applications for characterization efforts, evaluating strengths and weaknesses, and focusing on a reduced set of selected techniques. Three in-depth sections cover everything from multidisciplinary approaches for assessing subsurface non-point source pollution to techniques for characterizing water and energy balances at the soil-plant-atmosphere interface, field methods for monitoring soil water status, and computer models for characterizing the effect of chemicals in soil.

This single-source reference is transforming method selection and our understanding of the principles, advantages, and limitations of the available monitoring techniques. Written in a simple and straightforward manner, Soil-Water-Solute Process Characterization is a detailed cookbook and a useful, practical reference for students, practitioners, and researchers.