Vaccines have long been used to combat infectious diseases, however the last decade has witnessed a revolution in the approach to vaccine design and development. No longer is there a need to rely on the laborious classical methods, such as attenuation or killing the pathogen. Now, sophisticated technologies - such as genomics, proteomics, functional genomics, and synthetic chemistry - can be used for the rational identification of antigens, the synthesis of complex glycans, the generation of engineered carrier proteins, and much more. Never has research in this area been more exciting. In this book, expert international contributors critically review the current cutting-edge research in vaccine design and development. Particular emphasis is given to new approaches and technologies. The book has been divided into two parts. The first part reviews the technologies and approaches used to identify, generate, and test new vaccines. Topics include new strategies to identify protective antigens, generation of improved adjuvants, use of alternative immunization routes, improving vaccine safety, and finding and establishing the correlates of protection. The second part of the book focuses on the development of new vaccines to replace or complement currently available products or for diseases against which prophylactic strategies are missing. Examples include vaccines against nosocomial infections, streptococci, emerging viral diseases, P. aeruginosa, and bovine mastitis.

Under the memories of Paris in black and white, the weavers of fantasies become time travelers, as they experience body transmutations and different types of love that are hidden in the secrecy of life. A story that perforates psychoanalyses with a needle and with the infinite threads that weave the feminine tapestry away from our daily perspectives, where time and space are mingled and flow into a virtual dimension. The characters are metamorphosed into a constant becoming of fantasies, friendship and into the multiplicity of what silently entangles the existence.

"Li(e)nes: Vestiges of an Opera" is an endless tunnel that meets other sides and other dimensions, turning the universal truths into intersecting feminine lies. It searches new perspectives of sexuality and madness; it floats inside of the fragmented compositions of an atmosphere made out of particles of dust, the ones that sing through the shapeless sounds of a deaf-mute violinist, whose silence translate the voices of an opera, echoing voices that unfreeze the pre-fabricated truths that comes from a computer system of matter and energy.

Set against the backdrop of globalization and global philanthropy, this book offers new perspectives on the sociological dynamics and governance implications of 'social entrepreneurial' policy in education. It examines the spatialities, relationships and culture that powerfully mediated the making and localisation of 'Teach for Bangladesh'. This globalised and philanthropy-backed reform model is based on 'Teach for America/All' (TfA) which promotes social entrepreneurial solutions to educational problems across continents. The authors demonstrate how TfB's policy model travelled through networks of diaspora, finance, technology and media and became established in Bangladesh through complex policy work. The book documents empirical research from Bangladesh to draw out broader implications in relation to education policy-making and policy content in today's globalizing world. The book also contributes to ongoing debates in contemporary comparative education about North-South dialogue, policy mobility and transfer, philanthrocapitalism, and international teacher education.

The emergence of H5N1 avian influenza in 1997 and of the influenza A H1N1 of swine origin in 2009 calls for new, rapid and sustainable solutions for both seasonal and pandemic influenza viruses. During the last ten years, science and technology have made enormous progress, and we are now able to monitor in real time the genetics of viruses while they spread globally, to make more powerful vaccines using novel adjuvants, and to generate viruses in the laboratory using reverse genetics. This volume not only provides state-of-the-art information on the biology of influenza viruses and on influenza vaccines, but is also designed to be a resource to face the present H1N1 pandemic and to plan for long-term global and sustainable solutions.

Technological advances, together with a better understanding of the molecular biology of infectious microorganisms, are creating exciting possibilities for a new generation of replicating vaccines. Historically, live vaccines have been either directly derived from a natural source or attenuated by empirical approaches using serial passages and host cell adaptation. Currently, we are witnessing a quantum leap in our technological capabilities to specifically modify the genetic make-up of viruses and bacteria, making it possible to generate improved live vaccines and to develop completely new types of replicating vaccines, such as vectored vaccines, single-round infectious vaccines and replicon vaccines. This book highlights some of the most exciting recent developments towards a new generation of replicating vaccines.

The electronics and information technology revolution continues, but it is a critical time in the development of technology. Once again, we stand on the brink of a new era where emerging research will yield exciting applications and products destined to transform and enrich our daily lives! The potential is staggering and the ultimate impact is unimaginable, considering the continuing marriage of te- nology with fields such as medicine, communications and entertainment, to name only a few. But who will actually be responsible for transforming these potential new pr- ucts into reality? The answer, of course, is today's (and tomorrow's) design en- neers! The design of integrated circuits today remains an essential discipline in s- port of technological progress, and the authors of this book have taken a giant step forward in the development of a practice-oriented treatise for design engineers who are interested in the practical, industry-driven world of integrated circuit - sign.

The Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is one of the most intriguing criminal phenomena in the world. It is an unparalleled organised criminal grouping that over almost two centuries has been able not only to successfully permeate licit and illicit economy, politics and civil society, but also to influence and exercise authoritative power over both the underworld and the upper-world. This criminal phenomenon has been a captivating conundrum for scholars of different disciplines who have tried to explain with various paradigms the reasons behind the emergence and consolidation of the mafia. Challenging the Mafia Mystique provides an analysis of the changes the Sicilian mafia has undergone, from legitimisation to denunciation. Rino Coluccello highlights how, from the very emergence of the organised criminal groups in Sicily, a culture existed that was protective and tolerant of the mafia. He argues that the various conceptualisations of the mafia that dominated the public and scientific debate in the nineteenth and more than half of the twentieth century created a mystique, which legitimised the mafia and contributed to their success. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of organised crime, Italian politics and Italian literature.

For the technological progress in communication technology it is necessary that the advanced studies in circuit and software design are accompanied with recent results of the technological research and physics in order to exceed its limitations.

This book is a guide which treats many components used in mobile communications, and in particular focuses on non-volatile memories. It emerges following the conducting line of the non-volatile memory in the wireless system: On the one hand it develops the foundations of the interdisciplinary issues needed for design analysis and testing of the system. On the other hand it deals with many of the problems appearing when the systems are realized in industrial production. These cover the difficulties from the mobile system to the different types of non-volatile memories.

The book explores memory cards, multichip technologies, and algorithms of the software management as well as error handling. It also presents techniques of assurance for the single components and a guide through the Datasheet lectures.

This book introduces simulation tools and strategies for complex systems of solid-state-drives (SSDs) which consist of a flash multi-core microcontroller plus NAND flash memories. It provides a broad overview of the most popular simulation tools, with special focus on open source solutions. VSSIM, NANDFlashSim and DiskSim are benchmarked against performances of real SSDs under different traffic workloads. PROs and CONs of each simulator are analyzed, and it is clearly indicated which kind of answers each of them can give and at a what price. It is explained, that speed and precision do not go hand in hand, and it is important to understand when to simulate what, and with which tool. Being able to simulate SSD's performances is mandatory to meet time-to-market, together with product cost and quality. Over the last few years the authors developed an advanced simulator named "SSDExplorer" which has been used to evaluate multiple phenomena with great accuracy, from QoS (Quality Of Service) to Read Retry, from LDPC Soft Information to power, from Flash aging to FTL. SSD simulators are also addressed in a broader context in this book, i.e. the analysis of what happens when SSDs are connected to the OS (Operating System) and to the end-user application (for example, a database search). The authors walk the reader through the full simulation flow of a real system-level by combining SSD Explorer with the QEMU virtual platform. The reader will be impressed by the level of know-how and the combination of models that such simulations are asking for.

This book focuses on the envelope of Gram-positive bacteria including its composition, the latest discoveries in the mechanisms behind its assembly, and its role in pathogenesis. Furthermore, new applications in biotechnology and vaccine development involving these bacteria are discussed in detail. This concise volume consists of eleven chapters by prominent experts in the field, which review the latest findings and current state of knowledge on a range of diverse yet interlinked aspects. This book is written for all researchers, clinicians and technicians engaged in basic or applied science projects on Gram-positive bacteria.

Employing primary sources and interviews with protagonists of the rebellion of the Italian North, this book explores the invention of the Padanian nation and the construction of identity politics in Northern Italy. It reveals for the first time the connection between the ethnic wave in European party politics in the 1970s and the rise of a new radical right nationalism in the 1990s. The author highlights the way in which the discourse of national minorities was instrumental in the rise of a new political agenda that links territory, identity and cultural rights to create new boundaries of exclusion. In addition to clarifying the connection between the new nationalism and racism by demonstrating how cultural distinctiveness is constructed in contemporary European politics, this unique book also explores the dynamics of new party mobilization and the symbolic resources of nationalist rhetoric. This book presents for the first time data on political participation - both party elites and members - and the real dimension of the party organization.

Gradient-Index (GRIN) optics provides a comprehensive and thorough treatment on fundamentals and applications of light propagation through inhomogeneous media. The book can be used both as a classroom text for students in physics and engineering and as a reference for specialists. A description of the phenomena, components and technology used in GRIN Optics are presented. The relationship to lenses, waveguides, optical connections, spatial solitons and vision is demonstrated. Applications of GRIN components and hybrid structures for optical connections, optical sensing and Talbot effect are analyzed.

This important book is the first to make an explicit link between management practices and service outcomes in social welfare agencies. Managing for Service Effectiveness in Social Welfare Organizations is based on the premise that the primary responsibility and distinctive competency of social welfare management is delivering high quality, effective services to clients. Collectively, the book's esteemed contributors have clearly presented a model of administration founded on concepts and strategies for connecting managerial action with service effectiveness. The sections of the book correspond to the core functions and tasks in an effective approach to management, including measuring performance, program and organizational design, managing people, managing information, managing environmental relations, and the ethics of managing for effectiveness.

This collection offers a comprehensive account of the development of intercultural communication strategies through Virtual English as a Lingua Franca, reflecting on the ways in which we make pragmatic meaning in today’s technology-informed globalized world. The volume places an emphasis on analyzing transmodal, transsemiotic, and transcultural discourse practices in online spaces, providing a counterpoint to existing ELF research which has leaned toward unpacking formal features of ELF communication in face-to-face interactions. Chapters explore how these practices are characterized and then further sustained via non-verbal semiotic resources, drawing on data from a global range of empirical studies. The book prompts further reflection on readers’ own experiences in online settings and the challenges of VELF while also supplying educators in these contexts with the analytical resources to better bridge the gap between formal and informal learning. Highlighting the dynamic complexity of online intercultural communication in the 21st century, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars in applied linguistics, language education, digital communication, and intercultural communication.

This book presents the basics of both NAND flash storage and machine learning, detailing the storage problems the latter can help to solve. At a first sight, machine learning and non-volatile memories seem very far away from each other. Machine learning implies mathematics, algorithms and a lot of computation; non-volatile memories are solid-state devices used to store information, having the amazing capability of retaining the information even without power supply. This book will help the reader understand how these two worlds can work together, bringing a lot of value to each other. In particular, the book covers two main fields of application: analog neural networks (NNs) and solid-state drives (SSDs). After reviewing the basics of machine learning in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 shows how neural networks can mimic the human brain; to accomplish this result, neural networks have to perform a specific computation called vector-by-matrix (VbM) multiplication, which is particularly power hungry. In the digital domain, VbM is implemented by means of logic gates which dictate both the area occupation and the power consumption; the combination of the two poses serious challenges to the hardware scalability, thus limiting the size of the neural network itself, especially in terms of the number of processable inputs and outputs. Non-volatile memories (phase change memories in Chapter 3, resistive memories in Chapter 4, and 3D flash memories in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6) enable the analog implementation of the VbM (also called "neuromorphic architecture"), which can easily beat the equivalent digital implementation in terms of both speed and energy consumption. SSDs and flash memories are strictly coupled together; as 3D flash scales, there is a significant amount of work that has to be done in order to optimize the overall performances of SSDs. Machine learning has emerged as a viable solution in many stages of this process. After introducing the main flash reliability issues, Chapter 7 shows both supervised and un-supervised machine learning techniques that can be applied to NAND. In addition, Chapter 7 deals with algorithms and techniques for a pro-active reliability management of SSDs. Last but not least, the last section of Chapter 7 discusses the next challenge for machine learning in the context of the so-called computational storage. No doubt that machine learning and non-volatile memories can help each other, but we are just at the beginning of the journey; this book helps researchers understand the basics of each field by providing real application examples, hopefully, providing a good starting point for the next level of development.

This edited volume discusses the application of very diverse human organotypic models in major areas of biomedical research. The authors lay a main focus on infectious diseases, cancer, allergies, as well as drug/vaccine discovery and toxicology studies. Representing a valid alternative to laboratory animals, these models are relevant for most areas of translational research. As the contemporary research shows, many human tissues can today be cultivated in vitro and used for several research objectives. This book provides an unprecedented overview of recent developments in an exciting field of research methodology. It is a reference guide for scientists in both academia and industry. Readers can update their knowledge and get hands-on recommendations on how to set up an organotypic model in their lab. Chapters 'Progress on Reconstructed Human Skin Models for Allergy Research and Identifying Contact Sensitizers' and 'Human Organotypic Models for Anti-infective Research' of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

This book explores how the multiplicity of nationalist parties across the European Union have embraced or refused the process of European integration and made it a platform for transnational coordination in the European arena. The author analyzes how opposing pro-European minority nationalist parties and Eurosceptic populist nationalist parties have diversely politicized European integration over the past three decades and engage in different patterns of Europeanization. Tracing their divergent trajectories of transnational coordination, the book examines the common challenges these opposing nationalist party families face and their systematic fragmentation in the European arena. The book offers a novel approach to understanding the conditions for the emergence of truly European nationalist party families, based on the interaction of ideological, strategic and institutional variables that underpin the Europeanization of heterogeneous nationalisms. Nationalisms in the European Arena will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sociology and political science. It contributes to the increasing literature on identity politics in the European Union and reveals the mechanisms behind why the European arena is adverse to the political translation and organization of domestic nationalisms as distinctive European actors.

Nowadays it is hard to find an electronic device which does not use codes: for example, we listen to music via heavily encoded audio CD's and we watch movies via encoded DVD's. There is at least one area where the use of encoding/decoding is not so developed, yet: Flash non-volatile memories. Flash memory high-density, low power, cost effectiveness, and scalable design make it an ideal choice to fuel the explosion of multimedia products, like USB keys, MP3 players, digital cameras and solid-state disk.

In ECC for Non-Volatile Memories the authors expose the basics of coding theory needed to understand the application to memories, as well as the relevant design topics, with reference to both NOR and NAND Flash architectures. A collection of software routines is also included for better understanding.

The authors form a research group (now at Qimonda) which is the typical example of a fruitful collaboration between mathematicians and engineers.

Autonomy is a characterizing notion of agents, and intuitively it is rather unambiguous. The quality of autonomy is recognized when it is perceived or experienced, yet it is difficult to limit autonomy in a definition. The desire to build agents that exhibit a satisfactory quality of autonomy includes agents that have a long life, are highly independent, can harmonize their goals and actions with humans and other agents, and are generally socially adept. Agent Autonomy is a collection of papers from leading international researchers that approximate human intuition, dispel false attributions, and point the way to scholarly thinking about autonomy. A wide array of issues about sharing control and initiative between humans and machines, as well as issues about peer level agent interaction, are addressed.

Ria is safe and sound from her potential kidnappers thanks to Asisi’s swift rescue, but she’s left with more questions than ever about the Guardian Knight. What’s the story behind his scar-riddled back? And why does everyone act so strangely when she tries to bring it up? Ria’s determined to get to the bottom of things—even if it takes every last one of her princess charms!

It has been estimated that between 5 and 10 percent of the world's population suffers from food allergies, and the consensus among medical professionals is that these numbers are still growing. Out of every classroom in America, there are at least two teens who have food allergies, and every three minutes someone is taken to the emergency room as a result of an allergic reaction. From school cafeterias to movie theaters to sporting arenas-not to mention restaurants-teens encounter countless allergens. Although parents and health professionals are on the alert for food allergies, teens themselves must take the steps needed to ensure their health and well-being. But most of the books about food allergies are aimed at adults and don't take into consideration the perils that face teens on a daily basis. In Food Allergies: The Ultimate Teen Guide, Jessica Reino offers helpful and practical information that will aid teens in managing their sensitivities. The book looks at a variety of food allergies, from the most common-milk, peanuts, and gluten-to rarer ones that are no less a threat. The book also features input from food allergy experts and interviews with teenagers who share not only the difficulties they face but also the strategies they must employ to stay vigilant. Chapters in this book cover such topics as *self-advocacy *negotiating meals with family members *the importance of reading labels *the pitfalls of dining out *eating well even with dietary restrictions Over the last several decades, the world has seen an increase in food sensitivity. This book addresses the cause of allergies, delving into the catalysts that provoke physical reactions; but more importantly, it stresses what teens can do to prevent such incidents. With a chapter that contains a few allergy-friendly recipes, Food Allergies: The Ultimate Teen Guide is an invaluable resource for young adults, their friends, and their families.

Infections in Systemic Autoimmune Diseases: Risk Factors and Management, Volume Sixteen describes the state-of-the-art of the risk factors and management treating the most common systemic autoimmune diseases (SADS). This updated volume consists of an introductory chapter that provides a brief overview of what different types of infectious diseases exist, followed by eight chapters detailing risk factors, guidelines and recommendations per different disease and bacterial infections. International in scope, the list of more than 20 contributors from Europa and America reads like a who's who of clinical researchers in the field.