Böcker utgivna av Springer Nature Singapore

This book provides a comprehensive review of hermaphroditism in fishes. It focuses on the behavioral ecology of functional hermaphroditism in fishes and discusses its evolution.Approximately 99% of all vertebrate species consist of separate-sex individuals (gonochorists), i.e., pure males and pure females. The other 1% of vertebrate species are hermaphroditic, and almost all of them are fishes. Among hermaphroditic fishes, four major types of hermaphroditism are known: simultaneous (or synchronous) hermaphroditism, protandry (male-to-female sex change), protogyny (female-to-male sex change), and bidirectional sex change (or reversed sex change in protogynous species).The book examines the occurrence of hermaphroditism in relation to phylogeny and mating systems. It also reviews the hypotheses for the evolution of hermaphroditism, and the size-advantage model, which is the main theory for the evolution of sex change, tested in relation to the mating system. The appendix in the last chapter provides an annotated list of hermaphroditic fish species (ca. 500 spp.).

This book provides a comprehensive understanding of India's continuing professional development (CPD) landscape. It examines the issues surrounding the professional development of English language teachers in India at the tertiary level from multiple perspectives. Further, it evaluates various models of continuing professional learning (CPL) and emphasizes the transformative model as a solution to the social, administrative, or other impediments teachers encounter in their lives. Importantly, it presents examples, solving academic and non-academic problems in formal and informal, and face-face and technology-mediated forms of teaching and learning by teachers of English in different contexts. It discusses the latest developments in the literature related to the transformative and reflective approach to classroom problems faced by teachers on the ground such as classroom environment, students' socio-economic background, teachers education, and teacher assessment. Also, it positions continuing professional development (CPD) as having transformative power in teaching English in India and how it can improve students' learning opportunities. The book is relevant to English language teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in India and across the globe to address significant issues in the field: how to handle every classroom situation and how to train oneself as a teacher as well as a teacher educator.

This edited volume offers a comprehensive reference point to an interdisciplinary and trans-boundary analysis of the sustainability of Asian tertiary education systems. The four sections of the volume ¿Collaborations, Transformations, Global-Local Tensions, and Future Developments¿reflect the current conditions, ongoing changes, and new directions of the universities¿ transformative contribution to the 2030 UN Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The chapters in this volume draw on inquiries and experiences from 12 research projects conducted in Asia, featuring cases from South Korea, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China, and include regions such as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, Ural-Siberian, and the Far Eastern regions of Russia. The collection of the studies presented in this volume offers a general framework for sustainable tertiary education that, with some adaptations, could be applied to other tertiary education systems in the world. The present volume, Sustainable Tertiary Education in Asia: Policies, Practices, and Developments, contributes to the research arena of Higher Education Sustainability by fostering a cross-cultural dialog among sustainability stakeholders of tertiary education in Asia and beyond.

This book is a phenomenological approach to film sound and film as a whole, bringing all sensory impressions together within the body as a sense of movement. This includes embodied listening, felt sound and the audiovisual chord as a dynamic knot of visual and auditory movements. From this perspective, auditory spaces in film can be used as a pivot between an inner and an external world.

This book demonstrates how a radical version of physicalism (`No-Self Physicalism¿) can offer an internally coherent and comprehensive philosophical worldview. It first argues that a coherent physicalist should explicitly treat a cognitive subject merely as a physical thing and should not vaguely assume an amorphous or even soul-like subject or self. This approach forces the physicalist to re-examine traditional core philosophical notions such as truth, analyticity, modality, apriority because our traditional understandings of them appear to be predicated on a cognitive subject that is not literally just a physical thing.In turn, working on the assumption that a cognitive subject is itself completely physical, namely a neural network-based robot programmed by evolution (hence the term `No-Self¿), the book proposes physicalistic theories on conceptual representation, truth, analyticity, modality, the nature of mathematics, epistemic justification, knowledge, apriority and intuition, as well as a physicalistic ontology. These are meant to show that this No-Self Physicalism, perhaps the most minimalistic and radical version of physicalism proposed to date, can accommodate many aspects that have traditionally interested philosophers. Given its refreshingly radical approach and painstakingly developed content, the book is of interest to anyone who is seeking a coherent philosophical worldview in this age of science.

This book describes the development of novel protein¿RNA-binding assays and their applications in a high-throughput manner for the identification of small-molecule modulators of protein¿RNA interactions to treat cancer and COVID-19.Modulating protein¿RNA interactions with small molecules is expected to provide novel biological insights of the interrelation of diseases with the protein¿RNA interactome. The modulations may also be exploited therapeutically. For these reasons, the development of a simple, reliable, and sensitive protein¿RNA-binding assay is necessary for high-throughput screening to discover new effective chemical entities capable of acting on diverse protein¿RNA interactions. This book discusses the discovery of small-molecule modulators targeting protein¿RNA interactions that are potentially valuable to treat cancer and COVID-19 by constructing novel high-throughput screening methods. The results of this dissertation provide valuable insights into the regulation of protein¿RNA interactions in chemical biology and drug development.

The prefrontal cortex is known to play important roles for performing a variety of higher cognitive functions. Among regions of the prefrontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays the most important roles for these functions. This book focuses on functions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, summarizes research results obtained mainly by non-human primate studies, and describes neural mechanisms of executive functions that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex participates. First, to understand the feature of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and how its function has been understood, anatomical and functional features of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and historical overview of prefrontal functions are described. To understand functions of the prefrontal cortex and neural mechanisms of executive functions, working memory is an important concept and sustained activation during the memory period of working memory tasks is known as a neural mechanism of working memory. Therefore, this book describes features of sustained memory-related activity based on neurophysiological results obtained in the prefrontal cortex and how memory-related activity contributes to executive functions including control of attention, inhibitory control, task management, and planning. And further, this book describes how the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex contributes to neural mechanisms for sensory and motor processing, memory control in multi-task performance, decision-making, metacognition, and top-down control. Thus, this book provides important information regarding neural mechanisms of dorsolateral prefrontal functions to neuroscientists and helps to plan further investigation to understand prefrontal functions in primates and human subjects.

This book highlights issues related to the organization and improvement of the efficiency of training system in technical operation of radio-electronic equipment currently used in civil aviation. The increasing intensity of air traffic around the world leads to a quantitative increase in old problems and the emergence of qualitatively new ones that can only be solved by trained people, whose training process should be carried out on a systematic basis. Modern approaches to improving the human resources potential of civil aviation, as a rule, are based only on modernizing the management mechanisms of the training system. One of the main advantages of this book is the unique integrated approach to building a system for training aviation personnel in the field of technical operation of radio-electronic equipment and air traffic control, which consists in taking into account various factors that affect the training of specialists, promising areas of development of civil aviation based on the analysis of various guidance documents and the construction of mathematical models that give a qualitative assessment of existing methods and the proposed new methodology. The book contains a large amount of visual illustrative material showing the existing structure of the system of training in the field of civil aviation.

This book focuses on the various invasive and non-invasive techniques which can be used for the characterization of starch macromolecules along with, the various types of physical, chemical, and enzymatic modifications of starch to enhance its usage in the food industry. It discusses various biophysical techniques, including scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, Raman scattering, and second harmonic generation microscopy for the understanding of the Physico-chemical properties of starch. The book also sheds light on the visual, rheological characterization of different types of starches that are responsible for altered digestibility. The chapters also cover the applications of starch in food industries, non-food industries, pharmaceuticals, drug delivery systems, and green flexible electronics. Towards the end, the book reviews the chemical, physical, and enzymatic modifications of the starch for improving its properties and applications. This book provides a valuable reference for students and researchers in the field of food science and technology, food science, and nutrition.

This collection of essays brings together ecocritical interpretations of Malaysian texts ¿ including fiction, nonfiction, and other media / cultural expressions. It includes original works by environmental activists as well as emerging and established scholars, who collectively analyse various aspects of Malaysian ecological discourse.The contributors address crucial ¿ and often controversial ¿ topics such as local ecological imaginations, wildlife conservation, overdevelopment, postcolonial ecological identities, biopolitics, nature and sexuality, nature and race, the commodification of nature, nature¿culture embodiments and entanglements, human¿animal relations, waste and materiality, human and other-than-human agency, toxicity and slow violence, self-representations as well as attitudes towards land, nativity and indigeneity, migrancy and diaspora.Readers will gain valuable insights into the ways in which environments and ecological relationships are mediated within this national space, while opening up room to theorise beyond its boundaries.

The book is a collection of best selected research papers presented at International Conference on Trends in Sustainable Computing and Machine Intelligence (ICTSM 2023) organized by Stamford International University, Bangkok, Thailand, during October 5¿6, 2023. The book includes original research by researchers working in the field of machine learning. The book covers important topics like decision support systems, neural networks and applications, machine learning, natural language processing, automated problem solving, AI and evolutionary algorithms, intelligent information systems, computational intelligence, computer vision and image processing, cognitive and biologically inspired vision, soft computing and applications, hybrid intelligent systems, distributed computing, pattern recognition and analysis, ubiquitous and high-performance computing, security, trust and privacy, big data for sustainable computing, and energy-aware machine learning.

This contributed book has a comprehensive collection of 17 carefully curated chapters that delve into the latest advancements in fixed-point theory and its diverse applications. It bridges the gap between theory and practicality, providing readers with a deep understanding of fundamental theorems related to the existence and uniqueness of maps. The book covers a wide array of applications, each showcasing the relevance of fixed-point theory in various domains. Readers will explore applications dealing with topological properties, the resolution of integral equations across multiple classes, nonlinear differential equations, fractional differential equations, dynamic programming problems, and engineering science-related challenges. This diverse range of topics ensures that the book caters to both theoretical researchers and practitioners seeking real-world solutions.The primary feature of the book is the pictorial depictions of examples, making complex concepts more accessible and understandable. These visual representations enhance the learning experience, enabling readers to grasp the enunciated outcomes effortlessly. The book stands as an essential reference for scholars, researchers, and professionals interested in the theoretical foundations and practical implications of fixed-point theory. Its blend of theoretical insights and real-world applications makes it an indispensable addition to the field of mathematics and its interdisciplinary applications.

The book focuses on sparse multi-sensor array systems and design approaches. Both principles and engineering practice have been addressed, with more weight placed on algorithm development. This is achieved by providing an in-depth study on sparse sensing for several major multi-sensor array applications such as beam-pattern synthesis, adaptive beamforming, target detection, arrival angle estimation, and dual-functional radar communications. Sparsity sensed in multi-sensor arrays refers to the sparse property of the spatial spectrum sensed. The exploitation of the sparsity in the sensed can significantly enhance the performance of signal processing systems. The comprehensive and systematic treatment of theory and practice in different array applications is one of the major features of the book, which is particularly suited for readers who are interested to learn practical solutions in array signal processing. The book benefits researchers, engineers, and graduate students in the fields of signal processing, electrical engineering, telecommunications, etc.

This book contains best selected research papers presented at ICTCS 2023: Eighth International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Competitive Strategies. The conference will be held in Jaipur, India during 8 ¿ 9 December 2023. The book covers state-of-the-art as well as emerging topics pertaining to ICT and effective strategies for its implementation for engineering and managerial applications. This book contains papers mainly focused on ICT for computation, algorithms and data analytics and IT security. The work is presented in five volumes.

This protocol book provides detailed procedures for the isolation of cyanobacteria, extraction, quantification, and detection of cyanotoxins. It illustrates the sampling and processing of toxin-producing cyanobacteria in water and aquatic animal samples, detection of cyanotoxins from Anabaena, Anabaenopsis, Cylindrospermopsis, Microsystis, Microcystis, Nodularia, Nostoc, Schizotrix, Lyngbya, Raphidiopsis, Oscillatoria, Planktothrix in aquatic resources. It also covers toxicity analysis by various bioassay protocols, and in vitro and insilico analysis methods. The book also reviews the methods for cyanotoxin extraction, detection, and quantification by various tools including LC-MS/MS, HPLC, NMR, PCR, and HESI-MS/MS. A separate section is dedicated to the advanced methods in Cyanotoxin analysis including the Molecular Imprinting Method (MIM), Cellular signaling biosensor, Electrochemical sensor, Nanosensors, and screening of Polyketide synthase gene. The analysis of various toxin-producing genes like sxtA and mcy is also accounted for in this book.In a nutshell, the book gives comprehensive procedures about the basics and preliminary processes that are involved in sample collection to advanced methods incorporated into the well-explored and unexplored Cyanobacterial toxin. Consequently, this manual is useful for both beginners and advanced researchers, including postgraduate students, academicians, researchers, and scientists in the field of Cyanobacterial research.¿

This book introduces readers to the financial markets, derivatives, structured products and how the products are modelled and implemented by practitioners. In addition, it equips readers with the necessary knowledge of financial markets needed in order to work as product structurers, traders, sales or risk managers.This second edition substantially extends, updates and clarifies the previous edition. New materials and enhanced contents include, but not limited to, the role of central counterparties for derivatives transactions, the reference rates to replace LIBOR, risk-neutral modelling for futures and forward, discussions and analysis on risk-neutral framework and numéraires, discrete dividend modelling, variance reduction techniques for Monte Carlo method, finite difference method analysis, tree method, FX modelling, multi-name credit derivatives modelling, local volatility model, forward variance model and local-stochastic volatility model to reflect market practice.As the book seeks to unify the derivatives modelling and the financial engineering practice in the market, it will be of interest to financial practitioners and academic researchers alike. The book can also be used as a textbook for the following courses:¿ Financial Mathematics (undergraduate level)¿ Stochastic Modelling in Finance (postgraduate level)¿ Financial Markets and Derivatives (undergraduate level)¿ Structured Products and Solutions (undergraduate/postgraduate level)

This book presents a study of the history of ancient Chinese books, not only highlighting specific aspects of the ontology of book history, such as printing and publishing, but also analyzing the internal and external causes of the development of book undertakings from a macro-perspective. Placing the development of and changes in the history of books in the context of social development, it investigates its interaction with politics, economy, society, education, and religion, especially with the big culture, and constructs a book-centered history of ancient Chinese culture.

This book presents a modified spherical harmonic expansion method in which the electromagnetic fields and their sources are expanded with the same set of spherical vector basis functions in a similar procedure. Explicit expressions for the electromagnetic fields, potentials, energies, and the related Green¿s functions are derived for the spherical modes in both frequency domain and time domain. Based on the formulation, the relationships between the electromagnetic sources, the electromagnetic far fields, and the electromagnetic near fields are clearly revealed. In particular, a nonuniform transmission line model is developed for intuitively characterizing the total radiation process. The introduction of the cutoff radius and the cutoff mode degree provides a simple reference for determining the numbers of degrees of freedom of the fields associated with sources in a bounded region. Based on the theory, an efficient hybrid method for synthesizing antenna arrays with complex footprints is proposed and demonstrated with several numerical examples. Effective algorithms are also developed for reconstructing the radiating part of the current sources.This book is intended for researchers, engineers, and graduate students who are interested in studying the energy transfer in electromagnetic radiation, synthesis and measurement of antenna arrays, and applications of inverse electromagnetic source problems.

This book is an exploration of one of the world¿s largest man-made reservoirs, Lake Kariba, created along the Zambezi River in central Africa. Originally built for electricity generation, as the lake reached its full capacity in 1963 it attracted other socioeconomic activities such as tourism, recreation, fisheries, and conservation. The material properties of the waterscape (including waves, strong winds, water volumes, deities and aquatic species) have shaped these socioeconomic activities since its creation. Community interpretations of the reservoir feature stories of fear, death, income generation, livelihoods, illegal cross-border trade, religion and everyday conflicts with wild animals. Drawing on extended ethnographic research and the author¿s personal experience growing up around Lake Kariba, this empirically-rich book provides a nuanced discussion of the ways in which the waterscape shapes people¿s lives and livelihoods. Additionally, the book explores the challenges of sustaining and preserving Lake Kariba's unique ecosystem amidst environmental pressures and competing demands for resources. Readers will gain a nuanced perspective of the significance of the lake, its relationship with neighboring communities, and its evolution over time.

This book presents select proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Approaches in Civil Engineering for Sustainable Development (IACESD 2023) hosted under the aegis of the Group of Twenty (G20) and Civil 20(C20) at Jyothy Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, India. The topics covered in this book include innovative design approaches, advanced materials and cutting-edge technologies aimed at enhancing the resilience of structures against various hazards (such as seismic events, hurricanes, floods, and extreme weather conditions). It also covers topics such as structural integrity and longevity of buildings and infrastructure, advanced monitoring systems, data analytics and intelligent structural health monitoring. This book is useful for researchers and professionals in the field of structural engineering.

The book presents high-quality papers from the Fourth International Conference on Microelectronics and Telecommunication Engineering (ICMETE 2021). It discusses the latest technological trends and advances in major research areas such as microelectronics, wireless communications, optical communication, signal processing, image processing, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and sensor network applications. This book includes the contributions of national and international scientists, researchers, and engineers from both academia and the industry. The contents of this volume will be useful to researchers, professionals, and students alike.

This book presents the select peer-reviewed proceedings of the Control Instrumentation and System Conference (CISCON 2022) held at Manipal Institute of Technology, MAHE, Manipal. It examines a wide spectrum covering the latest trends in the fields of instrumentation, sensors and systems, and industrial automation and control. The topics covered include image and signal processing, robotics, renewable energy, power systems, and power drives, performance attributes of MEMS, multi-sensor data fusion, machine learning, optimization techniques, process control, safety monitoring, safety-critical control, supervisory control, system modeling and virtual instrumentation. The book is a valuable reference for researchers and professionals interested in sensors, adaptive control, automation and control, and allied fields.

This book gathers the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Frontier Computing, held in Tokyo, on July 10¿13, 2023, and provides comprehensive coverage of the latest advances and trends in information technology, science, and engineering. It addresses a number of broad themes, including communication networks, business intelligence and knowledge management, Web intelligence, and related fields that inspire the development of information technology. The respective contributions cover a wide range of topics: database and data mining, networking and communications, Web and Internet of things, embedded systems, soft computing, social network analysis, security and privacy, optical communication, and ubiquitous/pervasive computing. Many of the papers outline promising future research directions, and the book benefits students, researchers, and professionals alike. Further, it offers a useful reference guide for newcomers to the field.

This book sheds light on the communication of social support, language use, and therapeutic effects in the context of online self-help groups for anxiety and depression. The book has two major purposes: the first is to enhance understanding of the phatic communication through a discourse-pragmatic perspective; and the second is to demonstrate the use of discourse analysis to discuss the potential therapeutic effects of the online self-help groups. Key concepts, including genre study, speech act theory, relational work and discourse analysis, are revisited and elucidated to show their applicability in health communication research. This book focuses on the topics of communication patterns, the communicative acts of self-disclosure and advice-giving, and relevant social theories in the communication of social support.This book is a useful reference guide for both undergraduate and postgraduate students who are interested in discourse analysis, pragmatics and health communication. It is also a valuable resource that catches attention of researchers who conduct interdisciplinary research pertaining to communication, clinical linguistics and social work.

This book explores the applications of cutting-edge technologies such as AI, blockchain, signal processing, digital twin technology, and 5G communication technology in healthcare. The writing style combines diagrams, tables, formulae, and text to enhance readability. The content combines theoretical analysis and medical application in every chapter. This book presents several innovative methods, including an AI-based computer-aided diagnosis system, a blockchain-based AI system framework for healthcare, pre-processing algorithms for medical imaging, digital twin models for healthcare, a healthcare platform based on cloud, fog, and edge computing, and a personal health device domain information model. This book will be valuable for researchers, engineers, and post-graduate students in the fields of medicine management and software engineering.

This book presents a revolutionary approach to service innovation, combining an interdisciplinary perspective with a robust theoretical framework. Integrating design thinking and systems engineering, it offers a fresh view on evolving service industries. The book is enriched with global case studies, bridging theory and real-world application, making it an essential resource for both professionals and students. It stands out by analyzing new business models and offering both qualitative and quantitative methods for service design, making it a must-read for those seeking to excel in the dynamic service market.

This book presents the result of an innovative challenge, to create a systematic literature overview driven by machine-generated content. Questions and related keywords were prepared for the machine to query, discover, collate and structure by Artificial Intelligence (AI) clustering. The AI-based approach seemed especially suitable to provide an innovative perspective as the topics are indeed both complex, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, for example, climate, planetary and evolution sciences. Springer Nature has published much on these topics in its journals over the years, so the challenge was for the machine to identify the most relevant content and present it in a structured way that the reader would find useful. The automatically generated literature summaries in this book are intended as a springboard to further discoverability. They are particularly useful to readers with limited time, looking to learn more about the subject quickly and especially if they are new to thetopics. Springer Nature seeks to support anyone who needs a fast and effective start in their content discovery journey, from the undergraduate student exploring interdisciplinary content to Master- or PhD-thesis developing research questions, to the practitioner seeking support materials, this book can serve as an inspiration, to name a few examples. It is important to us as a publisher to make the advances in technology easily accessible to our authors and find new ways of AI-based author services that allow human-machine interaction to generate readable, usable, collated, research content.

This book comprehensively reviews the theranostic applications of nanomaterials against various neurological disorders. The initial chapters briefly introduce various neurological disorders, their molecular mechanism, available treatments, and the latest research. It further reviews the challenges associated with the current theranostics strategies, including blood-brain-barrier. This book examines the synthesis of nanoparticles, development of efficient biosensors, fabrication of nanomaterials, diagnosis through nano-chips, and their interaction with neuronal cells. The chapter also discusses the various nanoformulations or nanocarriers of natural therapeutics, including herbal products, peptides, nootropics, and dietary supplements used to prevent and delay neurological disorders. Additionally, the book provides information on the commonly used molecular imaging tools and biosensors, using different nanomaterials for the early detection of neurological disorders. Towards the end,the book covers the imaging techniques like gold nanocages and photoacoustic imaging for diagnosing and targeted drug delivery for neurological disorders. The chapter presents the current challenges in using nanotechnology for neurological disorders and their potential solutions.