Books published by Nova Science Publishers Inc

Wind tunnels are facilities in which the wind is produced by fans or by compressed air to study and measure the action of the air flow around a solid. There are two basic types of wind tunnels: the closed-circuit and the open-circuit. Open-circuits draw air from the ambient environment and exhaust it back to the ambient after exiting the fan, while in closed-circuit, the air repeatedly circulates through the tunnel. The closed-circuit design delivers improved efficiency and generates less noise, but it is more expensive and more difficult to manufacture. Wind tunnels are typically used in aerodynamic research to analyse the behaviour of flows under varying conditions, both within channels and over solid surfaces. The present book focus on uses and developments of wind tunnels. It consists on nine chapters presenting different studies on the design, uses and developments of the wind tunnel in different applications like wind turbines, building and aircraft models. The presented case studies and development approaches aim to provide the readers, such as engineers and PhD students, with basic and applied studies broadly related to the wind tunnels and its applications.

Healthcare costs continue to rise in the United States and many Americans are struggling to budget and pay for their healthcare expenses. As healthcare costs continue to rise, many Americans still have no idea how much something will cost them before they receive care. Chapter 1 examines some of the causes of increased healthcare costs, and increasing healthcare costs. One of the biggest challenges for small businesses wishing to help their employees with health care is the cost. Small businesses helping their employees purchase health insurance is discussed in chapter 2. From fiscal years 2009 through 2016, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) obligated more than $9 billion for the provision of inmate health care and several factors affected these costs. Chapter 3 addresses BOP''s costs to provide health care services and factors that affect costs; the extent to which BOP has data to help control health care costs; and the extent to which BOP has planned and implemented cost control efforts.

The federal government spends more than $80 billion each year on information technology (IT) investments; in FY2017 that investment is expected to increase to more than $89 billion. Historically, the projects supported by these investments have often incurred "multi-million dollar cost overruns and years-long schedule delays." In addition, they may contribute little to mission-related outcomes and, in some cases, may fail altogether. These undesirable results "can be traced to a lack of disciplined and effective management and inadequate executive-level oversight." The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) was enacted on December 19, 2014, to address these issues and codify existing initiatives managed by the Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO).

When the Affordable Care Act was just beginning to be implemented in 2013, the HHS secretary released a report stating the goal of Affordable Healthcare Act is to increase competition and transparency in the markets for individuals and small group insurance leading to higher quality, more affordable products. Fast forward 4 years later, what we are seeing is a decrease in competition and an increase in premium costs. This trend is concerning for all Americans and is discussed in this book.

The federal government''s demand for information technology (IT) is ever increasing. In recent years, as federal agencies have modernised their operations, put more of their services online, and improved their information security profiles, their need for computing power and data storage resources has grown. Accordingly, this growing demand has led to a dramatic rise in the number of federal data centres and a corresponding increase in operational costs. In response, the Office of Management and Budget''s (OMB) Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) launched the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) in 2010 to reduce the growing number of centres. This book reports on the progress and challenges of the 24 agencies required to participate in the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI).

The Medicare program serves as the healthcare coverage provider to over 58 million beneficiaries. In serving the over age 65 population, Medicare accounts for a large share of total opioid prescriptions. In 2016, one out of every three beneficiaries was prescribed an opioid through Medicare Part D. While many Medicare beneficiaries with serious pain-related conditions are being properly prescribed opioids, there is mounting evidence of opioid misuse in the Medicare system. This book looks at a proposed programs which seek to increase screening and thus, early detection of potential opioid use disorder upon entry into the Medicare program.

The globalisation of trade in goods and services has opened up new and more and more vast markets and so financial markets have triggered sharp growth in investment portfolios and large movements of short-term capital, with borrowers and investors interacting through a more and more unified market. Cyberspace is a global network of computers linked by high-speed data lines and wireless systems and so cyberspace can strengthen national and global governance. Financial crimes are types of economic crimes which implicate using instruments and institutions of the financial market for getting financial profits at the expense of other market actors. Insider trading is basically when a corporate insider or another party in possession of proprietary non-public information trades upon it. The insider trading policy is an aspect of a company''s internal governance making certain corporate transparency is preserved upholding investor confidence. Insider trading is far from generic propagated through various means and brought about by various market participants. Money laundering is the course whereby criminals mask the true origin and ownership of the earnings of their criminal activities permitting them to keep control over these profits and, in due course, to stipulate a legitimate cover for their source of income and the financing of their criminal actions. Crypto-currencies have been portrayed as an instrument making possible illegal activity, as they advance a setting for individuals to create, transfer, launder and steal unlawful funds with anonymity. Terrorism produces governments to be more vigilant with private financial transactions to avert funding of terrorist activities from abroad. Financial crimes contribute to terrorist financing.

This compilation titled "Laser Therapy: Types, Uses, and Safety" focuses on varied aspects of laser (photobiomodulation, PBM) therapy ranging from types of lasers, parameters of optical radiation determining its biological activity and therapeutic action, basic and modern techniques, mitochondrial effects of laser for therapeutics to the clinical use of PBM in treating various medical conditions and its use in surgery. The authors discuss parameters of optical radiation of low intensity determining its biological activity and therapeutic action, basic techniques and modern technologies, and mitochondrial effects of laser therapy. This book provides the most up-to-date information on recent clinical and research trials and clinical uses as well as catalogs the optimal therapeutic settings for a myriad of disease states. The book describes the use of PBM in dentistry, tissue repair and regeneration, treatment of fibromyalgia, muscle fatigue, injury, regeneration and repair, hearing loss, osteoarthritis, neurosurgery, gynecological diseases, snakebite envenomation, acute and chronic respiratory diseases, hypertension, relieving symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage, venous ulcer healing, treatment of inflammation, and its synergism with physical exercise in treatment of obesity. Further, the role of laser therapy in drug development and in enhancing drug delivery has been discussed. Lastly, we have discussed the evolving role of optogenetics using laser lights in elucidating the molecular mechanism in various pathologies. The authors have critically discussed the uses and side-effects of laser therapy and have highlighted the future directions and approaches to get the best outcome. Altogether, this book will serve as a helpful guide on how PBM could play a role in providing daily care to the patients and enlighten upcoming students and researchers.

The book titled Parental Involvement: Practices, Improvement Strategies and Challenges is a collection of papers focusing on different challenges and practices to obtain greater involvement of parents in the schooling of children and youth. The authors espoused, to varying degrees, the unique and complex patterns of parent-school relationships pointing out two significant areas where parents should become involved, namely home-based and school-based. In their exposition of these two areas, the authors of the various chapters point out both macro and micro antecedents of how parents are involved both at home (home-based) and at school (school-based) supporting their children towards achieving success. At the macro-level, the authors who contributed to this book reflected upon policy issues whereby the Ministries of Education in various countries (i.e., New Zealand, Israel, Finland, South Africa, and the United States) instigated strategies for parental involvement with varying degrees of success. There is also evidence of socio-cultural perspectives and teachers'' ethnic and professional identities impacting on attitudes towards parental involvement both at school and at home. In addition, the authors point to the impact of gender differences (fathers and mothers) and at-home engagement with children''s educational success. In sum, there are many and variable barriers, obstacles, and challenges towards enabling parents for greater involvement in their children''s academic achievements, and a need for more consistency and collaboration across home and school systems. Presenting their most up-to-date research findings, the authors of the various chapters espouse their viewpoints pertaining to parental involvement from the perspective of the parents themselves, the perspective of the teachers, and the views of students both in the home and at the school. For the most part, however, the authors advocate the belief that strengthening parent-teacher relationships will promote the child''s development and success in school and in life.

These books are intended for undergraduate, graduate researchers and practitioners in computational sciences, and as reference books for an advanced computational methods course. We have included new results for iterative procedures in abstract spaces general enough for handling inverse problems in various situations related to real life problems through mathematical modeling. These books contain a plethora of updated bibliography and provide comparison between various investigations made in recent years in the field of computational mathematics in the wide sense. Iterative processes are the tools used to generate sequences approximating solutions of equations describing the real life problems stated above and others originating from biosciences, engineering, mathematical economics, mathematical biology, mathematical chemistry, mathematical physics medicine, mathematical programming, and other disciplines. These books also provide, recent advancements on the study of iterative procedures, and can be used as a source from which one can obtain the proper method to use in order to solve a problem. The books require a fundamental background in mathematical statistics, linear algebra and numerical analysis. It may be used as a self-study reference or as a supplementary text for an advanced course in biosciences, engineering and computational sciences.

In the first chapter of Gyroscopes: Types, Functions and Applications, the operating principle, types and applications of fiber-optic gyroscopes are summarized, and a novel slow light gyroscope based on coupled resonators is introduced. Following this, two signal processing techniques are discussed, each for a different type of gyroscope noise. These two techniques are then combined to produce a general technique for improving the accuracy of a gyroscope. The main methods of creating compact passive optical gyroscopes and their development trends are examined in the closing chapter.

Atrial fibrillation is a common supraventricular arrhythmia characterized by rapid and irregular atrial activation without a clear P-wave on an electrocardiogram. New Research on Atrial Fibrillation and Ischemic Heart Disease begins by discussing the risk factors, symptoms, and treatment of atrial fibrillation. Following this, the authors review the recently established relationship of atrial fibrillation with endurance sports activities in middle-aged athletes, connecting findings from various evidence in order to investigate this phenomenon since the pathophysiology of atrial fibrillation in middle-aged athletes is still unclear. Also explored are the associations between cerebrovascular risk factors and abnormal carotid and transcranial Doppler sonography and brain magnetic resonance imaging findings in individuals aged between 44 and 71 years without preceding neurological and psychiatric disorders. The association between perceived occupational noise exposure and hypertension among hospital nurses is examined, as hospital noise pollution is increasing worldwide. The concluding study aims to update and extend the existing burden of disease calculations by the WHO for road traffic noise-attributed myocardial infarction and stroke. All analyses were limited to 24 European countries and the year 2012.

This is a comprehensive list of all the significant battles from ancient time through 1904.