Books published by Springer

The link between modern lifestyles and increasing levels of chronic heart disease, obesity, stress and poor mental health is a concern across the world.

This book brings clarity to the new, often still opaque world of the Metaverse. It concisely shows how the business areas of sales and marketing can specifically unleash their potential within it. Develop a fundamental understanding of the key terms and tools of the Metaverse with this book, and learn how Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) can shape the future of your business ¿ and how you can optimally present and sell yourself in virtual worlds. With numerous use cases, strategies, and best practices, you will be well-equipped to help shape the Metaverse of tomorrow today.

This book analyzes the intricate relationship between football fans and clubs, presenting new approaches for those in charge to actively involve fans in club management¿a complex task often fraught with emotional tension. Fan communities are spaces for integration and identity formation, but also for exclusion and demarcation. Moreover, the author highlights the resistance of active soccer fan scene towards increasing commercialization of their sport and their skeptical view of powerful institutions. This book therefore emphasizes that the goal of club management should be to develop fans from stakeholders to stakeowners, so that they can take on responsibility as equal participants in club affairs. The author, Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger, introduces the fundamentals of the "fan" phenomenon and outlines paths towards greater transparency and integrity, as well as productive dialogue between clubs and fan communities.This book is targeted at academics, sports managers, and soccer enthusiasts interested in the intersection of fan culture, club management, and the socio-political dimensions of sports.

Dive into the fascinating world of digital disruption and discover the transformative power of open and digital ecosystems, which will constitute one-third of global trade by 2030. This book demonstrates how value creation occurs beyond organizational boundaries and places the consumer at the forefront. The convergence of industries and technologies drives the experience-oriented customer journey and accelerates digital transformation. Explore Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, the Internet of Things, Blockchain, Cloud, and Quantum Computing as key building blocks for innovation. The golden triangle of digital ecosystems - commerce, social media, and finance ¿ illustrates how companies like Alibaba, Tencent, NIO, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, and Migros create unique customer experiences and integrate services with super-apps.Through in-depth analyses and practical case studies, you will learn how companies can thrive in this revolutionary model, achieving growth by sharing knowledge and resources, responding swiftly to market changes, and balancing the optimization of existing businesses with the exploration of new opportunities. Leadership in open and digital ecosystems demands a shift in mindset and the development of new dynamic capabilities. Emphasizing openness, agility, and ambidexterity as critical skills, this book is an indispensable guide for companies aiming to leverage open and digital ecosystems for sustainable growth and to build agile, resilient organizations.Gain a modern understanding of leadership and discover how it shapes the future of work in the era of digital ecosystems.

In a VUCA world, which is becoming increasingly volatile, uncertain, and complex, companies, organizations, and states must respond promptly and adequately to the respective situations. Making decisions based on past experiences is less successful in these times than having an accurate understanding of current conditions. The importance of empirical sciences, continuous environmental observation, timely analysis of causal relationships, and deriving new insights from them is increasing. From this, it can be deduced which measures are likely to achieve one's goals with predictable probability, such as which price for an offer generates the desired demand or which marketing measure reaches the desired target group.Where classical statistics were once used for calculations and predictions, today free (open source) tools like R allow data in various formats and from any number of sources to be read in, processed, and analyzed using methods of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The results can then be perfectly visualized so that decision-makers can benefit quickly and effectively.The age of Data Science has arrived. Digitalization is more than a buzzword or a promise; it is actionable and usable for everyone.This book teaches you, based on the latest version of R at the time of publication, how to use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Industry 4.0.

This book, authored by three experts with the assistance of GPT, provides comprehensive insights into the applications of generative AI, such as GPT, in the financial sector of businesses. It offers background information, benefits, as well as the challenges and risks associated with implementation. In addition to general applications within companies, specific use cases are also presented, focusing on areas such as controlling, business intelligence, accounting, investor relations, internal audit and control systems, risk management, auditing, and data privacy. The book concludes with a discussion on strategies for utilizing GPT effectively.

The standard economic theory, despite its many advantages, has a significant weakness: it is only of limited applicability to the economic reality of practice. Therefore, the book presents a new economic theory that is completely oriented towards the reality of economic practice. In this new theory, human beings are not just actors but constitute the central element from which the theory and everything else derive: work, production, consumption, demand, supply, exchange, trade, markets, stock exchanges, money, state economics, and global economics with all their complexities. Unlike the standard model, the new theory employs a holistic approach in its methodology. With this new and differentiated economic perspective and mindset, the new theory is capable of initiating a paradigm shift in the discipline of economics.

Economics still adheres entirely unreflectively to a mechanistic worldview and machine thinking. Epistemologically, it thus remains in the 19th century, and its assumptions and theories, methods, and models therefore stand in stark contradiction to the findings of all other social and natural sciences as well as a multitude of empirical facts.Through a discourse-analytical examination of sixteen basic concepts in economics, based on twelve standard economics textbooks, their ideahistorical origin and use are worked out and compared and related to the current state of knowledge of other disciplines. This reveals the structural, methodological, and content errors of economics in a clear manner.Especially for critical students, who have long been demanding an economics that is in line with the current state of research and faces the challenges of the 21st century, this opens up the possibility of a new approach to economics.The Content Discourse-analytical examination of fundamental assumptions and concepts of economics from "labor" to "wealth" Structural, methodological, and content critique of economic thinking from an epistemological perspective Critical examination of the use of empirical and statistical data, the method of gaining knowledge, and the model thinking in economics

This practical handbook provides a well-founded insight into the complex preparatory work for the realisation of eLearning projects. The book describes how project managers and media authors work as a team to create a script for eLearning that fulfils learning psychology criteria and current multimedia didactics. Tools for designing and writing scripts are presented and evaluated so that a needs-based selection is possible. The third edition has been revised and updated throughout. A new chapter on "Mobile Learning" shows the latest developments. The draft of instructional videos and the possibilities of the social web are explained in detail.Enriched with valuable tips for work organisation and an outline of the media author's job description, the handbook is aimed at project managers and specialists in companies, further education institutions and multimedia agencies as well as media authors and those who want to become one. Numerous checklists facilitate daily work, e.g. for checking a finished script - a quality assurance measure that helps save time and money. Written directly for everyday professional use, the book uses practical methods and work aids as well as tips and tricks to show how a strong draft and a carefully prepared script make a decisive contribution to the successful production of eLearning applications.

Why do you lean in a bend? Why does a sprinter slow down before the finish line? Why do golf balls have dimples? Why do you swim better slightly underwater? Why, on a bike, the faster you go, the more stable you are? Why shouldn¿t you rely on doping tests too much? Is there a law of evolution of records?These are some of the 40 questions that Amandine Aftalion answers in this book using simple physics and mathematics, and some humor. Not only will it allow you to improve yourself in sports, but it will also but it will also give way to understanding how champions do.An easy book to read and the must to have if you are a sports addict or if you watch sports on TV and ask yourself ¿why?¿.Amandine Aftalion is a French mathematician. She is a CNRS senior scientist and graduated from École normale supérieure in Paris. She has given talks all over the world, as a specialist of models coming from low temperature physics. She has written a book on vortices in Bose¿Einstein condensates. More recently, she has used energy minimization to study an optimal control problem coming from human energy: optimizing running. She has written papers on sports aimed at coaches. Part of her latest results have inspired the first chapter of this book. She is the producer and director of a French YouTube channel for the popularization of mathematics, Videodimath, elected as one of the 5 best French YouTube channels for popular mathematics.

Based on thoroughly researched texts and rare photographies this book describes the actual developments of international shipping and all the facets connected to overseas good flows.

This contributed volume presents the latest research on additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing, one of the key techniques of novel medical devices, which can process complicated or customized structures to match the properties of human tissues. AM allows for the fabrication of devices with optimal architectures, complicated morphologies, surface integrity, and regulated porosity and chemical composition. Various AM methods can now consistently fabricate dense products for a variety of materials, comprising steels, titanium alloys, Co-Cr alloys, metal-based composites, and nanocomposites. This book elucidates the chronology of various techniques that are categorized under additive manufacturing. Moreover, the futuristic techniques or advancements in this area are also described. The available literature focuses on the microstructure and various properties of 3D-printed alloys. However, the research on the wear characteristics, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility of 3D-printedtechnology for biomedical applications is limited. This book comprises the helicopter view of different surface analysis trends of additive manufactured alloys. The book can be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers, and professionals interested in bioimplant manufacturing and allied fields.

This book is a guide to achieving optimal crop yield while ensuring the sustainable and efficient use of water resources. It delves into critical topics such as irrigation water management, global and regional climate variability and change, food security, water pollution, soil erosion, and fertility loss. With the growing stress on water resources, the emphasis needs to be on environmentally friendly alternatives, including cutting-edge solutions like AI-based approaches, sensor-driven automation systems, and the integration of IoT in irrigation automation. This book collates information and analyzes current challenges in agriculture but also proposes innovative solutions, particularly in the context of the interconnected factors of water, crops, and climate change. By offering insights and strategies, it aims to guide the development of a water-wise, sustainable agriculture system that ensures the safety and well-being of future generations. This book is a valuable resource for anyone involved in agriculture and related fields, providing knowledge and tools to create a resilient and efficient food system. The target audience is diverse, ranging from farmers and students to researchers, scientists, irrigation practitioners, decision-makers, professors, and policymakers.

Transfer learning is one of the most important technologies in the era of artificial intelligence and deep learning. It seeks to leverage existing knowledge by transferring it to another, new domain. Over the years, a number of relevant topics have attracted the interest of the research and application community: transfer learning, pre-training and fine-tuning, domain adaptation, domain generalization, and meta-learning. This book offers a comprehensive tutorial on an overview of transfer learning, introducing new researchers in this area to both classic and more recent algorithms. Most importantly, it takes a "student's" perspective to introduce all the concepts, theories, algorithms, and applications, allowing readers to quickly and easily enter this area. Accompanying the book, detailed code implementations are provided to better illustrate the core ideas of several important algorithms, presenting good examples for practice.

Verwaltung ist vielfältig, aber ihr Recht lässt sich anhand allgemeiner Grundsätze verständlich machen. Dieses Buch schlägt Schneisen durch das Vorschriftengeflecht und präsentiert das Allgemeine Verwaltungsrecht systematisch anhand der beteiligten Rechtsträger, der zu erwerbenden Rechtspositionen und der vorkommenden Rechtsakte. Zahlreiche Beispiele machen die Bedeutung der einzelnen Rechtsinstitute anschaulich. Durchgehend findet auch die Falllösungsperspektive Berücksichtigung. Das Buch ist somit sowohl für den Einstieg ins Verwaltungsrecht als auch zur Vertiefung geeignet.

Viel zu tun und kein Urlaub in Sicht? Wunderbar - dann ist jetzt genau die richtige Zeit für Erholung! Denn auch zwischen Videokonferenzen, langen Besprechungen und diversen anderen Verpflichtungen bleibt Zeit für kleine Auszeiten. Und das lohnt sich! Denn Erholung ist ein wahres Wundermittel, um uns gegen Stress zu wappnen. Und sicher die angenehmste Sache, sich etwas Gutes zu tun. Der Ratgeber einer erfahrenen Erholungsexpertin bietet das erforderliche Handwerkszeug, um sich im Alltag gut zu erholen und so den Herausforderungen der heutigen Arbeitswelt entgegentreten zu können. Dafür brauchen Sie weder (mehr) Urlaub noch viel Zeit, sondern Lust auf Alltagsabenteuer, Schaffensrausch und neue Routinen! Mit diesem Buch gelingt Ihnen Erholung vielleicht nicht immer perfekt, aber jeden Tag ein bisschen besser.

Increasing customer demands and innovations in digital sales require targeted management and flexible organisation of multiple sales channels. Multi-channel marketing can be used to achieve outstanding competitive advantages. This book provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of the fundamentals and management of multi-channel marketing. The book understands multi-channel marketing as an integrative marketing system with special consideration of digital technologies. "Multi-Channel-Marketing is with increasing frequency a key success factor for companies in competition for customers. Bernd Wirtz' textbook provides a clearly patterned, incorporated and theoretically funded overview for this purpose. The author excellently succeeded in illustrating in a descriptive way the considerable complexity and breadth of applicability and contemporaneously establishing a high practical relevance." Dr. Rainer Hillebrand, Deputy Executive Board Chairman of Otto Group "Wirtz examines the whole path down from theoretical basic knowledge of Multi-Channel-Marketing right up to the practical realization. This book is a needed approach which is at the same time a reference book for specific issues. 'The Wirtz' is essential for everyone who is concerned with this highly topical subject in his studies or in practice already." Dr. Arno Mahlert, Chief Executive Officer Tchibo Holding AG (2004-2009), Member of the Board of Directors Peek&Cloppenburg KG and maxingvest AG

Based on a cooperation between science and minority self-organizations, the book offers for the first time comprehensive data on the national minority of German Sinti and Roma and immigrant Roma in Germany. The social and educational situation of Sinti and Roma in Germany is examined using an innovative sampling strategy with interviewers from the minority. An international team of renowned authors from minority and majority analyzes the connections between discrimination, expectations and developments in school and training qualifications.

This textbook provides an overview of the fundamentals of game theory and its applications in various fields. It introduces game theory as an established toolkit for the mathematical analysis and evaluation of strategic decisions. Through applied exercises, it introduces the basic concepts of game theory and offers students from various disciplines the opportunity to practice the concepts through in-depth training. The textbook addresses advanced students of economics, business administration, and related disciplines, university graduates with basic mathematical training as well as interested readers from all fields. For this, it provides student-friendly explanations, a variety of exercises and problems, and useful references to further reading. The book is divided into a beginner-friendly theory section, in which the most important aspects are presented in a compact and clear manner, and an application-oriented problem section, in which the readers can directly check what they have learned and find many application examples. The latter can also be used as a source of inspiration for instructors.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the MICCAI 2023 Challenge, FLARE 2023, held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2023, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, on October 8, 2023. The 27 full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The papers present research and results for abdominal organ segmentation which has many important clinical applications, such as organ quantification, surgical planning, and disease diagnosis.

This book presents the managed aquifer recharge, also called MAR, as state of the art in the Middle East and North Africa. Renewable groundwater resources are scarce in the majority of the MENA countries. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area is often regarded as the world's most water-scarce region. The MENA region consists of eighteen countries covering an area of approximately 12 million km2. The population of MENA countries is around 6% of the world's population, but its water resources are four times lower. Aquifer recharge plays an essential role in adequately allocating recovered water into the groundwater storage capacity, recovering overexploited groundwater, and improving groundwater quality. MAR may help minimize flood mitigation and flood hazard by harvesting floodwater using storage dams, which allows it to replenish the underlying groundwater aquifer while simultaneously lowering flood risks to downstream areas. MAR has the potential to be a crucial water management strategy to promote groundwater storage in arid and semiarid regions as MENA region. This book explores several themes, including the status of the applications of the MAR in MENA countries, strategies for the MAR in MENA countries, MAR methods and assessments, the economics of using MAR in the MENA region, sustainability of the MAR in MENA countries, environmental risk management, and relevant applications of remote sensing and GIS techniques for the managed aquifer recharge. This book presents various strategies for the managed aquifer recharge in the MENA countries to help them achieve their sustainability agenda 2030.

This book addresses the transformation of primary education in the former Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) after the fall of the communist regime in 1989. It follows the overall transformation of education and school policy and offers original insights into the everyday life of the schools at that time. It also provides a unique perspective on the whole transformation process. The work discusses the school environment in the context of specific local characteristics, such as parents, community, regional institutions, and national and international contexts. The book specifically focuses on the changes in primary school management in terms of economics, organization, and personnel. The processes of pedagogical change are an essential theme of the book. They cover how teachers proceeded through the changes in their work at the time of the transformation and the reasons for their resistance to change, including the challenges that the transformation introduced into their work and personal lives. The book also monitors how the teachers navigated the selection and use of new textbooks and tools, such as digital tools. The work originates in historical-pedagogical research, based primarily on the oral history method and complemented by the study of contemporary documents.

This book is a gentle introduction for all those wishing to learn about modern views of the cosmos. Our universe originated in a great explosion - the big bang. For nearly a century cosmologists have studied the aftermath of this explosion: how the universe expanded and cooled down, and how galaxies were gradually assembled by gravity. The nature of the bang itself has come into focus only relatively recently. It is the subject of the theory of cosmic inflation, which was developed in the last few decades and has led to a radically new global view of the universe. Students and other interested readers will find here a non-technical but conceptually rigorous account of modern cosmological ideas - describing what we know, and how we know it. One of the book's central themes is the scientific quest to find answers to the ultimate cosmic questions: Is the universe finite or infinite? Has it existed forever? If not, when and how did it come into being? Will it ever end? The book is based on the undergraduate course taught by Alex Vilenkin at Tufts University. It assumes no prior knowledge of physics or mathematics beyond elementary high school math. The necessary physics background is introduced as it is required. Each chapter includes a list of questions and exercises of varying degree of difficulty. This new edition includes hints for answering the questions and exercises, as well as extensions to the discussions on dark matter, quantum cosmology. A new chapter summarizing the standard cosmological model has also been added.

The 7-volume set LNCS 14651 - 14657 conference volume constitutes the proceedings of the 43rd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, EUROCRYPT 2024, held in in Zurich, Switzerland, in May 2024. The 105 papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 500 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: Awarded papers; symmetric cryptology; public key primitives with advanced functionalities; Part II: Public key primitives with advances functionalities; Part III: AI and blockchain; secure and efficient implementation, cryptographic engineering, and real-world cryptography; theoretical foundations; Part IV: Theoretical foundations; Part V: Multi-party computation and zero-knowledge; Part VI: Multi-party computation and zero-knowledge; classic public key cryptography, Part VII: Classic public key cryptography.

This book addresses critical questions in the field of terrorism studies that have long eluded consensus in the international community. It discusses why there is an abundance of definitions of terrorism and, on the other hand, the absence of a standard definition of terrorism reflected at the international level, shedding light on the elusive boundaries for achieving a global consensus.The book's two compelling hypotheses pave the way for a fresh perspective on counterterrorism efforts. Firstly, the need for new legal frameworks that adapt to the evolving nature of terrorism, encompassing state-sponsored terrorism. Secondly, by examining the historical roots of terrorism, this book uncovers patterns that could reshape future counterterrorism strategies.Drawing on interviews with 20 leading experts in terrorism studies from diverse backgrounds and regions, this book provides invaluable insights and ensures a well-rounded examination of the subject. It will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of security studies, political science, international relations, and terrorism studies in particular, as well as policy-makers interested in exploring the complexities of countering terrorism in our ever-changing world.

This book discusses theories of crisis management and the radical right, to shed light on how responses to crisis influence radical right parties in their presence, discourse, and evolution. The book offers a comparative perspective by examining case studies with various traditions of radical right actors, presenting data on how crisis exploitation can assist in exploring, reconsidering, bargaining, and learning about the prospects of change of political parties.The book focuses on the debate on radicalization and crisis management. Similar to the already existing economic, political, post-Brexit, and migration crises in Europe, discourses of fear around the latest health crisis are paving the way for further radicalised discourse from the far right. The book looks into how radical right parties in Europe have responded to these crises. It monitors and explores how crisis exploitation impacts political strategies, opportunity-seeking behaviours, and the evolution of the discourse of radical right parties in the contemporary political landscape.Therefore, this book is a must-read for researchers, students, and policy-makers, interested in a better understanding of populism, radical right parties, electoral studies, as well as comparative politics in general.