Books published by Springer International Publishing AG

In this book the most recent technical and technological advancements in the treatment of intracranial tumours will be described, and a wide and updated review of the literature on neurosurgical pathologies with high clinical impact will be offered to the readers. Technical nuances and surgical pearls, as well as tricks suggested by the most renowned experts in the field will be explained and illustrated in the light of the most modern approach to oncological neurosurgical pathologies. Each surgical technique will be contextualized in a multi-modal approach to the pathology, defining specific aims and goals of surgery, and a comparative analysis of surgical and clinical results deriving from the different approaches will be systematically discussed, analyzing the specific drawbacks and advantages in approaching the different pathologies, and emphasizing the preservation of patient¿s functioning and quality of life as well as the neurological status.Through this book, the editors aim to provide an effective educational support to already trained and experienced neurosurgeons, who want to approach the multi-modal management of intracranial tumors according to the principles of Evidence Based Medicine, highlighting classes of evidence, by using schemes and therapeutic algorithms based on most updated data available in the literature.

This book has two heroes - the surgeon and the robot. The education system and intelligence can create a human who is specialized in surgery. While the accurate analysis of data with machine learning, AI, can create a more autonomous robot for surgery. Currently, robots still require human input in the decision-making loop, whether or not this will always be the case is an issue that still needs to be debated, analyzed and studied, preferably by computer scientists AND surgeons.Surgeons and their patients are increasingly opting for less invasive surgeries. However, among their many advantages, there is an important issue: less invasiveness always means limited access to direct information from the operating field (3D image, local palpation sensations, all information about the "whole" patient and feedback from the accompanying team during teleoperation). To increase precision, we are increasingly using surgical robots and mechatronic instruments. The less invasive the surgery and the greater the precision of robotic micro-instruments, the greater the role of artificial intelligence methods, especially machine learning, which supports the surgeon in making decisions, planning and performing the procedure.The development of artificial intelligence and further evidence of its effectiveness in various application fields mean that the work of a doctor is changing today. In the book, we address the issue of AI surgery, asking whether this means that an AI surgeon will be created? A key question about autonomous surgical robots will come up regularly: how far can we go with their autonomy while maintaining safe and effective procedures?The book provides useful information on both early successes, failures, and expectations related to the development of new technologies in surgery. It is a guide written by various experts, intended for a wide audience: from medical development planners, through students, to doctors and decision-makers.

This compact book examines age friendliness within the framework of age-friendly ecosystems, and from a place-based approach, considering anchor institutions of neighborhoods, campuses and health environments as sites uniquely positioned to catalyze age equity and inclusivity.Age friendliness has grown from an idea into a social movement that recognizes the diversity of older adults, and integrates research, policy, programming and design practices. Compounding pressures of rapid aging, systemic ageism, and a growing disparity of resources compel us to rethink how we achieve equity in aging through the design of places and practices.Content for this book draws from a 2022 symposium, Age Friendly Communities as Platforms for Equity, Health & Wellness. Contributors build upon the content shared through the symposium in order to examine how neighborhoods, campuses and health environments are uniquely poised to support equity and to extend reach to historically marginalized populations of older adults. Ideas and experiences from national experts in aging, as well as "real world" experiences and narratives shared by older adults, students, community stakeholders and faculty researchers, are presented through a place-based approach. Collectively the voices in this book create a lens for empowering age-friendly ecosystems as environments for equitable aging by design. Among the topics covered: Creating an Age-Friendly Environment Across the Ecosystem Age Friendliness as a Framework for Equity in Aging Age-Friendly Voices in the Pursuit of an Age-Friendly Ecosystem Age-Friendly Futures: Equity by DesignAge-Friendly Ecosystems: Environments for Equitable Aging by Design is written for people who are interested in understanding how the age-friendly movement is transforming places we live ¿ community planners, designers, policy makers, aging service providers, academics and citizen activists. This compact volume presents a case of need for age friendliness in places we live, learn and care for our health. Readers with interests in the professional practice areas of aging studies/gerontology, architecture and planning, colleges and universities, community/neighborhood development, health systems, research, and policy will benefit from this brief that examines neighborhoods, campuses, and health environments from interdisciplinary perspectives.

This book presents an innovative public mental health model addressing the global crisis of declining mental health among adolescents. Despite the scholarly and public media attention given to post-pandemic adolescent mental health, few published sources present a sustainable, scalable and multisector collaborative solution that includes attention to the social determinants of health, equity, and prevention, together with mental health literacy education and early intervention. This book takes a public health approach to address this need and is inspired by the authors' experience creating and implementing change in adolescent mental health systems.While prevention, together with diagnosis and treatment, are the most effective ways to address mental illness, a systems-level approach has only recently appeared in the applied mental health scientific literature. Unlike cardiovascular disease and cancer, mental health promotion and mental illness prevention have been slow to gain traction in the U.S. However, leading professional associations are beginning to acknowledge the value of a public health approach to adolescent mental health and the need to support public health and mental health intersectoral policies. The concepts presented in this volume draw on three primary systems: public health, mental health and education. The authors present 24 recommendations that are relevant for scholars, practitioners and leaders involved in adolescent mental health. Among the topics covered: U.S. and global adolescent mental health, public health, and school mental health Why a systems change is needed in adolescent mental health How to implement an adolescent public mental health model Taking action with systems changeAdolescent Public Mental Health is essential reading for professionals in mental health, public health, social work, and medicine who are interested in moving to a more integrative, multisectoral approach to adolescent mental health. Educators and academic institutions who teach our future leaders will benefit from understanding the new model, which can be seamlessly included in secondary school education. Clinicians, practitioners, school principals and superintendents can adopt the model and collaborative processes, described in the demonstration project, to respond to the mental health challenges they encounter every day.

This book offers a tour of ¿the known galaxy¿, here defined as the region of interstellar space closest to Earth. The phrase ¿the known galaxy¿ has a particular resonance in science fiction, as it refers to the part of the Milky Way that from the perspective of a point in time centuries from now may have been explored and settled by human beings. In the known galaxy, there are gloomy ocean worlds illuminated by the light of exploding stars. There are worlds where precious gems could be as common as pebbles. There are planets eternally wandering between the stars like the Flying Dutchman. There are lava worlds, steam worlds, hot Jupiters, cold Jupiters and maybe even worlds like our Earth. The purpose of the book is to begin to give this region a sense of place, in the same way that Mars is now starting to be appreciated as a location rather than just a planet. In doing so, the book merges our current scientific knowledge of the known galaxy with speculative fiction and with older legends and myths.A sense of place is the feeling that some locations have a special meaning. This emotional connection arises from a combination of cultural and environmental factors that make individuals care about a particular place. It is challenging to create a sense of place for distant locations that no human has visited and for which our current knowledge is limited. This book attempts to take a step in this direction, by dividing the known galaxy into a number of clearly described distinct regions, by providing scientific descriptions of the likely environmental conditions on the known planets of these regions, and by linking these planets to their literary and mythological context.The book is aimed at fans of both science fact and science fiction. It combines a tour of real planets outside of our solar system with tales of their fictional counterparts. The combination of solid scientific facts and analysis with speculation and imagination will be appealing to readers who want to gain a feeling for these planets as places with a back story, rather than just as names somewhere out there in the sky.

This book provides a complete teaching companion that an organization can use to educate on the hard topics of racism, antiracism, microaggressions, bias and allyships. It explores the experience of underrepresented minority trainees and other healthcare professionals with racism and allyship.Talking about racism is challenging due to the amount of associated pain, suffering and strong emotions. Creating a respectful, open, interactive and safe place to have conversations, teach and learn is paramount in order to produce change in the healthcare environment. Using narratives to facilitate difficult conversations is familiar to healthcare professionals, and with humility reminds us that we are all "patients" that also need healing. Narratives promote self-reflection and have the power to change beliefs and attitudes.The volume opens with introductory chapters that focus on definitions, historical context and the current climate of racism, bias, microaggressions and allyship. Narratives are presented in 42 chapters organized by themes of racism, microaggression, allyship, sexism and health equity. Each narrative is an honest representation of real-life encounters within the healthcare system. The narratives include personal experiences of racism in health care, explicit and implicit bias, microaggressions and experiences of anti-racist efforts and allyship. There are clear instructions on how to use the narratives for teaching and to facilitate discussion. Among the book's benefits: Explicitly includes the perspective of trainees and administration; Engages learners in affective and emotional learning as well as practical and cognitive learning modes; Provides a series of historical cases, consistent with the preferred and traditional learning modality of health professions; Includes an array of activities, tools and learning exercises.Racism, Microaggressions and Allyship in Health Care is a timely and essential text for medical student and resident training, graduate and undergraduate nursing programs, advanced practice care providers, clinical faculty and staff development, CME workshops, public health programs, and hospital administration. It also is a useful resource for undergraduate pre-medicine programs, structural racism courses, and advanced social science courses (health disparities, medical sociology, inequality, healthcare policy).

This book marks the centenary of the remarkable invention of an opto-mechanical planetarium projector, the Zeiss Mk I. In May 1925, the first public planetarium opened at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. In the ensuing decades, this invention spread all over the world, becoming an integral part of modern life.The book presents a global narrative of the modern planetarium and its history through a selection of 100 objects and their stories. Written by a varied international group of contributors including planetarium professionals, scientists, historians, and other experts, these object stories highlight major developments in planetaria as they relate to advances in astronomy and space science as well as changes in society and culture at large. The objects featured in this book show how planetaria gained a central place in modern life at the intersection between science, education, art, and entertainment. They also connect the reader with the diverse people whohave made the modern planetarium a reality and continue to pave the way for its future - be they planetarium staff, scientists, architects, artists, engineers, educators, or planetarium visitors.

This book offers an accessible framework for macroeconomic modelling rooted in the capital theory of Austrian Economics. By distinguishing between the goods and monetary sides of the economy and exploring their interaction, the book provides a comprehensive macroeconomic model that integrates time preference and interest rates. It examines how monetary and fiscal policies can produce business cycles and how these cycles are influenced by central bank liquidity and financial market behaviour. Additionally, the book discusses the ways in which monetary and fiscal policies can prolong and intensify economic stagnation.Through its clear exposition, this book deepens the understanding of the conditions that determine the unsustainability of credit-driven economic expansions. It is essential reading for students and researchers in political economy, macroeconomics, monetary economics, and those interested in advancing Austrian Economics.Antony P. Mueller is a Professor at the Mises Academy in São Paulo. He specializes in Austrian Economics, with a focus on macroeconomic theory.

'This intriguing volume offers a significant contribution to the growing field of lived religion, i.e. religion from the perspective of laymen and women, who sought empowerment through their faith. The volume not only provides readers with much new knowledge about religious revival movements; the geographical breadth of the chapters offers new opportunities to explore the topic from a sociological and trans-denominational perspective. Anyone with an interest in global history, social history, and gender studies will have an interest in this work.'- Juliane Engelhardt, University of Copenhagen, Denmark'This is a significant contribution to the historiography of revival movements in the long nineteenth century. Ranging from Russia and Finland to India and the US, the chapters highlight the international and cross-denominational dynamics of Protestant awakenings and how they intersected with diverse esoteric revivals. Especially rewarding is the focus on formations of popular religion between dissemination efforts by experts from above and the self-empowerment of lay people from below.'- Jan Stievermann, Heidelberg University, Germany.This open access book focuses on the potential for conflict between high and low culture during the transformations of the popular in the field of religion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Specifically, the contributors to this edited collection consider the so-called 'Revival Movements' that came up as a symptom of differentiation and pluralisation of Protestantism in reaction to the Enlightenment, rationalism, and criticism of religion, and explore the attempts at theological self-empowerment of Christian laymen and laywomen.Veronika Albrecht-Birkner is University Professor in Church and Theology History at the University of Siegen, Germany. Stefanie Siedek-Strunk is Research Assistant at the CRC 1472 'Transformations of the popular' at the University of Siegen, Germany.

This book compiles an extensive list of solved and proposed problems in mathematical topics in analysis, aimed at students of mathematics, applied mathematics, physics, and engineering.The book begins with an exploration of simple linear and nonlinear ordinary differential equations in Chapter 1, advancing through topics such as power series and the Frobenius method for solving differential equations in Chapter 2. In subsequent chapters, the discussion expands to include functions of complex variables, special functions constructed through the hypergeometric function, and series solutions including Fourier, Fourier-Bessel, and Fourier-Legendre series. Problems in integral transforms, Sturm-Liouville systems, Green's function, linear partial differential equations are also included. The work finishes with a special chapter on fractional calculus and practical applications of the topics presented.With solved examples and step-by-step exercises, this book can be of value to undergraduate and graduate students seeking a hands-on approach on the listed topics, and as a bibliographical complement to STEM courses as well.

Housing has always had a close association with the lives refugees lead in exile and the settlement of refugees is, at its core, a housing issue. Refugees move from their home, perhaps through various other places, to finally arrive in a nation-state which provides them with security of status and the promise of assistance to continue their lives. At the foundation of this promise of refuge is the provision of a safe and secure home. Despite this, the knowledge base about housing and its significance in the lives of refugees is not fully understood and this risks understating the enormous impact housing has on the settlement of refugees more broadly. This book makes an important contribution to the literature on the relationship between sanctuary and housing. It draws on new empirical research to examine how refugees have transitioned through the housing system over the last three decades and how changes in policy and the routes into refugee status has mediated these experiences.

This book describes some approaches for developing the numerical models to efficiently predict the formation of extreme waves which can pose a threat to the safety of marine structures. The numerical algorithms for solving different governing equations and the theoretical probability models for extreme wave predictions are explained in detail. These models can help engineers in the design of marine structures that can withstand extreme waves.With more frequent extreme weather due to climate change, extreme waves have become more common. Extreme waves are an interesting phenomenon, but because of their enormous destructive power, understanding their formation mechanism, properties, and impact, is necessary for the design and safe operation of ships and offshore structures.In addition, this book: Explains the nature of extreme waves, their formation mechanism, and their generation probability in different sea states Describes some numerical models that can simulate the behaviour of extreme waves to various degrees of accuracy as required Suitable for scientists, graduate students, in ocean engineering, and engineers who design marine structures

This concise and challenging examination of medical education aims to discuss curriculum design and evaluation in medical schools and to take a fresh look at current trends in patient care and continuing education teaching methods. The ideas and insights provided here are based on the author's long career in clinical practice and teaching medical students and residents.Medical education is no exception to the changes at every level in medicine. For example, the ready access to medical information via the Internet and other media has produced smarter and informed patients.  Multi-specialty hospital practice has replaced the individual 'doctor-patient' relationship, perhaps compromising patient care to some extent.  New subjects have been added over the years to medical curricula. Nevertheless, there has often been a reluctance to remove older topics, possibly limiting the medical training course's ability to develop as expected.  The transition from theories of higher education to the reality of curriculum planning and design is a huge leap. An important question is how to translate the mission of higher education in general which has been variably described as a training of 'reflective individuals' who 'possess both culture and expertise' and can 'master any subject with facility' into a coherent teaching program. The mission of medical education includes the promotion of professionalism in learners by including courses in medical ethics that have become integral to medical education in the USA. However, despite the development of standards and competencies related to professionalism, there is no consensus on the specific goals of medical ethics education, the knowledge and skills expected of learners, and the best pedagogical methods and processes for their implementation and assessment.A significant contribution to the clinical teaching literature, Curriculum Design, Evaluation, and Teaching in Medical Education should be of interest to a variety of readers, including clinical educators, administrators, health care professionals, and especially residency directors.

This textbook is addressed to PhD or senior undergraduate students in mathematics, with interests in analysis, calculus of variations, probability and optimal transport. It originated from the teaching experience of the first author in the Scuola Normale Superiore, where a course on optimal transport and its applications has been given many times during the last 20 years. The topics and the tools were chosen at a sufficiently general and advanced level so that the student or scholar interested in a more specific theme would gain from the book the necessary background to explore it. After a large and detailed introduction to classical theory, more specific attention is devoted to applications to geometric and functional inequalities and to partial differential equations.This is the second edition of the book, first published in 2018. It includes refinement of proofs, an updated bibliography and a more detailed discussion of minmax principles, with the aim of giving two fully self-contained proofs of Kantorovich duality.

The success of predictive large language models (PLLMs) like GPT3 and ChatGPT has created both enthusiasts and skeptics of their widespread practical applications, but this book argues that the larger significance of such models is contained in what they suggest about human cognition. To explore this potential, the book develops a thought experiment called the Prediction Room, a reference to John Searle's influential Chinese Room argument, in which a human agent processes language by following a set of opaque written rules without possessing an inherent understanding of the language. The book proposes a new Room model-the Prediction Room with its resident Prediction Agent-generalizing the working of large language models. Working through a wide range of topics in cognitive science, the book challenges the conclusion of Searle's thought experiment, that discredited contemporary artificial intelligences (AI), through the suggestion that the Prediction Room offers a means of exploring how new ideas in AI can provide productive alternatives to traditional understandings of human cognition. In considering the implications of this, the book reviews an array of topics and issues in cognitive science to uncover new ideas and reinforce older ideas about the mental mechanisms involved in both sides. The discussion of these topics in the book serves two purposes. First, it aims to stimulate new thinking about familiar topics like language acquisition or the nature and acquisition of concepts. Second, by contrasting human psychology with the form of artificial psychology these models exhibit, it uncovers how new directions in the development of these systems can be better explored.In addition, this book: Evaluates PLLMs using cognitive science to reflect on implications for human cognition Explores how PLLMs reinforce and suggest new ideas about mental mechanisms of cognition Utilizes cognitive model theories to test limits of understanding large language models

In an era of significant geopolitical shifts, unrelenting violent confrontation, nationalism and identity politics, the institutions in which Canada and its allies have invested significant capital such as trade, political, and security organisations are being tested and stretched to the limit. This edition will look back on Canadäs approach to encouraging democracy abroad, it will consider ways to enhance middle power democracy statecraft in an era of growing international and domestic insecurity, backsliding and populism, and discern patterns and recurring themes in Canadian support for rights and democracy, as well as efforts to grapple with novel trends like digital threats to democracy.