Books published by Springer Nature Singapore

In Alcohol and Hormones, leading researchers concisely review what is known about each human hormone system and how these systems are affected by alcohol use, and to a lesser extent, by other drugs of abuse. The contributors show clearly just how the body is regulated and how its normal functioning can be changed by alcohol. Major topics covered range from alcohol-stress interactions and the effects of alcohol on vitamin A metabolism (fetal alcohol syndrome and neural tube development) to how alcohol blocks the release of various peptide hormones, to its effects on puberty-related events in the female. There are also articles about how alcohol affects the control of body temperature, the impact of alcohol on male sexual development during puberty, the role of TRH in alcohol use disorders, and the possibility for a neuro-endocrinological component in alcoholism. Alcohol and Hormones will be of interest to biomedical and alcohol researchers, neurobiologists, endocrinologists, pharmacologists, psychiatrists, and some clinicians interested in a deeper understanding of the effects of alcohol on the body.

Strategy and Management of Industrial Brands is the first book devoted to business-to-business products and services. Looking at numerous companies, this book defines two brand objectives that are specific to the industrial and service sectors and which must be added to the traditional functions of branding: the minimization of risk as perceived by buyers, and the facilitation of the customer company's performance by the supplier brand. Different ways of classifying brands are suggested, providing a better understanding of brand strategies adopted by business-to-business companies, as well as new concepts such as brand `printability', `visibility', and `purchaseability'. Five major brand categories are dealt with in separate chapters: -entering goods brands; -intermediary equipment goods brands; -equipment goods brands; -business-to-business service brands; and -industrial distributor brands. From a practical point of view, the aim of the book is to address the main concerns of managers: How to create and protect brands? What type of visual identity is appropriate? How to manage international brands? An analysis of 1,500 industrial brands as well as 40 case studies are included in this book. These brands are used in both the industrial (automotive, building, aeronautics, IT, etc.) and consumer sectors (clothing, electronics, food packaging, telecommunications, etc.). This book has been written for professors and students of universities and business schools, as well as managers and people working in industry or the service sector.

The complex relationships between alcohol use and human health represent an area of increasing interest to specialists interested in preventive cardiology. The inverse relationship between alcohol consumption and the incidence of cardiovascular diseases, especially myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke, has in fact gained sound scientific support in recent years. This book, based in an international symposium on the topic held in Venice, October 30-31, 1999, analyzes in depth the epidemiological association between alcohol consumption and human diseases and discusses the possible mechanisms involved in alcohol-associated protection from atherosclerotic diseases. The oxidative effects of different amounts of alcohol intake and of various alcoholic beverages in the production of these effects - subjects of considerable debate - are also analyzed. This book will be of interest to clinicians and researchers active in the areas of atherosclerosis, public health, preventive medicine, and preventive cardiology. It is intended to specifically help practising clinicians provide their patients with evidence-based answers to the most commonly asked questions regarding alcohol use.

This concise volume contains the key papers presented during the International NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Silicon on Insulator device technologies. The authors have moved beyond reporting the current state of the technology to explore wider issues, from the economic aspects incorporating SOI and related materials into circuits and systems to consideration of low temperature electronics, quantum devices and MEMS. Readership: Postgraduate and professional engineers and researchers in the major silicon manufacturing companies, universities and research institutes.

There have been major changes in the heat content and ice cover of the Arctic Ocean since 1990. Year after year, this observational evidence underscores the likelihood that predictions of global climatic effects will turn out to be true. Changes in the freshwater flow from the Arctic Ocean may have very significant consequences for humanity, including those alive today. It is vital that we develop the capability to predict the magnitude of such effects with far greater certainty, as well as the probability of their occurrence within a giver time frame. To do so, we need the internationally organised commitment of scientific labour and funding. This book has been written by many of the world's most knowledgable polar oceanographers, meteorologists and hydrologists, takes full account of the latest results and discusses their significance. It draws together assessments by many specialists to present an integrated view of possible future changes in the climate of the Northern hemisphere.

This book takes a long-term view of environmental policy in Poland, which thus serves as an example to increase our understanding of environmental policy making in general in the former Eastern bloc countries. The perspective adopted also includes the pre-transition period, since the transformation process cannot be understood without reference to the preceding period. The book investigates the driving forces underlying policy changes, both prior to and after the transition, and identifies elements both of change and continuity - topics that have hitherto been neglected in the literature. A change of political system in Poland did not lead to a major change in the thrust of environmental policy: the policy makers adopted a cautious approach to new instruments and institutions during the transition period. What did change with the transition was the implementation aspect: the effectiveness of environmental policy increased dramatically after the abolition of socialism. The rule of law meant that the state administration and the polluters were subordinated to the legal system, thus increasing the power to environmental policy. Readership: Researchers and students interested in the environment and the countries in transition.

This volume presents the Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Fibonacci Numbers and their Applications, held in Rochester, New York, in June 1998. All papers have been carefully refereed for content and originality and represent a continuation of the work of previous conferences. This book, describing recent discoveries and encouraging future research, shows the growing interest in and the importance of the pure and applied aspects of Fibonacci Numbers in many different areas of science. Audience: This volume will be of interest to graduate students and research mathematicians whose work involves number theory, combinatorics, algebraic number theory, field theory and polynomials, finite geometry and special functions.

This book presents novel techniques for describing image textures. Contrary to the usual practice of embedding the images to known modelling frameworks borrowed from statistical physics or other domains, this book deduces the Gibbs models from basic image features and tailors the modelling framework to the images. This approach results in more general Gibbs models than can be either Markovian or non-Markovian and possess arbitrary interaction structures and strengths. The book presents computationally feasible algorithms for parameter estimation and image simulation and demonstrates their abilities and limitations by numerous experimental results. The book avoids too abstract mathematical constructions and gives explicit image-based explanations of all the notions involved. Audience: The book can be read by both specialists and graduate students in computer science and electrical engineering who take an interest in texture analysis and synthesis. Also, the book may be interesting to specialists and graduate students in applied mathematics who explore random fields.