Books published by Springer

This book presents the Fifth International Conference on Safety and Security with IoT (SaSeIoT 2023), which took place Bratislava, Slovakia, October 24-26, 2023. The conference aims to explore not only IoT and its related critical applications but also IoT towards Security and Safety. The conference solicits original and inspiring research contributions from experts, researchers, designers, and practitioners in academia, industry and related fields and provides a common platform to share knowledge, experience and best practices in various domains of IoT.

This open access book provides a historical treatment of scientific control in experimentation in the longue durée. The introduction distinguishes four related strands in the history of experimental control: the development of practices to stabilize experimental conditions; the career of the comparative design; the unfolding of methodological discussions about control practices and designs; and the history of the term "control". Each chapter brings these distinctions to bear on specific historical episodes. The focus is on experiments with complex, elusive phenomena such as perception and learning, irregular movements, and unobservable elements. Such experiments bring control issues to the fore because they are difficult to design and stabilize and often controversial. Together, the chapters show that the local context shapes what exactly is controlled, how control can be accomplished, and how controls are justified. They also show that control strategies and methodological ideas often remain stable for a long time and change only gradually. This book, as well as the volume on analysis and synthesis in experimentation by the same editors, contains contributions by an array of experts from multiple disciplines, making it suitable for historians and philosophers of science and students alike.

This book is dedicated to Einstein's personal and scientific relationships with Italy, which began as early as adolescence and continued over various stages of his life. It collects together a wealth of historical documentation including the letters in which Einstein recalls having lived as a young man with his family in Lombardy, Pavia and Milan; the texts of three lectures delivered by Einstein in Italian in October 1921 in Bologna at the invitation of the mathematician Federigo Enriques, the only lectures he held in Italy; the correspondence with Enriques and other Italian intellectuals, together with the letter that Einstein sent in 1931 to the Minister of Justice Alfredo Rocco to try to avoid the infamy of the oath of allegiance to the fascist regime imposed by Mussolini on university professors. The book closes with some writings on relativity from 1907 to 1914 (Einstein, Abraham, Corbino, Castelnuovo) and the 1920s debate between pro-relativists and anti-relativists publishedin the international journal "Scientia", founded in 1907 by Enriques.

This manual provides a quick reference guide to assist educators in providing authentic feedback, how to address feedback in pre-clinical and clinical situations, and the benefits of two-way feedback in improving instruction. This manual is a collective effort between medical educators designed to ensure authentic feedback is structured for both the learner and the learning environment.This manual enables medical educators to move from theory to practical application in both the preclinical and clinical settings. Through theory, the practical application of authentic feedback becomes a concrete application rather than a profound concept. Educators gain knowledge regarding how theoretical concepts become a reality leading to student success and self-directed learning. The manual guides the educator through the various modalities in which feedback is required to drive student success, such as formative practice, learning environments, small group learning, multiple-choice assessments, and clinical settings. Finally, the manual ends with two-way communication and describes the steps medical educators can take to become reflective professionals. Supported by experienced and evidence-based recommendations, medical educators, administrators, and institutions are presented with checklists, strategies, and best practices for providing authentic feedback.

This open access book presents the state-of-the-art environmental governance research and practices in Indonesia. It offers a wide scope, covering different sectors (e.g., forestry, mining) and geographical landscapes (e.g., inland and coastal areas). This book engages with existing theories and frameworks, including Earth System Governance, Adaptive and Interactive Governance, among others to trigger a debate regarding the operationalization of such concepts, which are mostly developed for the Global North context. It is also our ambition to incorporate more empirical knowledge from local contexts to indicate research gaps and future directions for environmental governance research agenda to be more diverse, inclusive, and facilitate the incorporation of inter-and transdisciplinary knowledge. This book will be useful for researchers, students, practitioners, and policymakers who are interested in the field of environmental governance, especially in Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the countries with the fastest-growing economies in Asia. Indonesia is rich in natural resources but also suffers from overexploitation and environmental threats exacerbated by climate and human pressures. Along with the growing global ambitions for achieving sustainable development and capacity to adapt to current and future threats, including climate change impacts and disaster risk, Indonesia's commitments to balance development while safeguarding a good environmental status are also increasing. The challenge is on how to govern complex and systemic natural, social and governance systems while adhering to the principle of equity and justice? As it will require more than traditional hierarchical modes of governance and current regulatory instruments (i.e., law and regulations).This is an open access book.

This book shows how managers at all levels of the company can master the challenges of sustainable corporate management with confidence. Concrete action plans are presented for this purpose. Climate change and the finite nature of natural resources are already taking their toll worldwide. A rethink towards ecological sustainability is not only urgently needed at a global level. The orientation of corporate strategies is also increasingly determined by the socio-political morals of customers and other stakeholders, where economic and socio-political interests must be in harmony with social and ecological challenges. Using the three-pillar model for sustainability (Triple Bottom Line) and further topics (such as supply chain law and ESG criteria), the author shows in a practical way how companies can successfully meet these major challenges in the long term. The key to success lies in a change in values towards ecological, social and economic sustainability that is defined and practiced at all levels of the company. Nicola Oudejans, Course Director Chief Digital Officer at the University for Continuing Education Krems/Danube University Krems

This textbook deals with the Middle East conflict as a key element of international relations. The origins of the conflict and its international dimensions, the major Israeli-Arab wars, attempts at a solution, peace plans and visions for the future are presented in a concise manner. Extensive map material illustrates the findings.The English translation of this book, originally in German, was facilitated by artificial intelligence. The content was later revised by the author for accuracy.

This book addresses the pressing problem of drug resistance in the treatment of breast cancer. It provides a comprehensive understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying drug resistance and presents the latest advances in therapeutic approaches to overcome this enormous challenge. The book begins with an introduction to the biology of breast cancer, treatment modalities and the mechanisms of drug resistance. This includes the principles of drug resistance in targeted, immune-, endocrine and chemotherapy. In the following sections, the authors present innovative strategies to overcome drug resistance and new research directions, among others the role of the microbiome in drug resistance, molecular profiling of patients for personalized medical care, and new drug delivery systems. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the differences in the prevalence and treatment success of breast cancer between high- and low-income countries. This book is an informative resource for students, researchers, and clinicians in the field of breast cancer research and oncology in general.

This comprehensive resource explains the FDA's classification of devices and provides expert guidance on differentiating between significant risk and non-significant risk medical device studies. The book is divided into two parts: Significant Risk Medical Devices and Non-Significant Risk Medical Devices. Each chapter includes a general introduction and overview of the device, along with guidance on its working principles, beneficial and toxicological effects, and potential risks to the health and safety of a patient/subject. The coverage also includes reports of prior investigations on the basics of risk determination and the nature of potential harm associated with using individual devices.Significant and Non-Significant Risk Medical Devices is designed to assist practicing engineers, academic researchers, and clinical investigators in navigating the complex regulatory environment associated with medical device research and development.

This book will addresses the recent advances on range of wireless powering and energy harvesting techniques for different medical devices such as leadless pacemakers, smart stents, implantable brain devices, cardiovascular devices, etc.

This edited volume systematically interrogates the Chinese investment presence in Africa, focusing on land and agriculture, mining and other infrastructural projects. In doing so, the form and extent of Chinese debt will be brought into perspective, with comparisons made to investments in Africa emanating from metropolitan capitalism. The volume examines the development potential of these investments by focusing on the labour regimes created and the effects of investments on the land-based agricultural livelihoods of the African peasantry. This entails the use of a political economy approach which incorporates the state, international actors and local communities into the analysis, with gender dynamics also of great significance. Overall, the contributions in this volume focus on an array of African nations (with a specific focus on Zimbabwe) and they deploy a large wealth of primary field-based data collected over a number of years by established and emerging scholars living andworking on the continent.

The 2024 U.S. presidential election is likely to hinge on two very different basic approaches to domestic and foreign policy, two very different sets of underlying premises, and two very different types of presidential and high-level official personalities at the administrative helm putting them into effect. This volume comparatively analyzes the choices of presidential doctrine that are likely to foreshadow alternatives concerning the principles, beliefs, and nature of U.S. foreign policy in the years following the election.

Life Cycle Assessment in Aviation: Theory and Applications provides readers with a comprehensive analysis that examines various elements within the aviation sector, including aircraft operations, maintenance and repair activities, aircraft gas turbine engine processes, airport auxiliary vehicles, airport operations, airport construction, airport access traffic, and airport wastes. The book's content has been meticulously crafted to address the specific needs and interests of a diverse audience encompassing researchers, engineering students, and civil aviation organization officials. Readers will find valuable insights and up-to-date information about the latest developments in the aviation field, serving as a valuable resource for their investigations and studies.

This Open Access book reviews recent theoretical and numerical developments in nonlinear model order reduction in continuum mechanics, being addressed to Master and PhD students, as well as to researchers, lecturers and instructors. The aim of the authors is to provide tools for a better understanding and implement reduced order models by using: physics-based models, synthetic data forecast by these models, experimental data and deep learning algorithms. The book involves a survey of key methods of model order reduction applied to model-based engineering and digital twining, by learning linear or nonlinear latent spaces.Projection-based reduced order models are the projection of mechanical equations on a latent space that have been learnt from both synthetic data and experimental data. Various descriptions and representations of structured data for model reduction are presented in the applications and survey chapters. Image-based digital twins are developed in a reduced setting. Reduced order models of as-manufactured components predict the mechanical effects of shape variations. A similar workflow is extended to multiphysics or coupled problems, with high dimensional input fields. Practical techniques are proposed for data augmentation and also for hyper-reduction, which is a key point to speed up projection-based model order reduction of finite element models. The book gives access to python libraries available on gitlab.com, which have been developed as part of the research program [FUI-25] MORDICUS funded by the French government. Similarly to deep learning for computer vision, deep learning for model order reduction circumvents the need to design parametric problems prior reducing models. Such an approach is highly relevant for image-base modelling or multiphysics modelling.

This proceedings volume provides in-depth research in the fields of quality innovation, sustainability, and operations management. It features contributions from the 4th International Conference on Quality Innovation and Sustainability (ICQIS) that explore how research in quality and innovation boost sustainability and includes solutions to complex industrial problems presented by researchers, professionals, and managers in the field. It also examines the drivers of quality management and sustainability in VUCA environments, with a special focus on supply chain management and innovation. Featuring real business cases on quality and sustainability, this book is useful for researchers, scholars, students, and academics interested in quality management, supply chain management, circular economy, and sustainability.

The Brief explores the relationship between industrial dynamics, business strategies, and environmental regulations in the agrochemical industry. Focusing on contested technologies that continue to be used despite evidence of their hazardous impacts, the book calls for investigating the potential hazards during the inventive phase of companies to anticipate future risks. Combining patent analysis with computational chemistry and toxicology, the author examines the toxicity of chemical inventions and the effectiveness of environmental regulations in curbing harmful products. The result is a comprehensive dataset that combines patent data with chemical structures, which provides valuable insights into firms' innovation strategies as well as their potential hazards. Underscoring the importance of effective regulation in addressing social and environmental challenges, this Brief will be of interest to researchers and practitioners at the intersection of numerous fields, including economic policy, industrial economics, agribusiness, management, life sciences, and sustainability.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems, DDDAS 2022, which took place in Cambridge, MA, USA, during October 6-10, 2022.The 31 regular papers in the main track and 5 regular papers from the Wildfires panel, as well as one workshop paper, were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. They were organized in following topical sections: DDAS2022 Main-Track Plenary Presentations; Keynotes; DDDAS2022 Main-Track: Wildfires Panel; Workshop on Climate, Life, Earth, Planets.

In this book, world-leading researchers in corporate sustainability explore the importance of considering environmental, social, and governance criteria to ensure the survival and profitability of a company, as well as the protection of people and the planet. The book serves as a resource for company executives and managers seeking to implement sustainable practices, investors and shareholders interested in how companies address environmental and social challenges, students and academics studying issues related to sustainability and corporate social responsibility, consulting and advisory professionals, and sustainability activists and advocates seeking to learn more about how companies can be part of the solution to environmental and social problems. The authors provide a collection of chapters that rigorously address the contribution of business to sustainable development, making it a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand the importance of sustainability in business.

In the dynamic realm of digital agriculture, the integration of big data acquisition platforms has sparked both curiosity and enthusiasm among researchers and agricultural practitioners. This book embarks on a journey to explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and agriculture, focusing on small-unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), edge-AI sensors and the profound impact they have on digital agriculture, particularly in the context of heterogeneous crops, such as walnuts, pomegranates, cotton, etc. For example, lightweight sensors mounted on UAVs, including multispectral and thermal infrared cameras, serve as invaluable tools for capturing high-resolution images. Their enhanced temporal and spatial resolutions, coupled with cost effectiveness and near-real-time data acquisition, position UAVs as an optimal platform for mapping and monitoring crop variability in vast expanses. This combination of data acquisition platforms and advanced analytics generates substantial datasets, necessitating a deep understanding of fractional-order thinking, which is imperative due to the inherent ¿complexity¿ and consequent variability within the agricultural process. Much optimism is vested in the field of artificial intelligence, such as machine learning (ML) and computer vision (CV), where the efficient utilization of big data to make it ¿smart¿ is of paramount importance in agricultural research. Central to this learning process lies the intricate relationship between plant physiology and optimization methods. The key to the learning process is the plant physiology and optimization method. Crafting an efficient optimization method raises three pivotal questions: 1.) What represents the best approach to optimization? 2.) How can we achieve a more optimal optimization? 3.) Is it possible to demand ¿more optimal machine learning,¿ exemplified by deep learning, while minimizing the need for extensive labeled data for digital agriculture? This book details the foundations of the plant physiology-informed machine learning (PPIML) and the principle of tail matching (POTM) framework. It is the 9th title of the "Agriculture Automation and Control" book series published by Springer.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of children's understanding and experiences of thermal comfort. The book provides a methodology for evaluating comfort that takes into account the unique perspectives of children. The first part of the book provides an overview of the history of thermal comfort, the human body and environmental parameters, and common thermal comfort indexes. It also offers guidelines for creating questionnaires that accurately assess children's perceptions of indoor thermal comfort. The book then delves into children's understanding of the concepts of comfort and energy, as well as the factors that influence their perception of these concepts. It addresses the psychological and pedagogical aspects of thermal comfort judgment, as well as the architectural and environmental characteristics that contribute to children's perceptions of comfort. First published as Indoor Thermal Comfort Perception, this updated edition also includes new sections on architecture and sensitivity, exploring the impact of classroom spaces on learning, and outdoor education and thermal comfort outdoors, based on qualitative research. These additions provide valuable insights for future studies on these topics. While physical parameter measurements and comfort indexes are useful in thermal comfort, the book emphasizes the importance of ergonomic assessments in the form of questionnaires, which offer unique insights into children's experiences. The book fills a critical gap in understanding children's perceptions of thermal comfort and is essential reading for HVAC engineers, architects, environmental psychologists, and researchers in the medical and cognitive fields.

This open-access book presents the best research papers from the XIV International Congress on Tourism and Information and Communications Technologies (TURITEC2023), held in Málaga, Spain from 19 to 20 October 2023. The book explores the profound impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry and the increasing importance of digitalization and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as key drivers for the industry's recovery, alongside sustainability. This curated collection of research papers offers conceptualizations, methodologies, analyses, and empirical case studies that illuminate the path to a resilient and sustainable future for tourism.

This book comprehensively covers various aspects of research and development (R&D). Intended for a classroom or professional setting, the book provides valuable insights into the significance of R&D for organizations, its role in enhancing processes, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and fostering innovation. The author offers understanding of how R&D contributes to developing new technologies, products, and services that help companies remain competitive in dynamic marketplaces. The book delves into topics such as the fundamentals of R&D, its role in business, project management, performance management, success evaluation, risk management, team building, and practical execution of R&D projects. In essence, the book aims to be a comprehensive guide for students and professionals interested in understanding and effectively implementing R&D practices within various industries and sectors. The author includes case studies to enhance reader understanding byshowcasing successful R&D initiatives, challenges faced, and strategies employed to overcome them. By embracing a holistic approach, this book emerges as a forward-thinking guide that encourages readers to navigate the evolving landscape of R&D with a conscientious and innovative mindset.

This book presents the intersection of two dynamic fields: Reinforcement Learning (RL) and RIS- Assisted Wireless Communications. With an emphasis on both discrete and continuous problems, it introduces a comprehensive overview of RL techniques and their applications in the evolving world of RIS-assisted wireless communications. Chapter 1 introduces the fundamentals of RL and deep RL (DRL), providing a solid foundation for understanding subsequent chapters. It also presents the Q-learning, deep Q-learning, and deep deterministic policy gradient algorithms. Chapter 2 provides a holistic overview of RIS-assisted systems and details several use cases in wireless communications. Then, Chapters 3 and 4 present various applications of the discrete and continuous DRL to RIS-assisted wireless communications. From maximizing the sum-rate to minimizing, the system resources and maximizing the energy efficiency. These chapters showcase the versatility of the DRL algorithms in tackling arange of challenges. This book concludes with Chapter 5, which introduces the challenges and future directions in this field. It explores the particulars of hyperparameter tuning, problem design, and complexity analysis, while also highlighting the potential of hybrid DRL, multi-agent DRL, and transfer learning techniques for advancing wireless communication systems. Optimizing RIS-Assisted Wireless Systems requires powerful algorithms to cope with the dynamic propagation environment. DRL is envisioned as one of the key enabling techniques to exploit the full potential of RIS-Assisted Wireless Communication Systems. It empowers these systems to intelligently adapt to dynamic wireless environments, maximize performance metrics, and adjusts their configurations to accommodate diverse use cases efficiently. This book serves as a valuable resource, shedding light on the potential of DRL to optimize RIS-Assisted Wireless Communication, enabling researchers, engineers, advanced level students in computer science and electrical engineering and enthusiasts to grasp the intricacies of this topic. It offers a comprehensive understanding of the principles, applications, and challenges, making it a reference to recognize the full potential of the RIS technology in modern wireless communication systems.

This book covers theoretical concepts of climate change related phenomena, different components of geospatial technology and application of geospatial technology on analysis of climate changes. Besides the book will also cover different characteristics of climate resilience, how resilience relates to the adaptation and mitigation and role of geospatial science, techniques, and tools in building climate resilience of a society. This text is suitable for researchers, academicians, urban planners, environmentalists, policy makers, scientists, ecologists, administrators etc.

This book provides professionals and practitioners with a comprehensive guide on credit risk modeling, capital modeling, and validation for Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL), International Financial Reporting Standard 9 (IFRS9), Basel Capital and Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) procedures. It describes how credit risk modeling, capital modeling, and validation are done in big banks with code and examples. The book features innovative concepts such as Binary Logit Approximation (BLA) for Competing Risk Framework; Adaptive and Exhaustive Variable Selection (AEVS) for automatic modeling; Full Observation Stratified Sampling (FOSS) for unbiased sampling; and Prohibited Correlation Index (PCI) for Fair Lending Texts. It also features a chapter on credit underwriting and scoring, addressing the credit underwriting risk with some innovations. It is a valuable guide for professionals, practitioners and graduate students in risk management.

This textbook teaches the basics of econometrics and focuses on the acquisition of methods and skills that are essential for any student to succeed in their studies, as well as for any practitioner interested in applying econometric techniques. Employing a pedagogical and easy-to-follow style, the book puts into practice the various concepts presented, such as statistics, tests, and methods, among others. Numerous examples and empirical applications using existing econometric and statistical software are given after each theoretical presentation.The book addresses students at the undergraduate and graduate levels in economics and management, as well as students of engineering and business schools. It will further appeal to professionals and practitioners of econometrics, such as economists and researchers in companies and institutions, who will find practical solutions to the different problems they are confronted with.

This book offers opportunities for better understanding teachers' unique challenges when planning teaching sessions for learners with special needs, based on the transdisciplinary approach. The work also presents some of the core learning strategies teachers may incorporate into their teaching processes in order to promote transdisciplinary learning among learners with special needs.From a theoretical perspective, this book discusses a variety of advantages and disadvantages transdisciplinary educators may encounter, and promotes educators' development of their own vision of this area. Although the concept of special needs is often over-generalized, this book relates to the most common types of special needs among learners who study in inclusive schools: learners from different cultural background, learners with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disability (ADHD), learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and learners with sensory or motor challenges. A special chapter is dedicatedto each of those groups in order to closely examine how teachers can teach those learners according to the transdisciplinary approach in practice, in inclusive classrooms. While each chapter presents different perspectives of learners with special needs, the book's summary integrates them all and highlights the commonalities between the various needs.

This book documents the development of early intervention systems (EISs) internationally, and provides evidence for and against their effectiveness as a key tool to reduce police misconduct and improve the physical and psychological health of officers. Featuring practical illustrations to support textual examples, this volume offers valuable best practices for police departments and policing students.

This book provides the results of an extensive scientific measurements campaign using advanced technologies and innovative non-invasive approaches carried out for the first time in such large numbers inside one of the most important baroque residences in Italy, the Chigi Palace in Ariccia, near Rome (Italy), with the aims of monitoring, characterizing and documenting several kinds of heritage items with different conservative and artistic issues. The analyses involved several research groups from regional universities (Sapienza, Tor Vergata, Roma 3) and research institutions (ENEA, INFN, CNR) and they were performed within the ADAMO project, which was addressed to technologies of analysis, diagnostics and monitoring for the preservation and restoration of Cultural Heritage. The project was proposed by the Centre of Excellence at the Technological District for Cultural Heritage (DTC) financed by the Lazio Region. At the Chigi Palace, important collections of paintings, documents, statues and wall decorations are preserved, dating back from the 16th up to the 18th centuries. The purpose of this book is twofold: it provides an overview of methodologies and technologies currently available in the field of heritage science, through the presentation of their in situ applications for the study of different artworks and materials; furthermore, it shows how the non-invasive analyses and the integration of diagnostic results are useful and sometimes crucial, for the overall understanding of heritage items, their conservation status, and for their correct conservation. This book is addressed at a large audience with both humanistic and scientific backgrounds, focusing the reader's attention on the information gained from multidisciplinary studies, also allowing a curious look at scientific methodologies applied to an art-historical context.

This edited volume evaluates how sport organizations in the public, private, and non-profit sectors define responsible management and sustainability and what these mean in their daily operations. Using country-specific cases, the chapters provide an empirical investigation of sport organizations in each sector, analyzing managerial decisions and policies through a sustainability lens. All chapters are structured in the same way, providing a truly comparative approach. Offering insights for scholars interested in responsibility and sustainability in different context, this volume will be important to undergraduate and postgraduate sport management, event management, sport science, and sport study programs around the globe.