lap lambert academic publishing jun 2009 (294 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This study explores the emergence of the profession of public relations in the recently democratic Russian Federation. The significance of this research is embedded in the need to understand the status of public relations in Russia, where few studies about public relations have been conducted. The purpose was to identify whether public relations practitioners in Russia practice Grunig and Hunt¿s (1984) models of public relations; how public relations has contributed to the political and economic transformation in Russia; and how the former communist propaganda has affected contemporary public relations. This book represents a contribution to the global body of knowledge about public relations. The Russian perspective augments this knowledge concerning a country where prior research has been scant. The goal of this study is to detect patterns that could guide future research involving Russian public relations. Additionally, principles discovered from this study could be meaningful to business entities desiring to mount effective PR campaigns.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 92 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This study is a qualitative analysis that focuses on how agencies in Saskatoon define youth gang activities and behaviours. The agencies involved constitute community based organizations, permanent and part-time holding residences, justice and city officials. Grounded theory analysis was utilized to maintain the original interviewees own voices from interviews to the final product. The final analysis is divided into three sections that focus on: characteristics of Saskatoon youth gangs, implications of defining, and programming. By analyzing these themes we begin to see that defining youth gangs becomes a very political issue and that agencies who work with youth have difficulty in coming to terms in creating a common definition or criteria to assess youth gangs for Saskatoon.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 120 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Zimbabwe is a republic without a homegrown democratic constitution.The absence of a people¿s constitution that dictates a democratic electoral framework, formation of legitimate government, observance of human rights, and good governance has led to the country¿s deepening crises of political dictatorship, violent electoral conflicts,state violence against citizens,economic collapse, financial corruption, social disintegration,and international isolation.These tragedies have left the country without a currency of its own.This book, based on a study on Constitutionalism in Zimbabwe, provides the people of Zimbabwe with a constitution-making process that should lead to the creation of a multiparty constitutional democracy in the country as a permanent solution to the nation¿s serious problems.The central role that people should play in the constitution-making process is analyzed. Obstacles to a people-driven constitution-making process are identified and analyzed.The analysis should result in empowering individuals,political parties, civil society bodies, government,and the international community with information that may make them more effective in fulfilling their mandates.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 76 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This work bases on the PhD thesis, defended by the author at Tallinn University of Technology in 2003. The work summarizes the main results of author¿s scientific work in the field of modeling and simulation of phase locked loops (PLLs). The book explains the modeling principles and presents the solutions of problems, for which the designed computer models and simulators were used. As a result, a set of parameters for adequate behavior of the PLL in respective applications is proposed. The scope of modeling and simulation is limited by the analog (classical) and mixed analog/digital structures of the PLL, while two methods for system level modeling (phase-domain and signal-domain modeling) are treated. Dealing with different PLL topics makes the book somewhat eclectic, but helps to apprehend and recognize the benefits of using simple and fast running models as an alternative to expensive commercial software tools for behavioral simulation of PLLs. It might encourage the researches, engineers and students to use cheap general-purpose software for developing self-made models for the study of dynamics and exactness of performance as PLLs as well as other nonlinear dynamic systems.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 104 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Pharmacist-physician collaboration has been shown to improve the safety and cost-effectiveness of drug therapy, however, it occurs relatively infrequently in the community setting, with respect to drug therapy management. This book provides information regarding family physician attitudes towards and readiness to collaborate with community pharmacists on drug therapy management. We developed a survey instrument utilizing the Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change, and administered it to a random sample of 848 family physicians in Ontario, Canada. We found that collaborative relationships between pharmacists and physicians were generally underdeveloped. System-related barriers, including pharmacists' lack of patient information, were highlighted by physicians as particularly problematic for collaborative relationship development. Our analysis sheds light on the predictors of physician readiness to collaborate with pharmacists, and provide direction for policy makers and health professionals interested in developing collaborative working relationship with physicians.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Wind farms are a proven environmentally sound and economically viable means of generating renewable energy. Energy security and sustainability are central to New Zealand¿s economic future. Population and economic growth and energy intensive industries are rising New Zealand¿s appetite for electricity. Recent power crisis along with the green image of New Zealand have reinforced the need to take positive steps to ensure a reliable, renewable and sustainable electricity supply for this country. But wind farm projects tend to face opposition at the local level because of its various potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. Therefore, gaining public acceptance becomes one of the most important factors for successful wind farm development. This book identifies the potential impacts of wind farm development with specific attention to those impacts and public dynamics surrounding wind farm development considering the policy context of New Zealand. It also looks into domestic and international wind farms along with drawing out the success and/or failure characteristics with respect to consultation, and impact mitigation providing empirical evidence from New Zealand.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -While runtime compilation has in practice been largely restricted to programming languages that execute on virtual machines, such as Java and C#, parallel OpenMP programs show many promising traits for efficient and effective runtime optimization. This work introduces stOMP: a specializing thread-library for OpenMP. Using a combined compile-time and run-time system, stOMP specializes OpenMP parallel regions for frequently-seen values and the configuration of the runtime system. We present a detailed description of the system, focusing on the optimizations implemented and techniques to minimize the runtime overhead: a context-based hot-spot detector; a pruning mechanism that eliminates poorly behaved variables as specialization targets; several runtime optimization policies; and several code optimizations and transformations that further allow performance improvement. We evaluate our work on the SPEC OMP benchmark suite, showing a performance increase of up to 7.8%.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 96 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Buildings typically hide a large and cost-effective potential for saving carbon dioxide through energy efficiency improvements. However, numerous barriers make the opportunities for energy saving in buildings difficult to capture. The project-based mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol do not seem to adequately cover energy efficiency activities in the building sector. Green Investment Schemes (GIS) as an innovative instrument offer promising solutions but the main question is how they could be practically designed for this purpose. The work examines the applicability of GIS with respect to energy efficiency projects in buildings. First, it looks at the prospects of GIS as a policy mitigation instrument in Bulgaria and identifies the existing barriers to energy efficiency in the Bulgarian building sector. Then it discusses the possibilities for GIS to cover energy efficiency activities in buildings, and particularly how certain elements of GIS can overcome the specific barriers to energy efficiency in this sector. The book concludes with recommendations for possible GIS design options. It should be especially useful to professionals in climate change and energy efficiency fields.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 80 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Focus of this study is to quantify the labeled cell con. using MRI. Two independent theories behind this relationship between MR parameters and labeled cell con. were proposed and tested in vitro and in vivo in rats after stroke. The first approach focused on the relationship between iron and labeled cell con. and R2p. R2p correlation with labeled cell con. is based on static dephasing regime theory. According to this theory, diffusion effects can be neglected if the protons do not migrate out of the local magnetic fields during a given echo time. R2p relaxivity agreed closely with SD regime theory predictions for all cell samples in both conditions. Second approach focused on the effects of apparent diffusion coefficient on T2 and labeled cell con. From theory, diffusion effects with transverse relaxivity (ADCXR2) would have a better correlation with labeled cell con. than R2 alone. In vitro results were as predicted, but in vivo ADCXR2 made the correlation weak. A major reason for this may be due to the background effects. Also, deltaR2 was used in vivo for estimating the effects of labeled cells. DeltaR2 showed a strong linear correlation.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The MetLife Survey of The American Teacher (2004-2005) reported the greatest challenge new teachers face is communicating with parents. Their research also indicated it was the area in which new teachers were the least prepared. This book provides a literature review, which covers research dating back nearly 30 years on practices veteran teachers and practitioners used for improving parent-teacher communication. Additionally, a quick-reference handbook has been designed to cover topics on the initial meeting; building relationships; encouraging on-going communication; ways of communicating; parent-teacher conferences; and encountering difficult parents. The analysis and easily accessible manual should be especially useful for first-year teachers or any other person seeking further knowledge on using recommended practices in regards to developing and improving effective communication with parents.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 60 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Qualitative and quantitative trade information on West Africa has remained a scarce resource for several decades. Thus, seaports in the region, that are maritime corridors to the landlocked countries (LLCs) of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, compete in a vacuum without any reliable basis to assess their individual competitiveness vis-à-vis the regional market. This book, therefore, provides an analysis of transit trade and transport with emphasis on five seaports used by the three LLCs in West Africa. It assesses the LLCs seaborne trade type, volume, distribution and growth trend, and examines the competitive status of each of the transit corridors on the basis of regional share of transit traffic, distance, infrastructure, logistics costs, legal and institutional framework and overall quality of service. The book provides sufficient and necessary overview of the transit trade and transport sub-sector in West Africa. It can serve as a working document for a sustainable transit trade development in any corridor and would, therefore, be useful to maritime trade and transport sector professionals, researchers and policy makers of both coastal and landlocked countries.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 120 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Because it is a chronic process that includes the proliferation of multiple stressors, chronic illness can lead to significant psychological distress. Within the framework of a stress proliferation model, chronic illness is a significant predictor of such distress. The 1996 National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) was utilized for this secondary analysis. There were 4242 adult respondents surveyed by phone on physical health, midlife development, and social support. Chronic illness was reported by 2095 (71%) respondents. Chronic illness, mediated by perceived control, was a significant predictor of depression. Social support and healthcare discrimination were also significant in the likelihood of depression. The current analysis supports the premise that chronic illness is a stressor that not only leads to poor mental health outcomes but is associated with the emergence of other stressors, such as distress from discrimination. The book highlights the significant impact personal agency and quality support have on dealing with stress from chronic illness.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 120 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The issue of Foreign Direct Investment has elicited international attention in recent times, mainly because of the growing awareness of the economic explioitation of millions of Africans. Some of the Leaders of the African continent, along with their governments, have equally placed the lack of FDI high on their agendas. This awareness has generated sustained debates within governments, international organisations and the private sector, to try and formulate policies aimed at addressing the problem regarding the lack of FDI. FDI has a clear and distinct effect on Africa and its economies; it therefore should be seen as the most positive approach that should be followed to address the problems listed below. The dominant debates around Africa are those concerning poverty alleviation, sustainable development, infrastucture development and economic stability. The lack of a collaborative approach within Africa with reference to economic integration, and the effects FDI has with specific reference to investment flows and the role of rating agencies, places Africa in a negative position.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The decision-maker is a crucial actor from the point of view of management accounting studies and management studies in general, but usually the human actor isn¿t dealt with as such at all. We suggest here that understanding the basics of the behaviour of decision-makers would be aided by a comprehensive view of the human actor. Our view covers both the way of functioning of the human brain and the philosophical dimensions of human actor. This aim in mind, we analyse and combine the so-called ¿holistic individual image¿ (by Lauri Rauhala), and a brain model called the ¿theater metaphor for conscious experience¿ (by Bernard J. Baars). On the basis of the resulting combined model, we assume the reader would understand better than before some basic characteristics of the decision-maker in a firm, in particular, in an accounting context. We assume that our results would be potentially useful for understanding human behaviour also in other fields of management studies, and indeed, in all disciplines dealing with human actor. In addition, the practitioners in these fields would also gain in knowing this model on human behaviour.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 60 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -'Everybody Learns English' has become a national movement in China. From TV to teashops, English has thickly infiltrated the everyday lives of the Chinese populous and they are crazy about it. Through ethnography this book examines how this cultural appropriation of the foreign - English language - in the names of ¿Nationalism¿ and ¿modernization¿ is affecting the younger urban people (ages 18-25) of contemporary China. The book unfolds as a series of vignettes on English-speaking urban residents from either Sichuan province or Chongqing municipality during 2001-2002. More than just amusing, this book should be insightful for those interested in contemporary Chinese culture, development, and globalization.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Whilst tourism development has brought economic prosperity for many people on Phuket (Thailand), it has also confronted the local population with the very negative impacts. Especially for the people 'excluded' - the locals not actively participating in tourism and unable to take advantage of the development - the negative impacts in the environmental and socio-cultural sphere are extremely evident. Also in economic terms, the development of tourism has often worsened the situation for these 'excluded' since the costs of many everyday goods have increased. As is the case in many developing countries, tourism development has led to the reinforcement of socio-economic inequalities on Phuket. This study indicates and analyses the opportunities for Phuket to increase the participation of the locals 'excluded' from the tourism development process, in order to combat the socio-economic inequality within the local population at the destination.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 96 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This work addresses the problem of finding the minimum number of vehicles required to service weekly a set of customers subject to time windows. The specific structure of the problem requires that a full loaded vehicle serve only one customer each time it leaves the depot. As a consequence, all feasible schedules involve the same total distance traveled. The fleet is homogeneous and is located in a common depot. Vehicle capacity is finite, weekly mileage is limited, and split service is not permitted. Four heuristics are developed to obtain feasible solutions. Results are reported for 1000 randomly generated problems with up to 150 deliveries. It is shown that the new heuristics outperform the actual algorithm used by the Transportation Company in terms of computation time and the quality of solution. To gauge the quality of the solutions, three lower bounding procedures are developed. The first considers the ¿bin packing aspect of the problem¿ with regard to the maximum weekly mileage. The second exploits the time windows constraints while the third lowerbounding method uses a network flow formulation.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 48 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -A novel scheme is presented for an iterative decambering approach to predict the post-stall characteristics of wings using known section data as inputs. The new scheme differs from earlier ones in the details of how the residual in the Newton iteration is computed. With earlier schemes, multiple solutions are obtained for wings at high angles of attack as the final converged solution depends on the initial conditions used for the iteration. With this scheme, multiple solutions at high angles of attack are brought to light right during the computation of the residuals for the Newton iteration. In general, the new scheme is found to be more robust at achieving convergence. Experimental validation is provided using experimental airfoil lift curves from Naik and Ostowari for three different aspect ratios of rectangular wings. Results are presented from a study of the stall characteristics of wings of different planform shapes and two configurations of a wing-tail and a wing-canard configuration. Results are also presented from a study to investigate possible asymmetric lift distributions when the iterations were started with an initial asymmetric distribution of the decambering.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Road and traffic sign recognition is one of the important fields in the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). This is due to the importance of the road signs and traffic signals in daily life. They define a visual language that can be interpreted by the drivers. They represent the current traffic situation on the road, show the danger and difficulties around the drivers, give warnings to them, and help them with their navigation by providing useful information that makes the driving safe and convenient. The main goal of automatic traffic sign recognition is to extract traffic signs from images of complex scenes under uncontrollable illumination. This book gives a description of the way to extract the traffic signs from the images taken for the roads.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 264 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Sphagnum fimbriatum Wilson is a peat moss species with a bipolar distribution. In Switzerland and other regions of Central Europe it is considered rare whilst it is frequent and abundant in the boreal zone and in the southernmost region of South America. In Europe it normally occupies modified habitats, in South America it grows in primary ecosystems, in minerotrophic bogs. This book gives information about the reproductive biology of S. fimbriatum and the life history traits of this species. Both asexual and sexual reproductions were studied in several ex-situ experiments. Furthermore, Analyses of genetic diversity and structure of populations of S. fimbriatum from both the northern and southern hemispheres using RAPD markers are presented here. Finally, a revision of the situation of S. fimbriatum in European mires is described, with emphasis on the Swiss localities where the species is rare, Information about the conservation status of this species and guidelines towards its preservation are given. This work should especially help people working in conservation programs of mires and should be useful to biology and ecology students and to teachers of population biologyBooks on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 76 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The present doctoral thesis provides insights into two conventional labeling techniques used in the studies of microbial metabolism - the 13C and fluorescence labeling. Application of both methods on yeast as a model organism is illustrated by two individual research topics, such as metabolic modeling and visualization of stress response by expression of GFP-tagged heat shock protein Hsp12p, respectively. The dissertation begins with a review of the yeast metabolism and metabolic network, discusses the technical details of the respective labeling experiments and concludes with analysis of the experimental results. Special emphasis is given on the set-up of advanced continuous cultivation techniques (D-stat and auxo-accelerostat), used in the respective labeling experiments. The text is for academic researchers and students in microbiology and molecular biotechnology field.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 64 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The present book describes the oral health and treatment needs of adult Iranians according to socio-demographic status, smoking, and oral hygiene. Dental plaque was a pervasive finding. Dental caries experience was higher among women. Decayed teeth dominated in DMFT among young adults and missing teeth among the middle-aged. The majority of max Community Periodontal Index scores consisted of calculus and deepened periodontal pockets. Having deep pockets was more likely among those with a low level of education than it was among well-educated individuals.Prosthodontic rehabilitation was associated with older age, female gender, urban residence, and low level of education. Removable partial dentures were more common than were other types of dental prostheses. Among men, heavy smoking was more common than among women. Lifelong exposure to smoking was associated with higher periodontal treatment needs, fewer teeth and higher percentage of edentulousness. To overcome their substantial unmet treatment needs will require a national oral health-promotion programme emphasising the prevention of risk factors for oral health such as poor oral hygiene and smoking.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 68 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Diabetes is a chronic metabolic disorder and complicated disease, and much remains to be learned. This is certainly a medical field in which more insights are needed. The development of high- throughput proteomic technologies permits the solution of deciphering diabetes from higher dimensionality that may provide a knowledgebase which changes the face of diabetes understanding and therapeutics. Ginseng is one of the Chinese medicinal plants with antidiabetic properties. This is the first book to provide an angle covering both proteomics and Chinese medicine researches on diabetes. This book not only serves as an introduction to the topic for novices to the area and a useful reference for those already involved, but also serves as a stimulus to these and others to develop new approaches to the disease. This unique book provides proteomic and medicinal approaches towards diabetes which will appeal to anyone involving in diabetes research ¿ clinicians, diabetes researchers, endocrinologists, pathologists, pharmacologists, and pharmaceutical specialists who want to expand their knowledge in diabetes research.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -With the rapid growth of data and computational needs, distributed systems and computational Grids are gaining more and more attention. Grids are playing an important and growing role in today networks. The huge amount of computations a Grid can fulfill in a specific time cannot be done by the best super computers. However, Grid performance can still be improved by making sure all the resources available in the Grid are utilized by a good load balancing algorithm. The purpose of such algorithms is to make sure all nodes are equally involved in Grid computations. This research proposes two new distributed swarm intelligence inspired load balancing algorithms. One is based on ant colony optimization and is called AntZ, the other one is based on particle swarm optimization and is called ParticleZ.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 104 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Corrosion of reinforced concrete (RC) structure becomes severe problem worldwide and results in a need of a huge budget for the maintenance of the corroded structure. In spite of this need, the concept of repair design and execution is still not well established. Without correct understanding how repair work changes behaviors of the RC structure, the repair work become risky as can been seen from many early failures of repaired RC members. The traditional structural analysis seems to be irrelevant to the repaired structure. This book illustrates how the structural behaviors of the flexural RC members are degraded by corrosion and changed by patching repair. The clear example is given through a sound experimental investigation. The numerical analysis was conducted to reproduce the structural performance of repaired RC. The bonding characteristic between repair materials and base concrete is represented by basic Coulomb friction model. The methodology provided in this book should be beneficial especially to professionals in the repair of RC structure or anyone else who may be dealing with the corrosion problem of RC structure.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -A classification is given of certain separable nuclear C\*-algebras not necessarily of real rank zero, namely, the class of simple C\*-algebras which are inductive limits of continuous trace C\*-algebras whose building blocks have spectrum homeomorphic to the closed interval [0,1]. In particular, a classification of simple stably AI algebras is obtained. Also, the range of the invariant is calculated. We start by approximating the building blocks appearing in a given inductive limit decomposition by certain special building blocks. The special building blocks are continuous trace C\*-algebras with finite dimensional irreducible representations and such that the dimension of the representations, as a function on the interval, is a finite (lower semicontinuous) step function. It is then proved that these C\*-algebras have finite presentations and stable relations. The advantage of having inductive limits of special subhomogeneous algebras is that we can prove the existence of certain gaps for the induced maps between the affine function spaces. These gaps are necessary to prove the Existence Theorem. Also the Uniqueness theorem is proved for these special building blocks.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 88 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In recent years, shrimp aquaculture, which is undertaken largely in the tropical countries, has experienced spectacular growth in response to expanding global demand and higher economic return. Despite a number positive aspects (e.g., foreign exchange, employment and food) of shrimp farming, the industry has serious negative environmental impacts. Because of the degradation of natural resources, commercial shrimp farming imposes socio-economic costs on rural resource-reliant communities as their traditional means of food production and livelihoods are displaced. Bangladesh is suffering because of unplanned expansion of this aquaculture and increasingly called as ¿a desert in the deltä. The central concern of this book is to apply participatory research techniques to identify and understand the impacts of commercial shrimp farming to the livelihood patterns of coastal villagers in southwest Bangladesh. The findings of this is book should be useful for researchers, government and NGOs to understand vulnerabilities of rural communities in shrimp farming areas and to design alternative livelihood strategies for affected groups.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 92 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The use of allograft bone and other bone substitutes in orthopedic surgery has increased tremendously over the last few years. There are inherent problems with allograft tissues, however, such as the risk of disease transmission and immunologic incompatibility. Strategies to reduce these risks include improving allograft sterilization methods and developing bone tissue substitutes were evaluated in this book. Tissue engineering offers a potential avenue to overcome the limitations related to traditional bone substitutes. To enhance the body¿s own repair system, i.e., tissue regeneration, biomaterial research focuses primarily on developing scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. Among adult stem cells, multipotent adipose stem cells can differentiate into osteoblastic cells when seeded on bioactive biomaterials and/or treated with osteogenic factors. Therefore, adipose stem cells are a promising cell source for bone tissue engineering. The subject of this book is topical and important because in aging population the need for orthopaedic operations will only increase with time.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 84 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Purposes: To analyze the low weight gain (WG) from birth to the sixth week of life as a risk factor for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Methods: A prospective cohort study comparing incidence of ROP and WG after preterm birth. Were included infants with birth weight (BW) ¿1,500 grams and gestational age ¿32 weeks at birth. Main clinical outcome were development of any stage and severe ROP. Main variable was the proportion of WG to the BW at the sixth week of life. Prevalence of ROP was determined and chi-square and Student-t test were used to compare data. Logistic regression was performed and the accuracy of WG for the development of ROP were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: Of 317 studied preterms, 98 (30.9%) developed ROP in any stage. Adjusted logistic regression in Group 1 indicated 1.055 OR for ROP (PBooks on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 72 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Anaplasma phagocytophilum is an emerging tick-borne pathogen of humans, horses, sheep, dogs, and wildlife. In humans, granulocytic anaplasmosis (GA) may be associated with pyrexia, headache, myalgia, nausea, and ataxia, organ failure, susceptibility to opportunistic infections, neuritis, or respiratory complications with a case fatality rate up to 5% in some areas. The putative reservoir for A. phagocytophilum in the western United States is the dusky-footed woodrat (Neotoma fuscipes). Evidence to implicate the woodrat as the reservoir includes high PCR- and seroprevalence in enzootic areas, frequent infestation with the tick vector, Ixodes pacificus, and results of experimental infection studies that show woodrat infection persisting for 1-8 months. Unlike in the eastern United States where a single vector species and a dominant reservoir host species maintain a sylvatic cycle, in the western US, there are multiple ecologically significant reservoir hosts including gray squirrels (Sciurus griseus) and chipmunks (Tamias spp.). The goal of this research was to identify the role of a number of abundant but potential reservoirs for A. phagocytophilum in the Western United States.Books on Demand GmbH, Überseering 33, 22297 Hamburg 52 pp. Englisch.