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The book takes a multi-level perspective, focusing on circular business models by manufacturing industries in European small open economies. The book conceptualises circular business models and combines theoretical foundations with best practices when such models appeared in the textile, furniture, and plastics industries. It also explores barriers, drivers, challenges, and opportunities for leading manufacturing companies to implement circular activities across the value chain. This book offers a qualitative and transformative approach, spread across three different manufacturing industries, towards a circular transition. The findings will be of interest to practitioners and managers, policymakers, and general readers who are interested in the circular economy and environmental sustainability.

The authors of this book tried to make these experiences available to those interested, considering the experience of several years of training, research, and implementation of projects in the supply chain performance evaluation field.This book intends to identify the current performance and competitive position of that supply chain compared to other supply chains by presenting and reviewing the techniques and models for measuring the efficiency and performance of the supply chain. Determining the performance of a supply chain is a good description of the status quo (what is). Determining the performance of a supply chain is useful for describing the past and present of supply chain processes, and on the other hand, it can be used to set performance goals and initiate the improvement process. To realize this, a strategic framework or model is needed to be able to extract indicators related to the efficiency of the supply chain and design the appropriate model.

This book reports on innovative concepts and practical solutions at the intersection between engineering design, production and industrial management. It covers cutting-edge design, modeling and control of dynamic and multiphysics systems, knowledge management systems in industry 4.0, cyber-physical production systems, additive and sustainable manufacturing and many other related topics. It also highlights important collaborative works between different countries and between industry and universities. Gathering the proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Integrated Design and Production, CPI 2022, held on May 10-12, 2022, at École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM), in Rabat, Morocco, this book gathers carefully peer-reviewed chapters, with extensive information for researchers and professionals in the broad area of engineering design, production and management.

This edited volume offers an insightful theoretical conceptualization of issues central to 21st century foreign language learning and teaching. Drawing on research results obtained in the fields of pedagogy, social psychology and sociology of education, this book provides a comprehensive practical exploration of issues experienced by researchers in Poland and in Europe, and which can easily find far-reaching implications in other educational contexts.Part I, Focus on the Teacher, includes seven texts discussing topics relevant to teacher initial and in-service education, as well as the functioning of foreign language instructors in educational systems. The eight contributions included in Part II, Focus on the Learner, explore learner-internal and learner-external factors that affect the effectiveness of the language learning process. The exploration of key contemporary topics and the wide range of methodologies applied make this book of high relevance to Second Language Acquisition scholars, teacher educators, teachers, and language education policy makers.

Through a series of highly speculative contributions by both leading and highly acclaimed practitioners and theorists, this book gives a new comprehensive overview of architectures¿ most recent practical and theoretical developments. While a few chapters are mostly dedicated to a historical analysis of how we got to experience a new technological reality in architecture and beyond, all chapters including the most forward looking, have in common their rigorous understanding of history as a pool of radical experiments, whether one speaks of the history of architecture, or of sociology, technology, and science. Disruptive Technologies: The Convergence of New Paradigms in Architecture is required reading for anybody student, practitioner, and educator who wants to do serious research in architecture and all disciplines dealing with the shaping of our environment, beyond the important but restricted domain of computational architectural design.Additional multimedia content via app: download the SN More Media app for free, scan a link with play button and access to the Additional Contents directly on your smartphone or tablet.

This open access book offers a comprehensive review of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with a particular focus on the pathobiology and clinical aspects of the disease, including diagnosis and treatment. HCC is becoming one of the most common causes of cancer-related death worldwide. It is the fifth most common malignancy in men and the ninth in women, with an estimated 500,000 to 1 million new cases annually around the world. Independent of its cause, cirrhosis is considered a major clinical and histopathological risk factor for HCC development. Five percent of all cirrhotic patients develop HCC every year. Diagnostic tools for HCC include blood tests, high-quality imaging studies and liver biopsy. The treatment of HCC depends on the size and location of the HCC and includes surgical resection, liver transplantation, endovascular approaches, percutaneous ablation, and medical treatments. The book is organized into four parts ¿ overview, diagnosis, management strategies, and recommendations ¿ and aims to provide surgeons and clinicians with a valuable resource for complete and up-to-date research on the clinical aspects and management of HCC.

This book introduces a comprehensive understanding in the use of space techniques in natural hazards and risk management in the MENA Region.  The book is based on different case-studies from 25 MENA countries, and will be useful in highlighting the issues from all aspects.In recent years the number of natural hazard events has increased in the MENA Region. This is exacerbated by the changing climate and extreme climate events, as well as a large increase in the population in this area.   Disastrous events occur on a yearly basis characterized by a vulnerability of physical processes.  Floods, earthquakes, and mass movement result in severe damage to property and livelihoods, and have devastating effects upon the environment.  These events cause severe financial losses, which on an annual basis, can exceed millions of dollars. The predication, assessment and monitoring approaches remain inadequate in managing these hazards and in mitigating their impacts, but with the development of space techniques and geo-information systems, these situations can now be better managed. The miscellany of satellite images, with different spatial and temporal resolutions, enable the detection of terrain features and provide indications of potential natural risks. This book will of interest to stakeholders, including field experts, academics, researchers and decision makers.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Scale Space and Variational Methods in Computer Vision, SSVM 2023, which took place in Santa Margherita di Pula, Italy, in May 2023. The 57 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Inverse Problems in Imaging; Machine and Deep Learning in Imaging; Optimization for Imaging: Theory and Methods; Scale Space, PDEs, Flow, Motion and Registration.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems, MESAS 2021, held as a virtual event due COVID-19, in October 2021.The 30 full papers together with 2 short papers included in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: M&S of intelligent systems,  R&D and application; and AxS/AI in context of future warfare and security environment and future challenges of Advance M&S Technology.

This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 11th International Workshop on Enterprise Applications, Markets and Services in the Finance Industry, FinanceCom 2022, held in Twente, The Netherlands, in August 2022.The 8 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 25 submissions. They deal with the adoption of innovative technologies in the financial services industry. The conference features four main themes: networks and business models, financial markets, IT and implementations, and new emerging digital and virtual financial markets.

This book provides a concise introduction to the physics of gravitational waves. It is aimed at graduate-level students and PhD scholars. Ever since the discovery of gravitational waves in 2016, gravitational wave astronomy has been adding to our understanding of the universe.Gravitational waves have been detected in the past few years from several transient events such as merging stellar-mass black holes, binary neutron stars, etc. These waves have frequencies in a band ranging from a few hundred hertz to around a kilohertz to which LIGO type instruments are sensitive. LISA will be sensitive to much lower range of frequencies from SMBH mergers. Apart from these cataclysmic burst events, there are innumerable sources of radiation which are continuously emitting gravitational waves of all frequencies. These include a whole mass range of compact binary and isolated compact objects and close planetary stellar entities. This book discusses the gravitational wave backgroundproduced in typical frequency ranges from such sources emitting over a Hubble time and the fluctuations in the h values measured in the usual devices. Also discussed are the high-frequency thermal background gravitational radiation from hot stellar interiors and newly formed compact objects. The reader will also learn how gravitational waves provide a testing tool for various theories of gravity, i.e. general relativity and extended theories of gravity, and will be the definitive test for general relativity.

The diverse developments in textile research of the last decade, along with the increased recognition of the importance of textile studies in adjacent fields, now merit a dedicated, full-length publication entitled "e;Ancient Textile Production from an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Humanities and Natural Sciences Interwoven for our Understanding of Textiles"e;. With this volume, the authors and the editors wish to illustrate to the current impact of textile archaeology on the scholarly perception of the past (not limited to archaeology alone). The volume presents new insights into the consumption, meaning, use and re-use of textiles and dyes, all of which are topics of growing importance in textile research. As indicated by the title, we demonstrate the continued importance of interdisciplinarity by showcasing several 'interwoven' approaches to environmental and archaeological remains, textual and iconographic sources, archaeological experiments and ethnographic data, from a large area covering Europe and the Mediterranean, Near East, Africa and Asia. The chronological span is deliberately wide, including materials dating from c. 6th millennium BCE to c. mid-14th century CE.The volume is organised in four parts that aim to reflect the main areas of the textile research in 2020. After the two introductory chapters (Part I: About this Volume and Textile Research in 2020), follow two chapters referring to dyes and dyeing technology in which analytical and material-based studies are linked to contextual sources (Part II: Interdisciplinarity of Colour: Dye Analyses and Dyeing Technologies). The six chapters of Part III: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Textile Tools discuss textiles and textile production starting from the analyses of tools, whether functional or as representative of technological developments or user identity. Archaeological and cultural contexts as well as textile traditions are the main topics of the six chapters in Part IV: Traditions and Contexts: Fibres, Fabrics, Techniques, Uses and Meanings. The two final chapters in Part V: Digital Tools refer to the use of digital tools in textile research, presenting two different case studies. 

This book presents a comprehensive overview of all available surgical techniques for complex perineal reconstruction. Divided into 17 chapters and employing a multi-disciplinary approach, it provides valuable insights into the re- sectional aspects of this field, considerations in multiple organ removal (bladder, anus/colon, stomach), and the inclusion of radiology in preoperative planning for complex reconstructions, as well as anaesthetic aspects in perioperative patient care. Written by leading experts in the field, the respective chapters offer step-by-step descriptions of all available reconstructive options and detailed information on perineal and pelvic defects, together with valuable insights into surgical execution, indications, and common complications and pitfalls encountered when dealing with this challenging defect.Given its breadth of coverage, the book provides a practical and comprehensive guide for Consultant Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, and for surgeons of allied specialties involved in re-sectional aspects of perineal and pelvic surgery.

This monograph is designed to be an in-depth introduction to domination in graphs. It focuses on three core concepts: domination, total domination, and independent domination. It contains major results on these foundational domination numbers, including a wide variety of in-depth proofs of selected results providing the reader with a toolbox of proof techniques used in domination theory. Additionally, the book is intended as an invaluable reference resource for a variety of readerships, namely, established researchers in the field of domination who want an updated, comprehensive coverage of domination theory; next, researchers in graph theory who wish to become acquainted with newer topics in domination, along with major developments in the field and some of the proof techniques used; and, graduate students with interests in graph theory, who might find the theory and many real-world applications of domination of interest for masters and doctoral thesis topics. The focusedcoverage also provides a good basis for seminars in domination theory or domination algorithms and complexity.The authors set out to provide the community with an updated and comprehensive treatment on the major topics in domination in graphs. And by Jove, they¿ve done it! In recent years, the authors have curated and published two contributed volumes: Topics in Domination in Graphs, © 2020 and Structures of Domination in Graphs, © 2021. This book rounds out the coverage entirely. The reader is assumed to be acquainted with the basic concepts of graph theory and has had some exposure to graph theory at an introductory level. As graph theory terminology sometimes varies, a glossary of terms and notation is provided at the end of the book.

¿This book provides an account of the reforms undertaken in German federalism throughout the 2000¿s. It explores the consequences of the historic changes made to the German federal order through detailed analysis of a set of unique case study areas. It also evaluates the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic on German federalism, and the relationship between party politics and federalism in Germany. The authors investigate what happens when policy responsibility is decentralized. The reforms undertaken in Germany fundamentally altered the roles played by the federal and state-level governments in several policy fields, and the question as to what kind of impact this has for policy itself is a global one. In a world that sees an increasing trend towards the decentralization of political authority, this book offers insights and lessons that have a practical application on a global scale. It will find the interest of students and scholars in countries worldwide which are grappling with thenature of policy responsibility across levels of political authority.

The purpose of this book is three-fold. The first purpose is to posit that the fundamental substance of the universe is energy, and that energy is required (consumed) for any material transformation, or information transmission. The labor theory of value, articulated by the physiocrats and elaborated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, J.B. Say and Karl Marx was a rough first approximation of the value creation process, in the 17th and 18th centuries, but is now obsolete. Labor is now (mostly) performed by machines, not by humans (or animals). The second aim of the book is to argue that the economy is a living (open) system -- an ¿island of order¿ ¿that exists far from both thermodynamic and economic equilibrium. Order is achieved by dissipating a flux of exergy. Economists frequently emphasize the equilibrium assumption, introduced originally by Leon Walras in 1854. But in reality, biological systems and human social systems are dissipative cycles, far from both thermodynamic equilibrium, and economic equilibrium, yet stable and capable of evolution, driven by the solar exergy flux. The third aim of the book is to re-emphasize, that ¿ being open ¿ the economic system cannot be regarded as a collection of individual competitive utility-maximizing transactions. There are, increasingly, important possibilities for cooperation instead of competition. Moreover third party effects, both ¿bads¿ (externalities) and the ¿public good¿ (happiness) ¿ need to be incorporated into the socio-economic decision making process.

This comprehensive open access book enables readers to discover the essential techniques for load forecasting in electricity networks, particularly for active distribution networks.From statistical methods to deep learning and probabilistic approaches, the book covers a wide range of techniques and includes real-world applications and a worked examples using actual electricity data (including an example implemented through shared code). Advanced topics for further research are also included, as well as a detailed appendix on where to find data and additional reading. As the smart grid and low carbon economy continue to evolve, the proper development of forecasting methods is vital. This book is a must-read for students, industry professionals, and anyone interested in forecasting for smart control applications, demand-side response, energy markets, and renewable utilization.

This volume discusses the definitional problems and conceptual strategies involved in defining the human. By crossing the boundaries of disciplines and themes, it offers a transdisciplinary platform for exploring the new ideas of the human and adjusting to the dynamic in which we are plunged. The emerging cyborgs and transhumans call for an urgent reconsideration of humans as individuals and collectives. The identity of the human in the 21st century eludes definitions underpinned by simplifying and simplified dichotomies. Affecting all the spheres of life, the discoveries and achievements of recent decades have challenged the bipolar categorizations of human/nonhuman and human/machine, real/virtual and thus opened the door to transdisciplinary considerations. Ours is a new world where the boundaries of normality and abnormality, a legacy of the long history of philosophy, medicine, and science need dismantling. We are now on our way to re-examine, re-understand, and re-describe what normal-abnormal, human-nonhuman, and I-we-they mean. We find ourselves facing what resembles the liminal stage of a global ritual, a stage of being in-between¿between the old anthropocentric order and a new position of blurred boundaries. The volume addresses philosophical, bioethical, sociological, and cognitive approaches developed to transcend the binaries of human-nonhuman, natural-artificial, individual-collective, and real-virtual.

This textbook is a comprehensive review of many different areas in solar-pumped lasers design and characterization. It enables readers to develop their skills in general solid-state laser design and solar collector design and provides numerous solved exercises at the end of each chapter to further this development. This book begins by introducing the brief history of solar-pumped laser and its potential applications. It explains the basic theories of imaging and non-imaging primary, secondary, and tertiary solar concentrators. It discusses solar-pumped solid-state laser theory and solar-to-laser power conversion efficiencies. There are chapters dedicated to ZEMAX and LASCAD numerical simulation tools, to help develop readers¿ skills in innovative solid-state laser design. This book is one of the first books to relate concentrated solar energy technologies to solid-state laser technologies and is therefore of interest to students, academics, engineers, and laser and optical system designers.

Challenge-based research focuses on addressing societal and environmental problems. One way of doing so is by transforming existing businesses to profitable ventures through co-creation and co-evolution. Drawing on the resource-based view, this book discusses how social challenges can be linked with the industrial value-chain through collaborative research, knowledge sharing, and transfer of technology to deliver value. The work is divided into three sections: Part 1 discusses social challenges, triple bottom line, and entrepreneurship as drivers for research, learning, and innovation while Part 2 links challenge-based research to social and industrial development in emerging markets. The final section considers research-based innovation and the role of technology, with the final chapter bridging concepts and practices to shape the future of society and industry. The authors present the RISE paradigm, which integrates people (society), planet (sustainability),and profit (industry and business) as critical constructs for socio-economic and regional development. Arguing that the converging of society and industry is essential for the business ecosystem to stay competitive in the marketplace, this book analyzes possible approaches to linking challenge-based research with social and industrial innovations in the context of sectoral challenges like food production, housing, energy, biotechnology, and sustainability. It will serve as a valuable resource to researchers interested in topics such as social challenges, innovation, technology, sustainability, and society-industry linkage.

This book is a comprehensive curation, exposition and illustrative discussion of recent research tools for interpretability of deep learning models, with a focus on neural network architectures. In addition, it includes several case studies from application-oriented articles in the fields of computer vision, optics and machine learning related topic. The book can be used as a monograph on interpretability in deep learning covering the most recent topics as well as a textbook for graduate students. Scientists with research, development and application responsibilities benefit from its systematic exposition.

This book examines how leaders can use strategic thinking to transform their followers, organizations, and industries in the wake of societal shocks like COVID-19 that require re-balancing both leadership and business models. It is organized around a new triumvirate of strategic thinking concepts for the better normal, explained in a 3S Model: Style, Situation, and Strategic Orientation. The environment (situation) creates or deters opportunities that are pursued by leaders with the propensity (style) and the potential (strategy) to develop them.In the face of ongoing crises such as COVID-19, natural disasters, political upheaval, and climate change, the author proposes that the field of strategic management needs to rethink and update traditional frameworks in order to offer business models more applicable in a rapidly changing environment.Addressing topics such as sustainability and diversity, this pivotal text fills a gap in strategic thinking and presents illustrative examples and case studies about organizations grappling with making decisions in a dynamically different ¿new normal.¿

This book deals with the economic impact of technological changes and the rise of passenger shipping on social relations on board and ashore in European shipping industries between c.1850 and 2000. The changes in motive power, communication techniques and positioning technologies and the rise of passenger shipping went together with the creation of new tasks and functions and the marginalization or disappearance of traditional jobs and skills. This book presents case-studies on changes in different maritime professions between the middle of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century, covering the shipping industries of a variety of seafaring countries in Europe. The subjects include changes in maritime labour at large, changes in specific groups of deck, catering or engine room personnel, such as captains, cooks, catering personnel, engineers, or radio-operators. A number of chapters employ a prosopographical or micro-historical approach, while others applya spatial perspective, analyze business records, materials from professional associations or distil information from large sets of quantitative data. This book will be of interest to academics and students of economic history, maritime and labour history.

This book offers new insights into the wider socioeconomic impacts of high-speed rail (HSR). Over the past few decades, significant investments have been made in these systems around the world. The use of public funds for the construction of high-speed rail offers a range of benefits, such as time savings, increased comfort, and reduced traffic congestion, as well as broader economic benefits, including the advancement of less developed regions.These proceedings feature papers presented at the 2nd International Workshop on the Socioeconomic Impacts of High-Speed Rail. The focus is on HSR¿s impacts on equity and integration, the land use system, productivity, the environment, the tourism industry, and cooperation and integration with other modes of transport. The book provides an overview of the current state of practice from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. Consequently, it will be of interest to scholars of transportation economics and related fields, as well as transportation industry professionals.

The book offers a rare cross-disciplinary blend of computational and ethnographic network analyses in the areas ranging from politics and urban planning to literature and education. The collected papers were presented at the sixth ¿Networks in the Global World¿ conference held on June 22¿24, 2022. This biennial conference series revolves around key interdisciplinary issues in the focus of network analysts, such as the multidimensional approach to social reality, translation of theories and methods across disciplines, and mixing of data and methods. The chapters cover relations between social and cultural structures, power, and interaction in communities, social media, and literature. The book will be useful to practicing researchers, graduate and post-graduate students, and educators interested in social relations, politics, economy, and culture.

This book argues that the backsliding or stagnation of democracy should be interpreted in a wider perspective on irregular movements towards and away from contemporary liberal democracy. This a perspective couched by a metaphor, namely the 'pendulum of democracy', which the author has constructed to suggest that democratic regimes may swing between a democratic end (fully developed liberal democracy) and a semi-authoritarian end (competitive authoritarianism). The pendulum does not have a predictable frequency. Democratization may lead to irregular movements back and forth. It is easier to analyze such movements of the pendulum when democracy is not consolidated yet (for instance, in the three post-Yugoslav political regimes mentioned above), as democratic institutions and processes are not yet stable. For this reason, this book analyses the swing of unconsolidated democracy away from the democratic end in the cases of today¿s Serbia and Montenegro and the swing back towards liberal democracy in the case of North Macedonia which - until 2017 - had been developing into a competitive authoritarian regime, but then embarked on the road to democratic recovery.