Biodiversity of West African Forests

Biodiversity of West African Forests

This book focuses on the biodiversity and ecology of West African forests. The first part of the book includes 8 chapters which analyse the factors that give rise to biodiversity and structure tropical plant communities. It emphasizes the distribution and state of the forests and analyses vegetation gradients, determines hotspots of plant diversity, and treats distribution patterns of rare and endemic species in the Upper Guinean forests which extend from Senegal to Togo. The main part of the book is an atlas with ecological profiles of 280 rare and endemic plant species and 56 large timber species, each with a one-page entry including a coloured photograph and distribution map. This book will appeal to researchers working in forestry, biodiversity, plant ecology and conservation.

Biodiversity of West African Forests

Mortalin Biology

Mortalin Biology

The phrase Life, stress and death connects three terms, but is there a biological basis for that? Are there molecules that are essential to/or mediate these phenomena? This contributory volume Mortalin Biology: Life, Stress and Death is a remarkable compilation of the research outcomes on the stress protein mortalin, a member of heat shock 70 family of proteins. The book is unique as it describes mortalin playing essential role in life, stress response and death either from cancer, when it becomes hyperactive or from neuro-degeneration, when it becomes hypoactive. The book provides up-to-date knowledge on mortalin with respect to its discovery, structure, evolutionary conservation, function and signal transduction in different organisms in a simple, but most comprehensive way, that besides offering an enjoyable and in-depth reading, prompts the reader to ask further questions to explore this protein with new ideas, approaches and experiments. Twenty-one chapters by the world leaders on the specific areas of mortalin research throw light on its multi-functionality, potentials for biotechnology, diagnostics and therapeutic values. Avenues of mortalin biology, yet unexplored, hold immense promises for future, and reading this volume provides an easy, enthusiastic and energetic head-on start.

Mortalin Biology

Foraging: Behavior and Ecology

Foraging: Behavior and Ecology

Foraging is fundamental to animal survival and reproduction, yet it is much more than a simple matter of finding food; it is a biological imperative. Animals must find and consume resources to succeed, and they make extraordinary efforts to do so. For instance, pythons rarely eat, but when they do, their meals are largeas much as 60 percent larger than their own bodies. The snakes digestive system is normally dormant, but during digestion metabolic rates can increase fortyfold. A python digesting quietly on the forest floor has the metabolic rate of thoroughbred in a dead heat. This and related foraging processes have broad applications in ecology, cognitive science, anthropology, and conservation biologyand they can be further extrapolated in economics, neurobiology, and computer science.

Foraging: Behavior and Ecology

Resource Recovery and Recycling from Metallurgical Wastes

Resource Recovery and Recycling from Metallurgical Wastes

Resource recovery and recycling from millions of tons of wastes produced from industrial activities is a continuing challenge for environmental engineers and researchers. Demand for conservation of resources, reduction in the quantity of waste and sustainable development with environmental control has been growing in every part of the world.

Resource Recovery and Recycling from Metallurgical Wastes

Visual Heritage in the Digital Age

Visual Heritage in the Digital Age

Heritage is everywhere, and an understanding of our past is increasingly critical to the understanding of our contemporary cultural context and place in global society. Visual Heritage in the Digital Age presents the state-of-the-art in the application of digital technologies to heritage studies, with the chapters collectively demonstrating the ways in which current developments are liberating the study, conservation and management of the past. Digital approaches to heritage have developed significantly over recent decades in terms of both the quantity and range of applications. However, rather than merely improving and enriching the ways in which we understand and engage with the past, this technology is enabling us to do this in entirely new ways.

Visual Heritage in the Digital Age

Challenges and Opportunities for the Worlds Forests in the 21st Century

Challenges and Opportunities for the Worlds Forests in the 21st Century

This book tackles the enormously important and complex issues facing the worlds forests today, posed by climate change, conservation objectives, sustainable development needs, and the growing demand for affordable energy, along with analyses of the difficulties and opportunities that these present

Challenges and Opportunities for the Worlds Forests in the 21st Century

Energy Management Principles and Practice

Energy Management Principles and Practice

Energy technology, Management, Efficiency, Energy consumption, Energy conservation, Management techniques, Planning, Conformity, Quality assurance, Quality management, Quality auditing, Environmental management, Documents, Measurement, Performance, Environment, Quality and Management

Energy Management Principles and Practice

The History of Theoretical, Material and Computational Mechanics - Mathematics Meets Mechanics and Engineering

The History of Theoretical, Material and Computational Mechanics - Mathematics Meets Mechanics and Engineering

This collection of 23 articles is the output of lectures in special sessions on The History of Theoretical, Material and Computational Mechanics within the yearly conferences of the GAMM in the years 2010 in Karlsruhe, Germany, 2011 in Graz, Austria, and in 2012 in Darmstadt, Germany; GAMM is the Association for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, founded in 1922 by Ludwig Prandtl and Richard von Mises. The contributions in this volume discuss different aspects of mechanics. They are related to solid and fluid mechanics in general and to specific problems in these areas including the development of numerical solution techniques. In the first part the origins and developments of conservation principles in mechanics and related variational methods are treated together with challenging applications from the 17th to the 20th century. Part II treats general and more specific aspects of material theories of deforming solid continua and porous soils. and Part III presents important theoretical and engineering developments in fluid mechanics, beginning with remarkable inventions in old Egypt, the still dominating role of the Navier-Stokes PDEs for fluid flows and their complex solutions for a wide field of parameters as well as the invention of pumps and turbines in the 19th and 20th century. The last part gives a survey on the development of direct variational methods the Finite Element Method in the 20th century with many extensions and generalizations.

The History of Theoretical, Material and Computational Mechanics - Mathematics Meets Mechanics and Engineering