bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Facilitated Percutaneous Coronary Intervention
Authors: Becker Richard C. , Spencer Frederick A.
Published: November 2020

The failure of fibrinolytic therapy to restore physiologic myocardial perfusion in upward of 40% of patients supports the development of strategies to improve response rates to percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in those requiring early procedures. The construct of facilitated PCI (pharmacoinvasive therapy) provides a platform for utilizing the strengths of existing therapies and treatment modalities. The Heparin in Early Patency (HEAP) trial (Zijlstra et al., 2002) included 1,702 patients treated with primary PCI for myocardial infarction (MI); 860 patients received aspirin (500 mg IV) and UFH (≥5,000 U IV) before being transported to the hospital and 842 patients received the same antithrombotic therapy in the hospital. TIMI 2 or 3 flow rates were higher in the pretreated group (31% vs. 20%; p = .001), and patients with TIMI 2 or 3 flow initially had a higher PCI success rate (94% vs. 89%; p <.001) and a lower 30-day mortality (1.6% vs. 3.4%; p = .04). The Plasminogen Activator Angioplasty Compatibility Trial (PACT) randomized 606 patients to receive a 50-mg bolus of alteplase or placebo, followed by immediate angiography and angioplasty if needed (Ross et al., 1999). TIMI flow rates on arrival to the catheterization laboratory were 33% and 15%, respectively. Facilitated PCI and primary PCI restored TIMI 3 flow in occluded vessels equally (77% and 79%, respectively). There were no differences in major bleeding. Left ventricular ejection fraction was highest in those with TIMI 3 flow on arrival to the catheterization laboratory or following PCI within 1 hour of alteplase administration. Full-dose fibrinolytic therapy with alteplase or reteplase followed by coronary angiography and PCI (if no clinical evidence of reperfusion) was evaluated retrospectively in the Global Use of Strategies to Open Occluded Arteries (GUSTO) III trial (Miller et al., 1999). Among those undergoing PCI (n = 392), 87 patients received in-laboratory abciximab. A trend toward reduced mortality was observed in abciximab-treated patients, but at a higher cost of hemorrhagic complications. In the Strategies for Patency Enhancement in the Emergency Department (SPEED) trial (Herrmann et al., 2000), 323 patients who underwent PCI had an 88% procedural success rate and a 30-day composite of death, reinfarction, or revascularization of 5.6%.
Violence Prevention in the Context of Child and Adolescent Development
Authors: Hamburg David A. , Hamburg Beatrix A.
Published: November 2020

What conditions favor good results in child and adolescent development? What can shift the odds away from dismal outcomes such as youth violence? How can our children grow up healthy and vigorous, inquiring and problem solving, decent and constructive? We approach such questions in two ways, using… 1. a basic generic comprehensive developmental sequence that provides antidotes to shattered and distorted lives—lives that are conducive to youth violence and other pathologies, or 2. a specific set of targeted interventions that can help to prevent youth violence and enhance personal ability to deal with conflict in nonviolent ways…. Both of these approaches need to be considered in a multifaceted way, taking into account the pivotal institutions that powerfully shape child and adolescent development: family, community, media, health, and education systems. This chapter focuses mainly on possibilities for averting youth violence by fostering healthy, constructive, prosocial development throughout childhood and adolescence, but we also have some remarks about interventions targeted specifically to preventing youth violence. A poor start in life can leave an enduring legacy of impairment, and the high costs may show up in various systems—health, education, and juvenile justice.We call these impairments by many names: disease, disability, delinquency, ignorance, incompetence, hatred, and violence. By whatever name, such outcomes entail severe economic and social penalties for the entire society as well as suffering for the damaged persons. During their earliest years of growth and development, children require dependable attachment to parents or other adult caregivers; they need protection, guidance, stimulation, nurturance, and tutelage in skills to cope with adversity. Infants, in particular, need caregivers who promote attachment and thereby instill the fundamentals of trust and decent human relationships throughout the child’s life. Young adolescents, too, have a special need to connect with people who can guide their momentous transition to adulthood with sensitivity and understanding.
Search Challenges and Methods
Authors: Wei James
Published: November 2020

A successful product must have the following elements: a market and customers with needs for a product that is available in quantity and at suitable prices, with a set of properties that are suitable for the application, containing appropriate material that can be produced by a suitable technology. The design of a successful product for the marketplace can be described as the creative synthesis of many elements together, with optimization and harmony. The product innovators usually start with some of the required elements, but other key elements are missing and have to be found: for example, when we needed a good refrigerant but did not know what material would have the right properties, or when we found an interesting nonstick polymer but did not know what products would benefit from it and what markets would appreciate it. At later stages, we need to find ways to optimize the elements to make a better product, such as by learning to make nylon from the raw materials adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine, and by increasing the solubility of taxol by emulsifying with castor oil. Thus, a successful design involves many searches for missing elements, as well as for ways to improve existing elements. The search from a material to its properties is called the forward search, since handbooks and tables of properties are organized and listed by the materials, so one looks up the boiling points and the flammability of the compounds by their names. The invention of nylon by Carothers and associates at DuPont in 1928 can be represented by the set of arrows from the left to the right in figure 3.1. Carothers discovered the science and technology of condensation polymerization, which has the capability to make polyester material in possession of properties that are promising but not entirely suitable, as well as the capability to make many other materials. They decided that the product should be a silken fiber, suitable for the market of ladies stockings. From this “lead compound,” they searched to find ways to modify the structure to obtain material with superior and desirable properties that were fine-tuned for the stocking market.
Product Design
Authors: Wei James
Published: November 2020

A good design is both art and science. Creativity is needed to come up with a product concept that has either not been considered before or has been considered and abandoned. Discipline is needed to investigate and evaluate all the details to make sure that they fit together, which is an exercise in multiscale optimization: the product structure is in the molecular scale of nanometers to micrometers, the process equipment is in centimeter to meter scales, marketing and finance are played in the meter to hundred kilometer scales, and environmental concerns are on a global scale. The work of product innovation usually involves a discovery phase followed by a development phase, which was described at the end of Chapter 2. Some of the work involved can be described as: 1. identifying customer needs and technological capabilities; 2. generating a number of broad ideas and concepts for products and processes; 3. investigating and solving problems encountered in customer needs and plant operations; 4. evaluating alternate concepts, and selecting winning designs for commercialization; 5. drawing detailed designs and plans for the products and the processes. A design team is critical to the success of the innovation work, involving people from marketing and research, plus critical inputs from manufacturing and finance. In the narrow sense, the design team is concerned with the work in (5), in drawing detailed designs and plans for the products and the processes. In the broad sense, the work of design begins in (2) by generating concepts, and makes significant contributions in (4) when evaluating alternate concepts. The decision to commercialize involves the commitment of major financial and manpower resources, and usually involves a presentation of a business plan at a high-level meeting, such as with the executive committee of a company. Different authors have come up with a variety of ideas on the ideal organization and phases of the innovation work. Ulrich and Eppinger (2000) suggested a template that may be more appropriate for mechanical engineering products that do not require research breakthroughs. Cussler and Moggridge (2001) suggested a four-step schedule involving needs, ideas, selection, and manufacture.
Product Innovation Opportunities
Authors: Wei James
Published: November 2020

There is an endless list of exciting new products that are waiting to be invented, developed, and introduced to the marketplace, which would bring honor and profit to the innovators. We will discuss in this chapter some of the methods to identify the most exciting challenges and some of the most tantalizing targets. What is a good target? An investigator should begin by making a self-examination on what are the internal competitive strengths of this individual or organization as the starting point. The internal competitive strength may be the ability to make keen observations on a market segment and its unsatisfied needs, plus the ability to connect with potential technological solutions; it may be the possession of a unique technological capability, or the observation of an underutilized technology. A good product development project should also have a large and profitable market that is growing, should have barriers of entry (such as patents) against imitators for a period of time, and should not have safety or environmental problems. In Chapter 1, we discussed historic product innovations, both motivated by external market-pull and by internal technology-push motivations. Figure 12.1 shows a quadrant that was popularized by the Boston Consulting Group as the “stars and dogs” chart, and later popularized by Donald Stokes as Pasteur’s quadrant. The horizontal axis shows the strength of external market-pull, and the vertical axis shows the level of internal technology-push. The lower right quadrant represents market needs that are not matched by adequate technology, and the upper left quadrant represents technical capabilities that are not matched by adequate market demand. The mission of product innovation is to find ways to go from these two quadrants to the upper right quadrant, which is the promised land combining high external need with high internal capabilities, and a wonderful place to do business. We ignore the dog in the lower left quadrant. Marketing people pay attention to major market trends in the world, as well as individual segments of opportunity. The normal assignment of a research and development organization in a manufacturing company is innovations in response to market needs in the current product areas.
The People Who Make Organizations Go—or Stop
Authors: Cross Rob , Prusak Laurence
Published: November 2020

We’re all familiar with the truism “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Managers invariably use their personal contacts when they need to, say, meet an impossible deadline, get advice on a strategic decision, or learn the truth about a new boss. Increasingly, it’s through these informal networks—not just through traditional organizational hierarchies— that information is found and work gets done. Social networks can be powerful political tools as well; few managers can resist the temptation to use their connections to discredit business initiatives they dislike or to support proposals they favor. Most corporations, however, treat informal networks as an invisible enemy—one that keeps decisions from being made and work from getting done. To many senior executives, these intricate webs of communication are unobservable and ungovernable—and, therefore, not amenable to the tools of scientific management. As a result, executives tend to work around informal networks or, worse, try to ignore them. When they do acknowledge the networks’ existence, executives fall back on intuition— scarcely a dependable tool—to guide them in nurturing this social capital. It doesn’t have to be that way. It is entirely possible to develop informal networks systematically. In fact, our research suggests that if senior managers focus their attention on a handful of key role-players in the group, the effectiveness of any informal network can be enhanced. After analyzing informal networks at more than 50 large organizations over the past five years, we’ve identified four common role-players whose performance is critical to the productivity of any organization. First, there are central connectors, who link most people in an informal network with one another. They aren’t usually the formal leaders within a unit or department, but they know who can provide critical information or expertise that the entire network draws on to get work done. Then there are boundary spanners, who connect an informal network with other parts of the company or with similar networks in other organizations. They take the time to consult with and advise individuals from many different departments—marketing, production, or R&D, for instance—regardless of their own affiliations.
Entropic Subextensivity in Language and Learning
Authors: Debowski Lukasz
Published: November 2020

In this chapter, we identify possible links between theoretical computer science, coding theory, and statistics reinforced by subextensivity of Shannon entropy. Our specific intention is to address these links in a way that may arise from a rudimentary theory of human learning from language communication. The semi-infinite stream of language production that a human being experiences during his or her life will be called simply parole (= "speech," [7]). Although modern computational linguistics tries to explain human language competence in terms of explicit mathematical models in order to enable its machine simulation [17, 20], modeling parole itself (widely known as "language modeling") is not trivial in a very obscure way. When a behavior of parole that improves its prediction is newly observed in a finite portion of the empirical data, it often suggests only minor improvements to the current model. When we use larger portions of parole to test the freshly improved model, this model always fails seriously, but in a different way. How we can provide necessary updates to, with- out harming the integrity of, the model is an important problem that experts must continually solve. Is there any sufficiently good definition of parole that is ready-made for industrial applications? Although not all readers of human texts learn continuously, parole is a product of those who can and often do learn throughout their lives. Thus, we assume that the amount of knowledge generalizable from a finite window of parole should diverge to infinity when the length of the window also tends to infinity. Many linguists assume that a very distinct part of the generalizable knowledge is "linguistic knowledge," which can be finite in principle. Nevertheless, for the sake of good modeling of parole in practical applications, it is useless to restrict ourselves solely to "finite linguistic knowledge" [6, 22]. Inspired by Crutchfield and Feldman [5], we will call any processes (distributions of infinite linear data) "finitary" when the amount of knowledge generalizable from them is finite, and "infinitary" when it is infinite. The crucial point is to accurately define the notion of knowledge generalized from a data sample. According to the principle of minimum description length (MDL), generalizable knowledge is the definition of such representation for the data which yields the shortest total description. In this case, we will define infinitarity as computational infinitarity (CIF).
A Generalization of the Zipf-Mandelbrot Law in Linguistics
Authors: Montemurro Marcelo A.
Published: November 2020

Human language evolved by natural mechanisms into an efficient system capable of coding and transmitting highly structured information [12, 13, 14]. As a remarkable complex system it allows many levels of description across its organizational hierarchy [1, 11, 18]. In this context statistical analysis stands as a valuable tool in order to reveal robust structural patterns that may have resulted from its long evolutionary history. In this chapter we shall address the statistical regularities of human language at its most basic level of description, namely the rank-frequency distribution of words. Around 1932 the philologist George Zipf [6, 19, 20] noted the manifestation of several robust power-law distributions arising in different realms of human activity. Among them, the most striking was undoubtedly the one referring to the distribution of words frequencies in human languages. The best way to introduce Zipf's law for words is by means of a concrete example. Let us take a literary work, say, James Joyce's Ulysses, and perform some basic statistics on it, whic simply consists in counting all the words present in the text and noting how many occurrences each distinct word form has. For this particular text we should arrive at the following numbers: the total number of words N = 268,112, and the number of different word forms V = 28,838. We can now order the list of different words according to decreasing number of occurrences, and we can assign to each word a rank index s equal to its position in the list starting from the most frequent word. Some general features of the rank-ordered list of words can be mentioned at this point. First, the top-rank words are functional components of language devoid of direct meaning, such as the article the and prepositions, for instance. A few ranks down the list, words more related to the contents of the text start to appear.
Evolutionary and Coevolutionary Theories
Authors: Monge Peter R. , Contractor Noshir
Published: November 2020

Chapter 3 discussed the emergence of communication networks from the perspective of complexity theory. Specifically, we described complexity as a network of agents, each with a set of attributes, who follow rules of interaction, which produces emergent structure. Complexity arose from the fact that there were numerous agents with extensive relations. Some complex systems but by no means all, we argued, were self-organizing, meaning that they created and sustained internal structure in response to the flow of matter and energy around them. Some readers, particularly those with some familiarity with the complex adaptive systems literature, may have noticed that the discussion of complexity in chapter 3 did not include processes of adaptation, evolution, or coevolution. The reason for this is that it is possible to view these as theoretical mechanisms that operate in at least some complex, self-organizing systems, though not necessarily all. Thus, we have chosen to treat adaptation and the coevolutionary perspective as theoretical mechanisms in the same manner as the other theoretical mechanisms we have examined in chapters 5 through 8. In the present chapter we examine adaptive and coevolutionary processes as the basis for building MTML models of emergent communication networks that form the basis for organizational populations and communities. Modern interest in evolutionary theory as a basis for studying human social processes can be traced to the work of Amos Hawley (1950, 1968, 1986). Much of the interest in applying this perspective to studying organizational structures is credited to Donald Campbell (1965, 1974). Over much of his professional life Campbell explored the application of evolutionary theory to a wide array of sociocultural processes, including organizations (Baum & McKelvey, 1999). Campbell is perhaps best known throughout the social sciences for his work on experimental and quasi-experimental design (Campbell and Stanley, 1966; Cook & Campbell, 1980) and multimethod triangulation (Campbell & Fiske, 1959). Nonetheless, McKelvey and Baum (1999) point to Campbell’s enormous influence in organizational science via the early work of Aldrich (1972) on organizational boundaries, Weick’s (1979) formulation of an evolutionary model of organizing, Hannan and Freeman’s (1977, 1983) development of population ecology theory (and inertial theory), McKelvey’s (1982) work on organizational taxonomies, and Nelson and Winter’s (1982) evolutionary theory of economics.
Multitheoretical, Multilevel Models of Communication and Other Organizational Networks
Authors: Monge Peter R. , Contractor Noshir
Published: November 2020

In this book we have argued for a multitheoretical, multilevel approach to the study of communication and other forms of organizational and social networks. We began by exploring several problems within the existing corpus of network research. We then showed how the MTML model provides a network research strategy that resolves most of these problems. (For ease of presentation, this review of the essential arguments and social theories includes citations only to references that have not been cited in earlier chapters of this book.) The first problem is the fact that the vast majority of network research is atheoretical. One reason for this is that there are very few explicit theories of social networks. Another reason is that researchers are generally not cognizant of the relational and structural implications inherent in various social theories. Even research that does employ theory typically does so without much attention to the network mechanisms implicit in the theories. A second problem with network research is that most scholars approach networks from a rather myopic, single-level perspective, which is reflected in the fact that almost all published research operates at a single level of analysis. Thus, they tend to focus on individual features of the network such as density. For the most part, researchers tend to ignore the multiple other components out of which most network configurations are composed, structural components from multiple levels of analysis such as mutuality, transitivity, and network centralization. Employing single levels of analysis is not inherently wrong; it is simply incomplete. Importantly, these components suggest different theoretical mechanisms in the formation, continuation, and eventual reconfiguration of networks. Typically, better explanations come from research that utilizes multiple levels of analysis. The third problem centers on the fact that most network research focuses on the relatively obvious elementary features of networks such as link density and fails to explore other, more complex properties of networks such as attributes of nodes or multiplex relations. But the members of networks often possess interesting theoretical properties, which help to shape the configurations in which they are embedded, and networks are themselves often tied to other networks.
Carbon Cycle
Authors: Bianchi Thomas S.
Published: November 2020

Carbon is the key element of life on Earth and exists in more than a million compounds (Holmén, 2000; Berner, 2004). The unique covalent long-chained and aromatic carbon compounds form the basis of organic chemistry and the “roadmap” for understanding life from the cellular to the ecosystem level. The oxidation states of C atoms range from +IV to −IV; methane (CH4) is the most reduced form of C (−IV), with CO2 and other carbonate forms existing in the most oxidized state (+IV). The major reservoirs of C are stored in the Earth’s crust, with much of it as inorganic carbonate and the remaining as organic C (e.g., kerogen) (figure 13.1; Sundquist, 1993). The global C cycle can be divided into short- and long-term cycles based on the vast differences in the turnover times of different C pools (Berner, 2004). The carbonate reservoir can be divided into two primary subreservoirs: (1) dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the ocean (H2CO3, HCO3−, and CO32−), and (2) solid carbonate minerals [CaCO3, CaMg(CO3)2, and FeCO3] (Holmén, 2000). While the global C cycle is quite complex, it is perhaps the best understood of all the bioactive element cycles. In fact, there have been numerous review papers on this cycle (e.g., Keeling, 1973; Degens et al., 1984; Siegenthaler and Sarmiento, 1993; Sundquist, 1993; Schimel et al., 1995; Holmén, 2000). Much of the interest in the global C cycle in recent years stems from linkages with environmental issues concerning carbon-based greenhouse gases (e.g., CO2 and CH4) and their role in global climate change (Dickinson and Cicerone, 1986). As described in chapter 8, short-term controls on the C cycle are largely a function of the uptake of inorganic C by autotrophs to fuel fixation in photosynthesis, and the utilization of organic carbon as a food resource by heterotrophs recycling inorganic C back into the system. This short-term cycle, which allows for the transfer of C between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere over periods of days to thousands of years, is relatively short in comparison to the more than 4 billion year age of the Earth.
Beginnings
Authors: Fagan Brian
Published: November 2020

The intoxicating fascination of archaeology and ancient ruins comes not from a melancholy romanticism brought on by shattered towers and collapsing walls, but from what the English novelist and traveler Rose Macaulay called “the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs. . . . It is less ruin-worship than the worship of a tremendous past.” Macaulay herself was an indefatigable traveler in search of the ghosts of the past. She looked at far more than the serried columns of the Parthenon in Athens or the ruins of Roman Palmyra. Her travels took her to sites that required imagination as well as some specialized knowledge. “Nineveh and Babylon . . . are, in fact, little more than mounds.” Macaulay was not the first to articulate this. The nineteenth-century English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard wrote of the “stern, shapeless mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by winter rains.” He was an archaeologist of energy and vast imagination, intoxicated with the grandeur of the Assyrian bas-reliefs on Nineveh’s palace walls—human figures, gods, kings, warriors, human-headed lions. Nineveh captivated the Victorians. “Is not Nineveh most delightful and prodigious?” wrote one young lady to her brother in India. “Papa says nothing so truly thrilling has happened in excavations since they found Pompeii.” Layard and others wrote books about the mighty palaces that once dazzled the ancient world. Inevitably, the tourists came to wander through the tunnels that Layard’s workers had carved into the city’s mounds. Inevitably, too, many of them succumbed to fever, recovering to remember an exotic underground world they had seen in their delirium. Today, you must rely on your restless imagination amid bare heaps of earth, desert on every side. You inescapably remember the words of the Old Testament prophet Zephaniah as you tread on twenty centuries of Assyrian history: “And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria, and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. . . . How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!”
Nuclear Accumulation of Mercury in Neutrophil Granulocytes Associated with Exposure from Dental Amalgam
Authors: Lindvall A. , Hudecek R.
Published: November 2020

Corrosion and wear of dental amalgam may be associated with unexpectedly high levels of endogenous exposure to heavy metals. According to WHO, the resulting uptake of mercury exceeds that from all other sources in persons not occupationally exposed (WHO 1991) and a daily uptake level of 100 μg has been reported (Barregard et al. 1995). Due to the distribution patterns of mercury, standard blood and urine analyses give meager information on the response of the organism to this exposure. We here present data from nuclear microscopy analysis of neutrophil granulocytes (short-lived cells in the immune system cascade) in peripheral blood. Blood samples were drawn from patients suffering from possible side effects from dental amalgam. Their symptoms resembled those of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Fukuda 1994), and the onset or intensity of the symptoms were related to occasional increased exposure to dental amalgam e.g., unprotected placing/drilling of the material. Data showed profound derangement of several cellular trace elements in the patient group and in some cases the substitution of mercury for zinc in the nuclear area. This supports the contention that systemic side effects from dental amalgam may occur. Venous blood samples were drawn from a cohort of Caucasian patients (n = 25) with a chronic debilitating illness, possibly related to the exposure from dental amalgam, and cell preparations were done as previously described (Johansson 1984, Lindh 1997). The same procedure was performed on blood samples from an age- and sex-matched healthy control group (n = 22) with similar numbers of amalgam fillings. A freeze-dried monolayer preparation of neutrophil granulocytes from each subject was investigated by means of nuclear microscopy (Zidenberg-Cherr). Thirty cells from each subject were analyzed in a subsequent manner and means and variances of the elemental concentrations of calcium (Ca), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), and mercury (Hg) were calculated. In addition, the intracellular distribution of zinc and mercury was investigated in a few cells from both patients and controls by means of a nuclear microscopy elemental mapping technique. Cells with mercury levels above the detection limit (0.5 μg/kg dry weight) were investigated as well as cells with no detectable mercury.
Molybdenosis Leading to Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Swedish Moose
Authors: Frank Adrian
Published: November 2020

The “mysterious moose disease” also called “wasting disease” is affecting moose in a strongly acidified region of southwestern Sweden. Chemical investigations of animals from the affected region have been performed since 1988 and several articles are already published (Frank et al. 1994, Frank 1998, Frank et al. 1999, 2000a, b, c, d). The numerous clinical signs and necropsy findings have included diarrhea, loss of appetite, emaciation, discoloration and loss of hair, apathy, osteoporosis, and neurological signs such as behavioral and locomotor disturbances (Rehbinder et al. 1991, Stéen et al. 1993). Further findings were mucosal oedema, hyperemia, hemorrhages and lesions of the mucosa in the gastrointestinal tract, hemosiderosis of the spleen and liver, dilated flabby heart, alveolar emphysema, and uni- or bilateral corneal opacity. Not all the symptoms appear simultaneously in one and the same animal. About 150—180 affected animals have been reported annually since the late 1980s. An increase in molybdenum (Mo) and a decrease in copper and cadmium (Cu, Cd) content in organ tissues (e.g., liver) are signs of a disturbed trace element balance found in affected animals (Frank 1998). To confirm the findings and to elucidate the mechanisms leading to molybdenosis and Cu deficiency, experimental studies were performed in goats. The feeding studies were performed in a controlled laboratory environment and a semi-synthetic diet was supplied (Frank et al. 2000c). Despite considerable differences in species and living conditions between goat and moose, similar changes in trace element pattern and clinical chemical parameters were observed in both species. The study shows that the etiology of the moose disease is basically molybdenosis followed by Cu deficiency, inter alia (Frank et al. 2000a,b,d). Mo is an essential trace element that controls the metabolism of Cu in ruminants. Increased Mo concentrations relative to Cu in feed results in Cu deficiency, whereas the converse leads to an accumulation of Cu, even to Cu poisoning (e.g., in sheep). In an acidified environment, the molybdate anion is adsorbed in the soil, contrary to positively charged metals. The presence of Mo and Cu in the environment is basically dependent mainly on geochemistry, influenced by numerous physical and chemical parameters (Selinus et al. 1996, Selinus and Frank 2000).
Health Problems Related to Environmental Fibrous Minerals
Authors: Hillerdal Gunnar
Published: November 2020

Very early in the history of mining and with the industrial applications of asbestos, it was known that a variety of mineral fibers were hazardous to health. By the 1940s, the potential risk of lung cancer, in addition to the fibrosis disorder asbestosis, one of the pneumoconioses, was described. Within twenty years, another malignant disease, mesothelioma, cancer of the tissues that surround the lung, was ascribed to asbestos exposure. It is now common knowledge that inhalation of certain mineral fibers can cause disease (Skinner et al. 1988). Because the fibers are inhaled, the lung and surrounding tissues are the primary targets, but there may be subsequent reactions in many other parts of the body. The information on disease related to fibrous materials emanates from studies of occupational environments where the dose or exposure is likely to be high and continued over long periods of time. However, it has been increasingly realized that domestic or general environmental exposure is also possible and can pose grave dangers. For a mineral fiber to be inhalable it should be less than one micron in diameter, but the length can be 10 microns or greater because the particle can align with the air stream in the bronchi and penetrate far into the lung. The ratio between length and diameter of the fiber is critical. The most dangerous fibers are very thin (one tenth of a micron in diameter or less) with a high length-diameter ratio. Another important factor is biodurability. Typically, the dangerous fibers are not broken down at all or only very slowly, with half-lives in the body of many years. They may remain in situ throughout life and can be found at autopsy. There are many varieties of fibers in the environment today, both naturally occurring and man-made. Only a few, however, fulfill the above criteria and occur in amounts where human exposure is possible. The problem fibers are collectively known as asbestos and the fibrous zeolite, erionite. There are many other fibers (Skinner et al. 1988), but their contributions to human disease are not recognized. Asbestos is not a mineralogical but a commercial term.
Biogeochemical Monitoring in Medical Geology
Authors: Selinus O.
Published: November 2020

How can we determine the distribution of metals and other elements in our environment? The Geological Survey of Sweden started an innovative monitoring of metals in a monitoring/mapping program in 1980. Before 1980, traditional inorganic stream sediments were used, a method still employed all over the world, but not really suitable for medical work. A new method is used, whereby metal concentrations are determined in organic material consisting of aquatic mosses and roots of aquatic higher plants. These are barrier-free with respect to trace metal uptake and reflect the metal concentrations in stream water (Brundin 1972, 1988, Kabata-Pendias,1992, Selinus 1989). Aerial parts of many plant species do not generally respond to increasing metal concentrations in the growth medium because of physiological barriers between roots and above-ground parts of plants. These barriers protect them from uptake of toxic levels of metals into the vital reproductive organs. The roots and mosses, however, respond closely to chemical variations in background levels related to different bedrock types in addition to effects of pollution. The biogeochemical samples provide information on the time-related bioavailable metal contents in aquatic plants and in the environment. One great advantage of using biogeochemical samples instead of water samples is also that the biogeochemical samples provide integrated information of the metal contents in the water for a period of some years. Water samples suffer from seasonal and annual variations depending on, for example, precipitation. The mapping program now covers about 65% of the land area of Sweden (40,000 sample sites, one sample every 6 km²), where about 80% of the population of Sweden is living. This means that there is now available an extensive analytical data base for use in environmental and medical research (Freden 1994). One example of the use of biogeochemical monitoring concerns high cadmium contents in Sweden. In noncontaminated, noncultivated soils, Cd concentration is largely governed by the amount of Cd in the parent material (Thornton 1986). If the substrate concentration is higher than in background concentrations, Cd is readily taken up by roots and is distributed throughout the plants.
Organic Compounds Derived from Pliocene Lignite and the Etiology of Balkan Endemic Nephropathy
Authors: Tatu Calin A. , Dumitrascu Victor
Published: November 2020

Acknowledged for the first time as a medical entity in the late 1950s, Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) is a chronic and irreversible kidney disease of unknown cause. BEN is geographically confined to several rural regions of central and southeastern Serbia, southwestern Romania, northwestern Bulgaria, southeastern Croatia, and parts of Bosnia and Kosovo, confined to the alluvial valleys of tributaries of the lower Danube River (Ceovic et al. 1992, Hall 1992, Tatu et al. 1998). It is estimated that several thousand people in the affected countries are currently suffering from the disease, and that thousands more will be diagnosed with BEN in the next few years. Although no single feature is sufficient for disease diagnosis, BEN has several characteristics that allow it to be distinguished from other chronic kidney diseases: These characteristics are: . . . ·The age of clinical onset is usually between 30 and 50 years, with a slightly higher frequency in women (female:male sex ratio is ~1.5:1), probably due to some social and genetic factors. . . . . . . ·There is a long subclinical “incubation” period and a rapid onset of end-stage renal disease; the only therapeutic solutions left are chronic renal dialysis or kidney transplantation. . . . . . . ·There is a family history of the disease, with an aggregation of the disease in certain households. . . . . . . ·BEN patients exhibit normal blood pressure in ~80% of the cases (a feature unusual for most other kidney diseases) and normochromic and normocytic anemia is common in BEN. . . . . . . ·BEN patients have lived for at least 10-20 years in one or more of the endemic villages. A slight decrease in the incidence of the disease has been noticed in the last two years in Serbia and Romania (Cukuranovic et al. 2000); however, this seems to follow the usual oscillating pattern of the disease, with lows and highs of incidence, and another epidemic outbreak is likely to occur in these areas in the future. . . .
The Geography of “Resource Wars”
Authors: Billon Philippe Le
Published: November 2020

Competition over natural resources has figured prominently among explanations of armed conflicts, from Malthusian fears of population growth and land scarcity to national security interests over resources defined as “strategic” because of their industrial or military use, such as oil and uranium. Access to natural resources and the transformation of nature into tradable commodities are deeply political processes, in which military force can play a role of domination or resistance. Armed separatism within Indonesia and Nigeria, annexation attempts on Kuwait and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, protracted civil wars in Angola and the Philippines, and coups d’état in Iran and Venezuela have all incorporated important resource dimensions. Arguably, the radical Islamic terrorism that has affected the United States since the early 1990s is to some extent an oil-related “blowback”: U.S. military deployment in Saudi Arabia, criticisms against the corruption of the Gulf regimes, and ironically, part of the funding made available to terrorist groups. This chapter examines relations between resources and armed conflicts, with a focus on commodities legally traded on international markets (thereby excluding drugs, as well as water and land involved, for example, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and on extracted resources such as oil, minerals, and timber, in particular. Beyond a simple reading of so-called resource wars as violent modes of competitive behavior, this chapter argues that resource exploitation and the resource dependence of many producing countries play a role in shaping incentives and opportunities of uneven development, misgovernance, coercive rule, insurrection, and foreign interference. This relationship, however, is not systematic: history, political culture, institutions, and regional neighborhoods, as well as a country’s place in the international economy, all play a part these relations. The incorporation of resources into an armed conflict has also specific implications upon its course through their influence on the motivations, strategies, and capabilities of belligerents. Military targets often consist of commercial business opportunities rather than political targets, while the cost of engaging adversaries may be calculated in terms of financial reward.
Peace, Deception, and Justification for Territorial Claims : The Case of Israel
Authors: Falah Ghazi-Walid
Published: November 2020

Television and print news media are replete with images of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For most of us, thankfully, that is how we experience war—through media representations and political rhetoric carefully crafted to solicit support and sympathy. Given Walzer’s claim that a war deemed unjust is a war misliked, and that conflicts are undertaken within the broader politics of the interstate system, it follows that the geopolitics of conflict includes the battle of projecting war goals, strategy, and tactics to gain the “moral high ground.” Mostly, it is the politics rather than the practice of war that we evaluate and respond to. Though this chapter illuminates the manipulation of the image of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it is concerned with the brutal realities “on the ground” that are the manifestations and reasons of the ongoing conflict. Of particular interest is the manner in which an embryonic Palestinian state is represented as failing in the “policing” tasks that are generally understood to be the duty of a sovereign state while, at the same time, it faces political-geographic constraints that deny it the ability to exercise authority. While the Palestinians are denied a functioning state, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority has enabled the embryonic political entity to be labeled a “rogue” that is unwilling to prevent acts of terrorism. The case study shows how intrastate geopolitics, from a Gramscian perspective, is an essential component of exerting power and debilitating opponents. Finally, analysis of this conflict allows us to note how the dynamism of war and peace entails changing political geographies of conflict, especially how the Palestinians have been constrained by abandoning their established geography of resistance and constructing a space of state power amid severe geopolitical constraints. Three territorial suggestions for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by peaceful means have been envisioned and in the air since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, but despite the involvement of many parties in the process, there has been no meaningful progress on any of them. These suggestions for a lasting peace in the Middle East can be characterized as “land for peace,” “comprehensive peace,” and “peace for peace.”
Data Analysis for Chemistry
Authors: Hibbert D. Brynn , Gooding J. Justin
Published: November 2020

Chemical data analysis, with aspects of metrology in chemistry and chemometrics, is an evolving discipline where new and better ways of doing things are constantly being developed. This book makes data analysis simple by demystifying the language and whenever possible giving unambiguous ways of doing things. Based on author D. Brynn Hibberts lectures on data analysis to undergraduates and graduate students, Data Analysis for Chemistry covers topics including measurements, means and confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, and calibration models. The end result is a compromise between recipes of how to perform different aspects of data analysis, and basic information on the background principles behind the recipes to be performed. An entry level book targeted at learning and teaching undergraduate data analysis, Data Analysis for Chemistry makes it easy for readers to find the information they are seeking to perform the data analysis they think they need.
Introduction: Adaptation, Evolution, and Intelligence
Authors: Booker Lashon , Forrest Stephanie
Published: November 2020

It has long been known that the repeated or collective application of very simple rules can produce surprisingly complex organized behavior. In recent years several compelling examples have caught the public's eye, including chaos, fractals, cellular automata, self-organizing systems, and swarm intelligence. These kinds of approaches and models have been applied to phenomena in fields as diverse as immunology, neuroscience, cardiology, social insect behavior, and economics. The interdisciplinary study of how such complex behavior arises has developed into a new scientific field called "complex systems." The complex systems that most challenge our understanding are those whose behavior involves learning or adaptation; these have been named "complex adaptive systems." Examples of complex adaptive behavior include the brain's ability, through the collective actions of large numbers of neurons, to alter the strength of its own connections in response to experiences in an environment; the immune system's continual and dynamic protection against an onslaught of ever-changing invaders; the ability of evolving species to produce, maintain, and reshape traits useful to their survival, even as environments change; and the power of economic systems to reflect, in the form of prices, supplies, and other market characteristics, the collective preferences and desires of millions of distributed, independent individuals engaged in buying and selling. What is similar in these diverse examples is that global behavior arises from the semi-independent actions of many players obeying relatively simple rules, with little or no central control. Moreover, this global behavior exhibits learning or adaptation in some form, which allows individual agents or the system as a whole to maintain or improve the ability to make predictions about the future and act in accordance with these predictions. Traditional methods of science and mathematics have had limited success explaining (and predicting) such phenomena, and an increasingly common view in the scientific community is that novel approaches are needed, particularly those involving computer simulation. Understanding complex adaptive systems is difficult for several reasons. One reason is that in such systems the lowest level components (often called agents) not only change their behavior in response to the environment, but, through learning, they can also change the underlying rules used to generate their behavior.