Geographic Information Systems for Geoscientists: Modelling with GIS provides an introduction to the ideas and practice of GIS to students and professionals from a variety of geoscience backgrounds. The emphasis in the book is to show how spatial data from various sources (principally paper maps, digital images and tabular data from point samples) can be captured in a GIS database, manipulated, and transformed to extract particular features in the data, and combined together to produce new derived maps, that are useful for decision-making and for understanding spatial interrelationship. The book begins by defining the meaning, purpose, and functions of GIS. It then illustrates a typical GIS application. Subsequent chapters discuss methods for organizing spatial data in a GIS; data input and data visualization; transformation of spatial data from one data structure to another; and the combination, analysis, and modeling of maps in both raster and vector formats. This book is intended as both a textbook for a course on GIS, and also for those professional geoscientists who wish to understand something about the subject. Readers with a mathematical bent will get more out of the later chapters, but relatively non-numerate individuals will understand the general purpose and approach, and will be able to apply methods of map modeling to clearly-defined problems.
Food systems in Indonesia and worldwide have experienced major transformations in the wake of agricultural modernisation. Once intact eco-systems have declined dramatically, along with human diets, long term food security and social cohesion. Using long-term ethnographic research, we documented this loss of traditional food systems in Java, Bali, East Timor and India, but also a recent revival and reinvention of sustainable production methods and community-based distribution systems. A growing movement of small farmers now reject the dominant paradigm of aggressive capitalist development, and are re-creating food systems based on moral ecology – a new concept we introduce to characterise food systems that regenerate the natural environment and serve the common good, rather than maximise profit. Small farmers like these already feed two thirds of humanity using only a third of agricultural land. With proper support, we argue, they could feed the entire world, using sustainable and socially responsible approaches to eradicate world hunger.
Semantic interpretation and the resolution of ambiguity presents an important advance in computer understanding of natural language. While parsing techniques have been greatly improved in recent years, the approach to semantics has generally improved in recent years, the approach to semantics has generally been ad hoc and had little theoretical basis. Graeme Hirst offers a new, theoretically motivated foundation for conceptual analysis by computer, and shows how this framework facilitates the resolution of lexical and syntactic ambiguities. His approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on research in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, montague semantics, and cognitive psychology.
The incidence of developing infection in prosthetic joints remains low after primary arthroplasty, but owing to the growing success of joint replacement surgery as a procedure to alleviate pain and improve mobility, infection numbers are increasing. The impact on the patient is immense, and surgical options are challenging. Prevention and reducing the incidence is the key to addressing this problem. Pathways in Prosthetic Joint Infection covers the most common incidences where the risk of PJI is elevated (such as following revision arthroplasty), and indicates suitable approaches to aid the improvement of outcomes. Featuring clearly-illustrated clinical cases on the typical presentation of established and latent infections, the microbiology profiles, assessment, and definitive management are all highlighted. Taking a team-based approach that includes the ortho-plastic surgery team, physiotherapists, and microbiologists, this new book provides a concise summary of the current literature and an essential overview of the management options for those with PJI. Endorsed by the Royal College of Surgeons, BAPRAS, The Vascular Society, and BASK, Pathways in Prosthetic Joint Infection is an indispensable title for all those working with patients who may face PJI.
In the Footsteps of the Etruscans describes the archaeology of the countryside within a ten km radius of the small town of Tuscania near Rome, throwing light on the unrecorded lives of the generations of farmers and shepherds who have lived there. What was the character of prehistoric settlement prior to Etruscan urbanization? How did urbanization shape the lives of the 'ordinary Etruscans' working the land, hardly ever addressed in Etruscan archaeology? What was the impact on these people of being absorbed into the expanding Roman empire and its globalised economic structures? How did the empire's collapse and the subsequent emergence of the nucleated medieval village affect Tuscania's rural population? The project's 7500-year 'archaeological history', from the first farmers to those grappling with globalisation today, contributes eloquently to our understanding of how Mediterranean peoples have constantly shaped their landscape, and been shaped by it.
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