The aim of this book is to introduce scientific ballooning to the many people who are interested in the use of balloons for scientific applications. The book offers a basic understanding of the engineering details and the scientific research giving rise to balloon activities going on today. Above all, the book will serve as a guidebook for young scientists and researchers seeking to become involved in space science and technology by participating in balloon projects. The book deals with three types of balloons: large stratospheric balloons used for scientific purposes, rubber balloons used for aerological observations, and planetary balloons to be used in the atmospheres of other planets. The book provides many figures and photographs, and offers a systematic description of balloon technologies and related matters from historical background to current research topics. The contents include a theoretical discussion of ballon shape design, analysis and synthesis of flight dynamics, actual launching procedure, flight operations, and typical applications of ballooning in various scientific fields. Detailed meteorological descriptions, especially of the Earth's stratosphere and the atmosphere of other planets, are provided for investigating actual flight behavior.
This book investigates the experience of Japanese women who have immigrated to Australia through marriage to a local partner. Based on long-term participant observations gathered with a Japanese ethnic association in Sydney, and on in-depth interviews with the association’s members, it examines the ways in which the women remould themselves in Australia by constructing gendered selves that reflect their unique migratory circumstances through cross-border marriage. In turn, the book argues that the women tend to embrace expressions of Japanese femininity that they once viewed negatively, and that this is due to their lack of social skills and access to the cultural capital of mainstream Australian society. Re-molding the self through conventional Japanese notions of gender ironically provides them with a convincing identity: that of minority migrant women. Nevertheless, by analyzing these women’s engagement with a Japanese ethnic association in a suburb of Sydney, the book also reveals a nuanced sense of ambivalence; a tension between the women’s Japanese community and their lives in Australia. Accordingly, the book provides a fresh perspective on interdisciplinary issues of gender and migration in a globalized world, and engages with a wide range of academic disciplines including: sociology of migration; sociology of culture; cultural anthropology; cultural studies; Japanese studies; Asian studies; gender studies; family studies; migration studies and qualitative methodologies.
The subject of this supplement to Landolt-Börnstein IV/22 Series is to present both the numerical and graphical data on the various magnetic properties of materials under pressure. Data for transition metal binary oxides MmOn [M: transition metals, O: oxygen, m, n: 1~15], MXO [M: transition metals, X: F, Cl, Br, O: oxygen] and MM’On [M: transition metals, M’: transition metals or non-transition metal elements, O: oxygen, n=2, 2.5, 3] ternary oxides are presented. As well known, the data-compiling principle in the Landolt-Bӧrrnstein series is to choose the best reliable values from many available experimental data. The present compilation is done according to this principle.
Preface: Natural products chemistry has a long history, and could be regarded as having its roots in the use of many kinds of herbal mixtures as crude drugs in traditional medicine. Systems of traditional medicine have been practiced in China and Japan for thousands of years, and virtually all regions of the world have used natural materials to treat human disease. It was clear that many plants, herbs, etc. contain components with powerful biological activities. The dawn of modern natural products chemistry began with the isolation of the active component, morphine, from opium. Subsequently, various alkaloids were isolated from medicinal plants and employed clinically. The discovery and the development of penicillin as a microbial metabolite opened up the era of antibiotics, which have saved countless lives in the past half century or so. The isolation and synthesis of steroid hormones resulted in the development of new concepts in molecular stereochemistry and organic synthetic techniques, as did the discovery of bioactive lipids such as prostaglandins and leukatrienes, bioactive peptides such as enkephalins and endetherines, and oligosaccharides, including glycoproteins. Further, the discovery of plant hormones has led to great strides in plant biotechnology, including plant tissue cultures, and derivatives of insect hormones and pheromones are now used as pesticides. Thus, applications of natural products chemistry have become all-pervasive in modern society. Apart from the extensive practical applications of natural products and their derivatives, natural products chemistry has played a central role in the development of modern organic chemistry as a result of its focus on structural and synthetic studies of often highly complex and inaccessible molecules. Biosynthetic studies have also attracted much attention, aiming to answer the questions of why and how such a large number and variety of compounds are synthesised by organisms. Researchers in the field of biosynthesis first focused on elucidation of the pathways of secondary metabolism, and then on the mechanisms, of the enzymes catalyzing the biosynthetic reactions. This was an extremely difficult task, because rather large amounts of enzymes are required for the investigation of reaction mechanisms and the enzyme proteins are often unstable and not easy to purify. However, in recent years the development of molecular biology has made gene and protein engineering rather routine. Thus, studies of mechanistic enzymology can now be conducted with cloned and overexpressed enzyme proteins. It has been shown that the enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of antibiotics in Streptomyces spp. are encoded in gene clusters. Further, cloning and functional analysis of the genes associated with flavonoid biosynthesis should soon cast light on the interesting question of why flavonoids are ubiquitously present in plant leaves. Life is maintained not only by large molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids, but also by many small molecules which have essential and diverse roles in the physiology of living organisms. Such compounds often have highly specific interactions with target receptors, but the mechanisms involved largely remain to be explored. Current methodology means that this task can be addressed, and this in turn should lead to a host of new applications for natural products and their derivatives. The key may be an interdisciplinary approach taking account of both biological function and molecular behaviour based on precise structure recognition. As we increasingly understand the mechanisms of molecular recognition that operate in nature, many possibilities should open up for artificial control or modification of biological functions, as well as new challenges for synthetic organic chemists. Our intention in this book is to focus on such dynamic aspects of natural products chemistry. By dealing in detail with representative topics to which the most modern techniques of research have been applied, we hope to emphasize the value of combining traditional approaches to natural products chemists with current biochemical and molecular-biological ideas. Each chapter provides sufficient background information and experimental detail to make the subject accessible to non-specialists. It is our hope that these examples of recent progress in key areas of natural products chemistry will stimulate work in related topics by illustrating the power of a modern interdisciplinary approach to the subject.
Takeshi Hamashita, arguably Asia's premier historian of the longue durée, has been instrumental in opening a new field of inquiry in Chinese, East Asian and world historical research. Engaging modernization, Marxist and world system approaches, his wide-ranging redefinition of the evolving relationships between the East Asia regional system and the world economy from the sixteenth century to the present has sent ripples throughout Asian and international scholarship. His research has led him to reconceptualize the position of China first in the context of an East Asian regional order and subsequently within the framework of a wider Euro-American-Asian trade and financial order that was long gestating within, and indeed contributing to the shape of, the world market. This book presents a selection of essays from Takeshi Hamashita's oeuvre on Asian trade to introduce this important historian's work to the English speaking reader. It examines the many critical issues surrounding China and East Asia's incorporation to the world economy, including: Maritime perspectives on China, Asia and the world economy Intra-Asian trade Chinese state finance and the tributary trade system Banking and finance Maritime customs.
This multi-authored book provides a unique accounting of the cancer problem from the standpoint of those primary genetic factors which may be interacting with myriad environmental exposures in cancer etiology. It provides a comprehensive coverage of cancer of all anatomical sites in conjunction with a genetic/environmental thrust. It includes a survey chapter dealing with the role of primary genetic factors in cancer of differing anatomic sites and a similar comprehensive survey chapter tracing the history of epidemiology, with focus upon multiple anatomic sites, including classical epidemiologic cancer models such as cigarette smoking, asbestos, vinyl chloride, and uranium exposure. Chapters are devoted to tumor biomarkers and their applicability to cancer of multiple anatomic sites. Clinical correlation will involve surveillance/management programsand focus on high-risk groups-such as those involving primary genetic or environmental factors and/or their interaction. The development of registries involving families with differing hereditary cancer syndromes are considered. Also, many chapters are devoted to environmental protective measures, as well as the need for more responsibility for coverage of patients at inordinately high risk for cancer by third party carriers. Other chapters address segregation and linkage analysis, oncogenes, cytogenetics, and other biomarkers. This book will be of interest to general clinicians, oncologists, surgeons, geneticists, and carcinogenesis investigators.
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