Microbial ecology is the relationship of microorganisms with one another and with their environment. It concerns the three major domains of life -- Eukaryota, Archaea, and Bacteria -- as well as viruses. Microorganisms, by their omnipresence, impact the entire biosphere. They are present in virtually all of our planet's environments, including some of the most extreme, from acidic lakes to the deepest ocean, and from frozen environments to hydrothermal vents. Microbes, especially bacteria, often engage in symbiotic relationships (either positive or negative) with other organisms, and these relationships affect the ecosystem. One example of these fundamental symbioses are chloroplasts, which allow eukaryotes to conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts are considered to be endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, a group of bacteria that are thought to be the origins of aerobic photosynthesis. Some theories state that this invention coincides with a major shift in the early earth's atmosphere, from a reducing atmosphere to an oxygen-rich atmosphere. This book presents new and important research in the field.
How did painters and their public speak about art in Rembrandt's age? This book about the writings of the painter-poet Samuel van Hoogstraten, one of Rembrandt's pupils, examines a wide variety of themes from painting practice and theory from the Dutch Golden Age. It addresses the contested issue of 'Dutch realism' and its hidden symbolism, as well as Rembrandt's concern with representing emotions in order to involve the spectator. Diverse aspects of imitation and illusion come to the fore, such as the theory behind sketchy or 'rough' brushwork and the active role played by the viewer's imagination. Taking as its starting point discussions in Rembrandt's studio, this unique study provides an ambitious overview of Dutch artists' ideas on painting.
Abolish stress. Rediscover joy. Replenish your energy. In Crazy Busy acclaimed psychologist Thijs Launspach examines why we often work ourselves to the bone and what we can do to prevent this. He explains how to cope with stress and create more peace and calm in your life. He draws on the latest scientific knowledge, the methods used by experts and the stories told by those who have learned the hard way what stress can do to both body and mind. All to provide you with the answer to the question: how can you free yourself from a life of stress? A full diary and no time to think; the feeling that you are always playing catch-up and never quite hitting the mark: our lives today are almost invariably crazy busy. Being busy is one of the hallmarks of the modern era. But the pressure is taking its toll on us. The number of burnouts has risen dramatically over the past ten years. In fact, it has now reached epidemic proportions: approximately one in seven of all workers suffers badly from stress or has been forced to take a break from work because of stress-related complaints. And even if you don’t reach the actual burnout stage, stress can still make your life a lot less enjoyable. Why are our lives so hectic? Have we all become workaholics? Why are we so susceptible to FOMO (the Fear Of Missing Out)? And most importantly, what can you do to cope with the stress in your life and prevent a burnout? Do you find yourself rushing to get things finished more than once a week? Do others often offer you well-intentioned advice on ‘how to slow things down a little’. Do you ever suspect that the stress you feel prevents you from being as happy as you would like to be? Are you more addicted to your smartphone than you would care to admit? Is it the first thing you reach for when you wake up in the morning? Do you often find yourself longing to stop and take a break from it all? If your answer to one or more of these questions is ‘Yes’, then this is the book for you.
This textbook is remarkable for emphasising that the mechanisms underlying plant physiological ecology can be found at the levels of biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology and whole-plant physiology. The authors begin with the primary processes of carbon metabolism and transport, plant-water relations, and energy balance. After considering individual leaves and whole plants, these physiological processes are then scaled up to the level of the canopy. Subsequent chapters discuss mineral nutrition and the ways in which plants cope with nutrient-deficient or toxic soils. The book then looks at patterns of growth and allocation, life-history traits, and interactions between plants and other organisms. Later chapters deal with traits that affect decomposition of plant material and with plant physiological ecology at the level of ecosystems and global environmental processes.
Fine Sediment in Open Water is mainly written for professional engineers working in estuaries and coastal systems. It provides the basis for a fundamental understanding of the physical, biological and chemical processes governing the transport and fate of fine sediment in open water and explains how this understanding can steer engineering studies with numerical models. This is a unique treatment of processes at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, from the micro-scale (colloid scale) to system-wide scales, and from intra-tidal time periods to decades.Beginning with the processes governing the transport and fate of fine sediment in shallow open water, the first eight chapters are dedicated to the hydrodynamic, soil mechanics and biological processes which determine fine sediment concentrations in the water column, in/on the bed and the exchange of sediment between bed and water column. The next two chapters treat the net fluxes of fine sediment as a function of asymmetries in forcing and sediment properties. These fundamental processes form the basis for the subsequent chapters on modeling in which the governing equations are presented, and tools are provided to aggregate and parameterize the various processes elaborated in the first eight chapters. Further, any numerical model study should be based on a conceptual model, as illustrated in the final five chapters, which provide examples of numerical modeling studies on the transport and fate of fine sediment in a coastal sea, an estuary, a tidal river, a lake, and around and within a harbor basin.Related Link(s)
How did the classical tradition survive on the North Sea shores? This richly illustrated book explores the interplay between art and erudition in the seventeenth century. It analyses the sources, editions, and reception of Franciscus Junius’s writings to chart how ideas about Northern European painting, from Van Dyck to Rembrandt, developed as a counterweight to the Italian tradition. Thus the language of art in Junius’s The Painting of the Ancients appears to be related to his seminal work in the field of Germanic linguistics and his discovery of the shared pre-Christian civilization of Holland and England. Junius’s innovative pairing of scholarship to the painter’s practice illuminates the reception of antiquity and the creation of an Anglo-Dutch artistic Arcadia.
In this work the question whether noncommutative geometry allows for supersymmetric theories is addressed. Noncommutative geometry has seen remarkable applications in high energy physics, viz. the geometrical interpretation of the Standard Model, however such a question has not been answered in a conclusive way so far.The book starts with a systematic analysis of the possibilities for so-called almost-commutative geometries on a 4-dimensional, flat background to exhibit not only a particle content that is eligible for supersymmetry, but also have a supersymmetric action. An approach is proposed in which the basic `building blocks' of potentially supersymmetric theories and the demands for their action to be supersymmetric are identified. It is then described how a novel kind of soft supersymmetry breaking Lagrangian arises naturally from the spectral action. Finally, the above formalism is applied to explore the existence of a noncommutative version of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model.This book is intended for mathematical/theoretical physicists with an interest in the applications of noncommutative geometry to supersymmetric field theories.
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