Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
Not a member yet
85081 research outputs found
Sort by
Planning Rural Landscapes
No full textAppealing to a broad audience, this book bridges different issues, from landscape to ecosystems, planning to implementation, and policies to local community willingness. This book outlines a methodology for defining green infrastructure (GI) in rural landscapes, showing how it underpins ecosystem services (ES) and aligns with various European Union (EU) directives. There are presented examples in Portuguese rural landscapes alongside international initiatives from several countries.
Building on the concept of landscape as an open, autopoietic system with distinct resilience thresholds, the book demonstrates how GI serves as a versatile framework to support ES, implement nature-based solutions and the more recent Nature-Futures-Framework scenarios. Through real-world studies, the authors illustrate its flexibility and applicability across different scales and environments while respecting each location’s unique characteristics.
Written for planners, designers, policymakers, and academic institutions, this book offers a valuable resource for supporting sustainable land management, public policy formulation, planning, and innovative design practices, fostering informed debate on these topics and advancing eco-conscious initiatives for a sustainable future
Human Impact on Groundwater Environment
No full textThe contributions to this Topic will encompass a broad spectrum of topics regarding the human impact on groundwater resources, including but not limited to the following: emerging topics dealing with water resource vulnerability and human impact, including emerging and chemical contaminants; advances in analytical techniques to monitor and identify sources and processes controlling the budget of human contaminants in water resources; advances in hydrological processes and hydrodynamic models for investigating water vulnerability to human impact; analysis of urban growth consequences for water resources and water management; remote sensing applications for water vulnerability assessment; linkage between water vulnerability, scarcity, security, and sustainability
The Benefits of the Cold and Domestication
No full textThis book explores cooperation between humans and animals in extreme environments and contends that understanding domestication is crucial to explaining how life is possible in such conditions. The chapters draw on work from anthropology, genetics, law, and geography, with a range of ethnographic case studies from cold environments. The contributors offer new evidence for rethinking the dichotomy of trust vs domination previously used to characterize human-animal relations. They show how humans and animals partner for survival, and how a cold environment does not merely threaten existence but rather creates opportunities. Domestication is presented as a continuous, mutually beneficial human-animal relationship of becoming familiar with each other and the surrounding environment, which can lead to a symbiotic partnership of multiple agents for adapting to changes including a warming climate. This volume will be relevant to scholars from anthropology, geography, and related disciplines interested in human-animal relations, ecology, and the environment, particularly in the North
Circular Economy and Sustainable Management
No full textThis book summarizes both conventional and emerging waste management approaches for fly ash, particularly with a focus on sustainability dimension – including its applicability, scope, methods, and challenges of bio-coal production. It covers the sustainability aspects of fly ash management and recent developments in methods, processes, and scope of bio-coal production as an alternative to conventional coal along with its implications for industrial ecosystems. It focuses on climate change, sustainability, and circular economy aspects of fly ash management approaches. Comprehensively covers all the dimensions related to coal and bio-coal fly ash and circular economy associated with it Discusses cradle-to-grave technology for bio-coal Emphasizes the efficient, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable use of coal and bio-coal fly ash Explores renewable fuel solutions and circular economy associated with it Encourages the use of bio-coal for boosting sustainability and circular economy This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students in environmental and civil engineering, as well as those working in clean technologies
Effects of Ionizing Radiation in Cancer Radiotherapy
No full textFor a long time, it was widely accepted that the biological effects of ionizing radiation such as cell death, DNA damage, and mutagenesis result from the direct ionization of cell structures, particularly DNA, or from indirect damage through reactive oxygen species produced by water radiolysis. This “targeted effect” (TE) model has been questioned by numerous observations, in which cells, that were not directly irradiated, exhibited responses similar to those of directly irradiated cells. Therefore, it is now accepted that the detrimental effects of ionizing radiation are not restricted only to irradiated cells, but also to non-irradiated adjacent or distant cells. The non-targeted effects (NTEs) of ionizing radiation, which include genomic instability, radiation-induced bystander effects, and abscopal effects, are defined as the occurrence of biological effects in non-irradiated cells because of the irradiation of other cells in the population. In opposition with TE, that display a linear dose–response, NTEs exhibit a non-linear dose–response, with a marked effect at low doses of radiation. The related cellular and molecular mechanisms of NTEs are still not completely understood, as they are mainly dependent on the cell type and the radiation quality. I am pleased to share with you this Special Issue on the "Targeted and non-targeted effects of ionizing radiation in the context of cancer radiotherapy"
Water Buffalo Welfare, Strategies to Improve Health, Behavior, Productivity, and Food Quality and Safety
No full textThe following collection provides a comprehensive and updated analysis of the challenges and advancements in the welfare, productivity, and sustainability of water buffalo under human management. The collection addresses critical topics such as adaptation to heat stress in the context of climate change, examining physiological and behavioral responses, and proposing environmental and nutritional management strategies to mitigate adverse effects. Buffalo nutrition is explored in depth, highlighting diet formulations tailored to diverse agroecological conditions and their impact on thermoregulation, productivity, and product quality, including milk and meat. Special attention is paid to the characterization of the ruminal microbiome in buffalo from various Amazonian ecosystems, recognizing the pivotal role of microbial composition and diversity in fermentation efficiency and resource utilization. In this reprint, key health issues affecting buffalo are also reviewed, including emerging viral diseases and Degnala disease, a mycotoxicosis linked to contaminated rice straw. Advances in genetic improvement technologies, such as genome editing and artificial intelligence algorithms, are presented as vital tools for the future. Comparative analyses of mammary gland physiology between buffalo and cattle, animal welfare during transport and slaughter, and the nutritional attributes of buffalo products are also examined
Homesick
No full textNicholas Shapiro examines the US government's distribution of over 120,000 toxic trailers following Hurricane Katrina, their devastating health effects, and the need to create new forms of accountability and change
17: Australia's push to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility: is 12 years old enough?
No full textThe debate surrounding the appropriate minimum age for criminal responsibility (MACR) has been ongoing in Australia for almost three decades. With a MACR set at 10 in all states and territories in Australia since 2000, Australia has been, alongside New Zealand, heavily criticised for having one of the lowest MACRs across the developed world. At a national level, no decision has been made about whether to raise the MACR and what age should be appropriate. Yet, with the long-standing debate gaining momentum following revelations in 2016 of patterns of abuse, deprivation and cruel punishment of vulnerable children in detention in the Northern Territory and the subsequent Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory, some Australian jurisdictions are finally now increasing the MACR. However, as this chapter highlights, there remain many concerns with both recent and proposed changes that continue to fail to bring the MACR in Australia in line with internationally acceptable standards.Publishe
Cutting through Complexity
No full textProgrammes and interventions to counter violent extremism (CVE) have become widespread across Europe. CVE is a relatively new and very complex phenomenon. The term itself has become a - contested - catch phrase for a broad array of interventions targeting different populations at different stages in the radicalization process. The complexity of CVE has resulted in a serious lack of evaluations in the field. Those few evaluations that we can draw upon are very heterogeneous, both in terms of evaluation method and the type of interventions that they address. It is therefore impossible to make any grounded statements on the effectiveness of CVE. Academia thus has little theoretical basis for adequately advising the policy and practitioner community on the best course of action. We are thus in need of an evaluation method that can accommodate the complexity of CVE, while providing an authoritative basis for new evaluations and at the same time exposing incorrect or too limited, normative assumptions in CVE policy. We also require a 'meta-analysis' method for synthesizing the variety of evaluations available to produce generic insights. This study applies and further develops realistic evaluation and realist review to provide an evaluation and synthesis method for complex social programmes such as CVE. The end result is heuristic development of the realistic evaluation method which provides a basis for future CVE evaluation studies. The dissertation also provides insights on relevant contexts and mechanisms in CVE, which will help policymakers further develop their CVE programmes
Computer Aided Verification
No full textThis open access 4-volume set constitutes the proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification, CAV 2025, held in Zagreb, Croatia, in July 23-25, 2025. The 51 regular papers presented together 24 tool papers, 4 casestudy papers in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 305 submissions. The accepted papers cover a wide spectrum of topics, from theoretical results to applications of formal methods. These papers apply or extend formal methods to a wide range of domains such as concurrency, machine learning and neural networks, quantum systems, as well as hybrid and stochastic systems