Life Sciences

Erinnerungen einer Buche - Der Spiegel-Bestseller, jetzt als edle SondereditionÜber 200 Jahre ist sie alt, jetzt blickt sie dem Ende ihres Lebens entgegen: eine alte Buche, zu deren Füßen ihre Sämlinge umsorgt und geschützt heranwachsen. Doch alles wird sich ändern, wenn die Buche stirbt. Wie kann sie die kleinen Bäume auf eine Zukunft vorbereiten, in der sie auf sich gestellt sind und in der nur überlebt, wer die Gesetze der Natur versteht? So beginnt sie zu erzählen, von ihrem fesselnden Leben voller Lebenslust und Neugier, Gefahr und Verlust ...In diesem einzigartigen Roman - dem ersten seiner Art - inszeniert Peter Wohlleben die spannende und berührende Geschichte einer Buche, die unseren Blick auf die Natur für immer verändern wird.Dieses Buch ist eine Sonderedition mit veredeltem UmschlagAusstattung: mit Illustrationen im Text

Jan Haft zeigt uns den Wald, wie wir ihn noch nicht gesehen haben - Ein neuer Blick des Autors von 'Die Wiese' auf das Ökosystem Wald - Mit zahlreichen farbigen Abbildungen des AutorsLeuchtende Pilzmücken, dunkle Bienen, Spechte mit überraschenden Entdeckerfähigkeiten und Schmetterlinge, die Wölfen hinterherfliegen: Unsere Wälder sind voll prallem Leben, mehr als wir auf den ersten Blick wahrnehmen - und doch sind sie zugleich meist eintöniger, als sie es sein müssten. Dabei ist die Artenvielfalt oft besonders gering in Wäldern, die nicht genutzt und sich selbst überlassen werden.Anschaulich beschreibt der Biologe und Naturfilmer Jan Haft, der mehrere Filme über den Wald gedreht hat, das faszinierende Netzwerk des Lebens im Wald und legt dar, welche der bei uns vorkommenden Waldarten dieses Netzwerk am stabilsten halten: Mittelwälder etwa oder die beinahe vergessenen Weidewälder, die eines gemeinsam haben - sie sind licht und artenreich.Mit vielen eindrucksvollen Fotografien und Tipps für WaldbesucheAusstattung: mit farbigen Abbildungen

This book discusses state-of-the-art techniques for ecosystem service valuation of forests, rivers, wetlands, lakes and coastal ecosystems, for their sustainable development and management. An ecosystem service valuation can be used to address environmental degradation of natural resources. Numerous natural and man-made factors like climate change, pollution, encroachment, and over-exploitation, have put ecosystems under threat worldwide. These ecosystems provide a lot of services to human beings but many of these services are not taken into account in the market prices for products and services, and their ecological functions are not economically valued. The valuation of these ecosystems' services will help to shed light on their sustainable management. This book offers a fresh and innovative resource that captures the latest advancements, addresses emerging challenges, and propels the field forward, making it a must-have for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. This book is also useful for stakeholders to achieve United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals 6 (Sustainability of water resources) and 13 (Climate action).The most relevant target audiences are hydrologists, hydrogeologists, environmental scientists, ecologists, biologists, and academicians. This book can be useful to post-graduate students, researchers, academicians, policy makers, NGOs in these fields. It also appeals to professionals in the fields of urban planning, agriculture, forestry, water resources management and environmental policy.

Individual-based models (IBM) describe a population as a collection of different organisms whose local interactions determine the behaviour of the entire population. The individual description is convenient for computer simulations and the determination of various model parameters, and appropriate limit passages lead to the transport equations used in classical population dynamics models. The aim of this book is to provide a brief mathematical introduction to IBMs and their application to selected biological topics. The book is divided into seven chapters. In the first chapter we give a general description of IBMs and we present examples of models to illustrate their possible applications. Examples of applications include age, size and phenotype models, coagulation-fragmentation process, and models of genome evolution. The second chapter contains some theoretical results concerning limit passages from IBMs to phenotype and age-structured models. The rate of this convergence formulated as functional central limit theorems is presented in Chapter 3. As a result of the limit passage can be a superprocess, i.e., a stochastic process with values in a space of measures. Chapter 4 presented examples of such passages: from the branching Brownian motion to the Dawson--Watanabe superprocess and from the Moran's model of genetic drift with mutations to the Fleming--Viot superprocess. The next three chapters are devoted to models, in which we directly participated in the study. In Chapter 5 we study IBMs phenotype models and their limit passages. We show that random mating stabilises the distribution of traits, while assortative mating can lead to a polymorphic population. Formation of aggregates of phytoplankton and their movement is studied in Chapter 6. We present two types of models based on: fragmentation-coagulation processes; and diffusion with chemical signals leading to advanced superprocesses. Chapter 7 is devoted to rather advanced models with chemotaxis used to description of retinal angiogenesis and cell proliferations. The book is complemented by two appendices in which we have collected information about stochastic processes and various spaces we have used. The book is dedicated both to mathematicians and biologists. The first group will find here new biological models which leads to interesting and often new mathematical questions. Biologists can observe how to include seemingly different biological processes into a unified mathematical theory and deduce from this theory interesting biological conclusions. Apart from the sections on superprocesses, where quite advanced mathematical issues arise, such as stochastic partial equations, we try to keep the required mathematical and biological background to a minimum so that the topics are accessible to students.

This book highlights the types and importance of multitasking fungi and provides critical analysis of fungi involved in production of important enzymes. It also covers additional tasks of fungi such as biosorption, remediation, soil fertilization, and water treatment. This book discusses the types of fungi, their cultivation, execution of multitasking, and the analysis and recovery of products. This information can be used to understand and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of fungi in the production of a variety of products, such as antibiotics, enzymes, and biofuels.This book would be of interest to researchers working in industrial biotechnology, fungal physiology, environmental sciences and technology, sustainable technologies, and agricultural sciences.

This book is the first comprehensive compilation of research on state¿of¿the-art genomics on the most advanced model tree species including genome assemblies, insights into genomic structural features and methylation patterns, whole¿genome resources used for population genomics and adaptation to climate, enabled breeding vs. classical genetics and traditional breeding, comparative genomics, and elucidations on functional genomics. The latest developments in the genomics of wood formation are particularly highlighted. Altogether, the book contains over 300 pages in over 15 chapters authored by globally reputed experts in the relevant fields of this tree crop's genomics research. This book is useful for students, teachers, and scientists in academia and governmental or private tree improvement agencies or companies interested in genetics, pathology, entomology, physiology, molecular genetics and breeding, in vitro culture and genetic engineering, land restoration, and agroforestry solutions.

This book is intended for a first-semester course in calculus, which begins by posing a question: how do we model an epidemic mathematically? The authors use this question as a natural motivation for the study of calculus and as a context through which central calculus notions can be understood intuitively. The book's approach to calculus is contextual and based on the principle that calculus is motivated and elucidated by its relevance to the modeling of various natural phenomena. The authors also approach calculus from a computational perspective, explaining that many natural phenomena require analysis through computer methods. As such, the book also explores some basic programming notions and skills.

This open access book seeks effective strategy to realize a rice Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa based on more than ten years of research team's inquiries into determinants and consequences of new technology adoption in rice farming in seven countries in this region. Rigorous statistical analyses are carried out by using valuable household data of rice farmers. The book is actually sequel to the two earlier books on the same subject published by Springer and edited by K. Otsuka and D.F. Larson, An African Green Revolution published in 2013 and In Pursuit of an African Green Revolution in 2016. The main message of the first book was that rice is the most promising cereal crop in SSA because of the high transferability of Asian rice technology, whereas that of the second book was that rice cultivation training programs are effective in significantly increasing rice yield in SSA. This third book has wider coverage in terms of topics, study periods, and study sites. It continuesto show the significant impacts of rice cultivation training on productivity and newly demonstrates the high sustainability of the productivity impact of the training and the existence of spillover effects from trainees to other farmers by using panel data. We newly assess the important role of mechanization in intensification of rice farming, high returns to large-scale irrigation schemes, and the critical role of rice millers in improving the quality of milled rice. Based on these studies, this book provides clear pathways toward full-fledged Green Revolution in rice farming in sub-Saharan Africa.

This volume is focused on a wide range of topics, including adaptive optic components and tools, wavefront sensing, different control algorithms, astronomy, and propagation through turbulent and turbid media.

This book highlights the latest findings and techniques related to nutrition and feed efficiency in animal agriculture. It addresses the key challenges facing the nutrition industry to achieve high animal productivity with minimal environmental impact. The concept of smart nutrition involves the use of smart technologies in the feeding and management of livestock.The first chapters focus on advances in biological fields such as molecular agriculture and genotype selection, as well as technologies that enhance or enable the collection of relevant information. The next section highlights applications of smart nutrition in a variety of livestock systems, ranging from intensive indoor housing of broilers and pigs to extensive outdoor housing of cattle and sheep, and marine fish farms. Finally, because of the worldwide attention to this issue, the authors address the environmental consequences.This work, which takes a serious look at how nutrition can be usedto improve sustainability in animal agriculture, is a key literature for readers in animal and veterinary sciences, the food industry, sustainability research, and agricultural engineering.

This volume contains up-to-date contributions written by leading experts in the role played by various microorganisms in psychiatric and neurological illness. The initial chapters present an evolutionary framework for the impact of microorganisms on behavior. This is followed by historical and epidemiological perspectives of the role of viruses in psychiatric illness. Subsequent chapters focus on different classes of microorganisms and psychiatric illnesses and emphasize diverse research approaches ranging from preclinical models to therapeutic interventions.

Obwohl Menschen auf keinen Fall zu den gefährdeten Tierarten auf diesem Planeten gehören, treibt Menschen offensichtlich die Sorge und die Befürchtung um, dass die Menschheit nicht überleben und damit die Tierart Homo sapiens für immer ausgelöscht werden könnte. Das scheint ein Widerspruch zu sein.In diesem Buch zeigt der Autor, dass dieser offensichtliche Widerspruch keiner ist. Der Autor zeigt, dass die Befürchtung von Menschen, die Menschheit könnte auf welche Art und Weise auch immer ausgelöscht werden, ohne Zweifel begründet ist und es sich bei dieser Befürchtung damit nicht nur um die unbegründete Einbildung einer Spezies handelt, die scheinbar mit ihrer eigenen Existenz permanent mehr oder weniger so überfordert ist, dass sie deshalb ständig ihren eigenen Untergang herbeifantasiert. Ist aber diese Befürchtung von Menschen, dass die Menschheit durch welche Ereignisse auch immer ausgelöscht werden könnte, tatsächlich begründet, dann stellt sich sofort eine Frage, deren Beantwortung sozusagen der Sinn und Zweck dieses Buches ist: Was wären die Voraussetzungen, die erfüllt sein müssten, damit unter allen möglichen Umständen und für jeden erdenklichen Fall diese Auslöschung der gesamten Menschheit verhindert bzw. vermieden werden könnte und es damit kein Ende der Menschheit geben würde?

This highly-readable Open Access textbook provides basic background information about marine mammals and anthropogenic impacts on them. The book includes inspiring exercises for education school programs in natural sciences. The book also provides advice on career paths using case studies of marine scientists and veterinarians describing their journeys from student to profession. By sharing real-life career paths, readers find answers to questions such as "What needs to be considered when choosing a career in science?" and "What kind of tasks do scientists undertake on a daily basis?"Marine mammals are amongst some of the most celebrated creatures on Earth, with their high intelligence, social and communicating skills, and capacity for deep diving. Alongside general information about marine mammals, the book aims at generating awareness of the impact of litter and noise pollution on the marine environment using marine mammals as an example. Huge numbers of marine animals, including marine mammals, die every year from entanglement in fishing gear, by ingestion of litter or because of chemical pollution. In the last decade many technological and scientific tools have been developed to aid research, for instance miniaturised sound recorders which can be attached to cetaceans and seals and record noise levels around them, their vocal production as well as their diving behaviour. This Open Access textbook can be used by undergraduate students interested in the fundamentals of marine mammal biology and medicine, and in pursuing the profession of a marine scientist.