Hydrogels are the foundation of regenerative medicine as a supportive matrix for cell immobilization and growth factor delivery. The fate of implanted cells is mediated by cell-matrix interaction at multiple scales and timed-release of growth factors to guide the differentiation and maturation of cells. Recently, there has been great interest in hydrogels with a hierarchical structure that mimi…
Here are clear explanations of how to make superb astronomical deep-sky images using only a DSLR or webcam and an astronomical telescope – no expensive dedicated CCD cameras needed! The book is written for amateur astronomers interested in budget astrophotography – the deep sky, not just the Moon and planets – and for those who want to improve their imaging skills using DSLR and webcam…
This book deals at some length with the question: Since there are many more poor than rich, why don’t the poor just tax the rich heavily and reduce the inequality? In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the topic of inequality was discussed widely. Ending or reducing inequality was a prime motivating factor in the emergence of communism and socialism. The book discusses w…
This book offers a rigorous and self-contained presentation of stochastic integration and stochastic calculus within the general framework of continuous semimartingales. The main tools of stochastic calculus, including Itô’s formula, the optional stopping theorem and Girsanov’s theorem, are treated in detail alongside many illustrative examples. The book also contains an introduction to Ma…
This textbook, or really a “coursebook” for a college freshman-level class, has been updated for Spring 2014 and provides an introduction to programming and problem solving using both Matlab and Mathcad. We provide a balanced selection of introductory exercises and real-world problems (i.e. no “contrived” problems). We include many examples and screenshots to guide the reader. We assume…
200 words; this text will present the book in all promotional forms (e.g. flyers). Please describe the book in straightforward and consumer-friendly terms. [Plants interact with microbes in many different ways and on many different levels. The most obvious interaction results in plant disease, which can be a severe threat to the global food supply. Therefore, research strives to uncover the mec…
This chapter discusses the information gaps relating to the type, level of accuracy and frequency of delivery of specific weather and climate information, and what extra information is required by the energy sector in the coming years. It is argued that ongoing technical and scientific interaction between weather and climate service providers and the energy sector, supported by input from the …
This unique and attractive open access textbook combines the beauty of macroscopic pictures of plant stems with the corresponding colorfully stained images of anatomical micro-structures. In contrast to most botanical textbooks, it presents all the stem characteristics as photographs and shows the microscopic reality. The amount of text is reduced to a minimum, and the scientific information is…
The broad host range pathogenic bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been widely studied as a model system to understand horizontal gene flow, secretion of effector proteins into host cells, and plant-pathogen interactions. Agrobacterium mediated plant transformation also is the major method for generating transgenic plants for research and biotechnology purposes. Agrobacterium species…
The average introductory geology student’s perception of geology normally involves the memorization of rocks and discussions of natural disasters, but Geology contains so much more. Geology is the study of our planet, which is vital to our everyday lives from the energy we use, to the growing of the food we eat, to the foundations of the buildings we live in, to the materials that are used to…