This book is the outcome of a three-year project coordinated by a group of Swedish researchers and with collaborating scholars from Africa and Asia. It provides a comparative study between Asian agricultural development during the Green Revolution in food production and the current problematic agricultural situation in sub-Saharan Africa. Case studies of eight African and eight Asian countries (fo

The Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning is accompanied every year by a shared task whose purpose is to promote natural language processing applications and evaluate them in a standard setting. In 2008 the shared task was dedicated to the joint parsing of syntactic and semantic dependencies. This shared task not only unifies the shared tasks of the previous four years under a uniq

The term Anthropocene denotes a new geological epoch characterized by the unprecedented impact of human activities on the Earth’s ecosystems. While the natural sciences have advanced their understanding of the drivers and processes of global change considerably over the last two decades, the social sciences lag behind in addressing the fundamental challenge of governance and politics in the Anthro

Engine tests have been performed on a 9.6 liter spark-ignited engine fueled by natural gas and a mixture of 25/75 hydrogen/natural gas by volume. The scope of the work was to test two strategies for low emissions of harmful gases; lean burn operation and stoichiometric operation with EGR and a three-way catalyst. Most gas engines today, used in city buses, utilize the lean burn approach to achieve

This chapter starts with a description of the optics of camera-type eyes, in which an image is projected upon a retina with cornea and lens as refracting elements. Ray tracing is explained with the human eye as an example of a terrestrial vertebrate's eye. Then the comparison is made to camera eyes of aquatic and amphibious animals, with an explanation of different kinds of aberrations, difficulti

This paper discusses the ways in which a critical systemic approach to systems analysis can provide support for a holistic, multicriteria benefits analysis. It highlights the importance of inquiry into the nature and boundaries of a perceived organizational problem space, taking into account unique perspectives of the living, engaged actors who desire beneficial change in their working systems. Th

Auto-ignition with SI-compression ratio can be achieved by replacing some of the fresh charge by hot residuals. In this work an engine is run with a negative valve overlap (NVO) trapping hot residuals. By increasing the NVO, thus raising the initial charge temperature it is possible to investigate the intermediate zone between SI and HCCI as the amount of residuals is increased. Recent research ha

Vård och behandling av personer med långvarig smärta är en utmaning. Vården kan inte bara rikta sig mot smärtan i sig utan måste omfatta hela den komplexitet som uppstår när flera olika faktorer interagerar med såväl smärtan som varandra på olika sätt. Detta kräver god kunskap bland vårdpersonal och då inte bara om hur smärta kan lindras utan även om hur livet förändras vid långvarig smärta. Inne

The incidence of evaporating `black widow' pulsars (BWPs) among all millisecond pulsars is far higher in globular clusters than in the field. This implies a special formation mechanism for them in clusters. Cluster millisecond pulsars in wide binaries with white dwarf companions exchange them for turnoff-mass stars. These new companions eventually overflow their Roche lobes because of encounters a

This chapter provides a novel framework for assessing energy security and illustrates its application by the Global Energy Assessment, the IEA Model for Short-term energy security and in several studies of long-term global energy security.

Because of the stratospheric ozone depletion that took place during the last decades of the past century, the effects of ultraviolet radiation on plants, animals, humans and micro-organisms became intensively studied. In this chapter we describe the role of the ozone layer as a radiation shield and various molecular and organismal effects of ultraviolet radiation, with an emphasis on the UV-B band

Scholars have argued that the end of the Cold War and the War on Terror have radically changed the context of war and defense, diminished the role of nation-states in favor of multi-lateral defense activities, and placed a new focus on human security. International peacekeeping has superseded the traditional act of war-making as the most important defense strategy among wealthy, liberal-democratic

Two 8-year-old Pinus radiata trees growing in a dry-land plantation forest were subjected to a partial shading treatment for 2 years in order to investigate the responses of photosynthesis and tree growth to a long-term reduction in illuminated leaf area. The lower 60% of the crown of shaded trees was surrounded by 50% neutral density shade cloth. This reduced radiation absorption by 13% for the t

This paper provides a survey of the role of feedback control in embedded realtimesystems, presented in the context of a new EU/IST Network of Excellence, ARTIST2.The survey highlights recent research efforts and future research directions in the areasof codesign of computer-based control systems, implementation-aware embedded controlsystems, and control of real-time computing systems.