Böcker utgivna av Springer Nature Switzerland

In 2023, the Brent oil benchmark, a key international oil price marker for global crude oil underwent a substantial change. It incorporated another key benchmark, West Texas Intermediate oil from Midland, produced in the US and sold into European and Asian markets. Brent is used to set prices for over 70 per cent of global crude oil, so this fundamental change in the composition of the benchmarks is making some observers question its future development and even its survival. Lessons from the past are very important for the future, particularly in this case. This book revisits the history and genesis of the Brent oil benchmark and how it came to dominate the global oil market for oil. With chapters written by the individuals involved in trading and shaping the market, it brings the richness and texture to the usual historical narrative by recalling the events, companies and people who shaped its history. It introduces the historical background to the international oil markets and the reasons for a move from OPEC-set prices to oil benchmarks. It discusses the role of the North Sea in the international oil markets, as well as the role of the British government in the British national oil and gas monopoly (British National Oil Corporation or BNOC). The development of the North Sea oil, which coincided with the liberalisation policies in the UK and US, is also discussed, alongside the challenges of the oil exchange (International Petroleum Exchange) in London, the home of Brent and looks at the failures, attempted takeovers, and its eventual sale to the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). It finally discusses the growing market ecosystem of the price reporting agencies (PRAs), which play a key role in establishing the value of the Brent benchmark.

This book is the first research monograph that explores a new research field and practical applications produced by the combined use of two of the most advanced and powerful technologies available in today¿s world ¿ Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR). It is written by a team of 50 researchers and practitioners from 16 countries, which has enabled a thorough coverage of emerging or previously unexplored subject areas.The authors consider practical, theoretical, and cultural aspects of ¿AI-powered AR¿ and ¿AR-enriched AI¿, and their usage in a large variety of areas, such as education, medicine, healthcare, dentistry, pharmacy, active lifestyle, smart services, fashion, retail, recommender systems, and several others.Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence: The Fusion of Advanced Technologies is essential reading not only for researchers, practitioners and technology developers, but also for students (both graduates and undergraduates) and anyone who is interested in building a comprehensive understanding of the emerging fields of ¿intelligent augmented environments¿ and ¿artificial intelligence presented by augmented reality¿.

The book provides a pedagogic and comprehensive introduction to homogenization theory with a special focus on problems set for non-periodic media. The presentation encompasses both deterministic and probabilistic settings. It also mixes the most abstract aspects with some more practical aspects regarding the numerical approaches necessary to simulate such multiscale problems. Based on lecture courses of the authors, the book is suitable for graduate students of mathematics and engineering.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Algorithms and Models for the Web Graph, WAW 2023, held in Toronto, Canada, in May 23¿26, 2023.The 12 Papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The aim of the workshop was understanding of graphs that arise from the Web and various user activities on the Web, and stimulate the development of high-performance algorithms and applications that exploit these graphs.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services, MobiCASE 2022, held in Messina, Italy, in November 17-18, 2022. The 9 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. The papers are organized in topical tracks: mobile computing; machine learning/deep learning; dependable systems; and emerging applications.

The Digital Marketing and eCommerce Conference aims to bring together leading researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on any aspects of ecommerce and digital marketing.This volume presents the proceedings of the 2023 edition in a collection of contributions with many original approaches. They address diverse areas of application such as online brand communities, channel design, online retailing, cryptocurrencies, user-generated content, TikTok, among others. A wide variety of theoretical and methodological approaches have been used.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the Workshop Empowering Novel Geometric Algebra for Graphics and Engineering, ENGAGE 2022, held in conjunction with Computer Graphics International conference, CGI 2022, which took place virtually, in September 2022. The 10 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 12 submissions. The workshop focused specifically on important aspects of geometric algebra including algebraic foundations, digitized transformations, orientation, conic fitting, protein modelling, digital twinning, and multidimensional signal processing.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Pervasive Knowledge and Collective Intelligence on Web and Social Media, PerSOM 2022, which was held in Messina, Italy, in November 2022. The 9 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions and present findings of research from the fields of pervasive computing, web, and social media to promote ideas and practices about pervasive knowledge and collective intelligence in this fields. The conference targeted a wide variety of topics including new perspectives in social theories, complex networks, data science, knowledge management, web and social media.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Advances in Quantitative Ethnography, ICQE 2022, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, during October 15¿19, 2022.The 29 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 71 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: QE Theory and Methodology Research; Applications in Education Contexts; and Applications in Interdisciplinary Contexts.

This book identifies and investigates the determinants that influence investment decision-making for conducting foreign direct investment (FDI) in Bangladesh¿s power sector. This book is organized around six core themes. These are: Bangladesh¿s vision to become a middle-income country by 2021 and have universal power for all; an overview of the benefits and costs of FDI from a host nation¿s perspective; an outlook of Bangladesh¿s power sector starting from the years 1994-2008 through 2011-2015 to 2016-2020 and beyond; the key factors that encourage foreign investors to conduct FDI in the Bangladeshi power sector subsumed under four broad categories of investment prospects namely, regulatory, economic and financial, political and social; the key barriers that deter FDI in the Bangladeshi power sector; and policy implications for long-term investment sustainability in the power sector.The main arguments posited in this book are: regulatory aspects are the most important for firms when conducting FDI in the power sector; land acquisition is a perineal problem that continues to hamper the development of large-scale power projects; there is a need for a transparent and competitive selection process to improve transparency and accountability in private power procurement; and more exploration of onshore and offshore gas fields with the extension of gas transmission networks be enhanced that ensure a regional balance of primary energy supply (gas) for setting up additional gas-based power plants in the country.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed conference proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Design and Architecture for Signal and Image Processing, DASIP 2023, held in Toulouse, France in January 2023.The 9 full included in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 17 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: Methods and Applications, Hardware Architectures and Implementations and others.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second EAI International Conference on Blockchain Technology and Emerging Technologies, BlockTEA 2022, held in Virtual Event, during November 21-22, 2022. The 10 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 28 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: answer set programming; functional programming; Smart contract, Privacy protection, NFT and Machine learning

This book provides a thorough overview of cutting-edge research on electronics applications relevant to industry, the environment, and society at large. It covers a broad spectrum of application domains, from automotive to space and from health to security, while devoting special attention to the use of embedded devices and sensors for imaging, communication and control. The book is based on the 2022 ApplePies Conference, held in Genoa, Italy in September 2022, which brought together researchers and stakeholders to consider the most significant current trends in the field of applied electronics and to debate visions for the future. Areas addressed by the conference included information communication technology; biotechnology and biomedical imaging; space; secure, clean and efficient energy; the environment; and smart, green and integrated transport. As electronics technology continues to develop apace, constantly meeting previously unthinkable targets, further attention needs to bedirected toward the electronics applications and the development of systems that facilitate human activities. This book, written by industrial and academic professionals, represents a valuable contribution in this endeavor.

In the present polyphony of evangelical theological epistemology, there are several authoritative approaches. Yet, the evangelical emphasis on sola scriptura demands that theological epistemology be subjected to the biblical canon. In this book, Dan-Adrian Petre argues for a canonically-derived theological epistemological framework that may foster a fuller understanding of theological knowledge formation within evangelicalism. Specifically, he explores some representative evangelical voices to identify the reasons for the contemporary epistemological variance. Petre then uses a canonical-epistemological methodology to outline a biblically-based framework. In exploring how the Scripture conceptualizes the formation of theological knowledge, the book uses cognitive linguistics to grasp the conceptual meaning of the theological knowledge formation in the Bible using prototypical case studies. The resulting epistemological implications outline a minimal epistemological model derived from the biblical canon. Using this vantage point, the author assesses the contemporary evangelical epistemological dissonance as a means of indicating a way forward for a canonical-epistemological attunement.

This book summarizes the outcomes of research results based on field works and recent studies related to soil cover of the dried Aral seabed in Kazakhstan. The purpose of the work was to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the current state of the soil cover in the dried bed of the Aral Sea in order to study the processes that are occurring in the local soils as a result of anthropogenic impacts inducing soil degradation and desertification (e.g., soil salinization and deflation). Additionally, the book analyzes morphological characteristics and chemical-physical properties of soils in the dried bottom of the Northern Aral Sea in order to know how material properties can be transported during soil deflation in dust/sand/salt storms in the region, as well as to identify changes in long-term dynamics of aridization and climatic parameters such as temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration in the Aral Sea region.The novelty of this research is reflected in the latest information on the vertical and spatial distributions of soils and their chemical properties in the region containing the dried bed of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. Consequently, an updated soil map (soil salinization and salinization degree, land degradation) of the seabed was obtained according to the collected field data and satellite-derived images such as those recorded by Landsat-8. The book is mainly addressed to scientists and researchers who study soil cover in the dried Aral Seabed and its region, as well as soil degradation and desertification in the dried lake playas and aridization in other arid regions. The book will also be useful for students and planners who feel responsible for the sustainable development and sustainable use of natural resources in Central Asian countries.

The purpose of the Reasoning Web Summer School is to disseminate recent advances on reasoning techniques and related issues that are of particular interest to Semantic Web and Linked Data applications. It is primarily intended for postgraduate students, postdocs, young researchers, and senior researchers wishing to deepen their knowledge. As in the previous years, lectures in the summer school were given by a distinguished group of expert lecturers. The broad theme of this year's summer school was ¿Reasoning in Probabilistic Models and Machine Learning¿ and it covered various aspects of ontological reasoning and related issues that are of particular interest to Semantic Web and Linked Data applications. The following eight lectures were presented during the school: Logic-Based Explainability in Machine Learning; Causal Explanations and Fairness in Data; Statistical Relational Extensions of Answer Set Programming; Vadalog: Its Extensions and Business Applications; Cross-Modal Knowledge Discovery, Inference, and Challenges; Reasoning with Tractable Probabilistic Circuits; From Statistical Relational to Neural Symbolic Artificial Intelligence; Building Intelligent Data Apps in Rel using Reasoning and Probabilistic Modelling.

The valuable characteristics of animal waste materials in terms of climatic change impact and bioenergy production are discussed in this book. Reutilization of such wastes for bioenergy harvest is the prime focus; the great need for future animal waste recycling is also depicted.Major topics discussed are types of livestock waste ¿ poultry and dairy, methods and management of waste utilization and storage, application of animal waste in bioenergy production, economics of waste utilization, novel disposable techniques, circular bioeconomy, pollution, and water quality. Furthermore, utilization of animal waste for resource conservation and environmental protection is discussed, such as potential materials for green biochemicals. Resource recovery can, therefore, forestall the shortage of natural resources and, at the same time, can greatly reduce waste-disposal problems and energy crises. Many alternatives to waste disposal, either currently available or under study, focus on the recovery of material or energy. In a world of diminishing resources and increasing needs, each opportunity for the recycling of animal waste materials has been examined.This book significantly contributes toward climate change mitigation through better environmental solutions. A better understanding of animal waste recycling to mitigate climate changes has been portrayed in order to generate discussions among researchers and administrators. Environmental implications of animal waste are of prime importance in climate change scenario. Such wastes also harbor zoonotic pathogens that are transported in the environment.Finally, it has been tried out to collect ideas and experience in multiple aspects of animal waste management for climate change mitigation and bioenergy harvest.

Volume one of Electoral Politics in Zimbabwe pays special attention to the overarching view that the 2023 harmonized elections define the fate of the major presidential contenders and their parties as well as (re) shaping the political and economic trajectories of the nation. Cognizant of the complex nature of the Zimbabwean political realm and nuanced dynamics at play, the chapters in this volume cover three interrelated themes: the electoral environment in Zimbabwean politics; language, politics, and elections in Zimbabwe; and lastly, electoral institutions and human rights in Zimbabwean politics. The chapters foreground the ongoing tensions and politicking between the two main rivals, the ruling party, ZANU PF and the main opposition party, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). The contributors also highlight the impact of internal tensions and factionalism within the contending parties, the apparent voter apathy, disconcerting voices due to claims about lack of transparency and a toxic political space as factors impacting on the outcome of the 2023 presidential elections. The volume will appeal to academics and practitioners in politics, human rights, religion, gender, media, languages, linguistics, and development studies.

This book examines both border policies and oppositional narratives of ¿the border,¿ 2011¿2021, demonstrating that the term designates not merely a line of territorial control but also a set of social relations shaped by persistent, racially differentiated colonial structures and, more recently, by neoliberal modes of accumulation. These relations are shown to determine access to wealth and/or resources and to enable the management of labor, the extraction of surplus, and the accumulation of capital. Discussion in the book is informed by the history of these policies and by the critical literature on borders. Various cultural texts focusing on two border zones¿the US¿Mexico and the EU¿Southern Mediterranean¿are analyzed: specifically, two novels, two films, and two murals examined in conjunction with amusic video. A path to a borderless future is suggested: an abolitionist refusal of border rules with an insistence on the necessity of abolition.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to complex analysis in several variables. While it focusses on a number of topics in complex analysis rather than trying to cover as much material as possible, references to other parts of mathematics such as functional analysis or algebras are made to help broaden the view and the understanding of the chosen topics. A major focus are extension phenomena alien to the one-dimensional theory, which are expressed in the famous Hartog's Kugelsatz, the theorem of Cartan-Thullen, and Bochner's theorem.The book aims primarily at students starting to work in the field of complex analysis in several variables and instructors preparing a course. To that end, a lot of examples and supporting exercises are provided throughout the text.This second edition includes hints and suggestions for the solution of the provided exercises, with various degrees of support.

The book provides a unique analysis of current air pollution in Germany by correlating results from chemical transport modelling and accumulation monitoring by moss.Results of most recent modelling of atmospheric concentration and deposition of the metal elements Cd, Hg and Pb are compared with the results of technical measurements and bioindication with mosses. These modelling results with status 2020 have a higher spatial resolution of 0.1° x 0.1° than the modelling results valid up to then (50 km x 50 km). This leads to partly slightly higher correlations between the findings of the modelling and those of the moss monitoring. In this study, descriptive and correlation-statistical parameters are calculated, results and recommendations drawn described. A statistically adequately deepened analysis and evaluation of the highresolution modelling results requires additional methodological tools, which are outlined in summary. It is particularly important to link the exposure data from modelling, technical measurements and the findings from moss monitoring with information on the receptors, the ecosystem types. This is the only way to ensure that the results of the present project contribute to a more differentiated assessment of the impacts on ecosystems from atmospheric heavy metal deposition than has been the case to date, thus enabling a targeted further development of risk assessments for German

This book presents an innovative and environmentally friendly type of excavated earth-based building material, called Shot-Earth. The use of a common excavated earth as a construction material (both for structural and non-structural applications) has many important advantages, the main one being that the soil can be used as a zero kilo and zero cost material, being used in the same place where it is excavated. This volume collects the main results obtained by the research units in the FIRS2019-00245 research project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research (MUR) and dedicated to the study of Shot-Earth materials. Many of the exposed contributions concern the optimization of the mixture and application technique, which consists in the application of the mixture sprayed on a support (that serves as formwork), with or without reinforcements, by using a pressure pipe (that is by a high-speed projection). This new construction technique allows to quickly realise a variety of structural systems, even with a complex geometry (like vaults, arches, shells, tunnel coatings, underground tanks, waterproofing of walls for landfills and waste storages, slope stabilization, etc.). An additional feature of Shot-Earth is that it can be used to realise high energy-efficient buildings. In particular, this innovative technology can improve the capacity of a building to auto-regulate its interior heat and humidity, increasing indoor environment quality and energy performance and reducing building gas emissions.

This book offers an extensive historical, philosophical and ethical discussion on the role of autonomous technologies, and their influence on human identity. By connecting those different perspectives, and analysing some practical case studies, it guides readers to dissect the relationship between machine and human autonomy, and machine and human identity. It analyses how the relationship between human and technology has been evolving in the last few centuries. Last, it aims at proposing an explanation on the reason/s why humans have been keen on developing their own autonomy¿s perfect avatar.

The goal of this monograph is to answer the question, is it possible to solve the dynamics problem inside the configuration space instead of the phase space? By introducing a proper class of vector field ¿ the Cartesian vector field ¿ given in a Riemann space, the authors explore the connections between the first order ordinary differential equations (ODEs) associated to the Cartesian vector field in the configuration space of a given mechanical system and its dynamics. The result is a new perspective for studying the dynamics of mechanical systems, which allows the authors to present new cases of integrability for the Suslov and Veselova problem; establish the relation between the Cartesian vector field and the integrability of the geodesic flow in a special class of homogeneous surfaces; discuss the importance of the Nambu bracket in the study of first order ODEs; and offer a solution of the inverse problem in celestial mechanics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Security and Privacy in New Computing Environments, SPNCE 2022, held in Xi¿an, china, in December 30-31, 2022. The 12 full papers were selected from 38 submissions and are grouped in thematical parts as: authentication and key agreement; data security; network security.

This book explores concepts of environmentalism and feminism in science fiction novels written by women. By extrapolating the future of climate change, the authors of these texts model how readers can apply utopian feminist and environmental theories in their own lives. Chapter One establishes an understanding of ecofeminist environmental thinking through original research conducted at the Ursula K. Le Guin archive at the University of Oregon. Chapter Two shows an example of climate change dystopia set in California in Claire Vaye Watkins¿ novel Gold Fame Citrus. The final chapters explore utopian visions of queer ecologies in books by Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin. Because climate change is so difficult for individuals to grapple with, a new perspective is needed to survive it. The queer ecological philosophy in these novels points to a way of life that can reduce environmental harm in an era of climate change.