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This book presents a consistent development of the Kohn-Nirenberg type global quantization theory in the setting of graded nilpotent Lie groups in terms of their representations. It contains a detailed exposition of related background topics on homogeneous Lie groups, nilpotent Lie groups, and the analysis of Rockland operators on graded Lie groups together with their associated Sobolev spaces. For the specific example of the Heisenberg group the theory is illustrated in detail. In addition, the book features a brief account of the corresponding quantization theory in the setting of compact Lie groups. The monograph is the winner of the 2014 Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize.
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This Special Issue of Bioengineering explores topics in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology ranging from preclinical modeling to translational research and neurocognitive outcomes. The topics are as below. 1. Radiotherapy advances in pediatric brain tumors; 2. Neurofibromatosis 1 and brain tumors in children; 3. Molecular biology of pediatric gliomas and therapeutic insights; 4. Embryonal tumors of the central nervous system in children-era of targeted therapeutics; 5. Preclinical models in pediatric brain tumors—clinical relevance; 6. Molecular neuroimaging of brain tumors; 7. Palliative care for children with central nervous system malignancies; 8. Neurocognitive and psychosocial outcomes following pediatric brain tumors.
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"This book is inspired by the University of the South Pacific, the leading institution of higher education in the Pacific Islands region. Founded in 1968, USP has expanded the intellectual horizons of generations of students from its 12 member countries—Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu—and been responsible for the formation of a regional elite of educated Pacific Islanders who can be found in key positions in government and commerce across the region. At the same time, this book celebrates the collaboration of USP with The Australian National University in research, doctoral training, teaching and joint activities. Twelve of our 19 contributors gained their doctorates at ANU, most of them before or after being students and/or teaching staff at USP, and the remaining five embody the cross-fertilisation in teaching, research and consultancy of the two institutions. The contributions to this collection, with a few exceptions, are republications of key articles on the Pacific Islands by scholars with extensive experience and knowledge of the region."
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This book presents the VISCERAL project benchmarks for analysis and retrieval of 3D medical images (CT and MRI) on a large scale, which used an innovative cloud-based evaluation approach where the image data were stored centrally on a cloud infrastructure and participants placed their programs in virtual machines on the cloud. The book presents the points of view of both the organizers of the VISCERAL benchmarks and the participants. The book is divided into five parts. Part I presents the cloud-based benchmarking and Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm that the VISCERAL benchmarks used. Part II focuses on the datasets of medical images annotated with ground truth created in VISCERAL that continue to be available for research. It also covers the practical aspects of obtaining permission to use medical data and manually annotating 3D medical images efficiently and effectively. The VISCERAL benchmarks are described in Part III, including a presentation and analysis of metrics used in evaluation of medical image analysis and search. Lastly, Parts IV and V present reports by some of the participants in the VISCERAL benchmarks, with Part IV devoted to the anatomy benchmarks and Part V to the retrieval benchmark. This book has two main audiences: the datasets as well as the segmentation and retrieval results are of most interest to medical imaging researchers, while eScience and computational science experts benefit from the insights into using the Evaluation-as-a-Service paradigm for evaluation and benchmarking on huge amounts of data.
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Plasticity and dynamism characterize the immune system as a tissue-integrating network with defensive functions. Blood and lymphatic vessel trees constitute the most evident and intuitive physical platform for the development of the net of interactions between immune cells, body tissues and foreign agents. Moreover vessel repair and immune patrolling are intimately linked physiological functions with common evolutionary roots. Not surprisingly variable degrees of vascular inflammation are often detectable in the setting of systemic inflammation and autoimmunity, whereas research in the field of cardiovascular pathology is progressively converging towards the identification of a common inflammatory background. The definition of the role of vascular inflammation in causing, sustaining and/or predicting the development of systemic autoimmunity constitute a challenging, unexplored frontier towards the development of a new generation of treatments and a better patient care.
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"The Greater China Australia Dialogue on Public Administration has held annual workshops since 2011 on public administration themes of common interest to the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and Australia. This book presents and discusses a selection of papers developed from the Dialogue’s fifth workshop held in late 2015 hosted by the National Taiwan University in Taipei. The theme, ‘Value for Money’, focused on budget and financial management reforms, including how different nations account for the relative performance of their public sectors. All governments face the challenge of scarce resources requiring budgetary management processes for identifying the resources required by and available to government, and then for allocating them and ensuring their use or deployment represents value for money. Such budgetary and financial management processes need to inform decision-making routinely and protect the integrity of the way public resources are used – with some public accountability to indicate that their uses are properly authorised and reflect the policies of legitimate government leaders. The chapters in this book explore budgeting and financial management in three very different jurisdictions: Australia, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan). These activist and at times innovative countries are keen to analyse and reflect upon each other’s policy achievements and patterns of public provision. They are keen to learn more about each other as their economic and social engagement continues to deepen. They are also conscious that fundamental differences exist in terms of economic development and global strategic positioning, and levels and philosophies of political development; to an extent these differences are representative of differences amongst countries around the globe."
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This book represents the first consolidated history of vocational education and training in the Northern Territory. Not only does the story present a chronological account of events, people and institutions, it also offers an explanation of how the system actually works and this has application well beyond the Territory. The mix of historical accounting and operational analysis comes from a unique perspective. It is proposed that the best way to understand the behaviour of the government ministers who have responsibility for vocational training is to compare their decisions and actions with those of wealthy philanthropists.
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'Infogest' (Improving Health Properties of Food by Sharing our Knowledge on the Digestive Process) is an EU COST action/network in the domain of Food and Agriculture. Infogest aims at building an open international network of institutes undertaking multidisciplinary basic research on food digestion gathering scientists from different origins (including food scientists, gut physiologists and nutritionists). The network gathers 70 partners from academia, corresponding to a total of 29 countries. The three main scientific goals are: Identify the beneficial food components released in the gut during digestion; Support the effect of beneficial food components on human health; Promote harmonization of currently used digestion models Infogest meetings highlighted the need for a publication that would provide researchers with an insight into the advantages and disadvantages associated with the use of respective in vitro and ex vivo assays to evaluate the effects of foods and food bioactives on health. Such assays are particularly important in situations where a large number of foods/bioactives need to be screened rapidly and in a cost effective manner in order to ultimately identify lead foods/bioactives that can be the subject of in vivo assays. The book is an asset to researchers wishing to study the health benefits of their foods and food bioactives of interest and highlights which in vitro/ex vivo assays are of greatest relevance to their goals, what sort of outputs/data can be generated and, as noted above, highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the various assays. It is also an important resource for undergraduate students in the ‘food and health’ arena.
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Beginning with an overview of data and concepts developed in the EU-project HABIT-CHANGE, this book addresses the need for sharing knowledge and experience in the field of biodiversity conservation and climate change. There is an urgent need to build capacity in protected areas to monitor, assess, manage and report the effects of climate change and their interaction with other pressures. The contributors identify barriers to the adaptation of conservation management, such as the mismatch between planning reality and the decision context at site level. Short and vivid descriptions of case studies, drawn from investigation areas all over Central and Eastern Europe, illustrate both the local impacts of climate change and their consequences for future management. These focus on ecosystems most vulnerable to changes in climatic conditions, including alpine areas, wetlands, forests, lowland grasslands and coastal areas. The case studies demonstrate the application of adaptation strategies in protected areas like National Parks, Biosphere Reserves and Natural Parks, and reflect the potential benefits as well as existing obstacles. A general section provides the necessary background information on climate trends and their effects on abiotic and biotic components. Often, the parties to policy change and conservation management, including managers, land users and stakeholders, lack both expertise and incentives to undertake adaptation activities. The authors recognise that achieving the needed changes in behavior – habit – is as much a social learning process as a matter of science-based procedure. They describe the implementation of modeling, impact assessment and monitoring of climate conditions, and show how the results can support efforts to increase stakeholder involvement in local adaptation strategies. The book concludes by pointing out the need for more work to communicate the cross-sectoral nature of biodiversity protection, the value of well-informed planning in the long-term process of adaptation, the definition of acceptable change, and the motivational value of exchanging experience and examples of good practice.
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What is the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the human condition? In order to address this question, in 2012 the European Commission organized a research project entitled The Onlife Initiative: concept reengineering for rethinking societal concerns in the digital transition. This volume collects the work of the Onlife Initiative. It explores how the development and widespread use of ICTs have a radical impact on the human condition. ICTs are not mere tools but rather social forces that are increasingly affecting our self-conception (who we are), our mutual interactions (how we socialise); our conception of reality (our metaphysics); and our interactions with reality (our agency). In each case, ICTs have a huge ethical, legal, and political significance, yet one with which we have begun to come to terms only recently. The impact exercised by ICTs is due to at least four major transformations: the blurring of the distinction between reality and virtuality; the blurring of the distinction between human, machine and nature; the reversal from information scarcity to information abundance; and the shift from the primacy of stand-alone things, properties, and binary relations, to the primacy of interactions, processes and networks. Such transformations are testing the foundations of our conceptual frameworks. Our current conceptual toolbox is no longer fitted to address new ICT-related challenges. This is not only a problem in itself. It is also a risk, because the lack of a clear understanding of our present time may easily lead to negative projections about the future. The goal of The Manifesto, and of the whole book that contextualises, is therefore that of contributing to the update of our philosophy. It is a constructive goal. The book is meant to be a positive contribution to rethinking the philosophy on which policies are built in a hyperconnected world, so that we may have a better chance of understanding our ICT-related problems and solving them satisfactorily. The Manifesto launches an open debate on the impacts of ICTs on public spaces, politics and societal expectations toward policymaking in the Digital Agenda for Europe’s remit. More broadly, it helps start a reflection on the way in which a hyperconnected world calls for rethinking the referential frameworks on which policies are built.
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This book trains the next generation of scientists representing different disciplines to leverage the data generated during routine patient care. It formulates a more complete lexicon of evidence-based recommendations and support shared, ethical decision making by doctors with their patients. Diagnostic and therapeutic technologies continue to evolve rapidly, and both individual practitioners and clinical teams face increasingly complex ethical decisions. Unfortunately, the current state of medical knowledge does not provide the guidance to make the majority of clinical decisions on the basis of evidence. The present research infrastructure is inefficient and frequently produces unreliable results that cannot be replicated. Even randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the traditional gold standards of the research reliability hierarchy, are not without limitations. They can be costly, labor intensive, and slow, and can return results that are seldom generalizable to every patient population. Furthermore, many pertinent but unresolved clinical and medical systems issues do not seem to have attracted the interest of the research enterprise, which has come to focus instead on cellular and molecular investigations and single-agent (e.g., a drug or device) effects. For clinicians, the end result is a bit of a “data desert” when it comes to making decisions. The new research infrastructure proposed in this book will help the medical profession to make ethically sound and well informed decisions for their patients.
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This reprint book ‘Communication in Pharmacy Practice’ is launched to help improve communication practices by increasing knowledge of different aspects of communication in pharmacy practice. The book consists of recently published research articles and illustrates that pharmacy communication is a research subject that is investigated globally and from many perspectives. The overall pharmacy communicational themes investigated and discussed in this book are as follows: Communication between health care professionals; communication between pharmacists and patients in the context of both prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines; and factors impacting communication. There are many challenges for communication in pharmacy practice today, and several are highlighted in this book. A central conclusion to the research contributions of several of the authors is the specific need to further develop direct, face-to-face communication between pharmacy staff and patients/consumers including tools to better address patient’s needs.
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This reprint book ‘Communication in Pharmacy Practice’ is launched to help improve communication practices by increasing knowledge of different aspects of communication in pharmacy practice. The book consists of recently published research articles and illustrates that pharmacy communication is a research subject that is investigated globally and from many perspectives. The overall pharmacy communicational themes investigated and discussed in this book are as follows: Communication between health care professionals; communication between pharmacists and patients in the context of both prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines; and factors impacting communication. There are many challenges for communication in pharmacy practice today, and several are highlighted in this book. A central conclusion to the research contributions of several of the authors is the specific need to further develop direct, face-to-face communication between pharmacy staff and patients/consumers including tools to better address patient’s needs.
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This book contains the proceedings of the International Symposium on the Mechanisms of Sexual Reproduction in Animals and Plants, where many plant and animal reproductive biologists gathered to discuss their recent progress in investigating the shared mechanisms and factors involved in sexual reproduction. This now is the first book that reviews recent progress in almost all fields of plant and animal fertilization. It was recently reported that the self-sterile mechanism of a hermaphroditic marine invertebrate (ascidian) is very similar to the self-incompatibility system in flowering plants. It was also found that a male factor expressed in the sperm cells of flowering plants is involved in gamete fusion not only of plants but also of animals and parasites. These discoveries have led to the consideration that the core mechanisms or factors involved in sexual reproduction may be shared by animals, plants and unicellular organisms. This valuable book is highly useful for reproductive biologists as well as for biological scientists outside this field in understanding the current progress of reproductive biology.
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This book trains the next generation of scientists representing different disciplines to leverage the data generated during routine patient care. It formulates a more complete lexicon of evidence-based recommendations and support shared, ethical decision making by doctors with their patients. Diagnostic and therapeutic technologies continue to evolve rapidly, and both individual practitioners and clinical teams face increasingly complex ethical decisions. Unfortunately, the current state of medical knowledge does not provide the guidance to make the majority of clinical decisions on the basis of evidence. The present research infrastructure is inefficient and frequently produces unreliable results that cannot be replicated. Even randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the traditional gold standards of the research reliability hierarchy, are not without limitations. They can be costly, labor intensive, and slow, and can return results that are seldom generalizable to every patient population. Furthermore, many pertinent but unresolved clinical and medical systems issues do not seem to have attracted the interest of the research enterprise, which has come to focus instead on cellular and molecular investigations and single-agent (e.g., a drug or device) effects. For clinicians, the end result is a bit of a “data desert” when it comes to making decisions. The new research infrastructure proposed in this book will help the medical profession to make ethically sound and well informed decisions for their patients.
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This book combines Islamic textual analysis with juridical methodology to engage dominant secular bioethics in the Muslim healthcare institutions. It integrates Islamic textual resources with medical information in order to provide careful analyses of the political, economic and cultural terrains that are necessary for bioethicists to effectively promote social justice
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This in-depth survey of salutogenesis shows the breadth and strengths of this innovative perspective on health promotion, health care, and wellness. Background and historical chapters trace the development of the salutogenic model of health, and flesh out the central concepts, most notably generalized resistance resources and the sense of coherence, that differentiate it from pathogenesis. From there, experts describe a range of real-world applications within and outside health contexts, from positive psychology to geriatrics, from small towns to corrections facilities, and from school and workplace to professional training. Perspectives from scholars publishing in languages other than English show the global relevance of the field.
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This book discusses the common principles of morality and ethics derived from divinely endowed intuitive reason through the creation of al-fitr' a (nature) and human intellect (al-‘aql). Biomedical topics are presented and ethical issues related to topics such as genetic testing, assisted reproduction and organ transplantation are discussed.
Whereas these natural sources are God’s special gifts to human beings, God’s revelation as given to the prophets is the supernatural source of divine guidance through which human communities have been guided at all times through history. The second part of the book concentrates on the objectives of Islamic religious practice – the maqa' sid – which include: Preservation of Faith, Preservation of Life, Preservation of Mind (intellect and reason), Preservation of Progeny (al-nasl) and Preservation of Property. Lastly, the third part of the book discusses selected topical issues, including abortion, assisted reproduction devices, genetics, organ transplantation, brain death and end-of-life aspects. For each topic, the current medical evidence is followed by a detailed discussion of the ethical issues involved.
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The educational system leading up to the pharmacy degree, student training, and the continuing personal development of pharmacists are being more and more mapped to the competences pharmacists require to provide the relevant safe and efficient pharmaceutical services to meet the health needs of patients. This book draws on the experience of experts involved in the develoment of competence training for pharmacy education and training in Europe, North America, and Australia. It discusses the philosophy and implications of such an approach, as well as the production and development of models, and their application to existing courses.
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This volume constitutes the Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Hearing (ISH), held from 15 to 19 June 2015 in Groningen, The Netherlands. This meeting continued a great tradition of conferences that started in 1969 and has been held every 3 years. It was the second ISH meeting that took place in Groningen.The emphasis for the ISH series has traditionally been on bringing together re-searchers from basic research on physiological and perceptual processes of the au-ditory system, including modeling. However, this tradition has also meant usually excluding great research on other topics related to hearing sciences, such as hearing impairment, hearing devices, as well as cognitive auditory processes. During the ISH 2015, we have aimed to expand to include such relatively new research, while still continuing with the ISH tradition of basic science. As a result, we had a great program that covered many exciting, and some contemporary, topics from a wide range of disciplines related to auditory sciences.
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Universal Health Coverage as defined by the World Health Organization encompasses equal access for all to good quality health services and with no financial risk for those in need of them. As such it is a modern term formulated on western ideas of health, however the philosophy it conveys has existed for many centuries across different regions and cultures of the world. 'Health For All' is based on series of seminars which formed part of the World Health Organization's Global Health Histories project. It explores the development of universal health coverage in diverse contexts, the political and economic trends that effected the running of these schemes, and, not least, critical perspectives into the variety of links between structures of national universal healthcare systems.
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Canadian Pharmaceutical Scientists have a rich history of ground-breaking research in pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism undertaken throughout its Pharmacy and Medical Schools and within the Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. The principle of drug Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Excretion (ADME) is the foundational basis of rationale drug-design, and pharmacotherapy. The study of ADME and its descriptive quantitative analysis is the basis of pharmacokinetics. Pharmacokinetics is fundamental in the development of a new chemical entity into a marketable product and is essential in understanding the bioavailability, bioequivalence and biosimilarities of drugs. Pharmacokinetics and drug development studies facilitate an understanding of organ-based functionality. Population pharmacokinetic variability and the modeling of drug concentrations has significant utility in translating individual response in a target patient population.This special issue serves to highlight and capture the contemporary progress and current landscape of pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism within the prevailing Canadian context. We invite articles on all aspects of Pharmacokinetics and Drug Metabolism studies highlighting the world-class research currently undertaken in Canada for this special issue.
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One of the main aspirations of the European Union (EU) is the development of a pan-European health system with unhindered access to quality care, in all member states. The PHAR-QA “Quality Assurance in European Pharmacy Education and Training” project explored the realities surrounding this idea in the area of pharmacy. This book assembles a series of papers, already published in the journal “Pharmacy”, that describe the project: its origins, design, implementation, results, interpretation, and perspectives.
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The educational system leading up to the pharmacy degree, student training, and the continuing personal development of pharmacists are being more and more mapped to the competences pharmacists require to provide the relevant safe and efficient pharmaceutical services to meet the health needs of patients. This book draws on the experience of experts involved in the develoment of competence training for pharmacy education and training in Europe, North America, and Australia. It discusses the philosophy and implications of such an approach, as well as the production and development of models, and their application to existing courses.
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This reprint book ‘Communication in Pharmacy Practice’ is launched to help improve communication practices by increasing knowledge of different aspects of communication in pharmacy practice. The book consists of recently published research articles and illustrates that pharmacy communication is a research subject that is investigated globally and from many perspectives. The overall pharmacy communicational themes investigated and discussed in this book are as follows: Communication between health care professionals; communication between pharmacists and patients in the context of both prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medicines; and factors impacting communication. There are many challenges for communication in pharmacy practice today, and several are highlighted in this book. A central conclusion to the research contributions of several of the authors is the specific need to further develop direct, face-to-face communication between pharmacy staff and patients/consumers including tools to better address patient’s needs.
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This book is intended to be a reference text for veterinarians who provide clinical services to sheep producers. It is directed first and foremost at Australian sheep-raising systems, but the approaches described herein will have wide application in all countries where sheep are raised under extensive grazing conditions. Most of the important conditions of sheep in Australia are relatively straightforward to diagnose, but the establishment of effective and economically sound control strategies is often the most difficult part of health management, particularly for those who are less familiar with sheep production systems. With six initial chapters focusing on providing readers with a basic understanding of the business and science underpinning sheep production, this book focuses its remaining chapters on reproduction and disease conditions, ordered largely on a systems basis. The book provides details about the way disease processes develop and manifest in sheep flocks, with numerous references for those who wish to read further. Australian sheep production is a profitable and fulfilling agricultural pursuit for a large number of farm owners, and this book is intended to assist those who work in the industry to add to the profitability and efficiency of sheep production systems, the quality of sheep products and the welfare of the sheep in those systems.
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Malaria was considered one of the most widespread disease-causing entities in the nineteenth century. It was associated with a variety of frailties far beyond fevers, ranging from idiocy to impotence. And yet, it was not a self-contained category. The reconsolidation of malaria as a diagnostic category during this period happened within a wider context in which cinchona plants and their most valuable extract, quinine, were reinforced as objects of natural knowledge and social control. In India, the exigencies and apparatuses of British imperial rule occasioned the close interactions between these histories. In the process, British imperial rule became entangled with a network of nonhumans that included, apart from cinchona plants and the drug quinine, a range of objects described as malarial, as well as mosquitoes. Malarial Subjects explores this history of the co-constitution of a cure and disease, of British colonial rule and nonhumans, and of science, medicine and empire.
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Mass vaccination campaigns are political projects that presume to protect individuals, communities, and societies. Like other pervasive expressions of state power - taxing, policing, conscripting - mass vaccination arouses anxiety in some people but sentiments of civic duty and shared solidarity in others. This collection of essays gives a comparative overview of vaccination at different times, in widely different places and under different types of political regime. Core themes in the chapters include immunisation as an element of state formation; citizens' articulation of seeing (or not seeing) their needs incorporated into public health practice; allegations that donors of development aid have too much influence on third-world health policies; and an ideological shift that regards vaccines more as profitable commodities than as essential tools of public health. A novel lens through which to view changes in concepts of 'society' and 'nation' over time.
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Animals and Medicine: The Contribution of Animal Experiments to the Control of Disease offers a detailed, scholarly historical review of the critical role animal experiments have played in advancing medical knowledge. Laboratory animals have been essential to this progress, and the knowledge gained has saved countless lives—both human and animal. Unfortunately, those opposed to using animals in research have often employed doctored evidence to suggest that the practice has impeded medical progress. This volume presents the articles Jack Botting wrote for the Research Defence Society News from 1991 to 1996, papers which provided scientists with the information needed to rebut such claims. Collected, they can now reach a wider readership interested in understanding the part of animal experiments in the history of medicine—from the discovery of key vaccines to the advancement of research on a range of diseases, among them hypertension, kidney failure and cancer. This book is essential reading for anyone curious about the role of animal experimentation in the history of science from the nineteenth century to the present.
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In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in the production of nanoscale fibres for drug delivery and tissue engineering. Nanofibres in Drug Delivery aims to outline to new researchers in the field the utility of nanofibres in drug delivery, and to explain to them how to prepare fibres in the laboratory. The book begins with a brief discussion of the main concepts in pharmaceutical science. The authors then introduce the key techniques that can be used for fibre production and explain briefly the theory behind them. They discuss the experimental implementation of fibre production, starting with the simplest possible set-up and then moving on to consider more complex arrangements. As they do so, they offer advice from their own experience of fibre production, and use examples from current literature to show how each particular type of fibre can be applied to drug delivery. They also consider how fibre production could be moved beyond the research laboratory into industry, discussing regulatory and scale-up aspects.
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This book is an essential guide to the medical treatment of thrombosis and presents core principles of anticoagulant therapeutics as well as drug recommendations. Written by recognized experts in the field, this concise, accessible handbook provides a unique and valuable resource in the cardiovascular field, both for those currently in training, and for those already in clinical or research practice.
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Across the world, developing countries are attempting to balance the international standards of intellectual property concerning pharmaceutical patents against the urgent need for accessible and affordable medicines. In this timely and necessary book, Monirul Azam examines the attempts of several developing countries to walk this fine line. He evaluates the experiences of Brazil, China, India, and South Africa for lessons to guide Bangladesh and developing nations everywhere. Azam's legal expertise, concern for public welfare, and compelling grasp of principal case studies make Intellectual Property and Public Health in the Developing World a definitive work.
The developing world is striving to meet the requirements of the World Trade Organization's TRIPS Agreement on intellectual property. This book sets out with lucidity and insight the background of the TRIPS Agreement and its implications for pharmaceutical patents, the consequences for developing countries, and the efforts of certain representative nations to comply with international stipulations while still maintaining local industry and public health. Azam then brings the weight of this research to bear on the particular case of Bangladesh, offering a number of specific policy recommendations for the Bangladeshi government—and for governments the world over.
Intellectual Property and Public Health in the Developing World is a must-read for public policy-makers, academics and students, non-governmental organizations, and readers everywhere who are interested in making sure that developing nations meet the health care needs of their people.
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This book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which include discussion of realistic cases which are likely to arise in the practice of public health. This work discusses these issues on a case to case basis and helps create awareness and understanding of the ethics of public health care. The main audience for the casebook is public health practitioners, including front-line workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, managers, planners, and decision makers who have an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis into their day to day public health practice. The casebook is also useful to schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics.
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The importance of the pharmaceutical industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, its claim to policy priority, is rooted in the vast unmet health needs of the sub-continent. Making Medicines in Africa is a collective endeavour, by a group of contributors with a strong African and more broadly Southern presence, to find ways to link technological development, investment and industrial growth in pharmaceuticals to improve access to essential good quality medicines, as part of moving towards universal access to competent health care in Africa. The authors aim to shift the emphasis in international debate and initiatives towards sustained Africa-based and African-led initiatives to tackle this huge challenge. Without the technological, industrial, intellectual, organisational and research-related capabilities associated with competent pharmaceutical production, and without policies that pull the industrial sectors towards serving local health needs, the African sub-continent cannot generate the resources to tackle its populations' needs and demands.
Research for this book has been selected as one of the 20 best examples of the impact of UK research on development. See http://www.ukcds.org.uk/the-global-impact-of-uk-research for further details.
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This book is the first to develop explicit methods for evaluating evidence of mechanisms in the field of medicine. It explains why it can be important to make this evidence explicit, and describes how to take such evidence into account in the evidence appraisal process. In addition, it develops procedures for seeking evidence of mechanisms, for evaluating evidence of mechanisms, and for combining this evaluation with evidence of association in order to yield an overall assessment of effectiveness.
Evidence-based medicine seeks to achieve improved health outcomes by making evidence explicit and by developing explicit methods for evaluating it. To date, evidence-based medicine has largely focused on evidence of association produced by clinical studies. As such, it has tended to overlook evidence of pathophysiological mechanisms and evidence of the mechanisms of action of interventions.
The book offers a useful guide for all those whose work involves evaluating evidence in the health sciences, including those who need to determine the effectiveness of health interventions and those who need to ascertain the effects of environmental exposures.
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This book discusses the common principles of morality and ethics derived from divinely endowed intuitive reason through the creation of al-fitr' a (nature) and human intellect (al-‘aql). Biomedical topics are presented and ethical issues related to topics such as genetic testing, assisted reproduction and organ transplantation are discussed.
Whereas these natural sources are God’s special gifts to human beings, God’s revelation as given to the prophets is the supernatural source of divine guidance through which human communities have been guided at all times through history. The second part of the book concentrates on the objectives of Islamic religious practice – the maqa' sid – which include: Preservation of Faith, Preservation of Life, Preservation of Mind (intellect and reason), Preservation of Progeny (al-nasl) and Preservation of Property. Lastly, the third part of the book discusses selected topical issues, including abortion, assisted reproduction devices, genetics, organ transplantation, brain death and end-of-life aspects. For each topic, the current medical evidence is followed by a detailed discussion of the ethical issues involved.
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This work contains updated and clinically relevant information about tuberculosis. It is aimed at providing a succinct overview of history and disease epidemiology, clinical presentation and the most recent scientific developments in the field of tuberculosis research, with an emphasis on diagnosis and treatment. It may serve as a practical resource for students, clinicians and researchers who work in the field of infectious diseases.
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This stimulating open access volume details the innovative work of the Pan Institution Network for Global Health in creating collaborative research-based answers to large-scale health issues. Equitable partnerships among member universities representing North America, Africa, Asia, and Europe reverse standard cross-national dynamics to develop locally relevant responses to health challenges as well as their underlying disparities. Case studies focusing on multiple morbidities and effects of urbanization on health illustrate open dialogue in addressing HIV, maternal/child health, diabetes, and other major concerns. These instructive examples model collaborations between global North and South as meaningful steps toward the emerging global future of public health.
Included in the coverage:
1. Building sustainable networks: introducing the Pan Institution Network for Global Health
2. Fostering dialogues in global health education: a graduate and undergraduate approach
3. Provider workload and multiple morbidities in the Caribbean and South Africa
4. Project Redemption: conducting research with informal workers in New York City
5. Partnership and collaboration in global health: valuing reciprocity
Global Health Collaboration will interest faculty working within the field of global health; scholars within public health, health policy, and cognate disciplines; as well as administrators looking to develop international university partnerships around global health and graduate students in the areas of global health, health administration, and public health and related social sciences (e.g., sociology, anthropology, demography).
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This book breaks new ground by situating animals and their diseases at the very heart of modern medicine. In demonstrating their historical significance as subjects and shapers of medicine, it offers important insights into past animal lives, and reveals that what we think of as ‘human’ medicine was in fact deeply zoological.
Each chapter analyses an important episode in which animals changed and were changed by medicine. Ranging across the animal inhabitants of Britain’s zoos, sick sheep on Scottish farms, unproductive livestock in developing countries, and the tapeworms of California and Beirut, they illuminate the multi-species dimensions of modern medicine and its rich historical connections with biology, zoology, agriculture and veterinary medicine. The modern movement for One Health – whose history is also analyzed – is therefore revealed as just the latest attempt to improve health by working across species and disciplines.
This book will appeal to historians of animals, science and medicine, to those involved in the promotion and practice of One Health today.
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This open access book is an overview on CT/X-ray contrast media designed for radiologists and other medical specialists who use contrast media in imaging and interventional procedures as well as related scientists on the use and pharmaceutical aspects of X-ray contrast media. The overall goal of this book is to provide a comprehensive overview relevant for the optimal use of x-ray contrast media covering next to the historic development, their structure and properties also practical information for handling of contrast media, and explanation of the relevant risks during use and measures for prevention and treatment of potential side effects.
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This open access book examines the triangle between family, gender, and health in Europe from a demographic perspective. It helps to understand patterns and trends in each of the three components separately, as well as their interdependencies. It overcomes the widely observable specialization in demographic research, which usually involves researchers studying either family or fertility processes or focusing on health and mortality.
Coverage looks at new family and partnership forms among the young and middle-aged, their relationship with health, and the pathways through which they act. Among the old, lifelong family biography and present family situation are explored. Evidence is provided that partners advancing in age start to resemble each other more closely in terms of health, with the health of the partner being a crucial factor of an individual’s own health. Gender-specific health outcomes and pathways are central in the designs of the studies and the discussion of the results. The book compares twelve European countries reflecting different welfare state regimes and offers country-specific studies conducted in Austria, Germany, Italy - all populations which have received less attention in the past - and Sweden. As a result, readers discover the role of different concepts of family and health as well as comparisons within European countries and ethnic groups.
It will be an insightful resource for students, academics, policy makers, and researchers that will help define future research in terms of gender and public health.
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This textbook serves as an introduction to nutrition for undergraduate students and is the OER textbook for the FSHN 185 The Science of Human Nutrition course at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. The book covers basic concepts in human nutrition, key information about essential nutrients, basic nutritional assessment, and nutrition across the lifespan.
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The authors of this book set out a system of safety strategies and interventions for managing patient safety on a day-to-day basis and improving safety over the long term. These strategies are applicable at all levels of the healthcare system from the frontline to the regulation and governance of the system.
There have been many advances in patient safety, but we now need a new and broader vision that encompasses care throughout the patient’s journey. The authors argue that we need to see safety through the patient’s eyes, to consider how safety is managed in different contexts and to develop a wider strategic and practical vision in which patient safety is recast as the management of risk over time. Most safety improvement strategies aim to improve reliability and move closer toward optimal care. However, healthcare will always be under pressure and we also require ways of managing safety when conditions are difficult. We need to make more use of strategies concerned with detecting, controlling, managing and responding to risk. Strategies for managing safety in highly standardised and controlled environments are necessarily different from those in which clinicians constantly have to adapt and respond to changing circumstances.
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This open access book presents recent advances in the pure sciences that are of significance in the quest for alternatives to the use of animals in research and describes a variety of practical applications of the three key guiding principles for the more ethical use of animals in experiments – replacement, reduction, and refinement, collectively known as the 3Rs. Important examples from across the world of implementation of the 3Rs in the testing of cosmetics, chemicals, pesticides, and biologics, including vaccines, are described, with additional information on relevant regulations. The coverage also encompasses emerging approaches to alternative tests and the 3Rs. The book is based on the most informative contributions delivered at the Asian Congress 2016 on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences. It will be of value for those working in R&D, for graduate students, and for educators in various fields, including the pharmaceutical and cosmetic sciences, pharmacology, toxicology, and animal welfare. The free, open access distribution of Alternatives to Animal Testing is enabled by the Creative Commons Attribution license in International version 4: CC BY 4.0.
