This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management, SSDBM 2012, held in Chania, Grete, Greece, in June 2012. The 25 long and 10 short papers presented together with 2 keynotes, 1 panel, and 13 demonstration and poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The topics covered are uncertain and probabilistic data, parallel and distributed data management, graph processing, mining multidimensional data, provenance and workflows, processing scientific queries, and support for demanding applications.

A smart civil structure integrates smart materials, sensors, actuators, signal processors, communication networks, power sources, diagonal strategies, control strategies, repair strategies, and life-cycle management strategies. It should function optimally and safely in its environment and maintain structural integrity during strong winds, severe earthquakes, and other extreme events. This book extends from the fundamentals to the state-of-the-art. It covers the elements of smart civil structures, their integration, and their functions. The elements consist of smart materials, sensors, control devices, signal processors, and communication networks. Integration refers to multi-scale modelling and model updating, multi-type sensor placement, control theory, and collective placement of control devices and sensors. And the functions include structural health monitoring, structural vibration control, structural self-repairing, and structural energy harvesting, with emphasis on their synthesis to form truly smart civil structures. It suits civil engineering students, professionals, and researchers with its blend of principles and practice.

"This Report demonstrates that innovative cultural policies implemented at regional and local levels have a positive impact on the whole of cultural governance. It highlights the strategic frameworks best adapted to the digital environment, the emergence of exchange platforms and the dynamism of artistic incubators in the global South. It also points to the persistent inequalities and underrepresentation of women in the culture sector, trade barriers on cultural goods and services from the global South and the vulnerability of artists at risk. By providing yet unpublished statistics and data in these areas, this Report is essential for developing and implementing public policies that are adapted to the evolving needs of the culture sector"--Foreword.

Q fever is a zoonotic infectious disease caused by Coxiella burnetii, which infects a broad range of hosts. This volume presents critical reviews of the biological aspects of C. burnetii. Topics covered include C. burnetii's place in the microbial world through a comparison with other microorganisms that are phylogenetically related or share phenotypic traits; intrinsic properties of Coxiella with respect to infectivity, virulence, and pathogenecity; past and current methods for the isolation, amplification, and purification of C. Burnetii; obligate acidophily; metabolic capabilities, with emphasis on intermediary metabolism, macromolecular synthesis, and protein export; and human immune responses to bacterial components during acute and chronic infection by C. Burnetii. Other fascinating topics about C. Burnetii include antigens, virulence factors, and biological response modifiers; ultrastructure; genetics; cloning and expression; and C. burnetii in the U.S.S.R. and China. Epidemiologists, molecular biologists, microbiologists, and other researchers interested in Q fever and C. burnetii should consider this book an essential reference resource.

This book brings together scholars who have been working on agreement restrictions within the generative framework. The articles range from syntactic to morphological approaches, investigating different domains of agreement restrictions, such as the Person Case Constraint, nominative objects, and Quirky Case Restrictions in a series of European and Non-European languages, providing new data and novel analyses for both, new and well-known facts. This book collects different and relevant studies in this field and gives a general overview of the different theoretical approaches concerned with the morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of agreement restriction phenomena.