Bentham Science Publishers

This volume summarizes the history and findings of the First Mariners Project, which the author, Robert G. Bednarik, commenced in 1996 in order to explore the Ice Age origins of seafaring. This is the largest archaeological replication project ever undertaken with several hundred people involved in the construction of eight primitive vessels with stone tools under scientifically controlled conditions, six of them sailing. Four bamboo rafts have succeeded in accomplishing the historically documented crossings they sought to replicate. One of the successful experiments, a 1000 kilometer journey to Australia in 1998, attempted to recreate the first human arrival in Australia, probably around 60,000 years ago. Other voyages attempted to address the much earlier sea crossings documented to have taken place in the islands of Indonesia, the earliest of which may have occurred nearly a million years ago. These experiments have also featured in BBC and National Geographic documentaries.

The First Mariners comprehensively describes the archaeological background and relevant issues of the project and features an extensive pictorial record, of both the experiments and the archaeological basis of this research – giving a unique experience to readers interested in understanding the earliest marine adventurers from a historical and technical perspective.

The Future of Computing: Ubiquitous Applications and Technologies explores the transformative power of ubiquitous computing across diverse fields, from healthcare and smart grids to home automation and digital forensics. Ubiquitous computing, which seamlessly integrates computing into everyday life, is reshaping industries and addressing significant challenges, such as data security, digital payments, and IoT optimization. This book provides expert insights and practical approaches, covering topics such as automated medical imaging, federated cloud assessments, smart grid security, and AI-driven control systems.

Key Features:

- Foundational and advanced concepts of ubiquitous computing across multiple industries.

- Security structures in IoT, AI applications, and data privacy.

- Real-world applications, including healthcare automation, smart homes, and digital forensics.

- Case studies on emerging trends in IoT, AIoT, and smart grid security.

This e-book reviews environmental impacts of ski tourism in mountain environments. Specifically, the book addresses skiing impacts on soils, vegetation, vertebrate and invertebrate animals living in such habitats. Additional chapters also explain the methods for the restoration of disturbed sites at high altitude and snow cover in a changing climate.

The e-book is therefore a compilation on the latest knowledge on environmental impacts of skiing and is intended to be a standard reference for ecologists, students and universities, business professionals (ski-resort managers), regional governmental organizations, conservation agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

• Diseases involving the gastrointestinal tract (esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine and rectum, and the pancreas accessory organ of digestion)
• Diseases involving the liver (i.e., autoimmune diseases, viral hepatitis, alcoholic liver diseases, metabolic diseases)
• Infectious diseases in the gastrointestinal tract and the liver
• Epidemiology of gastrointestinal diseases
• Diagnosis and treatment
• Nutrition
• Disease biomarkers
• Drug discovery, efficacy, toxicity, and personalized medicine
• Pathology
• Diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy

Blending insights from psychology, neuroscience, and cultural studies, this book aims to equip readers with practical tools to interpret body language, facial expressions, eye movements, and gestures, enabling a deeper understanding of unspoken thoughts and emotions.

Beginning with the science behind nonverbal cues, the book progresses on to techniques for analyzing micro-expressions, cultural variations, and advanced topics like pupillometry and deception detection. Later chapters emphasize observational skill-building and intuitive perception, supported by real-world applications and hands-on activities.

Key features:

Integrates scientific research with practical decoding strategies

Applies behavioral analysis across business, healthcare, education, and law enforcement

Includes cultural case studies and ethical considerations

Enhances emotional intelligence and social awareness

Offers interactive exercises for skill development

Frontiers in Arthritis is an ebook series devoted to publishing the latest advances in arthritis medicine and research. Each volume brings forth contributions on topics relevant to the diagnosis, management and treatment of arthritis. The ebook series is essential reading for rheumatologists and orthopedic surgeons involved in clinical research and practice.

This volume presents comprehensive information about the pathology, diagnosis and treatment of haemophilic arthropathy. Readers will find information about knee, hip, elbow, foot and ankle surgery in patients affected by haemophilia as well as special topics (microsurgery and postoperative rehabilitation and health risks). The broad range of information presented in this volume makes it the definitive handbook on arthritis in haemophiliac cases and the management of related complications.

This eBook " Medical Lives of History`s Famous People" highlights the consequences of numerous medical concerns of historical individuals. It also discusses in depth how the public lives of famous people were strongly affected due to their medical conditions.

The contents of this book include chapters on the historical facts concerning Babe Ruth`s heroic battle with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, the Oral Cancer of Sigmund Freud, Celiac disease: The Cause of President John F. Kennedy`s life long medical travails, Porphyria: The cause of the madness of King George; Hemophilia: The Royal disease and much more.

This book is a valuable resource for MSc and PhD students, academic personnel and researchers seeking updated and critically important information on medical and mental ailments. The book gives a detailed exposure of the medical issues of the famous people which will give benefit to the readers in their daily life.

This e-book discusses the molecular relationship between biological systems and risk factors for in-utero oxidative insults, maternal health and the impact on fetus at different critical developmental time windows (prenatal or even postnatal). Plausibly, prenatal and early postnatal periods are the most critical "windows" to oxidative stress programming insults. Pro-oxidative stress is a common feature of many conditions associated with adverse fetal growth and/or preterm birth, such as pre-eclampsia, diabetes, smoking, malnutrition or excessive nutrition, infection or inflammation. Oxidative stress insults may be directly linked to or associated with many genetic, nutritional and environmental risk factors that contribute to risks of adverse fetal growth or preterm birth. This e-book should be a valuable reference for medical researchers and working professionals interested in congenital defects.

Inflammation triggers specific metabolic pathways and if not resolved, translates into several painful diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disorders and psoriasis. Various processes have been explored to understand the factors behind inflammation and consequently, many mechanisms have been examined to suppress it. The nucleotide-binding domain like receptor 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is an example of such factors which is responsible for triggering sterile and microbe induced inflammation. Studies of genetic variants of the related gene have revealed insights into the mRNA expression pathways that may help researchers to identify crucial disease mechanisms.

This book is a review of the scientific findings of distinguished scholars who have studied NLRP3 inflammasome activation and its contribution in worsening the outcomes of inflammatory disorders.

This collection of chapters covers many aspects of the multifaceted role of NLRP3 inflammasome. Beginning with airway inflammation and fibrosis, it progresses to explore its involvement in pulmonary hypertension, heart diseases, tuberculosis, cardiovascular complications, and childhood asthma. Additionally, it examines the inflammasome's impact on protozoan parasitic infections and neuropathic pain. The chapters not only elucidate the intricate mechanisms of NLRP3 activation but also discuss potential inhibitors and therapeutic targets. Readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of the NLRP3 inflammasome's diverse implications across different physiological contexts. The book includes references making this book a valuable treatise of insights for researchers, clinicians, and healthcare professionals.

Thermodynamics and kinetics (i.e., chemical interactions) are extremely important concepts for pharmaceutical scientists to understand since the "drug selection process", that is, the process used by pharmaceutical companies to discover and develop marketable drugs, is totally dependent upon these theories. While both theories are important, kinetic models describing complex chemical and biological processes provide a unifying theory for all phases of the discovery and development of drugs. Unfortunately, in most textbooks the mathematical descriptions necessary to develop a deeper understanding of kinetic models are omitted. This is primarily done such that the underlying chemistry and biochemistry principles are not obscured by the "mathematical maze" that is generated from these models. As a result many chemists and biologists veer rapidly away from thermodynamics and kinetics. For some scientists, this can lead to confusion on how to apply these models to real-life situations. For example, many enzyme kinetic models are formulated as rate equations. Since experimentally measurements typically determine concentrations and rarely determines rates directly, confusion arises on how to apply kinetic models. In this case, either the model is integrated to give a description of the concentration course of the enzyme reaction or the data is differentiated (i.e., the process of determining rates) by measuring tangents to the reaction curves at zero time.

The level of mathematical skills required to solve kinetic models is minimal for anyone who has studied college level algebra and calculus. Thus, the objective of this book is to present a brief review of thermodynamics and kinetics followed by a detailed step-by-step approach in developing and solving kinetic models for complex chemical and biological processes. The book focuses on building a solid mathematical foundation of enzyme kinetic models by systematically evolving simple uni- and bi-molecular models to enzyme models. Applications for some of these kinetic models are generated from pharmaceutical examples and a selection of problems is presented at the end of each chapter. This elementary approach has been intentionally selected to keep the book at a self-explanatory level. It is anticipated that the reader will be able to follow the mathematical operations and in the process develop a deeper understanding of kinetic models and an improved ability to interpret kinetic parameters.

The book is restricted to solution chemical kinetics and does not deal with the theories of chemical reactions, gas-phase reactions, experimental kinetic methods and so on. There are many excellent chemical kinetic textbooks available for those interested in these topics. The solution chemical kinetics materials for the book were obtained from literature papers and several books on physical chemistry and enzyme kinetics. The ideas from these sources have been hopefully reinterpreted in a style that is well matched to those pharmaceutical scientists that do not have a comprehensive knowledge of kinetic models and the mathematical skills to solve them.

Chapter 1 presents a general overview to thermodynamic and kinetic principals and theory. In Section i, an overview to the scope of the book is presented. A brief review of mathematical fundamentals used in the book (Section ii) and kinetic and thermodynamic principals are present (Section iii and iv). A glossary of symbols and abbreviation used throughout the book is presented in Section v. Chapter 2 describes the basic theory of first-order kinetic models. These types of mathematical models are used for irreversible (Section I) and reversible (Section II) rearrangement reactions and some examples are presented to illustrate their applications to drug discovery. Chapter 3 describes second-order irreversible (Section III) and reversible (Section IV) dimerization reactions while Chapter 4 describes second-order irreversible (Section V) and reversible (Section VI) binding reactions. Chapter 5 describes partially and fully coupled reversible completive binding reactions (Section VII). Chapter 6 describes second-order kinetic models that are used to analyze consecutive irreversible (Section VIII) and reversible (Section IX) substrate suicide enzyme reactions. Chapter 7 describes kinetic models that are used to analyze consecutive irreversible (Section X) and reversible (Sections XI and XII) enzyme reactions. Chapter 8 describes kinetic models that are used to analyze consecutive reversible inhibition enzyme reactions (Section XIII - XVI). Chapter 9 describes kinetic models that are used to analyze substrate (Section XVII) and product inhibition (Section XVIII) enzyme reactions. The Appendix contains the answers to the problems.