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This book reports the results from on-site research into radioactive cesium contamination in various agricultural systems affected by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident that occurred in March 2011. This is the second volume from the research groups formed in the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences of The University of Tokyo who have published the initial data in their first volume. In this book, additional data collected in the subsequent years are presented to show how the radioactivity level in agricultural products and their growing environments have changed with time. The data clarify the route by which radioactive materials entered agricultural products and their movement among different components (e.g., soil, water, and trees) within an environmental system (e.g., forests). The book consists of various topics, including radioactivity inspection of food products; decontamination trials for rice and livestock production; the state of contamination in wild animals and birds, trees, mushrooms, and timber; the dynamics of radioactivity distribution in mountain and paddy fields; damage incurred by the forestry and fishery industries; and the change in consumers’ minds. The last chapter introduces a real-time radioisotope imaging system, the forefront technique to visualize actual movement of cesium in soil and in plants. This is the only book to provide systematic data about the actual change of radioactivity, and thus is of great value for all researchers who wish to understand the effect of radioactive fallout on agriculture. The project is ongoing; the research groups continue their work in the field for further evaluation of the long-term effects.

Environmental Monitoring/Analysis --- Agriculture --- Plant Sciences --- Ecology

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At a time when contemporary challenges seem to many to be insurmountable, this book offers an optimistic view of the future and provides a road map for societies to get there. Drawing upon extensive research and many years as a thought leader in environmental and sustainability issues in Japan and internationally, Hiroshi Komiyama analyzes the most pressing challenges to the attainment of sustainability of economically advanced nations and argues forcefully for Japan to lead them out of the present dilemma through active promotion of creative consumer and societal demand. He shows how an active industry–government–academic partnership can provide the environment needed to promote such new creative demand and illustrates its potential through presentation of a Platinum Society Network that was launched on a regional basis in Japan in 2010 to facilitate the solution of common issues through the exchange of information and ideas. What is perhaps most surprising about the text is its unwavering optimism supported by hard evidence, history, and insightful observation. Problems arising from new paradigms of the 21st century (what the author refers to as “exploding knowledge, limited Earth resources, and aging societies“) thwart sustainable development in advanced and developing countries alike. All countries will struggle with issues that evolve from these paradigms including diminishing resources, expanding budget deficits, and growing global environmental problems. This window on potential practical pathways and solutions should be of interest to all those engaged in seeking ways to meet these contemporary challenges.

Sustainable Development --- Energy Policy, Economics and Management --- Energy Efficiency (incl. Buildings) --- Climate Change Management and Policy --- Renewable and Green Energy --- Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology

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Modern knowledge discovery methods enable users to discover complex patterns of various types in large information repositories. However, the underlying assumption has always been that the data to which the methods are applied to originates from one domain. The focus of this book, and the BISON project from which the contributions are originating, is a network based integration of various types of data repositories and the development of new ways to analyse and explore the resulting gigantic information networks. Instead of finding well defined global or local patterns they wanted to find domain bridging associations which are, by definition, not well defined since they will be especially interesting if they are sparse and have not been encountered before. The 32 contributions presented in this state-of-the-art volume together with a detailed introduction to the book are organized in topical sections on bisociation; representation and network creation; network analysis; exploration; and applications and evaluation.

Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics) --- Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery --- Information Systems Applications (incl. Internet) --- User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction --- Pattern Recognition --- Computer Communication Networks

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Daten sind die strategische Ressource des 21. Jahrhunderts. Es findet kein Geschäftsprozess, keine Kommunikation zwischen Geschäftspartnern, keine Wertschöpfung statt, ohne dass die involvierten Personen, Maschinen und IT-Systeme Daten nutzen, erzeugen oder verändern. Trends wie die Digitalisierung, Industrie 4.0 und Social Media tragen ebenfalls dazu bei, dass Datenmanagement zu einer Kernkompetenz für erfolgreiche Unternehmen dieser Zeit geworden ist. Damit Daten ihren ganzen Wert entfalten können, müssen sie stets in angemessener Qualität zur Verfügung stehen. Dies gilt besonders für Stammdaten, die zentralen Geschäftsobjekte eines Unternehmens. Dieses Buch zeigt einen ganzheitlichen Ansatz zum qualitätsbewussten Management von Stammdaten auf und richtet sich damit sowohl an Praktiker als auch an die Wissenschaft. Das „Framework für Stammdatenqualitätsmanagement“ wurde im Rahmen des „Competence Center Corporate Data Quality“ der Universität St. Gallen seit dem Jahr 2006 gemeinsam mit Unternehmen aus unterschiedlichen Industrien in zahlreichen praktischen Anwendungen entwickelt und verbessert. Neben den theoretischen Grundlagen räumt das Buch der praktischen Sicht mit 10 Fallstudien großen Raum ein, die erfolgreich durchgeführte Datenqualitätsprojekte praxisnah aufbereiten. Schließlich führt das Buch noch Methoden und Werkzeuge für das Datenqualitätsmanagement auf, die (Stamm-)datenmanager bei Projekten im eigenen betrieblichen Umfeld unterstützen können.

Innovation/Technology Management --- e-Commerce/e-business --- Business Process Management --- e-Business/e-Commerce

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This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources. The annual global cost of land degradation due to land use and cover change (LUCC) and lower cropland and rangeland productivity is estimated to be about 300 billion USD. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for the largest share (22%) of the total global cost of land degradation. Only about 38% of the cost of land degradation due to LUCC - which accounts for 78% of the US$300 billion loss – is borne by land users and the remaining share (62%) is borne by consumers of ecosystem services off the farm. The results in this volume indicate that reversing land degradation trends makes both economic sense, and has multiple social and environmental benefits. On average, one US dollar investment into restoration of degraded land returns five US dollars. The findings of the country case studies call for increased investments into the rehabilitation and restoration of degraded lands, including through such institutional and policy measures as strengthening community participation for sustainable land management, enhancing government effectiveness and rule of law, improving access to markets and rural services, and securing land tenure. The assessment in this volume has been conducted at a time when there is an elevated interest in private land investments and when global efforts to achieve sustainable development objectives have intensified. In this regard, the results of this volume can contribute significantly to the ongoing policy debate and efforts to design strategies for achieving sustainable development goals and related efforts to address land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

environmental economics --- biodiversity --- sustainable development