Books on the topic 'Disturbed environments'

This chapter examines ‘threatened species’ and ‘vulnerable marine ecosystems’ (VME) in the law of the sea. It teases out the broad-spectrum responses of international law that tackle principal anthropogenic threats, including the want of jurisdiction over marine resources, unsustainable fisheries, pollution, and habitat conservation. It then extracts rules from within environmental treaties designed to catch emergency cases, where individual species are close to extinction or sites are being degraded and disturbed.

Related to bidirectional interaction between electrophysiological and endocrine activity during sleep, which are assessed by sleep electroencephalography (EEG) and hormone profiles, respectively, sleep changes occur frequently in endocrine disorders. In most of these disorders, sleep is impaired. Only in patients with prolactinoma is slow-wave sleep elevated. This chapter summarizes the current knowledge on sleep in disorders of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) and hypothalamic–pituitary–somatotropic (HPS) systems, in hypo- and hyperthyroidism, in diabetes mellitus, in prolactinoma, in disorders related to gonadal hormones, and with regard to disturbed endocrine rhythms related to environmental influences.

Integrative Environmental Medicine looks at the history and changing landscape of environmental issues in the United States, including water supply, air quality, extensive plastic pollution, harmful chemicals in cleaning and personal care products, radiofrequency radiation, food additives, pesticides, and medications. The unique properties of compounds such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals are explored along with their ability to disturb the body’s normal signaling pathways, genetic profile, and gut microbiome. Resulting molecular derangements promote thyroid and other autoimmune diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and influence developmental problems in children. Analysis of current research identifies ways to reduce exposures and health risks, improve regulations and appropriate testing for chemicals, remediate environmental pollution, and design healthier products for the future. Best practices are considered for clinicians to ascertain exposure history, test for toxins, and teach patients how to avoid harmful exposures. Patients will be prepared and empowered with information about healthier food choices and cooking practices, appropriate supplement use, water filtration, cleaning and personal care product selection, improved sleep, stress reduction, sauna, fasting, chelation, safe cell phone use, and other means of reducing harmful environmental exposures. Solutions at every level require interdisciplinary collaboration to advance assessment, design, stewardship, and regulation of chemicals to promote environmental and human health.

This chapter reviews the numerous reasons why critically ill patients often sleep poorly and describes the unique challenges of monitoring sleep in these patients. An inhospitable environment in the intensive care unit (ICU), care-related interruptions day and night, mechanical ventilation, numerous medications, and critical illness itself conspire to deprive these vulnerable patients of both deep NREM sleep and REM sleep. Under some conditions, sleep is so disturbed as to be almost unrecognizable by the Rechtschaffen & Kales criteria. Patients may suffer from “atypical sleep” or from “pathological wakefulness.” Patients often recall this poor sleep as one of their most stressful experiences while in the ICU. Ultimately, what may best restore good quality sleep for patients in the ICU is a multifaceted approach to creating a quiet, safe environment, combined with evidence-based management of medications, support devices, pain, and delirium and a conscious effort to set aside uninterrupted time for sleep.

There is much we can learn about conservation from native peoples, says Gene Anderson. While the advanced nations of the West have failed to control overfishing, deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, and a host of other environmental problems, many traditional peoples manage their natural resources quite successfully. And if some traditional peoples mismanage the environment--the irrational value some place on rhino horn, for instance, has left this species endangered--the fact remains that most have found ways to introduce sound ecological management into their daily lives. Why have they succeeded while we have failed? In Ecologies of the Heart, Gene Anderson reveals how religion and other folk beliefs help pre-industrial peoples control and protect their resources. Equally important, he offers much insight into why our own environmental policies have failed and what we can do to better manage our resources. A cultural ecologist, Gene Anderson has spent his life exploring the ways in which different groups of people manage the environment, and he has lived for years in fishing communities in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Tahiti, and British Columbia--as well as in a Mayan farmtown in south Mexico--where he has studied fisheries, farming, and forest management. He has concluded that all traditional societies that have managed resources well over time have done so in part through religion--by the use of emotionally powerful cultural symbols that reinforce particular resource management strategies. Moreover, he argues that these religious beliefs, while seeming unscientific, if not irrational, at first glance, are actually based on long observation of nature. To illustrate this insight, he includes many fascinating portraits of native life. He offers, for instance, an intriguing discussion of the Chinese belief system known as Feng-Shui (wind and water) and tells of meeting villagers in remote areas of Hong Kong's New Territories who assert that dragons live in the mountains, and that to disturb them by cutting too sharply into the rock surface would cause floods and landslides (which in fact it does). He describes the Tlingit Indians of the Pacific Northwest, who, before they strip bark from the great cedar trees, make elaborate apologies to spirits they believe live inside the trees, assuring the spirits that they take only what is necessary. And we read of the Maya of southern Mexico, who speak of the lords of the Forest and the Animals, who punish those who take more from the land or the rivers than they need. These beliefs work in part because they are based on long observation of nature, but also, and equally important, because they are incorporated into a larger cosmology, so that people have a strong emotional investment in them. And conversely, Anderson argues that our environmental programs often fail because we have not found a way to engage our emotions in conservation practices. Folk beliefs are often dismissed as irrational superstitions. Yet as Anderson shows, these beliefs do more to protect the environment than modern science does in the West. Full of insights, Ecologies of the Heart mixes anthropology with ecology and psychology, traditional myth and folklore with informed discussions of conservation efforts in industrial society, to reveal a strikingly new approach to our current environmental crises.

Any discussion of the pathomechanisms and treatments of MS benefits from an understanding of the physiology of the neuronal membrane and the action potential. Neurons and glia, are important for signal propagation, synaptic function, and neural development. The neuronal cell membrane, maintains different ionic environments inside and outside the cell, separating charge across the membrane and facilitating electrical excitability. Ion channels allow flow of sodium, potassium, and calcium ions across the membrane at selected times. At rest, potassium ion efflux across the membrane establishes the nerve membrane resting potential. When activated by a voltage change to threshold, sodium influx generates an action potential, or a sudden alteration in membrane potentials, that can be conducted along an axon. The myelin sheaths around an axon, increase the speed of conduction and conserve energy. The pathology of MS disrupts the myelin structures, disturbs conduction, and leads to neurodegeneration. Ion channels have been the target of investigation for both restoration of conduction and neuroprotection.

The world’s systems of higher education (HE) are caught up in the fourth industrial revolution of the twenty-first century. Driven by increased globalization, demographic expansion in demand for education, new information and communications technology, and changing cost structures influencing societal expectations and control, higher education systems across the globe are adapting to the pressures of this new industrial environment. To make sense of the complex changes in the practices and structures of higher education, this Handbook sets out a theoretical framework to explain what higher education systems are, how they may be compared over time, and why comparisons are important in terms of societal progress in an increasingly interconnected world. Drawing on insights from over 40 leading international scholars and practitioners, the chapters examine the main challenges facing institutions of Higher Educations, how they should be managed in changing conditions, and the societal implications of different approaches to change. Structured around the premise that higher education plays a significant role in ensuring that a society achieves the capacity to adjust itself to change, while at the same time remaining cohesive as a social system, this Handbook explores how current internal and external forces disturb this balance, and how institutions of Higher Education could, and might, respond.

IMBRe is pleased to extend this book which features a compilation of business management case studies.The aims of this second volume of Case Studies in Management and Business remain unchanged from the first volume.Realizing the importance of using case study as one of the student-centered learning approach, this book is designed to enhance learning and teaching activities by providing a collection of teaching cases which could be used both for the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.This book includes relatively wide scope of work includes marketing, business policy, IT and Islamic finance. However the field is still in the field of management in general.The target audience is an academician and management students.In general, this book meets the scope of management.It is also suitable for an academician and students, but may not be appropriate in using for certain course, because of its scope is geared to specific disciplines. This book has the potential, especially if the university lecturers took it to be discussed in their classes.There is least amount of case use Malaysia environment in the market.The cases highlighted also are unique and not similar to the other cases.Furthermore, this book is using a real case in the beginning, especially in our country.In addition, this book is accompanied by teaching notes for each case.These teaching notes are available to instructors only.First to fifth case is ongoing for all cases involving the issue of whether the marketing or the service industry. The second and third cases involving issues on marketing in the nutritional industry. Consequently the third to fifth case involves a service industry that highlight on a unique issues within the companies concerned. The sixth case issues on muamalat are not so related to other cases.Since each case is developed by different authors, writing style and technique seem different and may disturb the concentration of the readers.The needs for local and contextual business case studies motivate most of the local case writers to write and compile teaching cases that are interesting and relevant to contemporary business situations and decisions, particularly in Malaysia.