This book provides comprehensive coverage of issues that facility managers in the property industry need to understand and apply in the pursuit of value for money over the life span of built facilities. The authors introduce the fast-growing discipline of facility management, examine the core competencies that facility managers should possess and study different contemporary drivers of change. The book emphasises the need to consider facilities management issues at the pre-design stage of the construction process, rather than only when the building is completed, in order to maximise value for money.

Virtually every major corporation faces decisions concerning a move into either a built-to-order or leased facility. This book guides the professional facilities planner and manager in how to develop a clear, long-range facilities plan - and how to see it through.

Food and raw material for its production was generally produced via the traditional agriculture. On the other hand, novel chemicals were manufactured in the laboratory or extracted from plant and animal sources. However, as the world population is steadily in creasing, there is a decrease in traditional agriculture productivity and concerns are also expressed over the damage inflicted to the environment and restrictions that might be en forced in food production. At the same time, there is an increasing demand for high qual ity agricultural products as well as for food ingredients related to both the traditional or newly discovered nutrients or phytochemicals. Trends and developments,~n the area of plant biotechnology and bioengineering has allowed manipulation of genes' !lnd/or insertion of new genes, thus production of trans genic plants. Starting from the introduction of agronomic traits, particularly stress resis tance to diverse environmental factors, process and sensory characteristics, food quality and production of novel varieties of plant-based products through genetic engineering, biotechnology is changing the,;agriculture and the concept of production of plant-ba~~d raw materials. Increasing attention is being paid on research for production of plants !pat can provide a wide array of food and non-food products. Perhaps the first non-food pro,d uct that plant biotechnology would achieve is production of large scale custom-designed industrial oils, but the list of chemicals is long, ranging" from oils and specific triacyl glycerols to biopolymers, enzymes, blood components, amo~g others.

This completely revised successor to the Handbook of Microscopy supplies in-depth coverage of all imaging technologies from the optical to the electron and scanning techniques. Adopting a twofold approach, the book firstly presents the various technologies as such, before going on to cover the materials class by class, analyzing how the different imaging methods can be successfully applied. It covers the latest developments in techniques, such as in-situ TEM, 3D imaging in TEM and SEM, as well as a broad range of material types, including metals, alloys, ceramics, polymers, semiconductors, minerals, quasicrystals, amorphous solids, among others. The volumes are divided between methods and applications, making this both a reliable reference and handbook for chemists, physicists, biologists, materials scientists and engineers, as well as graduate students and their lecturers.