Selected as a Winner of the National Poetry Series by Mary Jo Bang Sarah Vap’s sixth work of poetry, Viability is an ambitious and highly imaginative collection of prose poems that braids together several kinds of language strands in an effort to understand and to ask questions about the bodies (and minds, maybe even souls) that are owned by capitalism. These threads of language include definitions from an online financial dictionary, samples from an essay on the economics of slavery, quotations from an article about slavery in today’s Thai fishing industry, lyric bits and pieces about pregnancy and infants of all kinds, and a wealth of quotations falsely attributed to John of the Cross. The viability that Vap is asking about is primarily economic and biological (but not only). The questions of viability become entwined with the need, across the book, to “increase”—in both a capitalist and a gestational sense. John of the Cross tries, at first with composure, to comment on or to mediate between all the different strands of the collection.

Viability theory designs and develops mathematical and algorithmic methods for investigating the adaptation to viability constraints of evolutions governed by complex systems under uncertainty that are found in many domains involving living beings, from biological evolution to economics, from environmental sciences to financial markets, from control theory and robotics to cognitive sciences. It involves interdisciplinary investigations spanning fields that have traditionally developed in isolation. The purpose of this book is to present an initiation to applications of viability theory, explaining and motivating the main concepts and illustrating them with numerous numerical examples taken from various fields.

From prehistoric times man has had a pecial s relationship with seed plants - as a source of food, materials for tools, buildings, clothing and pharmaceuticals, and for ornamenting his surroundings for his own delight (probably in that chronological order which, incidentally, also gives some indication ofthe priorities oflife). Today man's most important staple foods are derived directly from seeds as they have been since neolithic times. (It is a sobering thought, as Harlan* has pointed out, that nothing significant has been added to his diet since then. ) From those times he must have learned to collect, conserve and cultivate seeds; and the accumulated experience has been handed down. This book then is part of an ancient tradition, for here we are still primarily concerned with these skills. Seeds are plant propagules comprised of embryos in which growth has been suspended, usually supplied with their own food reserves and protected by special covering layers. Typically they are relatively dry structures compared with other plant tissues and, in this condi tion) they are resistant to the ravages of time and their environment. But resistant is a relative tenn and seeds do deteriorate: the type, the extent and the rapidity of the deterioration, and the factors which control it are important to agronomists, horticulturalists, plant breeders, seedsmen, seed analysts, and those concerned with the conservation of genetic resources.

Many of the world's leading conservation and population biologists evaluate what has become a key tool in estimating extinction risk and evaluating potential recovery strategies - population viability analysis, or PVA.

One common characteristics of a complex system is its ability to withstand major disturbances and the capacity to rebuild itself. Understanding how such systems demonstrate resilience by absorbing or recovering from major external perturbations requires both quantitative foundations and a multidisciplinary view on the topic. This book demonstrates how new methods can be used to identify the actions favouring the recovery from perturbations. Examples discussed include bacterial biofilms resisting detachment, grassland savannahs recovering from fire, the dynamics of language competition and Internet social networking sites overcoming vandalism. The reader is taken through an introduction to the idea of resilience and viability and shown the mathematical basis of the techniques used to analyse systems. The idea of individual or agent-based modelling of complex systems is introduced and related to analytically tractable approximations of such models. A set of case studies illustrates the use of the techniques in real applications, and the final section describes how one can use new and elaborate software tools for carrying out the necessary calculations. The book is intended for a general scientific audience of readers from the natural and social sciences, yet requires some mathematics to gain a full understanding of the more theoretical chapters. It is an essential point of reference for those interested in the practical application of the concepts of resilience and viability

AMI E. ISKANDRIAN & ERNST E. VAN DER WALL The first edition of this book was published in 1994. Since then important advances have occurred in the field of myocardial viability. This, coupled with increasing interest by the scientific community in the broader issues of its relevance to patient care, suggested to us the need to write the second edition. We are most fortunate to have the help of a distinguished group of experts who have helped shape the field; we appreciate their commitments and contributions. Almost all chapters have been radically modified. Chapter 1 deals with pathophysiology of myocardial hibernation and stunning; Chapter 2 with apoptosis; Chapter 3 with the role of positron emission tomography; Chapters 4 and 5 with the role of single photon emission computed tomography with thallium-201 and technetium agents, respectively; Chapter 6 with the role of SPECT fatty acid imaging; Chapter 7 with the role of SPECT FDG imaging; Chapter 8 with the role of cardiac catheterization angiography; Chapter 9 with the role of echocardiography; Chapter 10 with the role of magnetic resonance imaging; and Chapter 11 with clinical applications. Finally, Chapter 12 provides a short summary.

This work examines viability theory and its applications to control theory and differential games. The emphasis is on the construction of feedbacks and dynamical systems by myopic optimization methods. Systems of first-order partial differential inclusions, whose solutions are feedbacks, are constructed and investigated. Basic results are then extended to the case of fuzzy control problems, distributed control problems, and control systems with delays and memory. Aimed at graduate students and research mathematicians, both pure and applied, this book offers specialists in control and nonlinear systems tools to take into account general state constraints. Viability theory also allows researchers in other disciplinesâartificial intelligence, economics, game theory, theoretical biology, population genetics, cognitive sciencesâto go beyond deterministic models by studying them in a dynamical or evolutionary perspective in an uncertain environment. "The book is a compendium of the state of knowledge about viability...Mathematically, the book should be accessible to anyone who has had basic graduate courses in modern analysis and functional analysisâ¦The concepts are defined and many proofs of the requisite results are reproduced here, making the present book essentially self-contained." (Bulletin of the AMS) "Because of the wide scope, the book is an ideal reference for people encountering problems related to viability theory in their researchâ¦It gives a very thorough mathematical presentation. Very useful for anybody confronted with viability constraints." (Mededelingen van het Wiskundig Genootschap)

In the past few years it has become clear that left ventricular dysfunction, even of severe degree, may be reversible after coronary revascularization in some patients. As a result, myocardial viability has captured the imagination of researchers and clinicians seeking to unravel the cellular and subcellular mechanisms and define appropriate diagnostic modalities. These diagnostic modalities include: cardiac catheterization, positron-emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, two-dimensional echocardiography and single-photon imaging. This book, for the first time, brings together a diverse array of information in a comprehensive and concise fashion using a template of ten chapters written by experts in the field. It will be required reading for cardiologists, radiologists, nuclear medicine specialists, cardiac surgeons, anesthesiologists, internists and basic researchers and their trainees who are involved in the management of patients with coronary artery disease in whom myocardial viability is a clinically relevant issue.

One common characteristics of a complex system is its ability to withstand major disturbances and the capacity to rebuild itself. Understanding how such systems demonstrate resilience by absorbing or recovering from major external perturbations requires both quantitative foundations and a multidisciplinary view on the topic. This book demonstrates how new methods can be used to identify the actions favouring the recovery from perturbations. Examples discussed include bacterial biofilms resisting detachment, grassland savannahs recovering from fire, the dynamics of language competition and Internet social networking sites overcoming vandalism. The reader is taken through an introduction to the idea of resilience and viability and shown the mathematical basis of the techniques used to analyse systems. The idea of individual or agent-based modelling of complex systems is introduced and related to analytically tractable approximations of such models. A set of case studies illustrates the use of the techniques in real applications, and the final section describes how one can use new and elaborate software tools for carrying out the necessary calculations. The book is intended for a general scientific audience of readers from the natural and social sciences, yet requires some mathematics to gain a full understanding of the more theoretical chapters. It is an essential point of reference for those interested in the practical application of the concepts of resilience and viability

Fred Van Dyke’s new textbook, Conservation Biology: Foundations, Concepts, Applications, 2nd Edition, represents a major new text for anyone interested in conservation. Drawing on his vast experience, Van Dyke’s organizational clarity and readable style make this book an invaluable resource for students in conservation around the globe. Presenting key information and well-selected examples, this student-friendly volume carefully integrates the science of conservation biology with its implications for ethics, law, policy and economics.