\r\n\tTSC involves mutations in chromosomes 9 and 16 encoding for the proteins hamartin and tuberin, respectively. Mutations in these genes cause upregulation of the mTOR pathway and inhibitors of this pathway, such as rapamycin and everolimus, have been shown to be effective in controlling the growth of unresectable tumors. Due to involvement of multiple organ systems, a multidisciplinary treatment plan is necessary and genetic counseling is often part of the management of TSC. Treatment options are quite variable and depended upon symptoms and organ involvement.
\r\n\r\n\tThe aim of this book is to provide the reader with an overview of the tuberous sclerosis complex including its genetic causes, clinical manifestations, and management of its most serious signs and symptoms.
",isbn:null,printIsbn:"979-953-307-X-X",pdfIsbn:null,doi:null,price:0,priceEur:0,priceUsd:0,slug:null,numberOfPages:0,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"763892736c7dfc107dc82453265142ad",bookSignature:"Dr. Scott Turner",publishedDate:null,coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10438.jpg",keywords:"Hypomelanotic Macules, Shagreen Patches, Cardiac Rhabdomyoma, Pulmonary Lymphangioleiomyomatosis, Renal Angiomyolipoma, Genetic Testing, Hamartin, Tuberin, Tubers, Subependymal Nodule, Subependymal Giant Cell Astrocytoma, Rapamycin",numberOfDownloads:null,numberOfWosCitations:0,numberOfCrossrefCitations:0,numberOfDimensionsCitations:0,numberOfTotalCitations:0,isAvailableForWebshopOrdering:!0,dateEndFirstStepPublish:"July 2nd 2020",dateEndSecondStepPublish:"July 23rd 2020",dateEndThirdStepPublish:"September 21st 2020",dateEndFourthStepPublish:"December 10th 2020",dateEndFifthStepPublish:"February 8th 2021",remainingDaysToSecondStep:"7 months",secondStepPassed:!0,currentStepOfPublishingProcess:5,editedByType:null,kuFlag:!1,biosketch:"Dr. Turner received his medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin. He completed a neurology residency at the State University of New York in Stony Brook and a neuro-oncology fellowship at Duke University. He specializes in the treatment of primary and metastatic tumors of the brain and spine. Dr. Turner's undergraduate and master's degree in molecular biology and biochemistry is critical in understanding the complex mechanisms involved with tumor biology.",coeditorOneBiosketch:null,coeditorTwoBiosketch:null,coeditorThreeBiosketch:null,coeditorFourBiosketch:null,coeditorFiveBiosketch:null,editors:[{id:"181611",title:"Dr.",name:"Scott",middleName:null,surname:"Turner",slug:"scott-turner",fullName:"Scott Turner",profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/181611/images/system/181611.png",biography:"Dr. Scott Turner is a clinical Neuro-oncologist and Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of California, Irvine. He attended graduate school at Cornell University and received his medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2003. He completed a Neurology residency at SUNY Stony Brook followed by a Neuro-oncology fellowship at Duke University in 2010. He has served as an Assistant Professor of Neurology at both Temple University and the University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Medicine. He has participated in many clinical trials in the field and is interested in the mechanism of glioma cell invasion.",institutionString:"University of California, Irvine",position:null,outsideEditionCount:0,totalCites:0,totalAuthoredChapters:"3",totalChapterViews:"0",totalEditedBooks:"0",institution:{name:"University of California, Irvine",institutionURL:null,country:{name:"United States of America"}}}],coeditorOne:null,coeditorTwo:null,coeditorThree:null,coeditorFour:null,coeditorFive:null,topics:[{id:"16",title:"Medicine",slug:"medicine"}],chapters:null,productType:{id:"1",title:"Edited Volume",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"},personalPublishingAssistant:{id:"297737",firstName:"Mateo",lastName:"Pulko",middleName:null,title:"Mr.",imageUrl:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/297737/images/8492_n.png",email:"mateo.p@intechopen.com",biography:"As an Author Service Manager my responsibilities include monitoring and facilitating all publishing activities for authors and editors. From chapter submission and review, to approval and revision, copyediting and design, until final publication, I work closely with authors and editors to ensure a simple and easy publishing process. I maintain constant and effective communication with authors, editors and reviewers, which allows for a level of personal support that enables contributors to fully commit and concentrate on the chapters they are writing, editing, or reviewing. I assist authors in the preparation of their full chapter submissions and track important deadlines and ensure they are met. I help to coordinate internal processes such as linguistic review, and monitor the technical aspects of the process. As an ASM I am also involved in the acquisition of editors. Whether that be identifying an exceptional author and proposing an editorship collaboration, or contacting researchers who would like the opportunity to work with IntechOpen, I establish and help manage author and editor acquisition and contact."}},relatedBooks:[{type:"book",id:"6550",title:"Cohort Studies in Health Sciences",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"01df5aba4fff1a84b37a2fdafa809660",slug:"cohort-studies-in-health-sciences",bookSignature:"R. Mauricio Barría",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/6550.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"88861",title:"Dr.",name:"R. Mauricio",surname:"Barría",slug:"r.-mauricio-barria",fullName:"R. Mauricio Barría"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"1591",title:"Infrared Spectroscopy",subtitle:"Materials Science, Engineering and Technology",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"99b4b7b71a8caeb693ed762b40b017f4",slug:"infrared-spectroscopy-materials-science-engineering-and-technology",bookSignature:"Theophile Theophanides",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/1591.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"37194",title:"Dr.",name:"Theophanides",surname:"Theophile",slug:"theophanides-theophile",fullName:"Theophanides Theophile"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"3092",title:"Anopheles mosquitoes",subtitle:"New insights into malaria vectors",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"c9e622485316d5e296288bf24d2b0d64",slug:"anopheles-mosquitoes-new-insights-into-malaria-vectors",bookSignature:"Sylvie Manguin",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/3092.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"50017",title:"Prof.",name:"Sylvie",surname:"Manguin",slug:"sylvie-manguin",fullName:"Sylvie Manguin"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"3161",title:"Frontiers in Guided Wave Optics and Optoelectronics",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"deb44e9c99f82bbce1083abea743146c",slug:"frontiers-in-guided-wave-optics-and-optoelectronics",bookSignature:"Bishnu Pal",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/3161.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"4782",title:"Prof.",name:"Bishnu",surname:"Pal",slug:"bishnu-pal",fullName:"Bishnu Pal"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"72",title:"Ionic Liquids",subtitle:"Theory, Properties, New Approaches",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"d94ffa3cfa10505e3b1d676d46fcd3f5",slug:"ionic-liquids-theory-properties-new-approaches",bookSignature:"Alexander Kokorin",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/72.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"19816",title:"Prof.",name:"Alexander",surname:"Kokorin",slug:"alexander-kokorin",fullName:"Alexander Kokorin"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"1373",title:"Ionic Liquids",subtitle:"Applications and Perspectives",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"5e9ae5ae9167cde4b344e499a792c41c",slug:"ionic-liquids-applications-and-perspectives",bookSignature:"Alexander Kokorin",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/1373.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"19816",title:"Prof.",name:"Alexander",surname:"Kokorin",slug:"alexander-kokorin",fullName:"Alexander Kokorin"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"57",title:"Physics and Applications of Graphene",subtitle:"Experiments",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"0e6622a71cf4f02f45bfdd5691e1189a",slug:"physics-and-applications-of-graphene-experiments",bookSignature:"Sergey Mikhailov",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/57.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"16042",title:"Dr.",name:"Sergey",surname:"Mikhailov",slug:"sergey-mikhailov",fullName:"Sergey Mikhailov"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"371",title:"Abiotic Stress in Plants",subtitle:"Mechanisms and Adaptations",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"588466f487e307619849d72389178a74",slug:"abiotic-stress-in-plants-mechanisms-and-adaptations",bookSignature:"Arun Shanker and B. Venkateswarlu",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/371.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"58592",title:"Dr.",name:"Arun",surname:"Shanker",slug:"arun-shanker",fullName:"Arun Shanker"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"878",title:"Phytochemicals",subtitle:"A Global Perspective of Their Role in Nutrition and Health",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"ec77671f63975ef2d16192897deb6835",slug:"phytochemicals-a-global-perspective-of-their-role-in-nutrition-and-health",bookSignature:"Venketeshwer Rao",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/878.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"82663",title:"Dr.",name:"Venketeshwer",surname:"Rao",slug:"venketeshwer-rao",fullName:"Venketeshwer Rao"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"4816",title:"Face Recognition",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"146063b5359146b7718ea86bad47c8eb",slug:"face_recognition",bookSignature:"Kresimir Delac and Mislav Grgic",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/4816.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"528",title:"Dr.",name:"Kresimir",surname:"Delac",slug:"kresimir-delac",fullName:"Kresimir Delac"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}}]},chapter:{item:{type:"chapter",id:"61347",title:"Zoonotic Tuberculosis: A Concern and Strategies to Combat",doi:"10.5772/intechopen.76802",slug:"zoonotic-tuberculosis-a-concern-and-strategies-to-combat",body:'Livestock plays an important role in the lives of people throughout the world. They provide dietary protein through meat and milk, materials like wool and leather, and draught power for agricultural activities and contribute to the livelihoods of around 70% of the world’s population living in poverty. Livestock is central to survival strategies of poor families, can serve as a repository of a family’s wealth, and may be sold as an emergency source of cash, in some settings; their ownership is linked to social status or may also be important for ceremonial, cultural, and religious significance. Due to unavoidable interaction of man and animals; zoonotic diseases remain a genuine threat to public health. Zoonotic diseases are the diseases or infections which are naturally transmitted between animals and humans, for example, tuberculosis, brucellosis, leptospirosis, and so on. In most cases, animals play an essential role in maintaining, distributing, and actually transmitting the infection up to varying degrees into the nature. One of the economically significant zoonotic diseases worldwide is bovine tuberculosis (TB) because of serious public health consequences, high cost of eradication programs mainly in developing countries, and trade restriction on animals and their products [1, 2, 3, 4]. It is said to be the leading cause of death by infectious diseases [5]. World Health Organization (WHO) classified bovine tuberculosis among seven neglected zoonotic diseases having the potential to infect man [6].
M. bovis mainly affects cattle, which are the most important animal reservoirs and can be established in wildlife. The link between animal and human tuberculosis has long always been known to be strong, as shown by the works of Villemin [7] and Koch [8], which demonstrated the cross-adaptability of the tubercle bacilli from one species to another and pointed out the danger that tuberculosis could be transmitted from animals to humans [7]. The infection currently poses a major concern in human populations in developing countries, as humans and animals share the same microenvironment. It has been estimated that zoonotic transmission of M. bovis is responsible for 10–15% of new human TB cases in developing countries [9]. Bovine TB has been largely eradicated from herds in the developed world by animal TB control and elimination programs, that is, test-and-slaughter programs have drastically reduced the incidence of disease in both animals and humans [10, 11]. However, in developing countries, animal TB is widely distributed and control measures are not applied or are applied sporadically [12, 13].
The human burden of disease cannot be reduced without improving the standards of food safety and controlling bovine TB in the animal reservoir. As with other zoonotic diseases, zoonotic TB cannot be controlled by the human health sector alone. Animal health and food safety sectors must be engaged to address the role of animals in maintaining and transmitting M. bovis. The present review highlights chronic multi-species zoonotic TB, its diagnosis prevention and control, veterinary public health challenges, and strategies to combat this important disease.
Mycobacteria belong to the order Actinomycetales, family Mycobacteriaceae. The genus Mycobacterium includes Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium avium complexes, other pathogenic Mycobacteria, and numerous species of saprophytic microorganisms present in soil and water. The etiologic agents of mammalian tuberculosis are Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the main cause of human tuberculosis; M. bovis, the agent of bovine tuberculosis; and M. africanum, which causes human tuberculosis in tropical Africa. This last species has characteristics halfway between those of M. tuberculosis and M. bovis. M. bovis is the principal agent of zoonotic tuberculosis. The distribution of M. bovis and M. tuberculosis is worldwide. M. africanum is prevalent in Africa, but it has also been isolated in Germany and England. M. africanum strains phenotypically related to M. tuberculosis are nitrase positive and are found in Western Africa while those which are similar to M. bovis are nitrase negative and are isolated more frequently in Eastern Africa.
The genus mycobacterium is phenotypically characterized as a facultative intracellular microbe, non-capsular, non-spore forming, non-motile, obligate aerobic, and thin-rod bacteria, usually straight or slightly curved having a length of 1–10 length and width of 0.2–0.6 μm. Its cell wall is rich in lipids, that is, mycolic acid, a thick waxy coat responsible for acid fastness, hydrophobicity, greatly contributing to bacterium resistance to many disinfectants, common laboratory stains, antibiotics, and physical injuries [14, 15].
M. bovis is a member of the mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC) and based on 16S ribosomal RNA sequence studies it shared more than 99.95% of identity with other members of MTC [3, 16]. The MTC includes five mycobacterium species, M. tuberculosis, M. canettii, M. africanum, M. microti, M. bovis, and two subspecies—M. caprae and M. pinnipedii [17]. In the environment M. bovis can survive for various months especially in cold, dark, and moist conditions. The survival period varies from 18 to 332 days at 12–24°C which is dependent on sunlight exposure. It is found that M. bovis best survives in frozen tissue and there are adverse effects of tissue preservatives, that is, sodium tetraborate on viability [18]. It has been found that the culture of the organism can be done for approximately 2 years in samples that are stored artificially [14, 18].
The most important causes of bovine TB in cattle are M. bovis and M. caprae, both of which cause infectious diseases [19, 20, 21, 22]. M. bovis has one of the broadest host ranges of all known pathogens and has been diagnosed worldwide. Cattle are considered to be the true hosts of M. bovis [23]. However the isolations of M. bovis has also been detected from domestic animals like buffaloes, sheep, goats, pigs, equines, camels, and so on, along with other animals like deer, antelopes, bison, wild boars, primates, llamas, kudus, elephants, foxes, mink, ferrets, rats, elands, tapirs, elks, sitatungas, oryxes, addaxes, rhinoceroses, possums, ground squirrels, badgers, otters, seals, hares, moles, raccoons, coyotes and lions, tigers, leopards, and lynx [23, 24]. The natural movement of these reservoir animals increases the spread of the disease to domestic animals [25]. M. caprae has been reported in many European countries such as Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. A disease caused by M. caprae is not substantially different from that caused by M. bovis and the same tests can be used for its diagnosis [26].
Transmission of M. bovis can occur between animals, from animals to humans, and vice versa and rarely in between humans [27]. The transmission of M. bovis between animals occurs mainly through aerosols. Transmission through other routes like cutaneous, congenital, and genital routes has also been reported. Close contact among animals and intensive breeding increase the rate of transmission [28]. Other factors like long survival periods of the organism in the environment also contribute to an increased risk of infection [29, 30]. Suckling calves can get the infection through consumption of infected milk. The infected bull semen may transmit diseases through artificial insemination [18].
Humans acquire the M. bovis infection from cattle directly by erogenous route or through the direct contact with material contaminated with the secretions of an infected animal or the herd [31, 32]. The individuals at risk are farm workers, zookeepers, milkers, animal dealers, veterinarians, abattoir workers, meat inspectors, autopsy personnel, laboratory personnel, and owners of potential tuberculous pets [33, 34, 35]. People in these occupations may develop pulmonary tuberculosis from M. bovis and in turn put other humans and susceptible animals at risk [36, 37]. Indirectly, man acquires the disease from animal sources by consumption of unpasteurized infected milk and ingestion of meat and meat products from slaughtered infected cattle [13, 38, 39, 40, 41]. Therefore tuberculosis can be foodborne also [42]. The consumption of contaminated milk products possesses more risks than infected meat products because badly infected carcasses are mostly condemned and meat is generally thoroughly cooked [43]. People suffering from M. bovis tuberculosis can retransmit the infection to cattle; however, this is not common [44].
Zoonotic TB is distributed globally and is more prevalent in most of Africa, parts of Asia and of the Americas except Antarctica, Caribbean islands, parts of South America and Australia, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Canada, Singapore, Jamaica, Barbados, and Israel [45]. Although most of the developed countries have reduced or eliminated bovine TB from their cattle population, however, the disease is still present in the wildlife of United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand [23]. Eradication programs are in progress in other European countries, Japan, New Zealand, the United States, Mexico, and some countries of Central and South America where it has been eradicated by following strict test-and-slaughter policies [46].
Bovine TB is a chronic debilitating disease usually characterized by formation of nodular granulomas known as tubercles. In many animals the course of the infection is chronic and signs may be absent, even in advanced cases when many organs may be involved. Subclinical signs include weakness, dyspnea, anorexia, emaciation, enlargement of lymph nodes, and cough, particularly with advanced tuberculosis. Lesions are commonly observed in the lymph nodes mainly of the head and thorax, lungs, intestines, liver, spleen, pleura, and peritoneum. Head and neck lymph nodes may become visibly affected, sometimes rupture, drain, and in advanced cases may be greatly enlarged and may obstruct air passages, alimentary tract, or blood vessels. Clinical signs vary with the involvement of the lung manifested through cough, dyspnea, and other signs of low-grade pneumonia which can be induced by changes in temperature or manual pressure on the trachea. Digestive tract involvement is manifested by intermittent diarrhea or constipation, extreme emaciation, and acute respiratory distress may occur during the terminal stages of tuberculosis [26].
M. bovis infection in humans has similar clinical forms as those caused by M. tuberculosis [27, 34, 44]. Most of the studies have suggested that the common clinical manifestation of M. bovis infection in man is associated with the extra-pulmonary form of the disease; however, about half of the post-primary cases involve the lung which is responsible for human-to-human transmission of tuberculosis due to M. bovis [13, 31, 44, 47]. The primary infection of the organism in the intestine may heal or it may progress in the intestines or disseminate to other organs [48]. Cervical lymphadenopathy, intestinal lesions, chronic skin tuberculosis, and other non-pulmonary forms are particularly common [13]. Infection due to M bovis in humans usually has a prolonged course and symptoms generally takes months or years to appear. Sometimes, the bacteria remain dormant in the host without causing diseases [23]. The common clinical signs of zoonotic TB include loss of appetite, diarrhea, weight loss, intermittent fever, intermittent hacking cough, large prominent lymph nodes, weakness, and so on.
Young children infected with M. bovis typically have abdominal infections and older patients suffer from swollen and sometimes ulcerated lymph glands in the neck [49]. Pulmonary disease is more common in people with reactivated infections [50] and this would occur only when some of the animals had active tuberculosis [32]. The symptoms may include fever, cough, chest pain, cavitation, and hemoptysis [50]. The pulmonary form of tuberculosis occurs less frequently and is usually occupationally related [44].
Bovine TB affects the national and international economy in different ways. It is extremely difficult to determine the economic impact of bovine TB on livestock production. The presence of bovine TB infection in livestock reduces the livestock productivity and economically devastates the cattle industry especially the dairy sector. Some losses are related to the animal production, marketing, or trading of the animals as well as the cost involvement while implementing surveillance and control programs. These losses are also extremely important when endangered wildlife species get involved [51, 52]. The direct productivity losses due to bovine TB can be categorized into “on-farm” losses and losses after the slaughtering of animals. On-farm losses consist of the losses from decreased milk and meat production, the increased reproduction efforts, and replacement costs for infected cattle while losses during slaughter consist of the cost of cattle condemnation and retention, with the loss from condemnation being essentially the purchased value of a slaughter animal and the loss [51]. Along with the direct productivity losses, bovine TB has profound economic consequences on international trade; it affects access to foreign markets due to import bans on animals and animal products from countries where the disease is enzootic. The presence of the disease in wildlife is not only difficult to eradicate and costly but also bovine TB can theoretically affect entire ecosystems with unpredictable impacts in many areas of private interest, for example, tourism [51].
In 2016, WHO estimated 147,000 new human cases of zoonotic TB in people and around 12,500 deaths due to the disease. The implications of zoonotic TB extend beyond human health. Bovine TB threatens the well-being of communities that rely on livestock for their livelihoods. The African region carries the heaviest burden of disease and death due to zoonotic TB, followed by the Southeast Asian region. However, cases of zoonotic TB in people are uncommon in countries where bovine TB in cattle is controlled and where standards of food safety are high. The true burden of zoonotic TB is likely to be underestimated due to a lack of routine surveillance data from most countries. Therefore, the number of people affected by zoonotic TB annually, and thus suffering from health challenges caused by M. bovis infection, might be higher than currently estimated in particular, countries where bovine TB is endemic and where laboratory capacity is limited [60].
Current diagnostics for human TB are focused on pulmonary diseases associated with M. tuberculosis (sputum smears examination) but zoonotic tuberculosis in human beings is frequently associated with extra-pulmonary tuberculosis and therefore initiation of treatment can be delayed [53, 54]. There is lack of testing to identify the Mycobacterium spp.; very few extra-pulmonary lesions are being tested, and requirements for mycobacterial culture for diagnostics are often skipped which contribute to under-reporting of human bovine TB cases [55, 56, 57, 58]. Determination of species can add important information needed by epidemiological studies to identify sources of infection and routes of transmission [57, 59, 60].
A major challenge in the case of effective treatment and recovery of a patient infected with zoonotic TB is the natural resistance of M. bovis to pyrazinamide, one of the four essential medications used in the standard first-line anti-TB treatment regimen [61]. Most of the health-care providers initiate the treatment without drug susceptibility testing due to which patients with zoonotic TB may receive inadequate treatment. This may lead to development of resistance to other anti-TB drugs. Resistance to additional drugs has also been reported in some M. bovis isolates, including rifampicin and isoniazid, and resistance to these two essential first-line drugs is defined as a multidrug-resistant TB, which is a major threat to human health globally. Such a shortcoming has significant implications for the treatment of zoonotic TB. Because most patients worldwide begin tuberculosis treatment without identification of the causative mycobacterium species, the risk of inadequate treatment of patients with undiagnosed M. bovis who do not have drug susceptibility testing is increased [62].
Bovine tuberculosis in the live animal is usually diagnosed on the basis of the standard method for the detection of bovine tuberculosis, that is, delayed hypersensitivity reactions. It is done by injecting bovine tuberculin intradermally into the measured area, measuring subsequent swelling at the site of injection after 72 h and measuring skin thickness. Now, purified protein derivative (PPD) products have been replaced by the heat-concentrated synthetic medium tuberculins due to their higher specificity and easier standardization. The identification of the pathogenic agent is done by the demonstration of acid-fast bacilli by microscopic examination. The Mycobacterial isolation on selective culture media and biochemical tests or DNA techniques, such as PCR, confirms infection. A gold standard for routine confirmation of infection is Mycobacterial culture method. Animal inoculation is rarely used because of animal welfare considerations. A number of blood tests are also been used for the identification of M. bovis [63]. These can be advantageous, especially with intractable cattle, zoo animals, and wildlife [64]. Blood-based laboratory tests now available are gamma-interferon assay, which uses an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) as the detection method for interferon [65], the lymphocyte proliferation assay, which detects cell-mediated immune responses [66], and the indirect ELISA, which detects antibody responses.
Diagnosis of active TB in people in many parts of the world is based on the sputum smear examination or some rapid assays like Xpert MTB/RIF. But these commonly used tests are not able to differentiate the M. tuberculosis complex into the distinct species of M. tuberculosis and M. bovis; therefore, most cases of zoonotic TB are misclassified. The identification of M. bovis can be done by PCR and gene sequencing of culture isolates, but for these tests the proper collection of samples is very essential as zoonotic TB is extra-pulmonary. However, most of the countries lack the capacity to routinely conduct these tests.
The treatment of animals with tuberculosis is not a favored option in eradication-conscious countries and is not economical. The Bacillus Calmette and Guérin (BCG) vaccine has advantages for use in cattle since the vaccine is safe, inexpensive, and is commercially produced for human application. However, the vaccination of animals with BCG is sensitive to the tuberculin skin test, and animals become test positive in the classical skin test at least for a significant period of post-vaccination. This is the reason why the test-and-slaughter-based control strategies based on tuberculin skin testing were favored above BCG vaccination in many countries [67].
In human tuberculosis, drugs like isoniazid, combinations of streptomycin and para-aminosalicylic, and other acids are commonly used. Long-term therapy requirement of the disease can create the chances of the development of multidrug-resistant (MDR), extremely drug resistant (XDR), and even totally drug resistant (TDR) bacterial strains if treatment regime is not properly followed. BCG vaccine is the only TB vaccine licensed for use in humans. BCG vaccine has variable levels of protection efficacy in humans against pulmonary TB in children and adults, ranging from 0–80% [68]. It is reported that the prevalence of MDR-TB in previously treated cases was 13.9% and in new cases only 2.3%, whereas the overall prevalence of MDR-TB was 5.7% in all cases [69]. Thus, previously treated cases were more vulnerable for being infected by the MDR-TB strain. Therefore, enhanced TB infection control activities, earliest case detection and treatment, strengthening and proper implementation of directly observed treatment, short course (DOTS), are suggested to reduce the burden of MDR-TB [69]. In human medicine, the treatment policy is based on second-line drug susceptibility testing. Most drug regimens currently used to treat MDR-TB include an aminoglycoside (e.g., streptomycin, kanamycin, amikacin) or capreomycin and a fluoroquinolone. The patients’ MDR-TB should be managed by or in consultation with physicians experienced in the management of MDR-TB. The internationally recommended highly efficient and cost-effective strategy for TB control is DOTS (directly observed treatment short course). In this strategy, a healthcare worker at a healthcare center or family DOTS supporter at home gives the standard regimen to all MDR-TB confirmed cases daily under direct observation [70]. The regimens consist of the four drugs which are expected to be effective and the duration is a minimum of 18 months. Furthermore, continuous monitoring and capacity building for family DOTS supporters are essential components of the DOTS strategy. Effective treatments of drug susceptible to TB cure the patient, interrupt the TB transmission to other persons, and also prevent the development of drug-resistant strains.
The epidemiology of zoonotic TB varies throughout the world, depending on the human, livestock, and wildlife populations, and on existing TB control programs, environmental conditions, and the socio-economic status of countries or regions [71]. The relationship between humans, livestock, wildlife, and ecology in the epidemiology of zoonotic TB makes control of the diseases complex [72, 73]. Zoonotic TB is not a new disease but has long been neglected; burden of this disease in humans cannot be fully addressed without considering the animal reservoir and the risk of transmission at the animal-human interface. As with other zoonotic diseases, zoonotic TB cannot be controlled by the human or animal health sector alone. Human, animal health, and food safety sectors must be engaged to address the role of animals in maintaining and transmitting M. bovis. Therefore, “One Health” linking human, animal, and environmental health sector of World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agricultural Organization of the (FAO), and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) together with the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung launched a comprehensive roadmap for zoonotic TB in people and bovine TB in animals in October 2017. The roadmap is on the basis of “One Health” approach and is centered under three core themes which consist of improvement of scientific evidence base, reduction in disease transmission at the animal-human interface, and strengthening the intersectoral collaboration.
An improvement in the scientific evidence base can be achieved by collecting, analyzing, and recording and a better quality data of the disease, by improving surveillance and reporting bovine TB in humans, livestock, and wildlife. For the better documentation and to generate accurate representative data which can differentiate M. bovis and M. tuberculosis infections, countries should strive to incorporate zoonotic TB into their routine surveillance activities. A better detection of cases requires health-care provider expertise and strengthened laboratories having improved access to accurate, rapid diagnostic tools coupled with reliable recording and reporting systems, that are case based and preferably electronic. Data regarding consequences of infectiousness, transmission, clinical presentation, and immunologic responses are important for the development of a vaccine against all forms of TB. But improved surveillance and data quality will be unsuccessful without strengthened laboratory capacity and better access to appropriate diagnostic tools. Coordination and communication across the sectors is critical for investigating disease epidemiology at the human, livestock, and wildlife interface, including the relative importance of direct and indirect routes of transmission in different populations. Sharing the information within different sectors allows for the identification of patients in a particular geographical area which facilitates a target response for the prevention and control of the disease. To interpret multi-species data there is a need for new methodologies for describing multi-species transmission, such as modeling approaches incorporating genetic data. The biological differences in the host-pathogen interaction of M. tuberculosis versus M. bovis in humans should be further investigated.
Transmission of zoonotic TB at the animal-human interface can be reduced by developing strategies to improve animal health, identifying the pathways for risk and improving food safety. Healthier animal food supply depends on healthier animal population. For the disease-free state of the animal, both government and private veterinary services must be well organized and should be armed with the tools which can detect disease and reduce the disease prevalence. Developed countries can follow the test-and-slaughter programs by giving compensation to the farmers, post-mortem examinations of the carcass, and can trace-back the herds with appropriate tools to identify and implement control strategies. Similarly, in developing countries, a first step could be a target herd to be disease free in a particular zone of a country and this could gradually expand to other herds and zones. While doing this one must ensure the control of livestock movements from endemic areas to disease-free areas. The disease in a people can be prevented by reducing the risk of exposure and transmission of the infectious agent from animals to humans. Along with the knowledge of the principal routes of transmission some other factors such as sociocultural and economic factors should also be taken into the consideration. The use of modern technologies like sequencing, metagenomics, and phylogenetic analyses helps in characterization of sources of infection, mechanism of transmission, and investigation of drug resistance. Food safety practices can be improved by pasteurization of milk and sanitary inspection of carcasses at abattoirs which lead to removal the contaminated animal products from the food chain and also help in the tracing back animals to herds of origin.
Intersectoral collaboration can be achieved by adopting a “One Health” approach which suggests an intersectoral and multidisciplinary approach by engaging both public and private stakeholders. The most relevant sectors include human health sector, veterinary health sector, wildlife authorities, food safety authorities, farming and trade organizations, consumer groups, educational bodies, and financial institutions. Within these sectors, collaborative relationships among farmers, healthcare providers, veterinarians, laboratory experts, epidemiologists, sociologists, economists, wildlife conservationists, and communication specialists must exist. “One Health” approach also addresses that all relevant sectors should work together for developing legislation and policies, designing, and implementing control strategies. Interventions which jointly address human and animal health can increase health and economic benefits for communities, for example, sharing of human resources, equipment, and transport across sectors can reduce operational costs which increase cost-effectiveness.
Disease eradication programs consist of intensive surveillance which includes farm visits, systematic testing of individual cattle, and removal of infected animals along with the segregation of animals in contact with the infected one similarly in control of animal movement. The identification of infected animals or infected carcass prevents unsafe meat from entering the food chain and allows veterinary services trace back to the infected herd. Pasteurization of milk and meat inspection system should be strengthened and designed to prevent the consumption of contaminated products by people. Vaccine is used in human medicine, but it is not widely used as a preventive measure in animals because its efficacy is variable and it can interfere with testing to eliminate the disease. Thus, the establishment of new TB drugs which can be effective within a short term and capable of controlling the emergence of MDR-TB and XDR-TB is critically urgent.
Animal and human health is intimately interwoven and food animals serve as a reservoir of diseases of public health significance [74]. Animals with a contagious disease remain in the population and serve as a reservoir of infection for other animals and human beings. Therefore, the development of vaccines for animals against bovine tuberculosis is highly effective for TB control or development of recombinant BCG with expressing luciferase activity can be used as the most effective tool to advance drug development. The screening of TB in human or animal population is a very time-consuming process as Mycobacterium grows very slowly; conventional drug screening takes more than 3 weeks and the biosafety level-3 (BSL-3) facility is the basic requirement. Therefore, it is the need of an hour to develop rapid diagnostic procedures which can detect the organism within a short period of time. Some successful efforts are being made for the development of a new screening method to identify TB drug candidates by utilizing luciferase-expressing recombinant Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guéren (rBCG) [75].
The risk due to zoonotic TB is significantly less in developed countries than developing countries, which is due to the milk pasteurization and effective bovine tuberculosis control programs. Therefore, food safety of animal-origin food is worth considering. Efforts to improve food safety include scaling up the heat treatment of milk and ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection of all animals entering the food chain which will not only reduce the risk of transmission but also bring substantial benefits for the control of other foodborne diseases. A healthier animal population leads to healthier food supply along with economic benefits and improvements in animal welfare. The epidemiology of bovine TB is well understood and effective control and elimination strategies have been known for a long time but the disease is still widely distributed and often neglected in most developing countries. The increase of this disease in such areas calls for stronger intersectoral collaboration between the medical and veterinary professions to assess and evaluate the scale of the problem, mostly when zoonotic TB could represent a significant risk. Developed countries which follow test-and-slaughter policies still are not able to completely eliminate infection in cattle because of wild animal reservoirs; therefore, they are now focusing on the wild animal vaccination. Therefore, the vaccine research and development program should be taken into account for possible application of vaccines to the animals, particularly in developing countries. Disease surveillance programs especially in areas where risk factors are present in animals and humans should be considered as a priority.
Design is an extremely versatile discipline characterized by different interpretations in philosophy and practice which involve considerable efforts to understand its nature. Defining design uniquely is controversial, both because the designers themselves are unable to give a distinctive definition capable of gathering all the themes related to it, and because, over the decades, the term has had different meanings, evolving.
The history of design is not simply a history of objects but of changing points of view on what is the object of the design itself [1]. A starting point on the study is represented by the thought of Herbert Simon [2] who defines design as the elaboration of artifacts to achieve goals. His reflection leads to the relationship between the natural world and the artificial one. “A forest may be a phenomenon of nature; a farm certainly is not. The very species upon which we depend for our food our corn and our cattle are artifacts of our ingenuity” [2]. The artificial object synthesized by men with the desired properties which can or may not imitate nature can be defined as an artifact, created by using the same basic natural materials or different ones. The artifact is also considered as an interface between the internal environment, i.e. the organization and the design of the artifact itself, and the external one, i.e. the environment in which it is located. “If the inner environment is appropriate to the outer environment, or vice versa, the artifact will serve its intended purpose” [2].
The most obvious and popular definition regarding design is that it represents the shape of products and therefore refers to style and esthetics. In fact, design is often associated with the shape of the product and not with its function [3]. However, despite numerous criticisms, the term has always remained closely linked to the esthetic aspects, reducing it to the exaltation of beauty since, as Raymond Loewy claimed, “ugliness doesn’t sell”.
Reducing design to simple esthetics distances the concept from innovation. It is a recent trend to extend the meaning of design, following broader meanings that concern various areas of knowledge [4].
Design is described as a problem-solving activity [5], a process that becomes a prescriptive sequence of activities related to the cognitive process of exploration [6]. Over time, the practical applications of design have extended to anything capable of producing artifacts deriving from the usage of creativity to generate a product, a service, or a process innovation [4]. Companies like IDEO, Apple and Decathlon think about the product no longer and not only as an object for which to design a shape, but as an experience and bearer of meanings [7]. Kotler and Rath [8] suggest that product design is a strategic tool for optimizing consumer satisfaction and corporate profitability through the combination of performance, shape, durability, and value in relation to environments, information, and identities. Consumers buy products for several often not obvious reasons which include both functional utility and psychological satisfaction.
The interpretation of design linked to the function can be found in Maldonado [9]. Designing the shape means coordinating, integrating, and articulating all those factors which in one way or another participate in the constitutive process of the shape of the product. More precisely, it alludes to factors relating to the use, function and individual or social consumption of the product, as well as to production. In this sense, design is interpreted as an activity capable of combining all the factors involved in the realization of the shape of the product, referring both to the technical, functional, economic and productive aspects, as well as to the symbolic, cultural and social ones.
The dimension linked to meaning is revealed with Krippendorff [10]. He involves design with the meaning of the products attributed by users and by the relationship with the surrounding environment. Therefore, the meanings depend on the context and the culture. The same artifact can invoke different meanings at different times, in various contexts of use and for different people. Since the meaning is not univocal, it is the responsibility of the designer to observe the actions that imply it, understand them, and establish a dialog with the interested parties.
More holistic is the design definition of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design: “design is the creative activity whose goal is to establish the various qualities of objects, processes and services and their systems in the life cycle. In addition, design is the central factor in the humanization of technology innovation and cultural and economic changes.” This definition expands the concept of design and connects it to management, to the ability to understand consumer needs, to strategy.
Design is increasingly becoming a frequent the answer to the multiple challenges that managers face: growing competitive pressure, managing complexity in organizations, customer orientation and social responsibility.
Talking about design today means recognizing the widespread presence of activities, skills, actions, products related to design within the economic system. This constitutes an essential point for defining an economic and social improvement strategy based on an advanced development concept that has its strength in the ability to add value to the system of products, services, and businesses.
Within the company context, design can take on different facets based on how it is integrated and conceived within the organization [11]. The value that a company gives to design depends on its history and its evolution. For this reason, a company that has recently approached design will probably integrate it into strategy only after using it as an operating tool.
The design can be considered as an operational tool and therefore linked to the initial phase of the design practice concerning the styling of the product. In this case, the design has an esthetic significance for the product and does not give it any other added value to the organization.
In another case, design can be an important resource for the company but simply linked to the realization of the product. In this circumstance, design is given its autonomy, its time, its space, and the possibility of developing a product starting from a project specification. In this case, the company prepares a project group which, however, is not involved in the organizational and decision-making dynamics of the company, dealing only with the project specification.
Design can also be perfectly integrated into process management and contribute to a company’s vision of the future. The ability of design to anticipate the needs of consumers, imagine possible future scenarios and put them into a solution, made it fundamental within companies and allowed it to play a role in all phases of the creation of a product, from the initial idea to its commercialization. This has helped to create designers with diversified training, able to dialog with all the actors in the design process but has also prompted companies to seek outside their borders different skills to reorganize the entire value chain (Figure 1).
Design value in the business context. Source: Personal adaption from Celaschi et al., 2011.
The long-term value for the company is created through three key changes: the transition from function to purpose, in which the product becomes important for its social utility and not only for its performance; the increasing importance not only of the final outcome but also of the processes involved used to conquer the motivations of the consumer; in the third instance, the relevance of co-design, where the user is not a passive entity but actively participates in the design of the product.
The creation of a business model in which design and management shorten their distance and work together for a joint vision of the organization, not only creates value for the company by increasing the performance achieved, but directs the company towards innovation and its exploitation with respect for social responsibility.
Although the concept of design thinking is quite current and today it is considered a useful approach for companies, the roots of its meaning are to be found elsewhere, shifting attention to the literature of the last century, which in addition to influencing the concept of design thinking, represents a model for contemporary exponents of the approach.
Herbert Simon is one of the first to offer idea for the development of some concepts related to design thinking. For Simon, the natural sciences deal with how things are, while the design deals with how they should be through the creation of artifacts that respond to specific objectives. Therefore, it could be said that design is the transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones. However, this transformation does not follow a linear path but rather it tends to adapt to the surrounding environment. The adaptation is explained by Simon with the example of the ant that, in the path to take to return home, adapts to the obstacles it encounters along the way not being able to have an overall and complete vision of the surrounding environment [2]. To carry out the non-linear path that leads him to the solution, the designer uses problem solving: the individual defines alternatives with respect to a goal to be achieved and chooses among the alternatives the best compared to that given goal, but not the best in absolute. This is because man has a limited rationality and therefore when he seeks a solution or wants to achieve a goal, he does not do so in full awareness of all possible opportunities, but only with respect to what he is able to know.
Another point of reference is represented by the thought of Bauchanan [1], who takes up Rittel [12] and his idea of wicked problems. Wicked problems are a class of indeterminate and tiring problems of the social system. They are difficult to define and for which there is no single solution. Each wicked problem is unique, and the designer’s effort is to try to minimize the error since each solution is a one-shot operation, an attempt that matters significantly and has consequences. This class of problems concerns issues such as sustainability, climate change or public policy, i.e. the location of a highway, the regulation of taxes or the change in the school system.
The wicked problems approach brings out the uncertainty in which the designer operates having to conceive and design something that does not yet exist. If in a linear approach a designer has a specific problem to solve based on defined conditions, a wicked problems approach, based on indeterminacy, gives the designer a universal scope.
The wicked problems approach contains peculiarities typical of the themes of design thinking. Indeed, the object of design can be applied to any area of human experience. Design thinking is considered a bridge to connect the knowledge of liberal arts and sciences, adapting them to current problems and purposes. Bauchanan [1] underlines the absence of the impossible, considered as a limitation of the imagination that can be overcome through a better use of design thinking, an instrument characterized by the integration of signs, things, actions and environments that respond to the concrete needs and values of human beings under various circumstances.
Design thinking was also analyzed from a managerial point of view. By discussing the mutual interactions and influences of management and design, managers became curious about the way designers think and operate within the company. Design thinking has become a tool for the entire planning area to contribute to innovation and replace strategic management to face a complex reality [13]. In this sense, design thinking becomes a broader approach, capable of involving the organizational systems of companies, influencing the behavior of managers, and solving complex problems. Not surprisingly, it is increasingly common that managers are asked to be a little more designer by adopting a “design attitude” [14].
Martin [15] and Brown [16], fathers of two different interpretations and applications of design thinking, do not turn to research on design studies and on the management of organizations, but formulate an approach that derives rather from experience gained during practical activity. Despite this, both theories are gaining recognition from designers, companies, and governmental agencies.
Martin sees design thinking as a useful and necessary tool for training managers. For him there are two forms of business thinking: analytical and intuitive. Analytical thinking is based on quantitative data and standardized processes, while intuitive thinking is about how to use instinct to guide creativity and innovation. Analytical thinking is the most common in management schools being easier to measure and more coherent. Martin uses the labels of reliable for analytical thinking and valid for the intuitive one. Companies prefer to privilege reliability, and this implies that they cannot create valid solutions that exploit the three inductive, abductive, and deductive logics.
Business schools generally tend to focus on inductive thinking, based on empirical evidence, and on the deductive one, based on already accepted premises that guide future actions. The design schools emphasize the abductive logic of the way of thinking, based on “what it could be”. An abductive approach sees in the project constraint a creative opportunity and a challenge; managers instead perceives it as an obstacle.
The use of design thinking to deal with indeterminate organizational problems favors reasoning and the continuous generation of idea through abductive, deductive and inductive combinations, an activity particularly important for companies that deal with both the exploitation of the existing and the exploration of the new [17]. Organizations that live in routine and that have developed the ability to always produce the same goods, keeping the cost and quality level constant, are unable to innovate. The search for a balance between abductive, deductive, and inductive reasoning that takes the form of generating an idea, predicting the consequences, testing, and dissemination (Figure 2) is the best way to innovate, using design thinking.
The design thinking process. Source: Personal adaption from Martin, 2009.
Another approach is the one proposed by Tim Brown and Tom and David Kelley. They provide a model for innovation that arises from the practice of consulting IDEO, a company that has started to market itself as an innovation organization and not as a design one, thus emphasizing the dependence between the two concepts. The design thinking of Tim Brown and the Kelley brothers is therefore a response to the innovation challenges of organizations that deal with complex issues. The approach starts from the assumption of bringing together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically sustainable [16]. The model adopts a human-centered orientation and therefore to the market and the analysis of consumer needs and their relative satisfaction, representing one of the most important peculiarities of design thinking. One of the most interesting aspects is that design thinking considers all potential innovators, using the skills that everyone has, in particular problem-solving. Another important topic contained in the approach is that of social innovation and the contribution that can be made through design thinking by creating products, services and organizations to support them for less developed communities in order to improve their quality of life.
Today, to deal with changes in society and the environment, an approach to innovation that manages to integrate with companies and society is necessary to create breakthrough ideas, capable of being implemented and successful. The design thinking approach is proposed as a solution to this need by suggesting a model that through the tools possessed by designers is able to create an innovation capable of integrating people’s needs and therefore giving them meaning with what is technologically feasible and functionally possible in the near future and which responds to the economic success of companies and can become part of a sustainable business model (Figure 3).
Innovation in the design thinking model. Source. Personal adaption from Brown, 2009.
If the classic designer tries to solve each of these constraints, the design thinker will place himself in a position of harmonious balance. In this model, the design has moved from a tactical role to a strategic one, starting to move in different areas and setting aside the idea of building on what already exists and looking for mere improvement features. The approach is based on the belief that the design belongs to everyone and for everyone, that the ideas and skills that everyone has can be expressed through alternative brainstorming methods in which sharing, the importance of team work and exaltation of diversity is enrichment for all and allows important results to be achieved [18].
Design thinking may be able to solve complex problems, which are not limited to products but can concern processes, services, interactions, forms of collaboration, communication, and strategies [19]. However, everything is guided by a human-centered vision, in which the market is put at the center, in which needs are the engine of all innovative ideas, giving people what they want and thus transforming the latent need into demand.
For a company that has understood the value of innovation and considers it a competitive lever, it is essential to use design thinking and its tools to guide growth, improve the quality of activities, decisions, and results.
In the wake of the design methodologies, the design process was divided into various steps to facilitate the planning of the project activities and their scheduling. The first references to a multiphase structure of the creative process come from Poincaré [20], who, through his reflections on the creative thinking process to solve mathematical problems, gave impetus to Wallas [21] who divided the creative process into four phases: preparation, incubation, lighting and verification. This classification was the starting point of the search for movements in the field of creativity in design that sought new models to better describe the stages of a process. As demonstrated by some design researchers, the classification and the respective visualization of the different phases of the design process depends above all on the methodological paradigm in which the creative process in the design is analyzed and described [22, 23, 24]. In the design methodology there was a paradigm shift in the 1980s, from the analytical and rational logic, to the holistic one of progressive affirmation of design solutions. The problem-solving paradigm moved towards the interpretation of the design process as a reflective practice [25] and as a co-evolution of problem-solution spaces [26]. In the new design thinking movement, the problem-solving approach is still dominant, but it is holistic and non-linear [17, 19, 27]. Instead of a sequence of stages, most of these models describe the design thinking process as a space overlap system [28] and as an iterative process [29], and therefore can be assigned to new design paradigms of progressive affirmation.
In the domain of design thinking applied to business and innovation, some process models have been published and defined as the most appropriate. These are the “3 I” model [28] developed by the consulting firm IDEO and The Stanford d_School model developed in 2008 from the collaboration between the Hasso Plattner Institute and the d_School of Stanford University, two of the most prestigious institutes in the field of design.
This model was developed by IDEO, one of the leading companies in design-driven innovation consulting and takes its name from the three phases into which it is divided: inspiration, ideation, and implementation.
Inspiration represents the initial phase in which it is necessary to identify the problem or challenge that must be face. The goal is to observe people and their lives, to understand how they think, feel and act. The inspiration stage can in turn be divided into three sub-phases:
understand the reason, the opportunity or the problem that pushes people to face a challenge; in other words, begin to understand what are the right questions that need to be asked to solve the problem;
observe people in their own context of life with the aim of collecting as much information and data available on their way of acting, feeling and thinking to determine the real needs, desires, dreams and problems to be solved or satisfied;
point of view that indicates the reformulation of a design challenge, transforming it into a statement of the problem to be faced in the following phase of ideation.
The three sub-phases must be covered repeatedly, considering the feedback collected and the possible opportunities for improvement at each iteration, trying to empathize with the people observed to understand them in depth. During the inspiration phase, the design team should be able to build a brief containing a series of constraints that help the team itself identify a framework from which to start, objectives to be achieved and parameters to measure obtained progresses and results and potential ones. It must be generic enough to allow the team freedom of action, develop creative ideas and think outside the box, but it must not be too general either, risking to make the team wander with no grips to cling to during moments of uncertainty and doubt about which direction to take. Once the initial framework has been defined, the inspiration involves understanding what people really want and what they need; it is necessary to use ad hoc tools since traditional methods, based mostly on simple interviews, are limited to asking people for these concepts: unfortunately people are often unable to provide this information since they do not even know what they really need.
Ideation is the phase in which a meaning is giving to everything that has been observed and heard in the previous phase, generating as many ideas as possible and identifying opportunities to be seized, developing and refining, iteration after iteration, the ideas identified, up to choose the best one to implement. Even the ideation stage can be broken down into three sub-phases, which, like the previous ones, must however be a cycle to be covered and retraced continuously: design, prototypes, and tests. The goal is to devise as many solutions as possible, create fast and inexpensive prototypes to build and test them from the initial stages, in order to immediately collect feedback and sensations to understand if the team is heading in the right direction, reducing time and resources on ineffective solutions. Among the good practices in support of the phase are optimism, abstaining from judgments and criticisms, visual representations of the paths and concepts addressed, and the multidisciplinary skills and knowledge of the people involved in the design process. Also, in this case, the key word is to iterate, pursuing perfection, but in small steps until the identification of the solution deemed best and in which to invest in the third and last phase of implementation.
Implementation is the final phase of the design thinking process according to the “3 I” model and consists in giving life to the best solution among those identified in the previous phases. The goal is to present the proposal to the market, choosing the most suitable way to share and promote it and evaluating the impact it will have, both in economic and social terms. This last step can also be broken down into three sub-phases which are:
storytelling: it helps to communicate the chosen solution to all stakeholders, internal and external to the organization, through the use of a language suitable for each of them, which can be made up of meanings, images and references to past experiences. The goal is to correctly convey to the market the meaning, the value, and the type of impact the solution will have for the people who will adopt it;
pilot: intended as a pilot prototype, completer and more defined than those created in the design phase. In this case the costs and production times will be greater because the pilot prototype must be tested by potential users as if it were the real product/service that is going to be launched into the market. Like all the phases described above, this one is subject to more and more iterations, at the end of which feedback and impressions are collected to continuously improve the pilot until the final optimal characteristics are identified;
business model: to correctly launch the asset on the market and implement its commercialization, a reliable business model should be developed. In the business model, strategic decisions will have to be made relating to financing, marketing, production, related auxiliary services, in short, everything needed to transform the idea into a complete product/service/experience to be offered to the market.
All these phases of the process are strictly interconnected and must not be carried out in a linear way but as a circular sequence, with an approach of continuous revisions and second thoughts that consider feedback and impressions to arrive at the optimal solution (Figure 4).
The “3 I” model. Source. Personal elaboration from Brown and Wyatt, 2010.
The model has been developed in 2008, from the collaboration between the Hasso Plattner Institute and the d_School of Stanford University. The approach remains, as in the previous case, of a scientific-engineering and iterative type and the phases to be implemented cyclically are five:
Empathy: since this is a human-centered approach, empathizing with the subjects involved is the basis of the model, to understand their needs by taking their point of view and to be able to produce solutions suitable and innovative for them. Once again, therefore, the starting point is to understand how the people who are addressed think, feel and behave, with the aim of deducing their needs and their desires, but also the beliefs, convictions and values they possess, without asking them explicitly. For example, to collect data and information about the customers, organizations might observe if differences or ambiguities exist between what a subject says and what he does instead. To empathize with people, it is necessary to:
Observe, viewing users and their respective behaviors in their life context, i.e. social, work, family;
Involve stakeholders in the challenge through meetings and interviews;
Identify with the users themselves by living the same experiences.
Definition: the objective is to define the problems to be faced and the opportunities to be seized, structuring the information collected in the previous stage to produce a point of view from which generate innovative solutions, aimed at satisfying the latent needs of users. The output of the phase is represented by a specific challenge to be faced, which represents the vision of the project; the more the vision will be clear and well defined, the more likely it will be to find a successful solution. Indeed, the better the problem is known, the easier it will be to find the best solution. Vice versa, the less clear a problem is, the more difficult it will be to find a solution of considerable impact. The definition phase also serves to collect and view all the insights gained in the empathy phase, always with the aim of defining the right challenge to start and begin to glimpse possible solutions to the problem. A good vision, in addition to capturing the hearts and minds of the people involved, must:
Frame the problem and focus the team’s attention on it;
Inspire the team;
Allow members to make decisions independently and simultaneously;
Avoid defining universal concepts that are good for each user, which is not only impossible given the great diversity of people, but also counterproductive since generalization makes the team moving away from the peculiarities of the challenge.
The vision is based on the point of view identified and assumed during the phases of empathy and of definition, that is a sort of micro-theory relating to the challenge, the reference environment, and potential users. Defining the point of view in the right way means defining the vision and consequently an innovative solution suitable for overcoming the described challenge. A useful methodology for this purpose is to continually ask the question “how can we….?”, thus offering a good starting point for brainstorming, the main activity of the next phase of ideation. Since the process is dynamic and iterative, brainstorming can also be used upstream of the ideation phase, as a transition activity aimed at generating a point of view and a vision.
Ideation: it represents the phase in which, developing the divergent and creative thinking of the team, many ideas are produced, to then choose those or the one to be explored and prototype in the next phase. The solutions generated, in addition to responding effectively to the problem to be overcome, could also open new perspectives, thus making it necessary to revise from the earliest stages. To develop this research and this type of thinking, as anticipated, powerful discussion tools can be used such as brainstorming, related to themes or concepts identified in the early stages which must be deepened to find insights and ideas on which the solutions to come will be based. The design process must allow the team to abandon obvious and banal ideas or to go beyond these using them only as a starting point. Additionally, the design process must allow the team to look for opportunities, even potential ones to be seized, and for new areas to explore, and give fluidity and flexibility to the range of possible solutions with high innovative content. Once again, the goal of the ideation is not to identify the best result, but a range of possible solutions that reconcile the characteristics of the challenge and the reference environment with the needs and requirements of the users. The selection of the best idea will be made later, based on the feedback received and the feasibility and desirability characteristics of the solutions. Once again there is an overlap between the design phase and the subsequent prototype and test phases, which is however necessary to identify the optimal solution. The output of the design phase is given by a small group of ideas to be submitted to the next prototyping phase; the number of ideas to be prototyped must be the right tradeoff between product innovation potential and feasibility understood both in economic and temporal terms. Prototyping each idea produced, as well as just one, would in fact be ineffective, first for economic reasons and, secondly, to not lose most of the innovative content produced during the ideation stage.
Prototyping: the conversion of the idea into reality, making the conceived solution tangible. The prototype has the task of conveying the concept or idea behind a solution, therefore it does not necessarily have to be complete or finished. The simpler it is, the more possibilities exist to try different combinations and alternatives before identifying the final optimal solution. In addition, the more people involved can try it, test it, and interact with it, the more successful the prototype will be, because in this way empathy between user and the solution is increased. Like the previous ones, this phase is also based on research and iterations: initially the challenge, the problem and the solutions are less defined and consequently the prototypes generated will be not clear as well, but, as the solution takes a determined shape, even the prototypes will become clearer and more detailed. There are many different forms of prototypes, from tangible products to bulletin boards containing post-its, from role-playing games to story boards; in other words, prototype is anything that can be used to submit a concept or even an idea for a solution to possible users or stakeholders involved in the process. The prototypes, in addition to sharing and communicating a solution to some selected subjects, can be used to seek insights and ideas in the ideation phase and are also useful for testing possible solutions and verifying their potential impact on the market. In general, when building a prototype, the team must avoid excessive attachment to it. Moreover, it is necessary to be extremely practical by ensuring that it responds effectively to a question and, finally, it is always necessary to design taking the point of view of the user, continually making questions like “what do we want to test?” and “what behaviors do we expect to observe?”.
Testing: the verification phase is generally performed in parallel with the presentation of a prototype, so much so that it is often difficult to separate the two activities. However, it should be noted that to test a solution or a prototype it is not enough to show it to possible users, but an evaluation system must be designed. In general, the testing phase is aimed at obtaining:
Feedback to finalize prototypes and solutions;
Information to increase the knowledge of potential users;
Understand the point of view: the test can also reveal that not only the optimal solution has not been identified, but that the wrong challenge has also been defined and therefore the whole process must be restarted.
Obviously, if the test is positive, the solution will continue in the implementation phase until it is proposed to the market. The type of test to perform will depend on the type of prototype or solution. However, a generally valid rule of thumb is to always defend and protect the prototype as if the team knows they are right but question it and try it as if they know to be wrong (Figure 5).
The d_ School of Stanford University Model. Source: Personal elaboration.
In recent years, a particular trend is spreading among the various companies: just as the industrial sector is transforming the offer, based mainly on the product, towards an experience-oriented economy, in the same way museums are forced to innovate its offer, in terms of visitor experience and educational opportunities. At the same time, they must also modernize their internal organization to support this transformation. The reason is that the advent of the experience economy has changed the dynamics of the various institutes, cultural and otherwise: they must face a radical change in order not to sink into an increasingly competitive environment, in which the consumer is looking for more engaging and customized experiences.
Since in this context the needs and expectations of consumers become the main objective, design thinking seems to be the perfect methodology to adapt the museum offer to the wishes of visitors, thanks to its human-centered approach and its nature of problem-solving.
But how can museums use the design thinking process to engage and delight visitors? There are several steps to integrate the design thinking mindsets into museum practice:
Museum professionals must get out from their desks and face-to-face with customers. This can help organizations discover, test, and validate ideas for solving real-world customer needs. In museums, this process is simplified since staff can walk into the galleries during the opening hours and observe and talk to visitors. They have access to them right outside their office doors. By getting away from their desks and into the galleries, they can learn about their visitors’ needs and shift their perspective from institution-centered to user-centered. Additionally, museum staff can also talk with a broader range of people like the parents who regularly drop their sons off at the museum for education programs or the millennials who have checked the website several times but have never come to any of the museum events they read about online. By speaking with this audience, the staff gather rich, individual stories, develop insights around how to meet the needs of current and potential visitors, and test their insights with prototypes;
Before investing time and money on developing new digital or analog products, services or experiences, museums should identify assumptions and test them before starting implementation. For example, a museum might want to redesign the exhibition web pages by starting from the assumptions that some visitors check the website before a visit and some of them arrive at the museum with a very clear agenda in their mind. But then, after conducting some initial interviews, the museum might discover that most visitors do not even consult the website in advance, they are overwhelmed when they arrive and they need guidance and recommendations around where to start and what to see and do. This might lead to new opportunity that consists of providing onsite in-gallery recommendations of what not to miss. Thus, rather than redesign the website, the museum staff can focus on reviewing their daily printed guide and prototyping new in-gallery digital signage as well;
Many museum projects start with the solution. By jumping to the solution, museum do not ask why they are building something but rather what to build. This often means that they set out to solve the wrong problem and miss potential opportunities. In the example reported above, the museum staff can demonstrate that by recognizing the opportunities around the onsite visitor experience before diving into the details of implementation, they were able to holistically consider the needs of their visitors, from online users to onsite guests;
Some museums, especially those about science and natural history, are keen to prototype almost everything, from exhibition installations to digital offerings. However, these represent the exceptions since the concept of prototyping is still very limited with regards to cultural institutions. Museum staff are so invested in the details of the solution that meaningful changes are nearly impossible to be provided. And when prototype happens it is done late in the development process. Prototyping is an essential step of the design thinking process and requires to be done by museums if they want to create innovative cultural experiences for their customers.
The Museo Egizio or Egyptian Museum of Turin is one of the oldest Egyptian museums in the world. Founded in 1824, it ranks second only to Cairo. It represents one of the most visited museums in Italy where it competes with the renowned ones of Rome, Florence and Naples. In 2016, TripAdvisor recognized the Museum Egizio as the most appreciated Italian museum by the visitors.
The audio guide, which provides recorded information while touring the museum, represents the most relevant device used to help the visitor to interpret what the museum has to offer. Given that relevance, the museum management decided to ask a consulting company to implement a training process able to aid the museum staff at developing ideas to redesign the audio guide and, in the meantime, bring the staff together while experimenting innovative working procedures.
After accepted the challenge, the consulting company developed a program focused on two main principles:
Visitor-centered: the visitor is at the center of the whole process and the museum staff needs to get in contact with him. This is the only way to develop innovative services and involve museum staff in their everyday routines with satisfaction;
Team based: all the members of the museum staff must be involved in the process of redesigning the audio guide. Everyone can provide an impact and a unique point of view on how things should be done. The creative process can be developed while continuing the museum daily activities just by adopting a flexible modus operandi and creating small interdisciplinary teams. Working with smaller teams has two main benefits: the members can provide unique perspectives to the problem to be solved and the main activities are not interrupted. Few plenaries have been organized by the consulting company to present the results of the research and to bring all the people together.
The consulting company decided to adopt the design thinking approach to help the Museo Egizio redesign the audio guide and they focus on the two phases of the design thinking model described by the d_School of Stanford University since they better fit the museum context: empathy and prototyping.
In the past, the museum has been considered a place where objects are collected and preserved. Putting the visitor at the center of the museum experience requires the development of innovative approaches based on empathy. Museum staff needs to understand what visitor wants and design thinking methods can help the organizations at achieving these results.
One of the main methods to understand what visitors want is to observe them by seeing what they do and how they behave. Taking notes can help comprehending what are the emotions visitors feel and what are their unfulfilled needs.
Museum staff can make observations directly while walking in the corridors or standing in the halls. Direct observation allows to understand visitors’ needs and desires. The consulting company asked the museum staff to plan between 30- and 60-minutes session of visitor observation. This amount of time represents the optimal choice to get important information about the visitor without neglecting the daily activities to be done.
At the end of the observations, the museum staff conducted interviews with the observed visitors to confirm the information collected. Then, they shared this information in quick meetings.
Visitor research should be conducted by museum staff since they can develop a meaningful conversation with the visitors which can provide useful information about their desires. These conversations can take place in the halls and they can be shorter or longer. Usually, longer conversations happen with selected visitors. The objective is to add more insights to the information collected during the observations.
Putting the visitor in the center means understanding how he acts when he lives the museum experience. This means that is necessary that the museum staff re-walks the same path of the visitors. For example, curators are usually in charge of listening to the audio guides before they are provided to the visitors. However, the curators represent just few members of the museum staff and they cannot provide a fully comprehensive perspective on how audio guides should be modified. For this reason, it is necessary that all the museum staff goes over the visitor journey in the museum. It could be useful to put himself in a specific visitor’s shoes such as a parent with children or a business traveler with no time at his disposal.
The results can be surprising since the museum staff, usually involved in everyday routine, does not really know what visitors feel when they enter in the museum. Having time to re-trace their paths allows the museum staff to get to know them in terms of their needs or problems.
Even if the visitor is put at the center of the entire process, it is extremely important to confirm the information collected by interviewing the internal experts of the museum who are in direct contact with the public such as the front-end staff, the social media managers, the security guards. These people can provide useful information to complete the puzzle. Additionally, internal experts can help to bring all the museum staff together since their expertise can represent an important force to building teams and strengthening relationships.
The work conducted during the first stage allows the museum staff to put together both the pros and the cons of a visitor’s museum experience. Starting from this map, the staff can identify what are the problems that is necessary to tackle and the needs to be satisfied with the redesigned audio guided.
Once problems have been identified, the museum staff can start thinking about how to solve them. In this stage, techniques like brainstorming are used. As explained above, brainstorming allows people to show their creativity even if the time available to discuss a specific problem seems limited.
The last two stages of the training process are prototyping and testing. They represent important tools to foster innovation and avoid mistakes in a museum environment. Prototyping means creating examples of the final products to see if the idea has been developed in the right way, if it can be appreciated by visitors and, if it solves the identified problems. In the museum environment, usually paper prototypes are created to test a new signposting or the position of an information desk. Paper prototypes are frequently used since they are cheap and easy to create.
Once prototypes are created, they are tested among the visitors in the museum environment. In the Museo Egizio, for example, visitors identified the main problems and opportunities of the ideas presented by the museum staff. This gave an important feedback on how to improve the following version of the audio guide. Additionally, visitors felt to be at the center of the creative process, and this reinforced the idea that the museum appreciated their contribution.
The design thinking steps need to be repeated more than once until a satisfactory prototype is obtained. Only in this way, museum staff can be assured about the developed ideas and can be satisfied for the effort made during the entire process.
At the end of the training, the Museo Egizio staff was able to collect relevant information, develop ideas and gain knowledge about the audio guide and the visitors’ needs. Additionally, they were pushed to experiment a new way to work together where creativity, collaboration and interdisciplinarity were the main driving forces. This brought some members of the staff to realize how much they are important for contributing to the creative process.
The Queensland Museum in Brisbane, Australia, aims at connecting visitors to Queensland by being the repository of the state’s natural and cultural heritage. It has several campuses and more than 1 million people visit them every year.
In 2011, because of an organizational renovation, the Queensland Museum decided to establish an internal creative agency with the objective of fostering innovation, increasing audience engagement, and implementing design thinking processes in the organization. The agency had the goal to develop a 5-year strategic plan by reasoning about new exhibitions and experiences to offer to visitors.
One of the main exhibitions the agency thought during that period is Lost Creatures: Stories from Ancient Queensland. Launched in 2013, this exhibition has been used as a test to implement a design thinking process which involved not only the museum staff but also external stakeholders such as volunteers and people from the closest communities.
During the discovery stage, the agency decided to ask the museum staff to interview different audiences within the museum environment. This allowed to create an “empathy map” that, in turn, provided useful information about what visitors expected about exhibition topics.
Specifically, for Lost Creatures, the agency asked visitors to select the most appropriate words to describe what they expected from their experiences in the museum. The most chosen words became the experience criteria which provided the agency and the museum staff with some specific goals to be developed.
In addition to the interviews, the museum staff had to undertake a space analysis to identify the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; synthesize the work developed in the past and review what has been proposed by the curators; take inspiration from different case studies and settings to inspire more creativity.
Building on the experience criteria discovered in the first stage, the museum staff brainstormed some ideas to respond to the visitors’ needs. Starting from more than 50 idea, the team selected few of them to take into the prototype and test stage. Among the others, the museum staff focused on the development of geological timeline, iconic specimens, immersive atmosphere using color, lightning and building connections to key fossil sites.
As in the Museo Egizio case study, the prototype and test stages allow the team to create essential examples of the product/service to be offered to visitors by using basic materials, especially cardboard models, notes, collages, drawings. Then, the prototypes are showed to the visitors in the museum with the objective to collect useful insights on what works and how improvements can be made.
Queensland Museum staff presented three prototypes for Lost Creatures: a “timeline tunnel” of iconic objects, a large-scale reconstruction with the objective of creating a sense of “wow”, one of the feeling arose in the previous stage, and modules with the overall theme of extinction.
The prototype and test stages have been repeated several times as the project Lost Creatures evolved in time and, three months after starting the design thinking process, the team decided to approach the visitors with the prototypes. Since prototype tests usually work better at a real scale, the agency decided to show them in the gallery. This helped the museum staff and visitors as well to better comprehend the issues related to spatial design.
In the end, even if the Queensland Museum staff encountered practical issues in delivery the outcomes of the design thinking process, some ideas remained in the final project and the exhibition started in December 2013 with great appreciation of the visitors. Moreover, ideas that have not been implemented Lost Creatures have been developed as separate funded projects such as a digital tourism app for regional paleontology sites.
The industrial design world has been using design thinking to move away from just making products to designing services and systems. Similarly, to innovate, museums are moving away from just traditional exhibitions to more collaborative and multifaceted experiences and services.
Design thinking gives museums a simple process to encourage innovation and new approaches. Most people and organizations are inherently creative problem solvers, but the clear processes of design thinking further help instill a creative culture and help build a common language. The process strongly supports innovation through collaboration internally with staff and externally with visitors. Projects become especially energized by the involvement of many diverse people, including those who might typically feel isolated from design processes.
Design thinking can be used in almost any stage and at any scale in a museum project. The process gives a clear pathway to involve audiences, drive investments and build better staff collaborations. For museum staff and project delivery, advantages to applying design thinking include breaking down the silos of organizational projects which might be isolated in curatorial or exhibition areas; involving staff, audience and people from many fields and backgrounds that helps to energize and widen the innovation process, giving museum staff “fresh eyes” to a project; defining clearer challenges and project scopes that helps avoid designing for too many groups which can result in weak ideas; testing of fast and rapid prototypes that helps avoid wasting investment, i.e. capital, time or emotional attachment in a project, going in a wrong direction; finally, valuing time constraints and forcing faster and stronger choices that helps avoid too much overthinking or stalling of projects.
The visitor centered museum requires to rethink all working methods and curatorial practices. With its focus on both empathy with visitors and interdepartmental teamwork, design thinking is a powerful tool to help the reinventing processes and practices in a way which is both effective and easy to follow.
Authors are listed below with their open access chapters linked via author name:
",metaTitle:"IntechOpen authors on the Global Highly Cited Researchers 2018 list",metaDescription:null,metaKeywords:null,canonicalURL:null,contentRaw:'[{"type":"htmlEditorComponent","content":"New for 2018 (alphabetically by surname).
\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nJocelyn Chanussot (chapter to be published soon...)
\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nYuekun Lai
\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nPrevious years (alphabetically by surname)
\\n\\nAbdul Latif Ahmad 2016-18
\\n\\nKhalil Amine 2017, 2018
\\n\\nEwan Birney 2015-18
\\n\\nFrede Blaabjerg 2015-18
\\n\\nGang Chen 2016-18
\\n\\nJunhong Chen 2017, 2018
\\n\\nZhigang Chen 2016, 2018
\\n\\nMyung-Haing Cho 2016, 2018
\\n\\nMark Connors 2015-18
\\n\\nCyrus Cooper 2017, 2018
\\n\\nLiming Dai 2015-18
\\n\\nWeihua Deng 2017, 2018
\\n\\nVincenzo Fogliano 2017, 2018
\\n\\nRon de Graaf 2014-18
\\n\\nHarald Haas 2017, 2018
\\n\\nFrancisco Herrera 2017, 2018
\\n\\nJaakko Kangasjärvi 2015-18
\\n\\nHamid Reza Karimi 2016-18
\\n\\nJunji Kido 2014-18
\\n\\nJose Luiszamorano 2015-18
\\n\\nYiqi Luo 2016-18
\\n\\nJoachim Maier 2014-18
\\n\\nAndrea Natale 2017, 2018
\\n\\nAlberto Mantovani 2014-18
\\n\\nMarjan Mernik 2017, 2018
\\n\\nSandra Orchard 2014, 2016-18
\\n\\nMohamed Oukka 2016-18
\\n\\nBiswajeet Pradhan 2016-18
\\n\\nDirk Raes 2017, 2018
\\n\\nUlrike Ravens-Sieberer 2016-18
\\n\\nYexiang Tong 2017, 2018
\\n\\nJim Van Os 2015-18
\\n\\nLong Wang 2017, 2018
\\n\\nFei Wei 2016-18
\\n\\nIoannis Xenarios 2017, 2018
\\n\\nQi Xie 2016-18
\\n\\nXin-She Yang 2017, 2018
\\n\\nYulong Yin 2015, 2017, 2018
\\n"}]'},components:[{type:"htmlEditorComponent",content:'New for 2018 (alphabetically by surname).
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJocelyn Chanussot (chapter to be published soon...)
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYuekun Lai
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPrevious years (alphabetically by surname)
\n\nAbdul Latif Ahmad 2016-18
\n\nKhalil Amine 2017, 2018
\n\nEwan Birney 2015-18
\n\nFrede Blaabjerg 2015-18
\n\nGang Chen 2016-18
\n\nJunhong Chen 2017, 2018
\n\nZhigang Chen 2016, 2018
\n\nMyung-Haing Cho 2016, 2018
\n\nMark Connors 2015-18
\n\nCyrus Cooper 2017, 2018
\n\nLiming Dai 2015-18
\n\nWeihua Deng 2017, 2018
\n\nVincenzo Fogliano 2017, 2018
\n\nRon de Graaf 2014-18
\n\nHarald Haas 2017, 2018
\n\nFrancisco Herrera 2017, 2018
\n\nJaakko Kangasjärvi 2015-18
\n\nHamid Reza Karimi 2016-18
\n\nJunji Kido 2014-18
\n\nJose Luiszamorano 2015-18
\n\nYiqi Luo 2016-18
\n\nJoachim Maier 2014-18
\n\nAndrea Natale 2017, 2018
\n\nAlberto Mantovani 2014-18
\n\nMarjan Mernik 2017, 2018
\n\nSandra Orchard 2014, 2016-18
\n\nMohamed Oukka 2016-18
\n\nBiswajeet Pradhan 2016-18
\n\nDirk Raes 2017, 2018
\n\nUlrike Ravens-Sieberer 2016-18
\n\nYexiang Tong 2017, 2018
\n\nJim Van Os 2015-18
\n\nLong Wang 2017, 2018
\n\nFei Wei 2016-18
\n\nIoannis Xenarios 2017, 2018
\n\nQi Xie 2016-18
\n\nXin-She Yang 2017, 2018
\n\nYulong Yin 2015, 2017, 2018
\n'}]},successStories:{items:[]},authorsAndEditors:{filterParams:{sort:"featured,name"},profiles:[{id:"6700",title:"Dr.",name:"Abbass A.",middleName:null,surname:"Hashim",slug:"abbass-a.-hashim",fullName:"Abbass A. Hashim",position:null,profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/6700/images/1864_n.jpg",biography:"Currently I am carrying out research in several areas of interest, mainly covering work on chemical and bio-sensors, semiconductor thin film device fabrication and characterisation.\nAt the moment I have very strong interest in radiation environmental pollution and bacteriology treatment. The teams of researchers are working very hard to bring novel results in this field. I am also a member of the team in charge for the supervision of Ph.D. students in the fields of development of silicon based planar waveguide sensor devices, study of inelastic electron tunnelling in planar tunnelling nanostructures for sensing applications and development of organotellurium(IV) compounds for semiconductor applications. I am a specialist in data analysis techniques and nanosurface structure. I have served as the editor for many books, been a member of the editorial board in science journals, have published many papers and hold many patents.",institutionString:null,institution:{name:"Sheffield Hallam University",country:{name:"United Kingdom"}}},{id:"54525",title:"Prof.",name:"Abdul Latif",middleName:null,surname:"Ahmad",slug:"abdul-latif-ahmad",fullName:"Abdul Latif Ahmad",position:null,profilePictureURL:"//cdnintech.com/web/frontend/www/assets/author.svg",biography:null,institutionString:null,institution:null},{id:"20567",title:"Prof.",name:"Ado",middleName:null,surname:"Jorio",slug:"ado-jorio",fullName:"Ado Jorio",position:null,profilePictureURL:"//cdnintech.com/web/frontend/www/assets/author.svg",biography:null,institutionString:null,institution:{name:"Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais",country:{name:"Brazil"}}},{id:"47940",title:"Dr.",name:"Alberto",middleName:null,surname:"Mantovani",slug:"alberto-mantovani",fullName:"Alberto Mantovani",position:null,profilePictureURL:"//cdnintech.com/web/frontend/www/assets/author.svg",biography:null,institutionString:null,institution:null},{id:"12392",title:"Mr.",name:"Alex",middleName:null,surname:"Lazinica",slug:"alex-lazinica",fullName:"Alex Lazinica",position:null,profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/12392/images/7282_n.png",biography:"Alex Lazinica is the founder and CEO of IntechOpen. After obtaining a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, he continued his PhD studies in Robotics at the Vienna University of Technology. Here he worked as a robotic researcher with the university's Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Group as well as a guest researcher at various European universities, including the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). During this time he published more than 20 scientific papers, gave presentations, served as a reviewer for major robotic journals and conferences and most importantly he co-founded and built the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems- world's first Open Access journal in the field of robotics. Starting this journal was a pivotal point in his career, since it was a pathway to founding IntechOpen - Open Access publisher focused on addressing academic researchers needs. Alex is a personification of IntechOpen key values being trusted, open and entrepreneurial. Today his focus is on defining the growth and development strategy for the company.",institutionString:null,institution:{name:"TU Wien",country:{name:"Austria"}}},{id:"19816",title:"Prof.",name:"Alexander",middleName:null,surname:"Kokorin",slug:"alexander-kokorin",fullName:"Alexander Kokorin",position:null,profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/19816/images/1607_n.jpg",biography:"Alexander I. Kokorin: born: 1947, Moscow; DSc., PhD; Principal Research Fellow (Research Professor) of Department of Kinetics and Catalysis, N. Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.\r\nArea of research interests: physical chemistry of complex-organized molecular and nanosized systems, including polymer-metal complexes; the surface of doped oxide semiconductors. He is an expert in structural, absorptive, catalytic and photocatalytic properties, in structural organization and dynamic features of ionic liquids, in magnetic interactions between paramagnetic centers. The author or co-author of 3 books, over 200 articles and reviews in scientific journals and books. He is an actual member of the International EPR/ESR Society, European Society on Quantum Solar Energy Conversion, Moscow House of Scientists, of the Board of Moscow Physical Society.",institutionString:null,institution:{name:"Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics",country:{name:"Russia"}}},{id:"62389",title:"PhD.",name:"Ali Demir",middleName:null,surname:"Sezer",slug:"ali-demir-sezer",fullName:"Ali Demir Sezer",position:null,profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/62389/images/3413_n.jpg",biography:"Dr. Ali Demir Sezer has a Ph.D. from Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Marmara (Turkey). He is the member of many Pharmaceutical Associations and acts as a reviewer of scientific journals and European projects under different research areas such as: drug delivery systems, nanotechnology and pharmaceutical biotechnology. Dr. Sezer is the author of many scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and poster communications. Focus of his research activity is drug delivery, physico-chemical characterization and biological evaluation of biopolymers micro and nanoparticles as modified drug delivery system, and colloidal drug carriers (liposomes, nanoparticles etc.).",institutionString:null,institution:{name:"Marmara University",country:{name:"Turkey"}}},{id:"61051",title:"Prof.",name:"Andrea",middleName:null,surname:"Natale",slug:"andrea-natale",fullName:"Andrea Natale",position:null,profilePictureURL:"//cdnintech.com/web/frontend/www/assets/author.svg",biography:null,institutionString:null,institution:null},{id:"100762",title:"Prof.",name:"Andrea",middleName:null,surname:"Natale",slug:"andrea-natale",fullName:"Andrea Natale",position:null,profilePictureURL:"//cdnintech.com/web/frontend/www/assets/author.svg",biography:null,institutionString:null,institution:{name:"St David's Medical Center",country:{name:"United States of America"}}},{id:"107416",title:"Dr.",name:"Andrea",middleName:null,surname:"Natale",slug:"andrea-natale",fullName:"Andrea Natale",position:null,profilePictureURL:"//cdnintech.com/web/frontend/www/assets/author.svg",biography:null,institutionString:null,institution:{name:"Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia",country:{name:"United States of America"}}},{id:"64434",title:"Dr.",name:"Angkoon",middleName:null,surname:"Phinyomark",slug:"angkoon-phinyomark",fullName:"Angkoon Phinyomark",position:null,profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/64434/images/2619_n.jpg",biography:"My name is Angkoon Phinyomark. I received a B.Eng. degree in Computer Engineering with First Class Honors in 2008 from Prince of Songkla University, Songkhla, Thailand, where I received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering. My research interests are primarily in the area of biomedical signal processing and classification notably EMG (electromyography signal), EOG (electrooculography signal), and EEG (electroencephalography signal), image analysis notably breast cancer analysis and optical coherence tomography, and rehabilitation engineering. I became a student member of IEEE in 2008. During October 2011-March 2012, I had worked at School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom. In addition, during a B.Eng. I had been a visiting research student at Faculty of Computer Science, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain for three months.\n\nI have published over 40 papers during 5 years in refereed journals, books, and conference proceedings in the areas of electro-physiological signals processing and classification, notably EMG and EOG signals, fractal analysis, wavelet analysis, texture analysis, feature extraction and machine learning algorithms, and assistive and rehabilitative devices. I have several computer programming language certificates, i.e. Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform 1.4 (SCJP), Microsoft Certified Professional Developer, Web Developer (MCPD), Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist, .NET Framework 2.0 Web (MCTS). I am a Reviewer for several refereed journals and international conferences, such as IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Optic Letters, Measurement Science Review, and also a member of the International Advisory Committee for 2012 IEEE Business Engineering and Industrial Applications and 2012 IEEE Symposium on Business, Engineering and Industrial Applications.",institutionString:null,institution:{name:"Joseph Fourier University",country:{name:"France"}}},{id:"55578",title:"Dr.",name:"Antonio",middleName:null,surname:"Jurado-Navas",slug:"antonio-jurado-navas",fullName:"Antonio Jurado-Navas",position:null,profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/55578/images/4574_n.png",biography:"Antonio Jurado-Navas received the M.S. degree (2002) and the Ph.D. degree (2009) in Telecommunication Engineering, both from the University of Málaga (Spain). He first worked as a consultant at Vodafone-Spain. From 2004 to 2011, he was a Research Assistant with the Communications Engineering Department at the University of Málaga. In 2011, he became an Assistant Professor in the same department. From 2012 to 2015, he was with Ericsson Spain, where he was working on geo-location\ntools for third generation mobile networks. Since 2015, he is a Marie-Curie fellow at the Denmark Technical University. His current research interests include the areas of mobile communication systems and channel modeling in addition to atmospheric optical communications, adaptive optics and statistics",institutionString:null,institution:{name:"University of Malaga",country:{name:"Spain"}}}],filtersByRegion:[{group:"region",caption:"North America",value:1,count:5775},{group:"region",caption:"Middle and South America",value:2,count:5238},{group:"region",caption:"Africa",value:3,count:1721},{group:"region",caption:"Asia",value:4,count:10409},{group:"region",caption:"Australia and Oceania",value:5,count:897},{group:"region",caption:"Europe",value:6,count:15805}],offset:12,limit:12,total:118372},chapterEmbeded:{data:{}},editorApplication:{success:null,errors:{}},ofsBooks:{filterParams:{hasNoEditors:"0",sort:"dateEndThirdStepPublish",topicId:"23"},books:[{type:"book",id:"10656",title:"Intellectual Property",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!0,hash:"135df9b403b125a6458eba971faab3f6",slug:null,bookSignature:"Dr. Sakthivel Lakshmana Prabu and Dr. Suriyaprakash TNK",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10656.jpg",editedByType:null,editors:[{id:"91590",title:"Dr.",name:"Sakthivel",surname:"Lakshmana Prabu",slug:"sakthivel-lakshmana-prabu",fullName:"Sakthivel Lakshmana Prabu"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"10658",title:"Multilingualism",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!0,hash:"a6bf171e05831c00f8687891ab1b10b5",slug:null,bookSignature:"Prof. Xiaoming Jiang",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10658.jpg",editedByType:null,editors:[{id:"189844",title:"Prof.",name:"Xiaoming",surname:"Jiang",slug:"xiaoming-jiang",fullName:"Xiaoming Jiang"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"10660",title:"Heritage - New Paradigm",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!0,hash:"d0b747909f95bd54d009ed0838c38f84",slug:null,bookSignature:"Prof. Daniela Turcanu-Carutiu",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10660.jpg",editedByType:null,editors:[{id:"176482",title:"Prof.",name:"Daniela",surname:"Turcanu-Carutiu",slug:"daniela-turcanu-carutiu",fullName:"Daniela Turcanu-Carutiu"}],productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}}],filtersByTopic:[{group:"topic",caption:"Agricultural and Biological Sciences",value:5,count:16},{group:"topic",caption:"Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology",value:6,count:4},{group:"topic",caption:"Business, Management and Economics",value:7,count:2},{group:"topic",caption:"Chemistry",value:8,count:8},{group:"topic",caption:"Computer and Information Science",value:9,count:6},{group:"topic",caption:"Earth and Planetary Sciences",value:10,count:7},{group:"topic",caption:"Engineering",value:11,count:18},{group:"topic",caption:"Environmental Sciences",value:12,count:2},{group:"topic",caption:"Immunology and Microbiology",value:13,count:3},{group:"topic",caption:"Materials Science",value:14,count:5},{group:"topic",caption:"Mathematics",value:15,count:1},{group:"topic",caption:"Medicine",value:16,count:24},{group:"topic",caption:"Neuroscience",value:18,count:2},{group:"topic",caption:"Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science",value:19,count:3},{group:"topic",caption:"Physics",value:20,count:3},{group:"topic",caption:"Psychology",value:21,count:4},{group:"topic",caption:"Robotics",value:22,count:1},{group:"topic",caption:"Social Sciences",value:23,count:3},{group:"topic",caption:"Technology",value:24,count:1},{group:"topic",caption:"Veterinary Medicine and Science",value:25,count:1}],offset:12,limit:12,total:3},popularBooks:{featuredBooks:[{type:"book",id:"9385",title:"Renewable Energy",subtitle:"Technologies and Applications",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"a6b446d19166f17f313008e6c056f3d8",slug:"renewable-energy-technologies-and-applications",bookSignature:"Tolga Taner, Archana Tiwari and Taha Selim Ustun",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9385.jpg",editors:[{id:"197240",title:"Associate Prof.",name:"Tolga",middleName:null,surname:"Taner",slug:"tolga-taner",fullName:"Tolga Taner"}],equalEditorOne:{id:"186791",title:"Dr.",name:"Archana",middleName:null,surname:"Tiwari",slug:"archana-tiwari",fullName:"Archana Tiwari",profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/186791/images/system/186791.jpg",biography:"Dr. Archana Tiwari is Associate Professor at Amity University, India. Her research interests include renewable sources of energy from microalgae and further utilizing the residual biomass for the generation of value-added products, bioremediation through microalgae and microbial consortium, antioxidative enzymes and stress, and nutraceuticals from microalgae. She has been working on algal biotechnology for the last two decades. She has published her research in many international journals and has authored many books and chapters with renowned publishing houses. She has also delivered talks as an invited speaker at many national and international conferences. Dr. Tiwari is the recipient of several awards including Researcher of the Year and Distinguished Scientist.",institutionString:"Amity University",position:null,outsideEditionCount:0,totalCites:0,totalAuthoredChapters:"3",totalChapterViews:"0",totalEditedBooks:"1",institution:{name:"Amity University",institutionURL:null,country:{name:"India"}}},equalEditorTwo:{id:"197609",title:"Prof.",name:"Taha Selim",middleName:null,surname:"Ustun",slug:"taha-selim-ustun",fullName:"Taha Selim Ustun",profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/197609/images/system/197609.jpeg",biography:"Dr. Taha Selim Ustun received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He is a researcher with the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute, AIST (FREA), where he leads the Smart Grid Cybersecurity Laboratory. Prior to that, he was a faculty member with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. His current research interests include power systems protection, communication in power networks, distributed generation, microgrids, electric vehicle integration, and cybersecurity in smart grids. He serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Access, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Energies, Electronics, Electricity, World Electric Vehicle and Information journals. Dr. Ustun is a member of the IEEE 2004 and 2800, IEC Renewable Energy Management WG 8, and IEC TC 57 WG17. He has been invited to run specialist courses in Africa, India, and China. He has delivered talks for the Qatar Foundation, the World Energy Council, the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, and the European Union Energy Initiative (EUEI). His research has attracted funding from prestigious programs in Japan, Australia, the European Union, and North America.",institutionString:"Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute, AIST (FREA)",position:null,outsideEditionCount:0,totalCites:0,totalAuthoredChapters:"1",totalChapterViews:"0",totalEditedBooks:"0",institution:{name:"National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology",institutionURL:null,country:{name:"Japan"}}},equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"10065",title:"Wavelet Theory",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"d8868e332169597ba2182d9b004d60de",slug:"wavelet-theory",bookSignature:"Somayeh Mohammady",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10065.jpg",editors:[{id:"109280",title:"Dr.",name:"Somayeh",middleName:null,surname:"Mohammady",slug:"somayeh-mohammady",fullName:"Somayeh Mohammady"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9644",title:"Glaciers and the Polar Environment",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"e8cfdc161794e3753ced54e6ff30873b",slug:"glaciers-and-the-polar-environment",bookSignature:"Masaki Kanao, Danilo Godone and Niccolò Dematteis",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9644.jpg",editors:[{id:"51959",title:"Dr.",name:"Masaki",middleName:null,surname:"Kanao",slug:"masaki-kanao",fullName:"Masaki Kanao"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"8985",title:"Natural Resources Management and Biological Sciences",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"5c2e219a6c021a40b5a20c041dea88c4",slug:"natural-resources-management-and-biological-sciences",bookSignature:"Edward R. Rhodes and Humood Naser",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/8985.jpg",editors:[{id:"280886",title:"Prof.",name:"Edward R",middleName:null,surname:"Rhodes",slug:"edward-r-rhodes",fullName:"Edward R Rhodes"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9671",title:"Macrophages",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"03b00fdc5f24b71d1ecdfd75076bfde6",slug:"macrophages",bookSignature:"Hridayesh Prakash",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9671.jpg",editors:[{id:"287184",title:"Dr.",name:"Hridayesh",middleName:null,surname:"Prakash",slug:"hridayesh-prakash",fullName:"Hridayesh Prakash"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9313",title:"Clay Science and Technology",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"6fa7e70396ff10620e032bb6cfa6fb72",slug:"clay-science-and-technology",bookSignature:"Gustavo Morari Do Nascimento",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9313.jpg",editors:[{id:"7153",title:"Prof.",name:"Gustavo",middleName:null,surname:"Morari Do Nascimento",slug:"gustavo-morari-do-nascimento",fullName:"Gustavo Morari Do Nascimento"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9888",title:"Nuclear Power Plants",subtitle:"The Processes from the Cradle to the Grave",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"c2c8773e586f62155ab8221ebb72a849",slug:"nuclear-power-plants-the-processes-from-the-cradle-to-the-grave",bookSignature:"Nasser Awwad",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9888.jpg",editors:[{id:"145209",title:"Prof.",name:"Nasser",middleName:"S",surname:"Awwad",slug:"nasser-awwad",fullName:"Nasser Awwad"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9027",title:"Human Blood Group Systems and Haemoglobinopathies",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"d00d8e40b11cfb2547d1122866531c7e",slug:"human-blood-group-systems-and-haemoglobinopathies",bookSignature:"Osaro Erhabor and Anjana Munshi",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9027.jpg",editors:[{id:"35140",title:null,name:"Osaro",middleName:null,surname:"Erhabor",slug:"osaro-erhabor",fullName:"Osaro Erhabor"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"7841",title:"New Insights Into Metabolic Syndrome",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"ef5accfac9772b9e2c9eff884f085510",slug:"new-insights-into-metabolic-syndrome",bookSignature:"Akikazu Takada",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/7841.jpg",editors:[{id:"248459",title:"Dr.",name:"Akikazu",middleName:null,surname:"Takada",slug:"akikazu-takada",fullName:"Akikazu Takada"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"8558",title:"Aerodynamics",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"db7263fc198dfb539073ba0260a7f1aa",slug:"aerodynamics",bookSignature:"Mofid Gorji-Bandpy and Aly-Mousaad Aly",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/8558.jpg",editors:[{id:"35542",title:"Prof.",name:"Mofid",middleName:null,surname:"Gorji-Bandpy",slug:"mofid-gorji-bandpy",fullName:"Mofid Gorji-Bandpy"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"7847",title:"Medical Toxicology",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"db9b65bea093de17a0855a1b27046247",slug:"medical-toxicology",bookSignature:"Pınar Erkekoglu and Tomohisa Ogawa",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/7847.jpg",editors:[{id:"109978",title:"Prof.",name:"Pınar",middleName:null,surname:"Erkekoglu",slug:"pinar-erkekoglu",fullName:"Pınar Erkekoglu"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"10432",title:"Casting Processes and Modelling of Metallic Materials",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"2c5c9df938666bf5d1797727db203a6d",slug:"casting-processes-and-modelling-of-metallic-materials",bookSignature:"Zakaria Abdallah and Nada Aldoumani",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10432.jpg",editors:[{id:"201670",title:"Dr.",name:"Zak",middleName:null,surname:"Abdallah",slug:"zak-abdallah",fullName:"Zak Abdallah"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}}],offset:12,limit:12,total:5240},hotBookTopics:{hotBooks:[],offset:0,limit:12,total:null},publish:{},publishingProposal:{success:null,errors:{}},books:{featuredBooks:[{type:"book",id:"10065",title:"Wavelet Theory",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"d8868e332169597ba2182d9b004d60de",slug:"wavelet-theory",bookSignature:"Somayeh Mohammady",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10065.jpg",editors:[{id:"109280",title:"Dr.",name:"Somayeh",middleName:null,surname:"Mohammady",slug:"somayeh-mohammady",fullName:"Somayeh Mohammady"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9644",title:"Glaciers and the Polar Environment",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"e8cfdc161794e3753ced54e6ff30873b",slug:"glaciers-and-the-polar-environment",bookSignature:"Masaki Kanao, Danilo Godone and Niccolò Dematteis",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9644.jpg",editors:[{id:"51959",title:"Dr.",name:"Masaki",middleName:null,surname:"Kanao",slug:"masaki-kanao",fullName:"Masaki Kanao"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9385",title:"Renewable Energy",subtitle:"Technologies and Applications",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"a6b446d19166f17f313008e6c056f3d8",slug:"renewable-energy-technologies-and-applications",bookSignature:"Tolga Taner, Archana Tiwari and Taha Selim Ustun",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9385.jpg",editors:[{id:"197240",title:"Associate Prof.",name:"Tolga",middleName:null,surname:"Taner",slug:"tolga-taner",fullName:"Tolga Taner"}],equalEditorOne:{id:"186791",title:"Dr.",name:"Archana",middleName:null,surname:"Tiwari",slug:"archana-tiwari",fullName:"Archana Tiwari",profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/186791/images/system/186791.jpg",biography:"Dr. Archana Tiwari is Associate Professor at Amity University, India. Her research interests include renewable sources of energy from microalgae and further utilizing the residual biomass for the generation of value-added products, bioremediation through microalgae and microbial consortium, antioxidative enzymes and stress, and nutraceuticals from microalgae. She has been working on algal biotechnology for the last two decades. She has published her research in many international journals and has authored many books and chapters with renowned publishing houses. She has also delivered talks as an invited speaker at many national and international conferences. Dr. Tiwari is the recipient of several awards including Researcher of the Year and Distinguished Scientist.",institutionString:"Amity University",position:null,outsideEditionCount:0,totalCites:0,totalAuthoredChapters:"3",totalChapterViews:"0",totalEditedBooks:"1",institution:{name:"Amity University",institutionURL:null,country:{name:"India"}}},equalEditorTwo:{id:"197609",title:"Prof.",name:"Taha Selim",middleName:null,surname:"Ustun",slug:"taha-selim-ustun",fullName:"Taha Selim Ustun",profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/197609/images/system/197609.jpeg",biography:"Dr. Taha Selim Ustun received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He is a researcher with the Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute, AIST (FREA), where he leads the Smart Grid Cybersecurity Laboratory. Prior to that, he was a faculty member with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. His current research interests include power systems protection, communication in power networks, distributed generation, microgrids, electric vehicle integration, and cybersecurity in smart grids. He serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Access, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Energies, Electronics, Electricity, World Electric Vehicle and Information journals. Dr. Ustun is a member of the IEEE 2004 and 2800, IEC Renewable Energy Management WG 8, and IEC TC 57 WG17. He has been invited to run specialist courses in Africa, India, and China. He has delivered talks for the Qatar Foundation, the World Energy Council, the Waterloo Global Science Initiative, and the European Union Energy Initiative (EUEI). His research has attracted funding from prestigious programs in Japan, Australia, the European Union, and North America.",institutionString:"Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute, AIST (FREA)",position:null,outsideEditionCount:0,totalCites:0,totalAuthoredChapters:"1",totalChapterViews:"0",totalEditedBooks:"0",institution:{name:"National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology",institutionURL:null,country:{name:"Japan"}}},equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"8985",title:"Natural Resources Management and Biological Sciences",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"5c2e219a6c021a40b5a20c041dea88c4",slug:"natural-resources-management-and-biological-sciences",bookSignature:"Edward R. Rhodes and Humood Naser",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/8985.jpg",editors:[{id:"280886",title:"Prof.",name:"Edward R",middleName:null,surname:"Rhodes",slug:"edward-r-rhodes",fullName:"Edward R Rhodes"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9671",title:"Macrophages",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"03b00fdc5f24b71d1ecdfd75076bfde6",slug:"macrophages",bookSignature:"Hridayesh Prakash",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9671.jpg",editors:[{id:"287184",title:"Dr.",name:"Hridayesh",middleName:null,surname:"Prakash",slug:"hridayesh-prakash",fullName:"Hridayesh Prakash"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9313",title:"Clay Science and Technology",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"6fa7e70396ff10620e032bb6cfa6fb72",slug:"clay-science-and-technology",bookSignature:"Gustavo Morari Do Nascimento",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9313.jpg",editors:[{id:"7153",title:"Prof.",name:"Gustavo",middleName:null,surname:"Morari Do Nascimento",slug:"gustavo-morari-do-nascimento",fullName:"Gustavo Morari Do Nascimento"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9888",title:"Nuclear Power Plants",subtitle:"The Processes from the Cradle to the Grave",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"c2c8773e586f62155ab8221ebb72a849",slug:"nuclear-power-plants-the-processes-from-the-cradle-to-the-grave",bookSignature:"Nasser Awwad",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9888.jpg",editors:[{id:"145209",title:"Prof.",name:"Nasser",middleName:"S",surname:"Awwad",slug:"nasser-awwad",fullName:"Nasser Awwad"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"9027",title:"Human Blood Group Systems and Haemoglobinopathies",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"d00d8e40b11cfb2547d1122866531c7e",slug:"human-blood-group-systems-and-haemoglobinopathies",bookSignature:"Osaro Erhabor and Anjana Munshi",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9027.jpg",editors:[{id:"35140",title:null,name:"Osaro",middleName:null,surname:"Erhabor",slug:"osaro-erhabor",fullName:"Osaro Erhabor"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"10432",title:"Casting Processes and Modelling of Metallic Materials",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"2c5c9df938666bf5d1797727db203a6d",slug:"casting-processes-and-modelling-of-metallic-materials",bookSignature:"Zakaria Abdallah and Nada Aldoumani",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10432.jpg",editors:[{id:"201670",title:"Dr.",name:"Zak",middleName:null,surname:"Abdallah",slug:"zak-abdallah",fullName:"Zak Abdallah"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}},{type:"book",id:"7841",title:"New Insights Into Metabolic Syndrome",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"ef5accfac9772b9e2c9eff884f085510",slug:"new-insights-into-metabolic-syndrome",bookSignature:"Akikazu Takada",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/7841.jpg",editors:[{id:"248459",title:"Dr.",name:"Akikazu",middleName:null,surname:"Takada",slug:"akikazu-takada",fullName:"Akikazu Takada"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}}],latestBooks:[{type:"book",id:"9243",title:"Coastal Environments",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"8e05e5f631e935eef366980f2e28295d",slug:"coastal-environments",bookSignature:"Yuanzhi Zhang and X. San Liang",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9243.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"77597",title:"Prof.",name:"Yuanzhi",middleName:null,surname:"Zhang",slug:"yuanzhi-zhang",fullName:"Yuanzhi Zhang"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"10020",title:"Operations Management",subtitle:"Emerging Trend in the Digital Era",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"526f0dbdc7e4d85b82ce8383ab894b4c",slug:"operations-management-emerging-trend-in-the-digital-era",bookSignature:"Antonella Petrillo, Fabio De Felice, Germano Lambert-Torres and Erik Bonaldi",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10020.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"181603",title:"Dr.",name:"Antonella",middleName:null,surname:"Petrillo",slug:"antonella-petrillo",fullName:"Antonella Petrillo"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"9521",title:"Antimicrobial Resistance",subtitle:"A One Health Perspective",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"30949e78832e1afba5606634b52056ab",slug:"antimicrobial-resistance-a-one-health-perspective",bookSignature:"Mihai Mareș, Swee Hua Erin Lim, Kok-Song Lai and Romeo-Teodor Cristina",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9521.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"88785",title:"Prof.",name:"Mihai",middleName:null,surname:"Mares",slug:"mihai-mares",fullName:"Mihai Mares"}],equalEditorOne:{id:"190224",title:"Dr.",name:"Swee Hua Erin",middleName:null,surname:"Lim",slug:"swee-hua-erin-lim",fullName:"Swee Hua Erin Lim",profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/190224/images/system/190224.png",biography:"Dr. Erin Lim is presently working as an Assistant Professor in the Division of Health Sciences, Abu Dhabi Women\\'s College, Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and is affiliated as an Associate Professor to Perdana University-Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Selangor, Malaysia. She obtained her Ph.D. from Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2010 with a National Science Fellowship awarded from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation Malaysia and has been actively involved in research ever since. Her main research interests include analysis of carriage and transmission of multidrug resistant bacteria in non-conventional settings, besides an interest in natural products for antimicrobial testing. She is heavily involved in the elucidation of mechanisms of reversal of resistance in bacteria in addition to investigating the immunological analyses of diseases, development of vaccination and treatment models in animals. She hopes her work will support the discovery of therapeutics in the clinical setting and assist in the combat against the burden of antibiotic resistance.",institutionString:"Abu Dhabi Women’s College",position:null,outsideEditionCount:0,totalCites:0,totalAuthoredChapters:"3",totalChapterViews:"0",totalEditedBooks:"0",institution:{name:"Perdana University",institutionURL:null,country:{name:"Malaysia"}}},equalEditorTwo:{id:"221544",title:"Dr.",name:"Kok-Song",middleName:null,surname:"Lai",slug:"kok-song-lai",fullName:"Kok-Song Lai",profilePictureURL:"https://mts.intechopen.com/storage/users/221544/images/system/221544.jpeg",biography:"Dr. Lai Kok Song is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Health Sciences, Abu Dhabi Women\\'s College, Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan in 2012. Prior to his academic appointment, Dr. Lai worked as a Senior Scientist at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia. His current research areas include antimicrobial resistance and plant-pathogen interaction. His particular interest lies in the study of the antimicrobial mechanism via membrane disruption of essential oils against multi-drug resistance bacteria through various biochemical, molecular and proteomic approaches. Ultimately, he hopes to uncover and determine novel biomarkers related to antibiotic resistance that can be developed into new therapeutic strategies.",institutionString:"Higher Colleges of Technology",position:null,outsideEditionCount:0,totalCites:0,totalAuthoredChapters:"8",totalChapterViews:"0",totalEditedBooks:"0",institution:{name:"Higher Colleges of Technology",institutionURL:null,country:{name:"United Arab Emirates"}}},equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"9560",title:"Creativity",subtitle:"A Force to Innovation",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"58f740bc17807d5d88d647c525857b11",slug:"creativity-a-force-to-innovation",bookSignature:"Pooja Jain",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9560.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"316765",title:"Dr.",name:"Pooja",middleName:null,surname:"Jain",slug:"pooja-jain",fullName:"Pooja Jain"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"9669",title:"Recent Advances in Rice Research",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"12b06cc73e89af1e104399321cc16a75",slug:"recent-advances-in-rice-research",bookSignature:"Mahmood-ur- Rahman Ansari",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9669.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"185476",title:"Dr.",name:"Mahmood-Ur-",middleName:null,surname:"Rahman Ansari",slug:"mahmood-ur-rahman-ansari",fullName:"Mahmood-Ur- Rahman Ansari"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"10192",title:"Background and Management of Muscular Atrophy",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"eca24028d89912b5efea56e179dff089",slug:"background-and-management-of-muscular-atrophy",bookSignature:"Julianna Cseri",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10192.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"135579",title:"Dr.",name:"Julianna",middleName:null,surname:"Cseri",slug:"julianna-cseri",fullName:"Julianna Cseri"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"9550",title:"Entrepreneurship",subtitle:"Contemporary Issues",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"9b4ac1ee5b743abf6f88495452b1e5e7",slug:"entrepreneurship-contemporary-issues",bookSignature:"Mladen Turuk",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9550.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"319755",title:"Prof.",name:"Mladen",middleName:null,surname:"Turuk",slug:"mladen-turuk",fullName:"Mladen Turuk"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"10065",title:"Wavelet Theory",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"d8868e332169597ba2182d9b004d60de",slug:"wavelet-theory",bookSignature:"Somayeh Mohammady",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10065.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"109280",title:"Dr.",name:"Somayeh",middleName:null,surname:"Mohammady",slug:"somayeh-mohammady",fullName:"Somayeh Mohammady"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"9313",title:"Clay Science and Technology",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"6fa7e70396ff10620e032bb6cfa6fb72",slug:"clay-science-and-technology",bookSignature:"Gustavo Morari Do Nascimento",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9313.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"7153",title:"Prof.",name:"Gustavo",middleName:null,surname:"Morari Do Nascimento",slug:"gustavo-morari-do-nascimento",fullName:"Gustavo Morari Do Nascimento"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"9888",title:"Nuclear Power Plants",subtitle:"The Processes from the Cradle to the Grave",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"c2c8773e586f62155ab8221ebb72a849",slug:"nuclear-power-plants-the-processes-from-the-cradle-to-the-grave",bookSignature:"Nasser Awwad",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/9888.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"145209",title:"Prof.",name:"Nasser",middleName:"S",surname:"Awwad",slug:"nasser-awwad",fullName:"Nasser Awwad"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}}]},subject:{topic:{id:"69",title:"Globalization",slug:"globalization",parent:{title:"Business, Management and Economics",slug:"business-management-and-economics"},numberOfBooks:6,numberOfAuthorsAndEditors:133,numberOfWosCitations:66,numberOfCrossrefCitations:47,numberOfDimensionsCitations:83,videoUrl:null,fallbackUrl:null,description:null},booksByTopicFilter:{topicSlug:"globalization",sort:"-publishedDate",limit:12,offset:0},booksByTopicCollection:[{type:"book",id:"6605",title:"Globalization",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"668508e80e1d73c5292bc19eeeb12c0b",slug:"globalization",bookSignature:"George Yungchih Wang",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/6605.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"202778",title:"Prof.",name:"George Yungchih",middleName:null,surname:"Wang",slug:"george-yungchih-wang",fullName:"George Yungchih Wang"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"3009",title:"Globalization",subtitle:"Approaches to Diversity",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"3a0b441ba233f7f6e07afb92c30833d6",slug:"globalization-approaches-to-diversity",bookSignature:"Hector Cuadra-Montiel",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/3009.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"31673",title:"Dr.",name:"Hector",middleName:null,surname:"Cuadra-Montiel",slug:"hector-cuadra-montiel",fullName:"Hector Cuadra-Montiel"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"2922",title:"Globalization",subtitle:"Education and Management Agendas",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"68cb740dac25a7b8096685d2aa71943d",slug:"globalization-education-and-management-agendas",bookSignature:"Hector Cuadra-Montiel",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/2922.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"31673",title:"Dr.",name:"Hector",middleName:null,surname:"Cuadra-Montiel",slug:"hector-cuadra-montiel",fullName:"Hector Cuadra-Montiel"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"470",title:"New Knowledge in a New Era of Globalization",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"08e011d059a55b7a904787039b394b29",slug:"new-knowledge-in-a-new-era-of-globalization",bookSignature:"Piotr Pachura",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/470.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"33832",title:"Prof.",name:"Piotr",middleName:null,surname:"Pachura",slug:"piotr-pachura",fullName:"Piotr Pachura"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"207",title:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"66505d156fe5c137eb7aba3c41c3f71a",slug:"the-systemic-dimension-of-globalization",bookSignature:"Piotr Pachura",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/207.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"33832",title:"Prof.",name:"Piotr",middleName:null,surname:"Pachura",slug:"piotr-pachura",fullName:"Piotr Pachura"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}},{type:"book",id:"3590",title:"Globalization",subtitle:"Today, Tomorrow",isOpenForSubmission:!1,hash:"63d2eefe753f6b341adc052fbca3d766",slug:"globalization--today--tomorrow",bookSignature:"Kent G. Deng",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/3590.jpg",editedByType:"Edited by",editors:[{id:"125761",title:"Dr.",name:"Kent",middleName:null,surname:"Deng",slug:"kent-deng",fullName:"Kent Deng"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter",authoredCaption:"Edited by"}}],booksByTopicTotal:6,mostCitedChapters:[{id:"38348",doi:"10.5772/45655",title:"Globalization and Culture: The Three H Scenarios",slug:"globalization-and-culture-the-three-h-scenarios",totalDownloads:15022,totalCrossrefCites:3,totalDimensionsCites:8,book:{slug:"globalization-approaches-to-diversity",title:"Globalization",fullTitle:"Globalization - Approaches to Diversity"},signatures:"Abderrahman Hassi and Giovanna Storti",authors:[{id:"148330",title:"Dr.",name:"Abderrahman",middleName:null,surname:"Hassi",slug:"abderrahman-hassi",fullName:"Abderrahman Hassi"},{id:"152537",title:"Prof.",name:"Giovanna",middleName:null,surname:"Storti",slug:"giovanna-storti",fullName:"Giovanna Storti"}]},{id:"38271",doi:"10.5772/47800",title:"Human Resource Management and Performance: From Practices Towards Sustainable Competitive Advantage",slug:"human-resource-management-and-performance-from-practices-towards-sustainable-competitive-advantage",totalDownloads:19308,totalCrossrefCites:4,totalDimensionsCites:7,book:{slug:"globalization-education-and-management-agendas",title:"Globalization",fullTitle:"Globalization - Education and Management Agendas"},signatures:"Asta Savaneviciene and Zivile Stankeviciute",authors:[{id:"146659",title:"Prof.",name:"Asta",middleName:null,surname:"Savaneviciene",slug:"asta-savaneviciene",fullName:"Asta Savaneviciene"},{id:"148268",title:"MSc.",name:"Zivile",middleName:null,surname:"Stankeviciute",slug:"zivile-stankeviciute",fullName:"Zivile Stankeviciute"}]},{id:"17529",doi:"10.5772/21231",title:"Sport in Asia: Globalization, Glocalization, Asianization",slug:"sport-in-asia-globalization-glocalization-asianization",totalDownloads:5301,totalCrossrefCites:4,totalDimensionsCites:5,book:{slug:"new-knowledge-in-a-new-era-of-globalization",title:"New Knowledge in a New Era of Globalization",fullTitle:"New Knowledge in a New Era of Globalization"},signatures:"Peter Horton",authors:[{id:"42366",title:"Prof.",name:"Peter",middleName:null,surname:"Horton",slug:"peter-horton",fullName:"Peter Horton"}]}],mostDownloadedChaptersLast30Days:[{id:"38348",title:"Globalization and Culture: The Three H Scenarios",slug:"globalization-and-culture-the-three-h-scenarios",totalDownloads:15020,totalCrossrefCites:3,totalDimensionsCites:8,book:{slug:"globalization-approaches-to-diversity",title:"Globalization",fullTitle:"Globalization - Approaches to Diversity"},signatures:"Abderrahman Hassi and Giovanna Storti",authors:[{id:"148330",title:"Dr.",name:"Abderrahman",middleName:null,surname:"Hassi",slug:"abderrahman-hassi",fullName:"Abderrahman Hassi"},{id:"152537",title:"Prof.",name:"Giovanna",middleName:null,surname:"Storti",slug:"giovanna-storti",fullName:"Giovanna Storti"}]},{id:"38371",title:"The Role of the International Organisms in the Globalization Process",slug:"the-role-of-the-international-organisms-in-the-globalization-process",totalDownloads:3501,totalCrossrefCites:0,totalDimensionsCites:0,book:{slug:"globalization-approaches-to-diversity",title:"Globalization",fullTitle:"Globalization - Approaches to Diversity"},signatures:"Dorina Tănăsescu, Felicia Dumitru and Georgiana Dincă",authors:[{id:"146791",title:"Prof.",name:"Georgiana",middleName:null,surname:"Dinca",slug:"georgiana-dinca",fullName:"Georgiana Dinca"},{id:"148338",title:"Prof.",name:"Dorina",middleName:null,surname:"Tănăsecu",slug:"dorina-tanasecu",fullName:"Dorina Tănăsecu"},{id:"148340",title:"Dr.",name:"Felicia",middleName:null,surname:"Dumitru",slug:"felicia-dumitru",fullName:"Felicia Dumitru"}]},{id:"17523",title:"The Importance of Globalization in Higher Education",slug:"the-importance-of-globalization-in-higher-education",totalDownloads:9051,totalCrossrefCites:1,totalDimensionsCites:1,book:{slug:"new-knowledge-in-a-new-era-of-globalization",title:"New Knowledge in a New Era of Globalization",fullTitle:"New Knowledge in a New Era of Globalization"},signatures:"Patricia Fox and Stephen Hundley",authors:[{id:"29989",title:"Prof.",name:"Patricia",middleName:"Lynn",surname:"Fox",slug:"patricia-fox",fullName:"Patricia Fox"},{id:"45640",title:"Dr.",name:"Stephen",middleName:null,surname:"Hundley",slug:"stephen-hundley",fullName:"Stephen Hundley"}]},{id:"60620",title:"The Moral Dilemmas of Global Business",slug:"the-moral-dilemmas-of-global-business",totalDownloads:1393,totalCrossrefCites:0,totalDimensionsCites:0,book:{slug:"globalization",title:"Globalization",fullTitle:"Globalization"},signatures:"Federico Ast",authors:[{id:"230355",title:"Dr.",name:"Federico",middleName:null,surname:"Ast",slug:"federico-ast",fullName:"Federico Ast"}]},{id:"17421",title:"Cultural Globalization and Transnational Flows of Things American",slug:"cultural-globalization-and-transnational-flows-of-things-american",totalDownloads:4831,totalCrossrefCites:1,totalDimensionsCites:0,book:{slug:"the-systemic-dimension-of-globalization",title:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization",fullTitle:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization"},signatures:"Mel van Elteren",authors:[{id:"31042",title:"Prof.",name:"Mel",middleName:null,surname:"Van Elteren",slug:"mel-van-elteren",fullName:"Mel Van Elteren"}]},{id:"17540",title:"The Impact of Globalization Determinants and the Health of the World’s Population",slug:"the-impact-of-globalization-determinants-and-the-health-of-the-world-s-population",totalDownloads:12025,totalCrossrefCites:0,totalDimensionsCites:1,book:{slug:"new-knowledge-in-a-new-era-of-globalization",title:"New Knowledge in a New Era of Globalization",fullTitle:"New Knowledge in a New Era of Globalization"},signatures:"Mario J. Azevedo and Barbara H. Johnson",authors:[{id:"31127",title:"Dr.",name:"Mario",middleName:null,surname:"Azevedo",slug:"mario-azevedo",fullName:"Mario Azevedo"},{id:"45668",title:"Dr",name:"Barbara",middleName:"H.",surname:"Johnson",slug:"barbara-johnson",fullName:"Barbara Johnson"}]},{id:"17417",title:"Globalization and Global Innovations",slug:"globalization-and-global-innovations",totalDownloads:6240,totalCrossrefCites:1,totalDimensionsCites:1,book:{slug:"the-systemic-dimension-of-globalization",title:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization",fullTitle:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization"},signatures:"Hassan Danaeefard and Tayebeh Abbasi",authors:[{id:"27849",title:"Dr.",name:"Hassan",middleName:null,surname:"Danaeefard",slug:"hassan-danaeefard",fullName:"Hassan Danaeefard"},{id:"110750",title:"Dr.",name:"Tayebeh",middleName:null,surname:"Abbasi",slug:"tayebeh-abbasi",fullName:"Tayebeh Abbasi"}]},{id:"38267",title:"The Impact of Globalization on Cross-Cultural Communication",slug:"the-impact-of-globalization-on-cross-cultural-communication",totalDownloads:24554,totalCrossrefCites:2,totalDimensionsCites:3,book:{slug:"globalization-education-and-management-agendas",title:"Globalization",fullTitle:"Globalization - Education and Management Agendas"},signatures:"Lowell C. Matthews and Bharat Thakkar",authors:[{id:"148763",title:"Dr.",name:"Bharat",middleName:"S.",surname:"Thakkar",slug:"bharat-thakkar",fullName:"Bharat Thakkar"},{id:"149061",title:"Dr.",name:"Lowell",middleName:"Christopher",surname:"Matthews",slug:"lowell-matthews",fullName:"Lowell Matthews"}]},{id:"17423",title:"Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Commodities in Amazonia",slug:"biodiversity-ecosystem-and-commodities-in-amazonia",totalDownloads:1882,totalCrossrefCites:0,totalDimensionsCites:1,book:{slug:"the-systemic-dimension-of-globalization",title:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization",fullTitle:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization"},signatures:"Peter Mann de Toledo, Ima Célia Guimarães Vieira, Gilberto Câmara, Roberto Araújo, Andrea Coelho and Sergio Gomes",authors:[{id:"30959",title:"Dr.",name:"Ima",middleName:null,surname:"Vieira",slug:"ima-vieira",fullName:"Ima Vieira"},{id:"46575",title:"Dr.",name:"Peter",middleName:"Mann",surname:"Toledo",slug:"peter-toledo",fullName:"Peter Toledo"},{id:"87444",title:"Prof.",name:"Gilberto",middleName:null,surname:"Câmara",slug:"gilberto-camara",fullName:"Gilberto Câmara"},{id:"87446",title:"Dr.",name:"Roberto",middleName:null,surname:"Araújo",slug:"roberto-araujo",fullName:"Roberto Araújo"},{id:"87447",title:"MSc.",name:"Andrea",middleName:null,surname:"Coelho",slug:"andrea-coelho",fullName:"Andrea Coelho"},{id:"87453",title:"Dr.",name:"Sergio",middleName:null,surname:"Gomes",slug:"sergio-gomes",fullName:"Sergio Gomes"}]},{id:"17418",title:"Demistifying Globalization and the State: Preliminary Comments on Re-Commodification, Institutions and Innovation",slug:"demistifying-globalization-and-the-state-preliminary-comments-on-re-commodification-institutions-and",totalDownloads:1448,totalCrossrefCites:1,totalDimensionsCites:1,book:{slug:"the-systemic-dimension-of-globalization",title:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization",fullTitle:"The Systemic Dimension of Globalization"},signatures:"Hector Cuadra-Montiel",authors:[{id:"31673",title:"Dr.",name:"Hector",middleName:null,surname:"Cuadra-Montiel",slug:"hector-cuadra-montiel",fullName:"Hector Cuadra-Montiel"}]}],onlineFirstChaptersFilter:{topicSlug:"globalization",limit:3,offset:0},onlineFirstChaptersCollection:[],onlineFirstChaptersTotal:0},preDownload:{success:null,errors:{}},aboutIntechopen:{},privacyPolicy:{},peerReviewing:{},howOpenAccessPublishingWithIntechopenWorks:{},sponsorshipBooks:{sponsorshipBooks:[{type:"book",id:"10176",title:"Microgrids and Local Energy Systems",subtitle:null,isOpenForSubmission:!0,hash:"c32b4a5351a88f263074b0d0ca813a9c",slug:null,bookSignature:"Prof. Nick Jenkins",coverURL:"https://cdn.intechopen.com/books/images_new/10176.jpg",editedByType:null,editors:[{id:"55219",title:"Prof.",name:"Nick",middleName:null,surname:"Jenkins",slug:"nick-jenkins",fullName:"Nick Jenkins"}],equalEditorOne:null,equalEditorTwo:null,equalEditorThree:null,productType:{id:"1",chapterContentType:"chapter"}}],offset:8,limit:8,total:1},route:{name:"profile.detail",path:"/profiles/107428/nagaswami-vasan",hash:"",query:{},params:{id:"107428",slug:"nagaswami-vasan"},fullPath:"/profiles/107428/nagaswami-vasan",meta:{},from:{name:null,path:"/",hash:"",query:{},params:{},fullPath:"/",meta:{}}}},function(){var e;(e=document.currentScript||document.scripts[document.scripts.length-1]).parentNode.removeChild(e)}()