Knowledge-based development for cities and societies : integrated multi-level approaches

Over the past twenty years, the conventional knowledge management approach has evolved into a strategic management approach that has found applications and opportunities outside of business, in society at large, through education, urban development, governance, and healthcare, amongst others. Knowledge-Based Development for Cities and Socieities: Integrated Multi-Level Approaches enlightens the concepts and challenges of knowledge management for both urban environments and entire regions, enhancing the expertise and knowledge of scholars, resdearchers, practitioners, managers and urban developers in the development of successful knowledge-based development policies, creation of knowledte cities and prosperous knowledge societies. This reference creates large knowledge base for scholars, managers and urban developers and increases the awareness of the role of knowledge cities and knowledge socieiteis in the knowledge era, as well as of the challenges and opportunities for future research.

Nanoparticles in European cities and associated health impacts

Atmospheric nanoparticles are one of those pollutants currently unregulated through ambient air quality standards. The aim of this chapter is to assess the environmental and health impacts of atmospheric nanoparticles in European environments. The chapter begins with the conventional information on the origin of atmospheric nanoparticles, followed by their physical and chemical characteristics. A brief overview of recently published review articles on this topic is then presented to guide those readers interested in exploring any specific aspect of nanoparticles in greater detail. A further section reports a summary of recently published studies on atmospheric nanoparticles in European cities. This covers a total of about 45 sampling locations in 30 different cities within 15 European countries for quantifying levels of roadside and urban background particle number concentrations (PNCs). Average PNCs at roadside and urban background sites were found to be 3.82±3.25 ×104 cm–3 and 1.63±0.82 ×104 cm–3, respectively, giving a roadside to background PNC ratio of ~2.4. Engineered nanoparticles are one of the key emerging categories of airborne nanoparticles, especially for the indoor environments. Their ambient concentrations may increase in future due to widespread use of nanotechnology integrated products. Evaluation of their sources and probable impacts on air quality and human health are briefly discussed in the following section. Respiratory deposition doses received by the public exposed to roadside PNCs in numerous European locations are then estimated. These were found to be in the 1.17–7.56 1010 h–1 range over the studied roadside European locations. The following section discusses the potential framework for airborne nanoparticle regulations in Europe and, in addition, the existing control measures to limit nanoparticle emissions at source. The chapter finally concludes with a synthesis of the topic areas covered and highlights important areas for further work.

A reanalysis of 409 European-Ancestry and African American schizophrenia pedigrees reveals significant linkage to 8p23.3 with evidence of locus heterogeneity

The detection and replication of schizophrenia risk loci can require substantial sample sizes, which has prompted various collaborative efforts for combining multiple samples. However, pooled samples may comprise sub-samples with substantial population genetic differences, including allele frequency differences. We investigated the impact of population differences via linkage reanalysis of Molecular Genetics of Schizophrenia 1 (MGS1) affected sibling-pair data, comprising two samples of distinct ancestral origin: European (EA: 263 pedigrees) and African-American (AA: 146 pedigrees). To exploit the linkage information contained within these distinct continental samples, we performed separate analyses of the individual samples, allowing for within-sample locus heterogeneity, and the pooled sample, allowing for both within-sample and between-sample heterogeneity. Significance levels, corrected for the multiple tests, were determined empirically. For all suggestive peaks, stronger linkage evidence was obtained in either the EA or AA sample than the combined sample, regardless of how heterogeneity was modeled for the latter. Notably, we report genomewide significant linkage of schizophrenia to 8p23.3 and evidence for a second, independent susceptibility locus, reaching suggestive linkage, 29 cM away on 8p21.3. We also detected suggestive linkage on chromosomes 5p13.3 and 7q36.2. Many regions showed pronounced differences in the extent of linkage between the EA and AA samples. This reanalysis highlights the potential impact of population differences upon linkage evidence in pooled data and demonstrates a useful approach for the analysis of samples drawn from distinct continental groups.