Innovative partnerships


Book Description




Stepping Stones to Achieving Your Doctorate: by Focusing on Your Viva from the Start


Book Description

What criteria are used to assess the scholarly merit of a thesis? What is the level of conceptualization that is expected in doctoral theses? How can you prepare to defend your thesis? What is the most effective route to achieving your doctorate? The starting point to achieving your doctorate is to appreciate how your thesis will be examined. The criteria that examiners use, the questions they ask in vivas and their reports provide templates against which theses are judged. So, why not start from this endpoint as you plan, undertake, write and defend your research? This book focuses specifically on how you, as a doctoral candidate, can raise your level of thinking about your chosen topic. Doing so will improve the quality of your research and ultimately contribute to knowledge. It also explores the nature of conceptualization which is sought by examiners in theses. As a candidate, the book provides those essential characteristics of doctorateness that examiners expect to find in your thesis. The book will also appeal to supervisors, examiners and those who conduct workshops for doctoral candidates and supervisors. This practical book includes extracts from theses, examiner reports and cameo accounts from doctoral examiners, supervisors and candidates. It also contains numerous visual models that explain relationships and processes for you to apply and use in your doctoral journey. Based upon contemporary practice, Stepping Stones to Achieving your Doctorate is an essential tool for doctoral candidates, supervisors and examiners.




Spatial Analysis in Epidemiology


Book Description

This book provides a practical, comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the use of spatial statistics in epidemiology - the study of the incidence and distribution of diseases. Used appropriately, spatial analytical methods in conjunction with GIS and remotely sensed data can provide significant insights into the biological patterns and processes that underlie disease transmission. In turn, these can be used to understand and predict disease prevalence. This user-friendly text brings together the specialised and widely-dispersed literature on spatial analysis to make these methodological tools accessible to epidemiologists for the first time. With its focus is on application rather than theory, Spatial Analysis in Epidemiology includes a wide range of examples taken from both medical (human) and veterinary (animal) disciplines, and describes both infectious diseases and non-infectious conditions. Furthermore, it provides worked examples of methodologies using a single data set from the same disease example throughout, and is structured to follow the logical sequence of description of spatial data, visualisation, exploration, modelling and decision support. This accessible text is aimed at graduate students and researchers dealing with spatial data in the fields of epidemiology (both medical and veterinary), ecology, zoology and parasitology, environmental science, geography and statistics.




Regulation of Feed Intake


Book Description

Natural feeding, feeding modes, preferences and behaviour; Physiological regulation of feed intake: genetic, metabolic, hormonal and neural regulations; Environmental factors and feed intake: feeding behaviour, feed choice and feeding habits.




Sampling


Book Description

This edition is a reprint of the second edition published by Cengage Learning, Inc. Reprinted with permission. What is the unemployment rate? How many adults have high blood pressure? What is the total area of land planted with soybeans? Sampling: Design and Analysis tells you how to design and analyze surveys to answer these and other questions. This authoritative text, used as a standard reference by numerous survey organizations, teaches sampling using real data sets from social sciences, public opinion research, medicine, public health, economics, agriculture, ecology, and other fields. The book is accessible to students from a wide range of statistical backgrounds. By appropriate choice of sections, it can be used for a graduate class for statistics students or for a class with students from business, sociology, psychology, or biology. Readers should be familiar with concepts from an introductory statistics class including linear regression; optional sections contain the statistical theory, for readers who have studied mathematical statistics. Distinctive features include: More than 450 exercises. In each chapter, Introductory Exercises develop skills, Working with Data Exercises give practice with data from surveys, Working with Theory Exercises allow students to investigate statistical properties of estimators, and Projects and Activities Exercises integrate concepts. A solutions manual is available. An emphasis on survey design. Coverage of simple random, stratified, and cluster sampling; ratio estimation; constructing survey weights; jackknife and bootstrap; nonresponse; chi-squared tests and regression analysis. Graphing data from surveys. Computer code using SAS® software. Online supplements containing data sets, computer programs, and additional material. Sharon Lohr, the author of Measuring Crime: Behind the Statistics, has published widely about survey sampling and statistical methods for education, public policy, law, and crime. She has been recognized as Fellow of the American Statistical Association, elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and recipient of the Gertrude M. Cox Statistics Award and the Deming Lecturer Award. Formerly Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Arizona State University and a Vice President at Westat, she is now a freelance statistical consultant and writer. Visit her website at www.sharonlohr.com.




Estimating Groundwater Recharge


Book Description

Understanding groundwater recharge is essential for successful management of water resources and modeling fluid and contaminant transport within the subsurface. This book provides a critical evaluation of the theory and assumptions that underlie methods for estimating rates of groundwater recharge. Detailed explanations of the methods are provided - allowing readers to apply many of the techniques themselves without needing to consult additional references. Numerous practical examples highlight benefits and limitations of each method. Approximately 900 references allow advanced practitioners to pursue additional information on any method. For the first time, theoretical and practical considerations for selecting and applying methods for estimating groundwater recharge are covered in a single volume with uniform presentation. Hydrogeologists, water-resource specialists, civil and agricultural engineers, earth and environmental scientists and agronomists will benefit from this informative and practical book. It can serve as the primary text for a graduate-level course on groundwater recharge or as an adjunct text for courses on groundwater hydrology or hydrogeology. For the benefit of students and instructors, problem sets of varying difficulty are available at http://wwwbrr.cr.usgs.gov/projects/GW_Unsat/Recharge_Book/.




Cover Crops in West Africa


Book Description

Cover Crops in West Africa Contributing to Sustainable Agriculture