1Alan M. MacEachren is Professor and Director of the GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography, 302 Walker, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802 USA; e-mail: [email protected] and Menno-Jan Kraak is Professor and Head of Division of Geoinformatics, Cartography and Visualization, ITC, PO Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede; e-mail: [email protected] This special issue of Cartography and Geographic Inf...

The prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases, particularly those that affect the aged, are predicted to increase rapidly in the coming decades. The World Health Organization forecasts that dementia cases will increase by almost 50% between 2005 and 2030. Supporting data suggests that the predicted number of cases of Alzheimer's disease will quadruple by 2050. It is estimated that interventions ...

Obesity is the main nutritional problem and one of the most important health problems in developed societies. Central to the challenge of obesity prevention and management is a thoroughly understanding of its determinants. Multiple socio-cultural, socio-economic, behavioural and biological factors--often interrelated and many of them still unknown or poorly understood--can contribute to the est...

In recent times cloud computing has appeared as a new model for hosting and conveying services over the Internet. This model is striking to business vendors as it eradicates the requirement for users to plan in advance, and it permits the organization to start from low level and then add more resources only if there is an increase in the service demand. Even though cloud computing presents grea...

The use of any drug ideally represents a decision based on objective, scientifically based cost–benefit analyses that factor in both the short and long-term effects of that exposure. Pharmacological, toxicological, pharmacokinetic and phar-macodynamic investigations that are deemed to be essential for the rational use of any therapeutic agent are therefore part of the usual drug approval proces...