This book provides fresh insights into concepts, methods and new research findings on the causes of excessive food price volatility. It also discusses the implications for food security and policy responses to mitigate excessive volatility. The approaches applied by the contributors range from on-the-ground surveys, to panel econometrics and innova...
Given the manifold challenges of financial sectors in developing and transition countries, one might be tempted to believe that embarking on "green" finance is not a priority for financial systems development. However, there are a number of arguments against this view. Environmental finance, particularly energy efficiency and renewable en...
Ability to use information and communication technologies (ICT) is an imperative for effective participation in today's digital age. Schools worldwide are responding to the need to provide young people with that ability. But how effective are they in this regard? The IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) responded t...
This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of...
This book offers insights into the development of the ground-breaking Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings (GCC) and the San Code of Research Ethics. Using a new, intuitive moral framework predicated on fairness, respect, care and honesty, both codes target ethics dumping - the export of unethical research practices from a ...
This book critically explores what child protection policy and professional practice would mean if practice was grounded in human rights standards. This book inspires a new direction in child protection research – one that critically assesses child protection policy and professional practice with regard to human rights in general, and the rights ...
This book presents theories and case studies for corporations in developed nations, including Japan, for designing strategies to maximize opportunities and minimize threats in business expansion into developing nations. The case studies featured here focus on Asia, including China and India, and use examples of Japanese manufacturers. Five case st...
This volume discusses the effects, models and implications of history teaching in relation to conflict transformation and reconciliation from a social-psychological perspective. Bringing together a mix of established and young researchers and academics, from the fields of psychology, education, and history, the book provides an in-depth exploration...
This book provides a practical and self-contained overview of the Gene Ontology (GO), the leading project to organize biological knowledge on genes and their products across genomic resources. Written for biologists and bioinformaticians, it covers the state-of-the-art of how GO annotations are made, how they are evaluated, and what sort of analyse...
The central purpose of this collection of essays is to make a creative addition to the debates surrounding the cultural heritage domain. In the 21st century the world faces epochal changes which affect every part of society, including the arenas in which cultural heritage is made, held, collected, curated, exhibited, or simply exists. The book is a...
This book considers the potential setup for a future Multilateral Investment Court (MIC). The option of an MIC was first discussed by the EU Commission in 2016 and has since been made an official element of the EU Common Commercial Policy. In 2017, UNCITRAL also decided to discuss the possibility of an MIC, and on 20 March 2018, the Council of the ...
This volume presents new insights on marginality, i.e. the situation of people living on the edge of socio-economic and ecological systems. The marginality concept leads to different development policies. While the prevalence of poverty declined by about 50 percent in the past two decades, any further reduction of poverty will be more difficult, be...
The aim of this book is to facilitate the identification and description of the different organs as well as pathogens and diseases affecting the most representative species of cephalopods focussed on Sepia officinalis, Loligo vulgaris and Octopus vulgaris. These species are valuable 'morphotype' models and belong to the taxonomic groups S...
This volume addresses the potential for combining large-scale marine aquaculture of macroalgae, molluscs, crustaceans, and finfish, with offshore structures, primarily those associated with energy production, such as wind turbines and oil-drilling platforms. The volume offers a comprehensive overview and includes chapters on policy, science, engine...
Arising from a scientific conference marking the 100th anniversary of her birth, this book honors the life and work of the social scientist and diplomat Ester Boserup, who blazed new trails in her interdisciplinary approach to development and sustainability. The contents are organized in three sections reflecting important focal points of Boserup&...
This book discusses a core question in many fields of the social sciences, namely how to create, share and adopt new knowledge. It creates an original space for conversation between two lines of research that have developed largely in parallel for a long time: social network theory and the geography of knowledge. This book considers that relational...
This book summarizes the findings of the VUELCO project, a multi-disciplinary and cross-boundary research funded by the European Commission's 7th framework program. It comprises four broad topics:1. The global significance of volcanic unrest2. Geophysical and geochemical fingerprints of unrest and precursory activity3. Magma dynami...
Using longitudinal data from the Swiss Household Panel to zoom in on continuity and change in the life course, this book describes how the lives of the Swiss population have changed in terms of health, family circumstances, work, political participation, and migration over the last sixteen years. What are the different trajectories in terms of mobi...
This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, fi...
'This is an incredibly audacious book. Derek Bolton and Grant Gillett brilliantly succeed in providing the big picture that was lacking in the defense of the biopsychosocial model promoted by Engel 40 years ago.' - Steeves Demazeux, Assistant Professor in philosophy, Bordeaux-Montaigne University, FranceThis book is a systematic update of...
This book introduces a novel approach to the design and operation of large ICT systems. It views the technical solutions and their stakeholders as complex adaptive systems and argues that traditional risk analyses cannot predict all future incidents with major impacts. To avoid unacceptable events, it is necessary to establish and operate anti-frag...
The multiple purposes of nature - livelihood for communities, revenues for states, commodities for companies, and biodiversity for conservationists - have turned environmental governance in Latin America into a highly contested arena. In such a resource-rich region, unequal power relations, conflicting priorities, and trade-offs among multiple goal...
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences, ISCIS 2016, held in Krakow, Poland, in October 2016.
The 29 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on smart algorithms; data classific...
This book begins with an algorithm - a set of IF...THEN rules used in the development of a new, ethical, video surveillance architecture for transport hubs. Readers are invited to follow the algorithm over three years, charting its everyday life. Questions of ethics, transparency, accountability and market value must be grasped by the algorithm in ...
This book includes contributions by leading researchers and industry thought leaders on various topics related to the essence of software engineering and their application in industrial projects. It offers a broad overview of research findings dealing with current practical software engineering issues and also pointers to potential future developme...
This book sets out to explain the reasons for the gap between "knowing" and "doing" in view of self-reliance, which is more and more often expected of citizens. In today's society, people are expected to take responsibility for their own lives and be self-reliant. This is no easy feat. They must be on constant high alert in...
This book discusses several didactic traditions in mathematics education in countries across Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the Czech and Slovakian Republics, and the Scandinavian states. It shows that while they all share common features both in the practice of learning and teaching at school and in research and develop...
This book presents a systematic investigation into internationally comparable data gathered in ICILS 2013. It identifies differences in female and male students' use of, perceptions about, and proficiency in using computer technologies. Teachers' use of computers, and their perceptions regarding the benefits of computer use in education, ...
This book defines the new field of "Bioeconomy" as the sustainable and innovative use of biomass and biological knowledge to provide food, feed, industrial products, bioenergy and ecological services. The chapters highlight the importance of bioeconomy-related concepts in public, scientific, and political discourse. Using an interdiscipli...
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2018, held in Porto, Portugal, in May 2018.
XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice, and XP 2018 provided a playful and informal environment to learn and trigger discussions around its main th...
This book is open access under a Creative Commons license.This authoritative book presents the ever progressing state of the art in evaluating climate change strategies and action. It builds upon a selection of relevant and practical papers and presentations given at the 2nd International Conference on Evaluating Climate Change and Development held...
This Topical Survey offers a brief overview of the current state of research on and activities for mathematically gifted students around the world. This is of interest to a broad readership, including educational researchers, research mathematicians, mathematics teachers, teacher educators, curriculum designers, doctoral students, and other stakeho...