This book is the final publication of the COST Action IC1303 "Algorithms, Architectures and Platforms for Enhanced Living Environments (AAPELE)" project.Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is an area of research based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), medical research, and sociological research. AAL is based on the notion tha...
This book aims to inspire decision makers and practitioners to change their approach to climate planning in the tropics through the application of modern technologies for characterizing local climate and tracking vulnerability and risk, and using decision-making tools. Drawing on 16 case studies conducted mainly in the Caribbean, Central America, W...
At present, how to develop industries is a burning issue in Africa, where population growth remains high and economic development has thus far failed to provide sufficient jobs for many, especially young people and women. The creation of productive jobs through industrial development ought to be a central issue in steering economic activity across ...
This book presents a picture of the current energy challenges on the African continent (and the Sub-Saharan region in particular) and proposes pathways to an accelerated energy transition. Starting with an analysis of the status quo and the outlook for Africa's energy demand and energy access, it provides an account of the available resources,...
This book presents simple, robust pre-field screening protocols that allow plant breeders to screen for enhanced tolerance to heat stress in rice. Two critical heat-sensitive stages in the lifecycle of the rice crop are targeted – the seedling and flowering stages – with screening based on simple phenotypic responses. The protocols are based on...
This book is a modern guide for all C++ programmers to learn Threading Building Blocks (TBB). Written by TBB and parallel programming experts, this book reflects their collective decades of experience in developing and teaching parallel programming with TBB, offering their insights in an approachable manner. Throughout the book the authors present ...
This edited volume examines the policies and practices of rising powers on peacebuilding. It analyzes how and why their approaches differ from those of traditional donors and multilateral institutions. The policies of the rising powers towards peacebuilding may significantly influence how the UN and others undertake peacebuilding in the future. Thi...
This book presents the findings of a team of scientists and practitioners who have been working on the project "Benefits of Governance in Drought Adaptation" (in short: the DROP project), which is included in the European Union's INTERREG IVB NWE programme. The DROP governance team developed a Governance Assessment Tool (GAT), which ...
This book covers the latest in snow sport epidemiology, snow sport injuries and treatment, and biomechanical/mechanical engineering related to snow sports injuries (mechanisms of injury, injury prevention by equipment design, injury prevention by design of resort features, and more). It brings together a collection of papers from the International ...
This book presents twelve unique studies on mediation from researchers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, respectively. Each study highlights important aspects of mediation, including the role of children in family mediation, the evolution and ambivalent application of restorative justice in the Nordic countries, the confusion of roles in cour...
This Brief presents new approaches and innovative challenges to address bringing technology into community-oriented policing efforts. "Community-oriented policing" is an approach that encourages police to develop and maintain personal relationships with citizens and community organizations. By developing these partnerships, the goal is to...
This engaging free book discusses how a values and valuing perspective can facilitate a more effective mathematics pedagogical experience, and allows readers to explore multiple applications of the values perspective across different education systems. It also clearly shows that teaching mathematics involves not only reasoning and feelings, but als...
This short open access book investigates the role of renewable energy in East Africa to provide policy-relevant inputs for the achievement of a cost-effective electrification process in the region. For each country, the authors review the current situation in the domestic power sector, adopt a GIS-based approach to plot renewable energy resources p...
This book, published in the Soft and Biological Matter series, presents an introduction to selected research topics in the broad field of flowing matter, including the dynamics of fluids with a complex internal structure -from nematic fluids to soft glasses- as well as active matter and turbulent phenomena.Flowing matter is a subject at the crossro...
With this graduate-level primer, the principles of the standard model of particle physics receive a particular skillful, personal and enduring exposition by one of the great contributors to the field. In 2013 the late Prof. Altarelli wrote: The discovery of the Higgs boson and the non-observation of new particles or exotic phenomena have made a big...
This book summarizes the results of 3 years of agricultural and forestry reconstructive efforts and applied research conducted directly in the affected areas of Fukushima following the Great East Japan Earthquake. It describes fast and effective revival methods and technologies from tsunami and radiation damages, demonstrated through the collaborat...
Symbolising the motivations of our actions and efforts, it reflects something much more aspirational and contributes to our global society. This book offers novel solutions to ensure employees support a wider organizational meaning whilst guaranteeing that the company benefits from the employee's individual sense of purpose. Advocating a shift...
This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses t...
This book reports on the results of an extended survey conducted across Europe within the framework of the APPRAISAL FP7 project to determine the extent to which an integrated assessment approach to air quality is being adopted, on the one hand, by regional and local authorities to develop air quality plans and, on the other, by researchers. Follow...
This book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among ...
This book presents results relevant in the manufacturing research field, that are mainly aimed at closing the gap between the academic investigation and the industrial application, in collaboration with manufacturing companies. Several hardware and software prototypes represent the key outcome of the scientific contributions that can be grouped int...
This book explores the implications of acknowledging uncertainty and black swans for regulation of high-hazard technologies, for stakeholder acceptability of potentially hazardous activities and for risk governance. The conventional approach to risk assessment, which combines the likelihood of an event and the severity of its consequences, is poorl...
Machine learning techniques provide cost-effective alternatives to traditional methods for extracting underlying relationships between information and data and for predicting future events by processing existing information to train models. Efficient Learning Machines explores the major topics of machine learning, including knowledge discovery, cla...
The Early Years analyzes the development of Latin American and Caribbean children and makes a compelling case for government intervention in what is instinctively a family affair. Spending on effective programs for young children is an investment that, if done well, will have very high returns, while failure to implement such programs will lower th...
A series of reforms have greatly improved the efficiency, reliability, and environmental performance of the Chinese power sector. However, significant challenges remain: rapidly rising electricity demand, concerns about power system reliability and energy security, environmental degradation and climate change. China's government explicitly set...
This book offers a theory for the analysis of how children learn and are taught about whole numbers. Two meanings of numbers are distinguished – the analytical meaning, defined by the number system, and the representational meaning, identified by the use of numbers as conventional signs that stand for quantities. This framework makes it possible ...
This book presents the roles and mechanisms of signal transduction triggered by nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) stimulation in neuroprotection against toxic effects of risk factors of neurodegenerative diseases. Accumulating evidence suggests that nAChRs in the CNS play important roles not only in excitatory neurotransmission but also in...
This book discusses the important issue of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of agricultural residue burning, common in agricultural practices in many parts of the world. In particular, it focuses on the pollution caused by rice residue burning using primary survey data from Punjab, India. It discusses emerging solutions to agricultural w...
The Assessment in Legal Education book series offers perspectives on assessment in legal education across a range of Common Law jurisdictions. Each volume in the series provides:
Information on assessment practices and cultures within a jurisdiction.A sample of innovative assessment practices and designs in a jurisdiction.Insights into how assessm...
If you're looking to access and make sense of all your data in real time, there's a more cost-effective and efficient way than using expensive commercial tool suites. In this O'Reilly report, Sam Newman from ThoughtWorks describes several small, freely available open source tools and frameworks for freeing data locked up in silos and...
You need more than great dev tools to release great software; you need an efficient pipeline that takes advantage of modern Agile development practices. Serverless platforms like AWS offer the basic building blocks you need to run code, store data, or process streaming information so you can focus on the features you want to provide, not get bogged...
How does technology impact research practices in the humanities? How does digitisation shape scholarly identity? How do we negotiate trust in the digital realm? What is scholarship, what forms can it take, and how does it acquire authority?
This diverse set of essays demonstrate the importance of asking such questions, bringing together establis...