This book analyses the domestic politics of African dominant party regimes, most notably African governments' survival strategies, to explain their variance of opinions and responses towards the reforming policies of the EU. The author discredits the widespread assumption that the growing presence of China in Africa has made the EU's task...
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...
We are not free from environmental risks that accompany the development of human societies. Modern economic development has accelerated environmental pollution, caused loss of natural habitats, and modified landscapes. These environmental changes have impacted natural systems: water and heat circulation, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. These ch...
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...
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...
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 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...
Sensor Technologies: Healthcare, Wellness and Environmental Applications explores the key aspects of sensor technologies, covering wired, wireless, and discrete sensors for the specific application domains of healthcare, wellness and environmental sensing. It discusses the social, regulatory, and design considerations specific to these domains.
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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 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 presents a comparative look at the norms and attitudes related to youth violence. It aims to present a perspective outside of the typical Western context, through case studies comparing a developed / Western democracy (Germany), a country with a history of institutionalized violence (South Africa), and an emerging democracy that has exper...
This report transfers the Ecological Scarcity Method (ESM) to the EU and its 28 member states. It provides a powerful tool for unbiased environmental assessments in enterprises and surveys the current impacts and the targets published by environmental authorities, specifically the European Environment Agency. ESM assesses environmental impacts of m...
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...
The result of a workshop bringing together an international advisory board of experts in science, satellite technologies, industry innovations, and public policy, this book addresses the current and future roles of satellite Earth observations in solving large-scale environmental problems. The book showcases the results of engaging distinct communi...
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...
Globalization is a powerful force with far reaching impacts on education and education policy. The growth of large scale international surveys of student achievement and the increasing role played by intergovernmental agencies in education means that the influence that globalization exerts on education is likely to increase even further in the futu...
This book describes in vitro and ex vivo models that can be employed to investigate effects of digested food products on the GIT, or specific components thereof. Many such models exist and include, for example, those used to study digestion and fermentation in the small and large intestine, to investigate absorption (e.g. Ussing chamber, epithelial...
This book, written by world experts in aquaponics and related technologies, provides the authoritative and comprehensive overview of the key aquaculture and hydroponic and other integrated systems, socio-economic and environmental aspects. Aquaponic systems, which combine aquaculture and vegetable food production offer alternative technology soluti...
This book advocates for the Social Sciences and Humanities to be more involved in energy policymaking. It forms part of the European platform for energy-related Social Sciences and Humanities' activities, and works on the premise that crossing disciplines is essential. All of its contributions are highly interdisciplinary, with each chapter gr...
It is common for us today to associate the practice of science primarily with the act of seeing—with staring at computer screens, analyzing graphs, and presenting images. We may notice that physicians use stethoscopes to listen for disease, that biologists tune into sound recordings to understand birds, or that engineers have created Geiger telle...
Get the most out of this foundational reference and improve the productivity of your software teams. This book collects the wisdom of the 2017 "Dagstuhl" seminar on productivity in software engineering, a meeting of community leaders, who came together with the goal of rethinking traditional definitions and measures of productivity.
The ...
Taking the business model as point of departure, this book explores how companies and organizations can contribute to a more sustainable future by designing innovative models that are both sustainable and profitable. Based upon years of research, it draws together theoretical foundations and existing literature on the topic of sustainable business ...
This in-depth survey of salutogenesis shows the breadth and strengths of this innovative perspective on health promotion, health care, and wellness. Background and historical chapters trace the development of the salutogenic model of health, and flesh out the central concepts, most notably generalized resistance resources and the sense of coherence...
This volume explores interdependencies between knowledge, action, and space from different interdisciplinary perspectives. Some of the contributors discuss knowledge as a social construct based on collective action, while others look at knowledge as an individual capacity for action. The chapters contain theoretical frameworks as well as experiment...
This book provides insight into the Life Cycle Management (LCM) concept and the progress in its implementation. LCM is a management concept applied in industrial and service sectors to improve products and services, while enhancing the overall sustainability performance of business and its value chains. In this regard, LCM is an opportunity to diff...
This book presents methods to evaluate sustainable development using economic tools. The focus on sustainable development takes the reader beyond economic growth to encompass inclusion, environmental stewardship and good governance. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework for outcomes. In illustrating the SDGs, the book employs thr...
This book presents 18 case studies that explore current scientific and technological efforts to address global development issues, such as poverty, from a holistic and interdisciplinary point of view, putting actual impacts at the centre of its analysis. It illustrates the use of technologies for development in various fields of research, such as h...
This book provides a critical account of the third sector and its future in Europe. It offers an original conceptualization of the third sector in its European manifestations alongside an overview of its major contours, including its structure, sources of support, and recent trends. It also assesses the impact of this sector in Europe which conside...
This book opens up the black box of mediation in collective conflicts through the analyses and comparisons of various systems. Mediation and related third party interventions such as conciliation and facilitation are discussed as effective prevention and regulation tools for different types of collective labor conflicts. These interventions fit in...
Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided.The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the di...
This survey provides an overview of the German discussion on modelling and applications in schools. It considers the development from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, and discusses the term "mathematical model" as well as different representations of the modelling process as modelling cycles. Different trends in the histo...