This book provides a compendium of material properties, demonstrates several successful examples of bio-based materials' application in building facades, and offers ideas for new designs and novel solutions. It features a state-of-the-art review, addresses the latest trends in material selection, assembling systems, and innovative functions of...
This book addresses the age-old problem of infinite regresses in epistemology. How can we ever come to know something if knowing requires having good reasons, and reasons can only be good if they are backed by good reasons in turn? The problem has puzzled philosophers ever since antiquity, giving rise to what is often called Agrippa's Trilemma...
This work examines the main directions of research conducted on the history of mathematics education. It devotes substantial attention to research methodologies and the connections between this field and other scholarly fields. The results of a survey about academic literature on this subject are accompanied by a discussion of what has yet to be do...
This book presents a comprehensive overview of dilated cardiomyopathy, providing readers with practical guidelines for its clinical management. The first part of the book analyzes in detail the disease's pathophysiology, its diagnostic work up as well as the prognostic stratification, and illustrates the role of genetics and gene-environment i...
This book analyses the interplay between governing, evaluation and knowledge with an empirical focus on Swedish higher education. It investigates the origins, logics, and mechanisms of evaluation and quality assurance reforms and their dynamic interactions with institutional, national and European policy contexts. The chapters report findings from ...
Interest in social innovation continues to rise, from governments setting up social innovation 'labs' to large corporations developing social innovation strategies. Yet theory lags behind practice, and this hampers our ability to understand social innovation and make the most of its potential. This collection brings together work by leadi...
This survey addresses the use of technology in upper secondary mathematics education from four points of view: theoretical analysis of epistemological and cognitive aspects of activity in new technology mediated learning environments, the changes brought by technology in the interactions between environment, students and teachers, the interrelation...
This book discusses individual, collective, and institutional responsibilities with regard to vaccination from the perspective of philosophy and public health ethics. It addresses the issue of what it means for a collective to be morally responsible for the realisation of herd immunity and what the implications of collective responsibility are for ...
This volume focuses on the etiology and morphogenesis of congenital heart diseases. It reviews in detail the early development and differentiation of the heart, and later morphologic events of the cardiovascular system, covering a wide range of topics such as gene functions, growth factors, transcription factors and cellular interactions that are i...
This open access wide-ranging collation of papers examines a host of issues in studying second-generation immigrants, their life courses, and their relations with older generations. Tightly focused on methodological aspects, both quantitative and qualitative, the volume features the work of authors from numerous countries, from differing discipline...
This book provides a comprehensive European perspective on the concept of ageism, its origins, the manifestation and consequences of ageism, as well as ways to respond to and research ageism. The book represents a collaborative effort of researchers from over 20 countries and a variety of disciplines, including, psychology, sociology, gerontology, ...
This book raises crucial questions about the citizenship of the European Union. Is it a new citizenship beyond the nation-state although it is derived from Member State nationality? Who should get it? What rights and duties does it entail? Should EU citizens living in other Member States be able to vote there in national elections? If there are ten...
This book offers comprehensive coverage on Ordered Fuzzy Numbers, providing readers with both the basic information and the necessary expertise to use them in a variety of real-world applications. The respective chapters, written by leading researchers, discuss the main techniques and applications, together with the advantages and shortcomings of t...
This book offers a comparative overview on Portuguese emigration in Europe and outside the EU in times of recession. It looks at Portuguese emigrants who, after the crisis of 2008, moved both intra-EU, such as UK, France, Switzerland, Germany and Spain, but also into countries with historical links, such as the USA and Canada, and to Portuguese spe...
By shedding light on EULEX - the EU mission to Kosovo – this book investigates the EU's peacebuilding activities in that country, in the light of the normative power theory in the post-conflict setting and peacebuilding theory. Ten years after the massive engagement of the EU in the country torn by war, the authors critically assess the effe...
Good education changes lives. It is therefore unsurprising that improved schooling plays a central part in most development strategies. At the same time, the expansion of school attainment alone is not sufficient to guarantee improved welfare. This book focuses on one country in West Africa, Togo, to explore what a country that has successfully inc...
This book demystifies the models we use to simulate present and future climates, allowing readers to better understand how to use climate model results. In order to predict the future trajectory of the Earth's climate, climate-system simulation models are necessary. When and how do we trust climate model predictions? The book offers a framewor...
This topical survey provides an overview of the current state of the art in technology use in mathematics education, including both practice-oriented experiences and research-based evidence, as seen from an international perspective. Three core themes are discussed: Evidence of effectiveness; Digital assessment; and Communication and collaboration....
This book presents recent advances in the pure sciences that are of significance in the quest for alternatives to the use of animals in research and describes a variety of practical applications of the three key guiding principles for the more ethical use of animals in experiments – replacement, reduction, and refinement, collectively known as th...
The objective of this book is to broadly illustrate the key aspects of water governance, mapping the spectrum of decision-making from techno-centric and eco-centric approaches, to hybrid concepts and people-centric approaches. Topics covered include the challenges for water-governance models, the polycentric model, the integration challenge, water ...
This book examines the current state of elective placements of medical undergraduate students in developing countries and their impact on health care education at home. Drawing from a recent case study of volunteer deployment in Uganda, the authors provide an in-depth evaluation of the impacts on the students themselves and the learning outcomes as...
This book investigates the reasons behind the 2017 youthquake – which saw the highest rate of youth turnout in a quarter of a century, and an unprecedented gap in youth support for Labour over the Conservative Party – from both a comparative and a theoretical perspective. It compares youth turnout and party allegiance over time and traces chang...
The InfoSec Handbook offers the reader an organized layout of information that is easily read and understood. Allowing beginners to enter the field and understand the key concepts and ideas, while still keeping the experienced readers updated on topics and concepts.
It is intended mainly for beginners to the field of information security, writte...
This book asks why and how some of the developing countries have "emerged" under a set of similar global conditions, what led individual countries to choose the particular paths that led to their "emergence," and what challenges confront them. If we are to understand the nature of major risks and uncertainties in the world, we m...
This work is devoted to understanding the recent advances in nuclear medicine and molecular imaging technologies along with their application to integrated medical therapy and future drug development. This anthology is based on the international symposium in 2015 entitled "Perspective on Nuclear Medicine for Molecular Diagnosis and Integrated ...
What are the challenges and action points for agricultural sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa? This collection of papers offers technical analyses, policy recommendations and an overview of success stories to date. Each carefully selected paper provides valuable insights for improved policy making and defines relevant strategic priorities on Afri...
This open-access book focuses on trends in educational inequality using twenty years of grade 8 student data collected from 13 education systems by the IEA's Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) between 1995 and 2015. While the overall positive association between family socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement is well doc...
This book provides an exhaustive picture of the role that annulment conflicts play in the EU multilevel system. Based on a rich dataset of annulment actions since the 1960s and a number of in-depth case studies, it explores the political dimension of annulment litigation, which has become an increasingly relevant judicial tool in the struggle over ...
The EQ-5D instrument, as a standardized, cross-culturally validated measure of self-assessed health has a hugely important role in understanding population health within and across countries. Over the past two decades a wealth of international population health survey data have been accumulated by the EuroQol Group from research conducted in many c...
Higher education has thrived in Europe for the last three decades supported by the powerful policy narratives of the European construction and knowledge society. The two together called for better-integrated societies with higher economic competitiveness, superior employment, and social cohesion. Extraordinary developments in higher education durin...
This book addresses the challenge of analyzing and understanding the evolutionary dynamics of complex biological systems at the genomic level, and elaborates on some promising strategies that would bring us closer to uncovering of the vital relationships between genotype and phenotype. After a few educational primers, the book continues with sectio...
The aim of this book is to document for the first time the dimensions and requirements of effective integrated groundwater management (IGM). Groundwater management is a formidable challenge, one that remains one of humanity's foremost priorities. It has become a largely non-renewable resource that is overexploited in many parts of the world. I...