Public spending on infrastructure plays an important role in promoting economic growth and poverty alleviation. Empirical studies unequivocally show that under-investment in infrastructure limits economic growth. At the same time, numerous other studies have shown that investment in infrastructure can be an effective tool in fighting poverty reduct...
This book looks at the major policy challenges facing developing Asia and how the region sustains rapid economic growth to reduce multidimensional poverty through socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable measures. Asia is facing many challenges arising from population growth, rapid urbanization, provision of services, climate change and t...
This book presents an incisive outline of the historical development and geography of cities. It focuses on three themes that constitute essential foundations for any understanding of urban form and function. These are: (a) the shifting patterns of urbanization through historical time, (b) the role of cities as centers of production and work in a ...
This book examines more than two centuries of societal development using novel historical and statistical approaches. It applies the well-being monitor developed by Statistics Netherlands that has been endorsed by a significant part of the international, statistical community. It features The Netherlands as a case study, which is an especially inte...
This book introduces the human development model to define disability and map its links with health and wellbeing, based on Sen's capability approach. The author uses panel survey data with internationally comparable questions on disability for Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. It presents evidence on the prevalence of disability and its ...
This publication addresses the global challenges of food and water security in a rapidly changing and complex world. The essays highlight the links between bio-physical and socio-cultural processes, making connections between local and global scales, and focusing on the everyday practices of eating and drinking, essential for human survival. Writte...
This open access report explores the nature and extent of students' misconceptions and misunderstandings related to core concepts in physics and mathematics and physics across grades four, eight and 12. Twenty years of data from the IEA's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and TIMSS Advanced assessments are anal...
This free book examines the triangle between family, gender, and health in Europe from a demographic perspective. It helps to understand patterns and trends in each of the three components separately, as well as their interdependencies. It overcomes the widely observable specialization in demographic research, which usually involves researchers stu...
This important textbook has been revised and updated to continue its focus on the link between ethics and economic policy analysis, whilst ensuring that perspectives addressing the moral limits of the market, latest behavioural economics literature, and the changes in inequality over the years are included. Basic philosophical concepts are systemat...
This book is an anthology of extracts of literary writing (in prose, verse and drama) about London and its diverse inhabitants, taken from the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. The 143 extracts, divided into four periods (1558-1659, 1660-1780, 1781-1870 and 1871-1914), range from about 250 words to 2,5...
Imagine a situation where your services report healthy and serving but you receive multiple user reports of poor availability. How are these users accessing your service? Most likely, they are using your service through a client application, such as a mobile application on their phone. SRE traditionally has only supported systems and services run i...
This is a book on the functional paradigm in general. We'll use the world's most popular functional programming language: JavaScript. Some may feel this is a poor choice as it's against the grain of the current culture which, at the moment, feels predominately imperative.
That said, typed functional languages will, without a doubt...
A cultural change in the Renaissance freed talented European writers to compose letters rivalling the finest that survived from ancient Rome. This book traces the lives and outlooks of distinguished Britons as revealed in their correspondence. The subjects range from the fierce satirist Jonathan Swift to the long-lived, all-observing Horace Walpole...
The purpose of this book is to shed light on the performance and personal competencies of information technology (IT) project managers in South Africa. Predictive models are built to determine what project managers consider the crucial competencies they should possess to deliver an IT project successfully. This investigation takes place in the cont...
Have you ever wished you could reprogram your brain, just as a hacker would a computer? In this 3-step guide to improving your mental habits, learn to take charge of your mind and banish negative thoughts, habits, and anxiety - in just 21 days!
A seasoned author, comedian, and entrepreneur, Sir John Hargrave once suffered from unhealthy addictio...
Happiness and Utility brings together experts on utilitarianism to explore the concept of happiness within the utilitarian tradition, situating it in earlier eighteenth-century thinkers and working through some of its developments at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on a range of philosophical and historic...
This book is based on the MOOC Responsible Innovation offered by the TU Delft. It provides a framework to reflect on the ethics and risks of new technologies. How can we make sure that innovations do justice to social and ethical values? How can we minimize (unknown) risks?
The book explains:
- The concept and importance of responsible innovati...
Illicit financial flows constitute a global phenomenon of massive but uncertain scale, which erodes government revenues and drives corruption in countries rich and poor. In 2015, the countries of the world committed to a target to reduce illicit flows, as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. But five years later, there is still no agreemen...
Researchers and practitioners from within the continent explore why Africa is so vulnerable to disease, and show how this vulnerability is closely linked to political and economic factors. They demonstrate how these same factors determine the way epidemics are treated.
Authors extract lessons from case studies in different parts of Africa; chall...
Books about Oxford have generally focused on the University rather than the city. This original book on the local politics of Oxford City from 1830 to 1980 is based on a comprehensive analysis of primary sources and tells the story of the city's progressive politics. The book traces this history from Chartism and electoral reform in the mid-ni...
In July 1905, in Paris, a young Anglo-French woman called Marie Wheeler became the bride of a Swiss émigré, Johannes Schad. Immediately after the wedding, Marie and Johannes moved to London. And there they lived for nineteen years. In 1924, however, something happened to change their lives, and Marie, in many respects, simply disappeared.
Pari...
While the rise of social protection in the global North has been widely researched, we know little about the history of social protection in the global South. This open book investigates the experiences of four middle-income countries - Brazil, India, China and South Africa - from 1920 to 2020, analysing if, when, and how these countries articulate...
This open book aims to show which factors have been decisive in the rise of successful countries. Never before have so many people been so well off. However, prosperity is not a law of nature; it has to be worked for. A liberal economy stands at the forefront of this success - not as a political system, but as a set of economic rules promoting comp...
This open book describes the Reading Success project, in which a 5-step, assessment-to- intervention process, based on the Simple View of Reading, was used within a primary school setting in Australia to better support those students who struggle with reading. It provides an easily accessible overview of each step of the process involved in impleme...
This open volume addresses the role of external actors in social protection in the Global South, from the Second World War until today, analysing the influence of colonial powers, superpowers during the Cold War and contemporary donor agencies.Following an introduction to the analysis of external actors in social policy making in the Global South, ...
This open book explores ways to leverage information technology and machine learning to combat disease and promote health, especially in resource-constrained settings. It focuses on digital disease surveillance through the application of machine learning to non-traditional data sources. Developing countries are uniquely prone to large-scale emergin...
This open book discusses the current role of smallholders in connection with food security and poverty reduction in developing countries. It addresses the opportunities they enjoy, and the constraints they face, by analysing the availability, access to and utilization of production factors.Due to the relevance of smallholder farms, enhancing their ...
This open book not only describes the challenges of climate disruption, but also presents solutions. The challenges described include air pollution, climate change, extreme weather, and related health impacts that range from heat stress, vector-borne diseases, food and water insecurity and chronic diseases to malnutrition and mental well-being.The ...
As technology has developed, computer hackers have become increasingly sophisticated, mastering the ability to hack into even the most impenetrable systems. The best way to secure a system is to understand the tools hackers use and know how to circumvent them. Defense against the Black Arts: How Hackers Do What They Do and How to Protect against It...
Every Database Administrator, developer, report writer, and anyone else who writes T-SQL to access SQL Server data, must understand how to read and interpret execution plans. My book leads you right from the basics of capturing plans, through how to interrupt them in their various forms, graphical or XML, and then how to use the information you fin...
This book is geared towards users who have no Revit background. It starts with Revit basics such as how to create walls, floors, roof, but it also covers more advanced topics such as creating a complex object, preparing construction documents, and modeling mechanical and structural systems.
This book is an open education platform for Architectur...
What does it mean to be a scientist working today; specifically, a scientist whose subject matter is human life? Scientists often overstate their claim to certainty, sorting the world into categorical distinctions that obstruct rather than clarify its complexities. In this book Daniel Nettle urges the reader to unpick such distinctions - biological...