The Internet of Things offers massive societal and economic opportunities while at the same time significant challenges, not least the delivery and management of the technical infrastructure underpinning it, the deluge of data generated from it, ensuring privacy and security, and capturing value from it.
This open access pivot explores these chall...
This third and last open volume in the series takes the perspective of non-EU countries on immigrant social protection. By focusing on 12 of the largest sending countries to the EU, the book tackles the issue of the multiple areas of sending state intervention towards migrant populations. Two "mirroring" chapters are dedicated to each of ...
This open book provides an empirical account of the psychological and social experiences of 3500 African migrants to 6 European countries: Germany, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, France, and the UK. It discusses the psychosocial motivations for migration from Africa, who migrates where, and stressful pre- and post-migration factors affecting the so...
This open book examines the multiple intersections between national and international courts in the field of investment protection, and suggests possible modes for regulating future jurisdictional interactions between domestic courts and international tribunals. The current system of foreign investment protection consists of more than 3,000 interna...
The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value...
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 ...
The Business of Plant Breeding is the result of a study on demand-led plant variety design for markets in Africa, sharing best practices from private and public sector breeding programmes worldwide that are applicable to improving tropical crops in Africa.
Beginning with an overview of the principles of demand-led plant breeding, the book then d...
Inventory Analytics provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the theory and practice of inventory control - a significant research area central to supply chain planning. The book outlines the foundations of inventory systems and surveys prescriptive analytics models for deterministic inventory control. It further discusses predictive...
Climate change negotiations have failed the world. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing carbon emissions rise dramatically. This edited volume, comprising leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world, takes a critical look at what has gone wrong and what is to...
We are entering a new era of technological determinism and solutionism in which governments and business actors are seeking data-driven change, assuming that Artificial Intelligence is now inevitable and ubiquitous. But we have not even started asking the right questions, let alone developed an understanding of the consequences. Urgently needed is ...
The nineteenth century witnessed a series of revolutions in the production and circulation of images. From lithographs and engraved reproductions of paintings to daguerreotypes, stereoscopic views, and mass-produced sculptures, works of visual art became available in a wider range of media than ever before. But the circulation and reproduction of a...
In Horos, Thea Potter explores the complex relationship between classical philosophy and the 'horos', a stone that Athenians erected to mark the boundaries of their marketplace, their gravestones, their roads and their private property. Potter weaves this history into a meditation on the ancient philosophical concept of horos, the foundat...
As technology and software become more and more important to Portuguese society, it is time for Portugal to take them more seriously, and become a real player in that world. This book discusses several ideas to make Portugal a place where programming, TDD, Open Source, learning how to code, hacking (aka bug-bounty style), and DevOps receive the con...
It is often assumed that creative people are prone to psychological instability, and that this explains apparent associations between cultural production and mental health problems. In their detailed study of recording and performing artists in the British music industry, Sally Anne Gross and George Musgrave turn this view on its head.
By liste...
This book examines the evolution of the relationship between taxpayers and their states in Sweden, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Romania, and asks why tax compliance is so much higher in some countries than others. The book shows that successful states have built strong administrative capacities, tax citizens fairly and equitabl...
There is virtually nowhere on Earth today that remains untouched by plastic and ecosystems are evolving to adapt to this new context. While plastics have revolutionized our modern world, new and often unforeseen effects of plastic and its production are continually being discovered. Plastics are entangled in multiple ecological and social crises, f...
In a modern global historical context, scholars have often regarded piracy as an essentially European concept which was inappropriately applied by the expanding European powers to the rest of the world, mainly for the purpose of furthering colonial forms of domination in the economic, political, military, legal and cultural spheres. By contrast, th...
Drawing on Indigenous peoples' struggles against settler colonialism, Theft Is Property! reconstructs the concept of dispossession as a means of explaining how shifting configurations of law, property, race, and rights have functioned as modes of governance, both historically and in the present. Through close analysis of arguments by Indigenou...
This book is for those whose financial management focus is on small businesses. For you, we adapt the traditional financial management themes emphasized in corporate financial management courses to meet the needs of small businesses.
Many financial managers of small businesses come from farms or agribusinesses. Others are interested in working f...
Nonprofit organizations are on the front lines in communities, providing an important foundation for the social safety net in the United States and around the world. They also provide places where people can gather, share ideas and build community. They often accomplish amazing feats with few resources. This book was designed to be used in an under...
Creating landscapes of investigation is a primary concern of critical mathematics education. It enables us to organise educational processes so that students and teachers are able to get involved in explorations guided by dialogical interactions. It attempts to address explicit or implicit forms of social injustice by means of mathematics, and also...
What is the most pressing problem facing the American public today? Is it immigration reform, health care costs, the student debt crisis, stagnating wages, or a budget deficit reaching into the trillions? How about climate change or the threat of plastic pollution in the ocean? What about gun violence and gun rights? The problems facing the U.S. ar...
Understanding the music industry as it exists today requires an understanding of how it developed over time. Today's music industry would most certainly not be the one anybody would design from scratch. It has many inefficiencies and quirks that reflect the economic pressures and musical concerns of bygone ages.
The history of music is clos...