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 edited volume is concerned with the evolution and achievements of cooperation in research and innovation between Africa and Europe, and points to the need for more diversified funding and finance mechanisms, and for novel models of collaboration to attract new actors and innovative ideas. It reflects on the political, economic, diplomatic and ...
This open access volume is about how to research the influence of our changing media environment. Today, there is not one single medium that is the driving force of change. With the spreading of various technical communication media such as mobile phone and internet platforms, we are confronted with a media manifold of deep mediatization. But how c...
This book provides insight on current patterns of migration in Switzerland, which fall along a continuum from long-term and permanent to more temporary and fluid. These patterns are shaped by the interplay of legal norms, economic drivers and societal factors. The various dimensions of this Migration-Mobility Nexus are investigated by means of new...
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 the results of the Interdisciplinary Research Group "Society – Water – Technology" of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. It describes interdisciplinary evaluation criteria for major water engineering projects (MWEPs) and portrays an application to the Lower Jordan Valley (Middle East) and th...
This open access textbook is the first to provide Business and Economics Ph.D. students with a precise and intuitive introduction to the formal backgrounds of modern financial theory. It explains Brownian motion, random processes, measures, and Lebesgue integrals intuitively, but without sacrificing the necessary mathematical formalism, making them...
Modern information and communication technologies, together with a cultural upheaval within the research community, have profoundly changed research in nearly every aspect. Ranging from sharing and discussing ideas in social networks for scientists to new collaborative environments and novel publication formats, knowledge creation and dissemination...
The second volume in the SIRCA book series investigates the impact of information society initiatives by extending the boundaries of academic research into the realm of practice. Global in scope, it includes contributions and research projects from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The international scholarly community has taken a variety of approach...
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...
Embedded Firmware Solutions is the perfect introduction and daily-use field guide - for the thousands of firmware designers, hardware engineers, architects, managers, and developers--to Intel's new firmware direction (including Quark coverage), showing how to integrate Intel® Architecture designs into their plans.
Featuring hands-on exampl...
Energy Efficient Servers: Blueprints for Data Center Optimization introduces engineers and IT professionals to the power management technologies and techniques used in energy efficient servers. The book includes a deep examination of different features used in processors, memory, interconnects, I/O devices, and other platform components. It outline...
This volume focuses on microscopic plastic debris, also referred to as microplastics, which have been detected in aquatic environments around the globe and have accordingly raised serious concerns. The book explores whether microplastics represent emerging contaminants in freshwater systems, an area that remains underrepresented to date. Given th...
This book utilizes new data to thoroughly analyze the main factors currently shaping the African housing market. Some of these factors include the supply and demand for housing finance, land tenure security issues, construction cost conundrum, infrastructure provision, and low-cost housing alternatives. Through detailed analysis, the authors invest...
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 overall aim of this book, an outcome of the European FP7 FET Open NESS project, is to contribute to the ongoing effort to put the quantitative social sciences on a proper footing for the 21st century. A key focus is economics, and its implications on policy making, where the still dominant traditional approach increasingly struggles to capture ...
Just how strong is the movement of big data analytics to the cloud? This report, based on a survey by O'Reilly data analyst John King, reveals that the desire among corporations to adopt big data-as-a-service is gaining momentum-and that many organizations with big data cloud experience are likely to expand their use.
King's recent sur...
This book provides a fresh, updated and science-based perspective on the current status and prospects of the diverse array of topics related to the potato, and was written by distinguished scientists with hands-on global experience in research aspects related to potato. The potato is the third most important global food crop in terms of consumption...
In recent years, the European Commission has attached increasing importance to the use of financial engineering instruments rather than traditional grant-based financing for the microcredit sector, considering these to be the most efficient option available.
This book presents a study of capacity building and structural funds in public managing au...
This book offers pioneering insights and practical methods for promoting diversity and inclusion in higher education classrooms and curricula. It highlights the growing importance of international education programs in Asia and the value of understanding student diversity in a changing, evermore interconnected world. The book explores diversity acr...
This is the first book-length exploration of the thoughts and experiences expressed by dementia patients in published narratives over the last thirty years. It contrasts third-person caregiver and first-person patient accounts from different languages and a range of media, focusing on the poetical and political questions these narratives raise: wha...
This free book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explore...
This book explores how the notion of the responsible university manifests itself at various levels within Nordic higher education. As the impetus of the knowledge society has catapulted the higher education sector to the forefront of policy agendas, universities and other types of higher education institutions face increasing scrutiny, assessment a...
This open access volume presents a comprehensive account of all aspects of biological invasions in South Africa, where research has been conducted over more than three decades, and where bold initiatives have been implemented in attempts to control invasions and to reduce their ecological, economic and social effects. It covers a broad range of the...
This book presents an overview of the main research findings and case studies concerning education and skills for inclusive growth, green jobs and the greening of economies. Focusing on India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam, it discusses government and business sector responses to these issues and how Technical and Vocational Education and Train...
'This free book addresses an urgent issue on which little organized information exists. It reflects experience in Africa but is highly relevant to other fragile states as well.'—Constantine Michalopoulos, John Hopkins University, USA and former Director of Economic Policy and Co-ordination at the World BankFragile countries face a tripl...
Asia's recent demographic transitions and rural - urban structural transformations are extraordinary and involve complexities that require in-depth study.The chapters within this volume examine those complexities using a range of traditional and nontraditional measures - such as multidimensional poverty, gaps, and polarization - to arrive at t...
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...
As the American election administration landscape changes as a result of major court cases, national and state legislation, changes in professionalism, and the evolution of equipment and security, so must the work of on-the-ground practitioners change. This Open Access title presents a series of case studies designed to highlight practical response...
This book explores the question of who or what 'the public' is within 'public health' in post-war Britain. Drawing on historical research on the place of the public in public health in Britain from the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948, the book presents a new perspective on the relationship between state and ...
In this open access publication, the social cohesion of urban neighborhoods and their residents is examined, which is often viewed as vulnerable since increased mobility, individualization, wider socio-economic and demographic changes have fundamentally altered the basis for everyday social interaction in urban neighborhoods. Anna Steigemann gives ...
The book examines the methodological challenges in analyzing the effectiveness of development policies. It presents a selection of tools and methodologies that can help tackle the complexities of which policies work best and why, and how they can be implemented effectively given the political and economic framework conditions of a country. The cont...