This open access book is the first published guide about how to analyse data produced by the EQ-5D, one of the most widely used Patient Reported Outcomes questionnaires world wide. The authors provide practical, clear and comprehensive guidance in five concise chapters. Following an overview of the EQ-5D and its analysis, we describe how the questi...
This open brief provides a systematic analysis of current trends and requirements in the areas of knowledge and competence in the context of the project "(A) Higher Education Digital (AHEAD) - International Horizon Scanning / Trend Analysis on Digital Higher Education." It examines the latest developments in learning theory, didactics, an...
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...
Organic waste composting is another excellent example to demonstrate the power and the benefits of nexus thinking. Even though organic waste composting itself is not a new topic, those who want to start a new project or align an ongoing project with nexus thinking, find it difficult to gather the necessary information. With nine case studies from f...
This open book summarizes the research done and results obtained in the second funding phase of the Priority Program 1648 "Software for Exascale Computing" (SPPEXA) of the German Research Foundation (DFG) presented at the SPPEXA Symposium in Dresden during October 21-23, 2019.
In that respect, it both represents a continuation of Vol. 1...
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, ...
The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), combined with greater heterogeneity not only online in cloud computing architectures but across the cloud-to-edge continuum, is introducing new challenges for managing applications and infrastructure across this continuum. The scale and complexity is simply so complex that it is no longer realistic for...
This open book focuses on robot introspection, which has a direct impact on physical human - robot interaction and long-term autonomy, and which can benefit from autonomous anomaly monitoring and diagnosis, as well as anomaly recovery strategies. In robotics, the ability to reason, solve their own anomalies and proactively enrich owned knowledge is...
This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.*
The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: Io...
This open book focuses on theoretical and empirical intersections between governance, knowledge and space from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributions elucidate how knowledge is a prerequisite as well as a driver of governance efficacy, and conversely, how governance affects the creation and use of knowledge and innovation in geographic...
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 features a selection of high-quality papers from the presentations at the International Conference on Spectral and High-Order Methods 2018, offering an overview of the depth and breadth of the activities within this important research area. The carefully reviewed papers provide a snapshot of the state of the art, while the extensive ...
This open book sets out the stress-system model for functional somatic symptoms in children and adolescents. The book begins by exploring the initial encounter between the paediatrician, child, and family, moves through the assessment process, including the formulation and the treatment contract, and then describes the various forms of treatment th...
Aquatic ecosystems are rich in biodiversity and home to a diverse array of species and habitats, providing a wide variety of benefits to human beings. Many of these valuable ecosystems are at risk of being irreversibly damaged by human activities and pressures, including pollution, contamination, invasive species, overfishing and climate change. Su...
This open book takes a critical and international perspective to the mainstreaming of the Global Citizenship Concept and analyses the key issues regarding global citizenship education across the world. In that respect, it addresses a pressing need to provide further conceptual input and to open global citizenship agendas to diversity and indigeneit...
This open book offers an initial introduction to programming for scientific and computational applications using the Python programming language. The presentation style is compact and example-based, making it suitable for students and researchers with little or no prior experience in programming.
The book uses relevant examples from mathematics a...
This open book focuses on the dimensions of the discourse of 'The World Class University', its alleged characteristics, and its policy expressions. It offers a broad overview of the historical background and current trajectory of the world-class-university construct. It also deepens the theoretical discussion, and points a way forward out...
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 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 provides a multi-perspective approach to the caravan trade in the Sahara during the 19th century. Based on travelogues from European travelers, recently found Arab sources, historical maps and results from several expeditions, the book gives an overview of the historical periods of the caravan trade as well as detailed information ab...
This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Semantic Systems, SEMANTiCS 2020, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in September 2020....
This open book, edited and authored by a team of world-leading researchers, provides a broad overview of advanced photonic methods for nanoscale visualization, as well as describing a range of fascinating in-depth studies. Introductory chapters cover the most relevant physics and basic methods that young researchers need to master in order to work ...
This open book presents new developments in the field of demographic forecasting, covering both mortality, fertility and migration. For each component emerging methods to forecast them are presented. Moreover, instruments for forecasting evaluation are provided. Bayesian models, nonparametric models, cohort approaches, elicitation of expert opinion...
This open book mainly focuses on the safe control of robot manipulators. The control schemes are mainly developed based on dynamic neural network, which is an important theoretical branch of deep reinforcement learning. In order to enhance the safety performance of robot systems, the control strategies include adaptive tracking control for robots w...
This open book provides an overview of the recent advances in representation learning theory, algorithms and applications for natural language processing (NLP). It is divided into three parts. Part I presents the representation learning techniques for multiple language entries, including words, phrases, sentences and documents. Part II then introdu...
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 presents a collection of the most up-to-date research results in the field of steel development with a focus on pioneering alloy concepts that result in previously unattainable materials properties. Specifically, it gives a detailed overview of the marriage of high-performance steels of the highest strength and form-ability with dama...
This open volume provides in-depth analysis of the wide range of ethical issues associated with drug-resistant infectious diseases. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is widely recognized to be one of the greatest threats to global public health in coming decades; and it has thus become a major topic of discussion among leading bioethicists and scholar...
The world is currently undergoing an historic energy transition, driven by increasingly stringent decarbonisation policies and rapid advances in low-carbon technologies. The large-scale shift to low-carbon energy is disrupting the global energy system, impacting whole economies, and changing the political dynamics within and between countries.This ...
Tracing the shift from liberal to neoliberal education from the nineteenth century to the present day, this open access book provides a rich and previously underdeveloped narrative of value in higher education in England. Value and the Humanities draws upon historical, financial, and critical debates concerning educational and cultural policy. Rath...
Does the Nordic model of education still stand by its original principles and safeguard education for all? This open volume is a carefully crafted collection of chapters that investigate the different aspects of equity, equality and diversity across the education systems in the Nordic countries. Based on data from various national and international...
Simplified Signs presents a system of manual sign communication intended for special populations who have had limited success mastering spoken or full sign languages. It is the culmination of over twenty years of research and development by the authors. The Simplified Sign System has been developed and tested for ease of sign comprehension, memoriz...