This book presents the outcomes of four years of educational research in the EU-supported project called ROLE (Responsive Online Learning Environments). ROLE technology is centered around the concept of self-regulated learning that creates responsible learners, who are capable of critical thinking and able to plan their own learning processes. ROL...
This book focuses on the achievements, current trends and further potential of microfinance to scale-up and serve many more clients with financial services that enable them to improve their living conditions. The book asks what it takes to achieve sustainable impact: to know your clients and to understand their needs, to treat them in a fair and tr...
This book written by international experts in the field of educational innovation is a guide for universities to become world-class universities. It contributes to the current international intellectual debate on the future of higher education. It also tells the story of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and its effort to become a ...
This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of...
We are not free from environmental risks that accompany the development of human societies. Modern economic development has accelerated environmental pollution, caused loss of natural habitats, and modified landscapes. These environmental changes have impacted natural systems: water and heat circulation, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. These ch...
This book reports on a novel and comprehensive approach to the uptake of ICT in Schools. It focuses on key questions, pedagogically sound ways of introducing ICT, new technical artifacts supporting the approach, the evaluation in a large-scale validator, and future work. While many innovations in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) have emerged over...
This edited collection explores the background and implementation of the Nordic Barnahus (or 'Children's House') model – recognised as one of the most important reforms related to children who are the victims of crime in the Nordic region. This book discusses both its potential to affect change and the challenges facing it. The mod...
This open access volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region. It comprises important scientific research on the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable mountain development and will serve as a basis for evidence-based decision-making to safeguard the environment and advance people's w...
Software has changed the rules of the game. The world talks about the digitalization in industry and society – how the focus has shifted from producing tangible things towards software and services. This trend started many years ago, but is now affecting every company, whether it's a software company or not. There are many companies that hav...
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging network superstructure that will connect physical resources and actual users. It will support an ecosystem of smart applications and services bringing hyper-connectivity to our society by using augmented and rich interfaces. Whereas in the beginning IoT referred to the advent of barcodes and Radio Freque...
Written for the IT professional and business owner, this book provides the business and technical insight necessary to migrate your business to the cloud using Microsoft Office 365. This is a practical look at cloud migration and the use of different technologies to support that migration. Numerous examples of cloud migration with technical migrati...
In this book readers will find technological discussions on the existing and emerging technologies across the different stages of the big data value chain. They will learn about legal aspects of big data, the social impact, and about education needs and requirements. And they will discover the business perspective and how big data technology can be...
The editors present essential methods and tools to support a holistic approach to the challenge of system upgrades and innovation in the context of high-value products and services. The approach presented here is based on three main pillars: an adaptation mechanism based on a broad understanding of system dependencies; efficient use of system knowl...
This book tells the story of Barbara Robb and her pressure group, Aid for the Elderly in Government Institutions (AEGIS). In 1965, Barbara visited 73-year-old Amy Gibbs in a dilapidated and overcrowded National Health Service psychiatric hospital back-ward. She was so appalled by the low standards that she set out to make improvements. Barbara'...
This book consolidates experiences from across Europe on the design, development, implementation and evolution of inter-organisational information infrastructures for healthcare. It provides insights with practical relevance for those involved or interested in the planning and implementation of such infrastructures and includes 11 empirical cases o...
This book summarizes work being undertaken within the collaborative MODAClouds research project, which aims to facilitate interoperability between heterogeneous Cloud platforms and remove the constraints of deployment, portability, and reversibility for end users of Cloud services. Experts involved in the project provide a clear overview of the MOD...
This book addresses the issue of diffusing sustainable energy access inlow- and middle-income contexts.
Access to energy is one of the greatest challenges for many people living in low-income and developing contexts, as around 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity.Distributed Renewable Energy systems (DRE) are considered a promising approa...
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 ...
"In this book, Wallace elegantly shows how committed government intervention can improve wellbeing with rigour and impact. It's an essential read for anyone concerned with the future of the UK."Julia Unwin, CBE"As someone who commissioned one of the first attempts to learn from the devolved nations I am delighted to see this pub...
This book presents the concept of value as the central component to success and longevity of the global ICT industry player, Huawei. It provides examples of how Huawei focuses on customers to pursue sustainable and profitable growth rather than focusing on capital market valuation, which is a familiar scenario among Western companies. It is the bus...
The Early Years analyzes the development of Latin American and Caribbean children and makes a compelling case for government intervention in what is instinctively a family affair. Spending on effective programs for young children is an investment that, if done well, will have very high returns, while failure to implement such programs will lower th...
This book provides a set of conceptual, empirical, and comparative chapters that apply a public policy perspective to investigate the political and institutional factors driving the use of evidence to inform health policy in low, middle, and high income settings. The work presents key findings from the Getting Research Into Policy (GRIP-Health) pro...
This free book tells the story of how Sweden is becoming a virtually cashless society. Its goal is to improve readers' understanding of what is driving this transition, and of the factors that are fostering and hampering it. In doing so, the book covers the role of central banks, political factors, needs for innovation, and the stakeholders in...
Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond poli...
When you explore a new technology landscape, the journey can take you to places you never expected. Take O'Reilly's CTO, Andrew Odewahn. While working on ideas for a new publishing platform, Andrew kept notes as he probed the depth and breadth of what we call the "distributed development stack" (DDS).
As patterns emerged, and...
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...
Windows developers have always enjoyed the productivity boost you get with the .NET platform, tools like Entity Framework and ASP.NET, and the amazingly-powerful C# language. Now, .NET Core extends those same benefits to Linux-based systems, offering a true cross-platform solution for enterprise application development. The .NET Core tools, includi...
In a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness? Through a collection of essays and case studies, leading visionaries and practitioners both inside and outside of government share their ideas on how to...
This free book presents up-to-date analyses of community-based approaches to sustainable resource management of SEPLS (socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes) in areas where a harmonious relationship between the natural environment and the people who inhabit it is essential to ensure community and environmental well-being as well as t...
This book features essays written by philosophers, biologists, ecologists and conservation scientists facing the current biodiversity crisis. Despite increasing communication, accelerating policy and management responses, and notwithstanding improving ecosystem assessment and endangered species knowledge, conserving biodiversity continues to be mor...
This book explores the dataspace paradigm as a best-effort approach to data management within data ecosystems. It establishes the theoretical foundations and principles of real-time linked dataspaces as a data platform for intelligent systems. The book introduces a set of specialized best-effort techniques and models to enable loose administrative ...
This open access book comprises 10 high-level papers on research and innovation within the Flexitranstore Project that were presented at the FLEXITRANSTORE special session organized as part of the 21st International Symposium on High Voltage Engineering.FLEXITRANSTORE (An Integrated Platform for Increased FLEXIbility in smart TRANSmission grids wit...