Lone Parenthood in the Life Course
Provides a comprehensive portrait of lone parenthood at the beginning of the XXI century from a life course perspective. The contributions included in this volume examine the dynamics of lone parenthood in the life course and explore the trajectories of lone parents in terms of income, poverty, labour, market behaviour, wellbeing, and health. Throughout, comparative analyses of data from countries as France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, and Australia help portray how lone parenthood varies between regions, cultures, generations, and institutional settings. The findings show that one-parent households are inhabited by a rather heterogeneous world of mothers and fathers facing different challenges.
Light and Light Sources : High-Intensity Discharge Lamps
Light and Light Sources gives an introduction to the working principles of high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps and points out challenges and problems associated with the development and operation of HID lamps. The state-of-the-art in electrode and plasma diagnostics as well as numerical methods used for the understanding of HID lamps are described. This volume addresses students as well as scientists and researchers at universities and in industry.
Language Production
This comprehensive text presents an up-to-date overview of the key topics in the field, providing important theoretical and empirical challenges to the traditional and accepted modal view of language production. Each chapter explores in detail a different aspect of language production, covering traditional methods including written and signed production alongside emerging research on joint action production. Emphasizing the neurobiological underpinnings of language, chapter authors showcase research that moves from a monologue-only approach to one that that considers production in more ecologically valid circumstances.
Language Policy and Modernity in Southeast Asia : Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand
This volume considers the ways in which modernity challenges and informs the language policies of various Southeast Asians nations. Using case studies from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, the authors examine language policies that are explicitly articulated either in the form of State constitutions or in the public proclamations of political leaders. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which English, often seen as the language of globalization, impacts the status of indigenous Southeast Asian language.
Lake Victoria : Ecology, Resources, Environment
Recently, there has been, and continues to be, a tremendous interest on Lake Victoria and its environs, both locally and internationally. A casual browsing on the Internet indicates that the entries on the Lake have been rising phenomenally. At the same time, the issues discussed are as diverse as they are varied in their treatment of the subject, both in terms of depth and comprehensiveness. The information on Lake Victoria and its environ is scattered, isolated, and sometimes confusing even though documentation on the subject are available. Despite this situation, the fact remains that various people (e. g. , secondary and universitystudents,researchers,practitioners,etc. ,)wouldliketoaccess and know more about the Lake and its environs. Aware of the existing information gap about this world’s second largest fresh water Lake, this book is intended to provide readers with up-to-date information pertaining the Lake. The book gives an in-depth coverage of environmental issues, - source endowment, poverty amidst plenty, development opportunities, challenges and other related issues facing the Lake and its environs. It aims at providing information on the above variables, which hopefully will address the needs of various users.
Knowing Art : Essays in Aesthetics and Epistemology
Knowing Art collects ten original essays written by leading philosophers who distill and build upon recent work at the intersection of aesthetics and epistemology. Specific topics addressed include the objectivity of critical knowledge, the quality of critical testimony, the roles of principles and perception in critical reasoning, phenomenal knowledge of what a work of art is like, the acquisition of factual information and psychological understanding from fictions, and the limits of images as sources of historical evidence. In addressing these topics, the volume also explores the challenges that art poses for theories of knowledge as well as the challenges that artistic knowledge poses to traditional views about art.
Compositionality and Concepts in Linguistics and Psychology
By highlighting relations between experimental and theoretical work, this volume explores new ways of addressing one of the central challenges in the study of language and cognition. The articles bring together work by leading scholars and younger researchers in psychology, linguistics and philosophy. An introductory chapter lays out the background on concept composition, a problem that is stimulating much new research in cognitive science. Researchers in this interdisciplinary domain aim to explain how meanings of complex expressions are derived from simple lexical concepts and to show how these meanings connect to concept representations.
Complex Inorganic Solids : Structural, Stability, and Magnetic Properties of Alloys
One the key aspects of this volume is to cut across the traditional taxonomy of disciplines in the study of alloys. Hence there has been a deliberate attempt to integrate the different approaches taken towards alloys as a class of materials in different fields, ranging from geology to metallurgical engineering. The emphasis of this book is to highlight commonalities between different fields with respect to how alloys are studied. The topics in this book fall into several themes, which suggest a number of different classification schemes. We have chosen a scheme that classifies the papers in the volume into the categories Microstructural Considerations, Ordering, Kinetics and Diffusion, Magnetic Considerations and Elastic Considerations. The book has juxtaposed apparently disparate approaches to similar physical processes, in the hope of revealing a more dynamic character of the processes under consideration. This monograph will invigorate new kinds of discussion and reveal challenges and new avenues to the description and prediction of properties of materials in the solid state and the conditions that produce them
Competencies, Higher Education and Career in Japan and the Netherlands
This book investigates how social and cultural factors affect the education, training and career development of graduates of higher education in Japan and the Netherlands. Despite their different historical paths, both countries are now subject to the common pressure of globalization. As a result, the higher education sector in both countries is becoming more universal and available to a larger population, and the economy and society are becoming increasingly knowledge-intensive. The aim of this book is to explore how Dutch and Japanese graduates choose and develop their careers in reference to the above-mentioned challenges. It is based on a unique data set consisting of surveys held among graduates 3 and 8 years after leaving higher education.
Comparative risk assessment and environmental decision making
Decision making in environmental projects is typically a complex and confusing process characterized by trade-offs between socio-political, environmental, and economic impacts. Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) is a methodology applied to facilitate decision making when various activities compete for limited resources. CRA has become an increasingly accepted research tool and has helped to characterize environmental profiles and priorities on the regional and national level. CRA may be considered as part of the more general but as yet quite academic field of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Considerable research in the area of MCDA has made available methods for applying scientific decision theoretical approaches to multi-criteria problems, but its applications, especially in environmental areas, are still limited. The papers show that the use of comparative risk assessment can provide the scientific basis for environmentally sound and cost-efficient policies, strategies, and solutions to our environmental challenges.
Communicating science and technology in society
Addresses the engagement between science and society from multiple viewpoints. At a time when trust in experts is being questioned, misinformation is rife and scientific and technological development show growing social impact, the volume examines the challenges in involving the public in scientific debates and decisions. It takes into account societal needs and concerns in research, and analyses the interface between the roles of institutions and individuals. From environmental challenges to science communication, participatory technological design to animal experimentation, and transdisciplinarity to norms and values in science, the volume brings together research on areas in which scientists and citizens interact, across diverse, often understudied, socio-cultural contexts in Europe.
Climate prediction and agriculture : Advances and challenges
Improved adaptation of food production, particularly in areas where climate variability is large, holds the key to improving food security for human populations. Increasing climate knowledge and improved prediction capabilities facilitate the development of relevant climate information and prediction products for applications in agriculture to reduce the negative impacts due to climate variations and to enhance planning activities based on the developing capacity of climate science. This book, based on an International Workshop held in Geneva in 2005, reviews the advances made so far in seasonal climate predictions and their applications for management and decision-making in agriculture and identifies the challenges to be addressed in the next 5 to 10 years to further enhance operational applications of climate predictions in agriculture, especially in the developing countries.
Chasing the Chinese dream : Four decades of following China’s war on poverty
This book explores the historical, cultural and philosophical contexts that have made anti-poverty the core of Chinese society since Liberation in 1949, and why poverty alleviation measures evolved from the simplistic aid of the 1950s to Xi Jinping’s precision poverty alleviation and its goal of eliminating absolute poverty by 2020. The book also addresses the implications of China’s experience for other developing nations tackling not only poverty but such issues as pandemics, rampant urbanization and desertification exacerbated by global warming. The first of three parts draws upon interviews of rural and urban Chinese from diverse backgrounds and local and national leaders. These interviews, conducted in even the remotest areas of the country, offer candid insights into the challenges that have forced China to continually evolve its programs to resolve even the most intractable cases of poverty.
Challenging American Leadership : Impact of National Quality on Risk of Losing Leadership
After leading the world during most of the 20th century in economic, political, technological, military, and even social terms, America’s role is now being challenged. Its values questioned, and its methods often disparaged, America had become the clear example to be followed or even copied, yet its more recent strategic and political decisions gained little international support and a lot of outright opposition. The quality of its national planning and decision making has been severely compromised, and risk management appears to be largely absent. India and China are now emerging as new economic powers, with advancing technological prowess. Their focus is on socioeconomic development, but their capabilities and potentials are much broader and may challenge America's leadership before long, unless it recognizes the changing demands of the new wide open globalized world.
Challenges to the second law of thermodynamics : Theory and experiment
The second law of thermodynamics is considered one of the central laws of science, engineering and technology. For over a century it has been assumed to be inviolable by the scientific community. Over the last 10-20 years, however, more than two dozen challenges to it have appeared in the physical literature - more than during any other period in its 150-year history. The number and variety of these represent a cogent threat to its absolute status. This is the first book to document and critique these modern challenges. Written by two leading exponents of this rapidly emerging field, it covers the theoretical and experimental aspects of principal challenges. In addition, unresolved foundational issues concerning entropy and the second law are explored. This book should be of interest to anyone whose work or research is touched by the second law.
Challenges in Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Regulation of the Nuclear Legacy
The book covers radiation protection and nuclear safety supervision of installations built during the cold war, particularly in relation to regulatory strategies for safe decommissioning of unique or unusual nuclear facilities and remediation
Challenges in Language Testing Around the World : Insights for language test users
This book combines insights from language assessment literacy and critical language testing through critical analyses and research about challenges in language assessment around the world. It investigates problematic practices in language testing which are relevant to language test users such as language program directors, testing centers, and language teachers, as well as teachers-in-training in Graduate Diploma and Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics programs. These issues involve aspects of language testing such as test development, test administration, scoring, and interpretation/use of test results.
Challenges for Computational Intelligence
Computational Intelligence (CI) is used as a name to cover many existing branches of science, with artificial neural networks, fuzzy systems and evolutionary computation forming its core. In recent years CI has been extended by adding many other subdisciplines and it became quite obvious that this new field also requires a series of challenging problems that will give it a sense of direction. Without setting up clear goals and yardsticks to measure progress on the way many research efforts are wasted.The book written by top experts in CI provides such clear directions and the much-needed focus on the most important and challenging research issues, showing a roadmap how to achieve ambitious goals.
Challenges and negotiations for women in higher education
There is much ambivalence in women’s experience of the academy as teachers and students. Although today many more women follow academic careers than in the past, they do not find the welcome that they had hoped for and expected. Additionally, women students find that whilst they can now enter through the doors of universities, academic space remains embedded in structures and cultures of gender and social class. This book is a clear and accessible exploration of lifelong learning and educational opportunities for women in higher education. It has been developed from work undertaken by members of the Women in Higher Education Network with chapters organised in three thematic sections: Ambivalent Positions in the Academy / Process and Pedagogy at Work / Career – Identity – Home
Building the Foundation : Whole Numbers in the Primary Grades : The 23rd ICMI Study
This twenty-third ICMI Study addresses for the first time mathematics teaching and learning in the primary school (and pre-school) setting, while also taking international perspectives, socio-cultural diversity and institutional constraints into account. One of the main challenges of designing the first ICMI primary school study of this kind is the complex nature of mathematics at the early level. Accordingly, a focus area that is central to the discussion was chosen, together with a number of related questions. The broad area of Whole Number Arithmetic (WNA), including operations and relations and arithmetic word problems, forms the core content of all primary mathematics curricula. this study presents a meta-level analysis and synthesis of what is currently known about WNA, providing a useful base from which to gauge gaps and shortcomings, as well as an opportunity to learn from the practices of different countries and contexts.



















