Comparative and Global Pedagogies : Equity, Access and Democracy in Education
This book critically examines equality, equity and democracy in education, globally as well as from various perspectives. Globally, there are increasing arguments both for the democratization of education and for the use of education to promote a democratic society. It is argued that democratic schools would better prepare for active citizenship and for a strong civil society which are seen to be the foundation of a democratic state. The book further argues that while there are inspiring examples of schools that engage in peace education or emancipatory pedagogy that work across various ethnic or religious divides, on balance, the forms, structures, ideologies and purposes of formal education interact to make national and international conflict more likely.
Community and Identity in Contemporary Technosciences
This book provides new thinking on scientific identity formation. It thoroughly interrogates the concepts of community and identity, including both historical and contemporaneous analyses of several scientific fields.
Clinical Bioethics : A Search for the Foundations
Clinical Bioethics. A Search for the Foundations compares major theoretical models in the foundation of clinical bioethics and explains medicine as a normative practice. The goals of medicine are discussed with particular reference to the subjectivisation of health and the rationalisation of health care institutions. This volume provides a consistent reconstruction of bioethical judgment both at the level of epistemological statute and institutional context, i.e. clinical ethics committees and clinical ethics consultation.
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.
Ceramic materials : Science and engineering
Ceramic Materials: Science and Engineering is an up-to-date treatment of ceramic science, engineering, and applications in a single, integrated text. Building on a foundation of crystal structures, phase equilibria, defects and the mechanical properties of ceramic materials, students are shown how these materials are processed for a broad diversity of applications in today's society. Concepts such as how and why ions move, how ceramics interact with light and magnetic fields, and how they respond to temperature changes are discussed in the context of their applications. References to the art and history of ceramics are included throughout the text. The text concludes with discussions of ceramics in biology and medicine, ceramics as gemstones and the role of ceramics in the interplay between industry and the environment. The text is extensively illustrated and includes references and questions for the student.
Canonical Perturbation Theories, Degenerate Systems, and Resonance
Canonical Perturbation Theories, Degenerate Systems and Resonance presents the foundations of Hamiltonian Perturbation Theories used in Celestial Mechanics, emphasizing the Lie Series Theory and its application to degenerate systems and resonance. This book is the complete text on the subject including advanced topics in Hamiltonian Mechanics, Hori’s Theory, and the classical theories of Poincaré, von Zeipel-Brouwer, and Delaunay.
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.
Buchi neri nel mio bagno di schiuma : L’enigma di Einstein = Black holes in my bubble bath : Einstein's riddle
Einstein's Enigma, or black holes in my foam bath, tells the story of the theory of gravitation, from its beginnings to the latest developments in astrophysics, focusing on Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity and the physics of black holes. Through engaging conversations and diagrams scribbled on paper napkins, the rudiments of relativity, space-time and many aspects of modern physics follow one another. In skits narrated with pedagogical skill and remarkable literary talent, the reader will come across the informal lessons that a cosmopolitan astrophysicist gives to his friend Alfie, a free lance organizer of research projects. Join in the intellectual fun and get excited with sparkling ideas, while with your imagination you enjoy a relaxing soak in this magical tub!
Boundary Integral Equations
This book is devoted to the basic mathematical properties of solutions to boundary integral equations and presents a systematic approach to the variational methods for the boundary integral equations arising in elasticity, fluid mechanics, and acoustic scattering theory. It may also serve as the mathematical foundation of the boundary element methods. The latter have recently become extremely popular and efficient computational tools in applications. The authors are well known for their fundamental work on boundary integral equations and related topics. This book is a major scholarly contribution to the modern theory of boundary integral equations and should be accessible and useful to a large community of mathematical analysts, applied mathematicians, engineers and scientists.
Bioethics in a Small World
Bioethics has addressed many of the issues that arise in the context of globalisation. This book presents the results of a conference the Europaische Akademie held in 2003 which developed its thesis in open discussions of foundational and applied problems of bioethics from an interdisciplinary and international perspective.
Beyond knowledge : The legacy of competence : Meaningful computer-based learning environments
The edited and peer reviewed volume presents selected papers of the conference "Beyond knowlegde: the legacy of competence" It reflects the current state-of-the-art work of scholars worldwide within the area of learning and instruction with computers. Mainly, areas of computer-based learning environments supporting competence-focused knowledge acquisition but also foundational scientific work are addressed. More specific, contents cover cognitive processes in hypermedia and multimedia learning, social issues in computer-supported collaborative learning, motivation and emotion in Blended Learning and e-Learning.
Berufliche passagen im lebenslauf : berufsbildungs- und transitionsforschung in der Schweiz = Vocational passages in the CV : Vocational training and transition research in Switzerland
During the transition from school to work, important groundwork is laid that prepares the further course of a person's life. In addition, this volume presents new results from diverse transition research from all over Switzerland, which are based on various disciplines such as psychology, sociology, educational sciences or educational economics. For this purpose, theoretical foundations and empirical evidence for the analysis and control of significant passages in the life course are developed.
Basic bundle theory and K-Cohomology invariants
Based on several recent courses given to mathematical physics students, this volume is an introduction to bundle theory with the aim to provide newcomers to the field with solid foundations in topological K-theory. A fundamental theme, emphasized in the book, centers around the gluing of local bundle data related to bundles into a global object. One renewed motivation for studying this subject, which has developed for almost 50 years in many directions, comes from quantum field theory, especially string theory, where topological invariants play an important role.
Autonomous Navigation in Dynamic Environments
The purpose of this book is to address the challenging problem of Autonomous Navigation in Dynamic Environments, and to present new ideas and approaches in this newly emerging technical domain. The book surveys the state-of-the-art, discusses in detail various related challenging technical aspects, and addresses upcoming technologies in this field. The aim of the book is to establish a foundation for a broad class of mobile robot mapping and navigation methodologies for indoor, outdoor, and exploratory missions.Three main topics located on the cutting edge of the state of the art are addressed, from both the theoretical and technological point of views: Dynamic world understanding and modelling for safe navigation, Obstacle avoidance and motion planning in dynamic environments, and Human-robot physical interactions. Several models and approaches are proposed for solving problems such as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) in dynamic environments, Mobile obstacle detection and tracking, World state estimation and motion prediction, Safe navigation in dynamic environments, Motion planning in dynamic environments, Robust decision making under uncertainty, and Human-Robot physical interactions.
At the crossroads : The world trading system and the Doha Round
Since its foundation in 1995 the legitimacy of the WTO – and herewith the notion of organising global trade on the basis of herewith the notion of organising global trade on the basis of concepts like trade-liberalisation, treaty-based rule of law and concepts like trade-liberalisation, treaty-based rule of law and enforceability – is challenged for very different reasons this volume not only documents the proceedings of this conference but, against the backdrop of the ongoing efforts to revive the Doha Round wants to be understood as some sort of stocktaking: What did really go wrong in Cancún? Where does the WTO stand today? Has there been any progress made since? And, finally: Is there any chance left to reach the ambitions goals postulated by the Doha Development Agenda? These and other, related questions are being discussed in the volume at hand.
Astrophysics Update 2
"Astrophysics Updates" is intended to serve the information needs of professional astronomers and postgraduate students about areas of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology that are rich and active research spheres. Observational methods and the latest results of astronomical research are presented as well as their theoretical foundations and interrelations. The contributed commissioned articles are written by leading exponents in a format that will appeal to professional astronomers and astrophysicists who are interested in topics outside their own specific areas of research. This collection of timely reviews may also attract the interest of advanced amateur astronomers seeking scientifically rigorous coverage.
Aspects of Automatic Text Analysis
This book It collects contributions of authors from a multidisciplinary area who focus on the topic of automatic text analysis from several (i.e. linguistic, mathematical, and information theoretical) perspectives. It describes methodological as well as methodical foundations and collects approaches in the field of text and corpus linguistics. In this sense, it contributes to the computational linguistic and information theoretical grounding of automatic text analysis.
Approximation of Additive Convolution-Like Operators : Real C*-Algebra Approach
Various aspects of numerical analysis for equations arising in boundary integral equation methods have been the subject of several books published in the last 15 years [95, 102, 183, 196, 198]. Prominent examples include various classes of o- dimensional singular integral equations or equations related to single and double layer potentials. Usually, a mathematically rigorous foundation and error analysis for the approximate solution of such equations is by no means an easy task. One reason is the fact that boundary integral operators generally are neither integral operatorsof the formidentity plus compact operatornor identity plus an operator with a small norm. Consequently, existing standard theories for the numerical analysis of Fredholm integral equations of the second kind are not applicable. In the last 15 years it became clear that the Banach algebra technique is a powerful tool to analyze the stability problem for relevant approximation methods [102, 103, 183, 189]. The starting point for this approach is the observation that the ? stability problem is an invertibility problem in a certain BanachorC -algebra. As a rule, this algebra is very complicated – and one has to ?nd relevant subalgebras to use such tools as local principles and representation theory.
Applied Physics of Carbon Nanotubes : Fundamentals of Theory, Optics and Transport Devices
The book describes the state-of-the-art in fundamental, applied and device physics of nanotubes, including fabrication, manipulation and characterization for device applications; optics of nanotubes; transport and electromechanical devices and fundamentals of theory for applications. This information is critical to the field of nanoscience since nanotubes have the potential to become a very significant electronic material for decades to come. The book will benefit all all readers interested in the application of nanotubes, either in their theoretical foundations or in newly developed characterization tools that may enable practical device fabrication.
Application of the Finite Element Method in Implant Dentistry
Part of the new series, Advanced Topics in Science and Technology in China, this book is designed to give the necessary theoretical foundation to new users of the finite element method in implant dentistry, and show how both the implant dentist and designer can benefit from finite element analysis.



















