Longevity and Frailty
Contained in this book are the outcome of a colloquium sponsored by Fondation IPSEN in which interdisciplinary perspectives were brought to bear on conceptual, empirical and clinical aspects of this relationship. The result is a unique, innovative and timely blend of papers on topics ranging from frailty concepts in animal models and early Homo sapiens, to documentation of progress in morbidity compression, on the relationships between frailty and impairments and inflammation, and perspectives on long-term health care needs in an aging world.
Longer Life and Healthy Aging
Focuses on theoretical issues and empirical findings related to trends and determinants of healthy aging, including factors related to "healthy longevity" of the oldest-old, aged 80 and over. The group is the most rapidly increasing elderly sub-population and is most likely to need assistance in daily living in all countries. Chapters include both longitudinal and cross-sectional data from North America, Europe, and Asia in country-specific studies and cross-national comparisons. Part I focuses on the definition, components, concepts, measurements, and determinants of healthy aging, and discusses the trends and patterns of disability and healthy life expectancy at the macro level. Part II addresses individual healthy aging, including its biological and socio-demographic aspects. Part III focuses on issues concerning the family and healthy aging, and Part IV explores formal and informal care for healthy aging through governmental policy interventions and community service programs.
Logistics Outsourcing Relationships : Measurement, Antecedents, and Effects of Logistics Outsourcing Performance
In recent years, logistics outsourcing has gained increasing importance and today is used by a large number of firms across virtually all industries worldwide. Logistics service providers have developed a wide array of services that are utilized to improve logistics processes - and mainly to cut costs.This book uses state-of-the-art scientific methods to reveal that most firms currently do not realize the full potential of logistics outsourcing. It shows the complexity of outsourcing performance and that its true drivers lie in the relationship between service providers and their customers. Through the results of a large-scale empirical survey, the book also emphasizes the importance of a firm's approach towards outsourcing: solely striving for cost reductions may be a dead end, while the often overlooked increased logistics service levels are equally important for boosting logistics performance. In the light of current outsourcing practices, this indicates substantial room for improvement for most firms.
Local Heroes in the Global Village : Globalization and the New Entrepreneurship Policies
The book contributes to the debate what role public policies play in stimulating national and regional economic growth. With a better understanding of the complexity and variety of existent entrepreneurship policies in the U.S. and Germany the reader of this volume will be able to formulate best practice, hands-on strategies which aim to promote nations as well as regions in an "entrepreneurial economy".This volume brings together conference contributions of leading academics and policy advisors from the United States and Europe,The volume has the virtue of both providing solid empirical analysis and theoretical underpinning from leading economists,social scientists as well as a fresh perspective on the myths and realities concerning the operation of the U.S
Linear Models for Optimal Test Design
Begins with a reflection on the history of test design--the core activity of all educational and psychological testing. It then presents a standard language for modeling test design problems as instances of multi-objective constrained optimization. The main portion of the book discusses test design models for a large variety of problems from the daily practice of testing, and illustrates their use with the help of numerous empirical examples. The presentation includes models for the assembly of tests to an absolute or relative target for their information functions, classical test assembly, test equating problems, item matching, test splitting, simultaneous assembly of multiple tests, tests with item sets, multidimensional tests, and adaptive test assembly. Two separate chapters are devoted to the questions of how to design item banks for optimal support of programs with fixed and adaptive tests. Linear Models for Optimal Test Design, which does not require any specific mathematical background, has been written to be a helpful resource on the desk of any test specialist.
Life Skills Education for Youth : Critical Perspectives
This book critically reviews a diverse body of scholarship and practice that informs the conceptualization, curriculum, teaching and measurement of life skills in education settings around the world. It discusses life skills as they are implemented in schools and non-formal education, providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence of when, with whom, and how life skills do or do not impact young women’s and men’s lives in various contexts. Specifically, it examines the nature and importance of life skills, and how they are taught.
Life Cycle Investing and Occupational Old-Age Provision in Switzerland
Florian Zainhofer uses the theory of life cycle investing, i.e. how we should optimally choose our savings rate and risky asset share throughout our lives, as a framework to study the implications of a potential BVG individualization. Following an introduction on the Swiss system of old-age provision, the author reviews recent life cycle models of portfolio choice and covers their numerical solution algorithms in depth. He presents an empirical analysis of Swiss workers’ earnings dynamics since these are important determinants of life cycle investment behavior. To further investigate the implications of a flexible contribution rate and risky asset share in the mandatory BVG, the author proposes a model adapted to Swiss conditions and parameterized with the estimated earnings dynamics.
Legitimacy Needs as Drivers of Business Exit
A diversified firm’s withdrawal from a business unit, i.e. business exit, is a significant phenomenon in management practice. Although divestitures are highly relevant in practice, the acquisition of business units attracts much more attention in strategic management research. Carolin Decker develops and empirically applies a framework in which business exits serve the purpose of re-establishing a firm’s previously harmed legitimacy. She suggests four types of legitimacy needs that are to be satisfied with the divestiture of a business unit and the simultaneous pursuit of strategic reorientation. The author tests the theoretical framework with secondary data on 213 business exits. Her findings support the idea that legitimacy needs drive the likelihood of fit-enhancing business exits in divesting firms.
Learning from clusters : A critical assessment from an economic-geographical perspective
Edited volumes run the danger of being a hotchpotch of contributions on a wide variety of topics. Here, we have explicitly focused on a central theme in contemporary economic geography and regional science, namely the relationship between learning, innovation and clustering. Internationally renowned scientists made both theoretical and empirical contributions to this volume. We think this book constitutes a broad palette of contemporary thinking and research on the relationship between spatial concentration and innovation and hope it will play a significant role in future debates on this issue.
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.
Knowledge for Governance
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 geographical context.
Knowledge and Institutions
Bridges the disciplinary boundaries within the social sciences to explore the role of social institutions in shaping geographical contexts, and in creating new knowledge. It includes theorizations as well as original empirical case studies on the emergence, maintenance and change of institutions as well as on their constraining and enabling effects on innovation, entrepreneurship, art and cultural heritage, often at regional scales across Europe and North America. Rooted in the disciplines of management and organization studies, sociology, geography, political science, and economics the contributors all take comprehensive approaches to carve out the specific contextuality of institutions as well as their impact on societal outcomes. Not only does this book offer detailed insights into current debates in institutional theory, it also provides background for scholars, students, and professionals at the intersection between regional development, policy-making, and regulation.
Knowing the Salween River : Resource Politics of a Contested Transboundary River
Focuses on the Salween River, shared by China, Myanmar, and Thailand, that is increasingly at the heart of pressing regional development debates. The basin supports the livelihoods of over 10 million people, and within it there is great socio-economic, cultural and political diversity. The basin is witnessing intensifying dynamics of resource extraction, alongside large dam construction, conservation and development intervention, that is unfolding within a complex terrain of local, national and transnational governance. With a focus on the contested politics of water and associated resources in the Salween basin, this book offers a collection of empirical case studies that highlights local knowledge and perspectives. Given the paucity of grounded social science studies in this contested basin, this book provides conceptual insights at the intersection of resource governance, development, and politics of knowledge relevant to researchers, policy-makers and practitioners at a time when rapid change is underway.
Key Account Management in Business-to-Business Markets: An Assessment of Its Economic Value
In times of fierce competition in business-to-business markets strong and economically sound business relationships with a company's customers rank among the main success factors. As a well established marketing management conception, key account management is of particular significance in this context. Interestingly enough, empirical research studies have recently proved that relationship marketing, and particularly key account management, does not achieve the economic value originally expected.
Jacob Mincer : A Pioneer of Modern Labor Economics
This volume contains essays by or about Jacob Mincer who, along with Gary Becker, is a founding father of modern empirical labor economics. His methodology analyzes the economics of the working world, and his human capital model is a fundamental tool in empirical economics.
Comprehensive mathematics for computer scientists 2 : Calculus and ODEs, splines, probability, fourier and wavelet theory, fractals and neural networks, categories and lambda calculus
This second volume of a comprehensive tour through mathematical core subjects for computer scientists completes the first volume in two - gards: Part III first adds topology, di?erential, and integral calculus to the t- ics of sets, graphs, algebra, formal logic, machines, and linear geometry, of volume 1. With this spectrum of fundamentals in mathematical e- cation, young professionals should be able to successfully attack more involved subjects, which may be relevant to the computational sciences. In a second regard, the end of part III and part IV add a selection of more advanced topics. In view of the overwhelming variety of mathematical approaches in the computational sciences, any selection, even the most empirical, requires a methodological justi?cation. Our primary criterion has been the search for harmonization and optimization of thematic - versity and logical coherence. This is why we have, for instance, bundled such seemingly distant subjects as recursive constructions, ordinary d- ferential equations, and fractals under the unifying perspective of c- traction theory.
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.
Component-Based Digital Movie Production : Reference Model of an Integrated Production System
The ongoing digitization process affects all areas of the media industry. Within the scientific discussion, movie production is little observed although it currently faces crucial structural developments. The change to digital production processes allows new ways of cooperation and coordination in the project networks. Marcus Pankow examines the specifics of the movie production industry and its value-creating processes, reflecting the digitization and its impact on the information systems strategy. An empirical case study analysis forms the basis for the development of a reference model for a company-wide application system to support the entire movie production process. Following the concept of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), he encapsulates established applications in services and integrates them on one platform.
Competence of Top Management Teams and Success of New Technology-Based Firms : A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis Concerning Competencies of Entrepreneurial Teams and the Development of Their Ventures
In his book, Jan Brinckmann develops a comprehensive competence concept for new technology-based firms. It is grounded in competence-related literature combining insights from entrepreneurship and management research. The competence concept comprises three domains: general entrepreneurial competencies, social competencies, and functional competencies in technology, marketing, and financial management. A measurement model is developed to specify the contents of each sub-domain and to facilitate self-assessment of these competencies. In an empirical study, 212 executives of German NTBFs assessed their team’s competencies. This data is analyzed using structural equation modelling to identify the most relevant competencies for new venture success.
Compendium for Early Career Researchers in Mathematics Education
The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of important theories from mathematics education and the broad variety of empirical approaches currently widely used in mathematics education research.



















