الصفحة 1
الصفحة 1
Open and distance education in Asia, Africa and the Middle East : National perspectives in a digital age
This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: China, India, Russia, Turkey, South Africa and South Korea. It describes how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of the national higher education systems in these countries. It also explores the similarities and differences between how their open and distance higher education systems are managed and structured. The book compare and draw conclusions about the nature of open and distance education in the context of various national higher education systems. In a digital era characterized by the growing use of online, open and distance education, this book will prove particularly valuable for policy-makers and senior administrators who want to learn about establishing or expanding open and distance education services. In addition, it offers a valuable reference guide for researchers, academics and students interested in understanding the different approaches to open and distance education.
One hundred years of social protection : The changing social question in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa
As the first in-depth study of the ideational foundations of social protection policies and programmes in these four countries, the contributions demonstrate that the social question was articulated in an increasingly inclusive way.
New approaches for security, privacy and trust in complex environments ; Proceedings of the IFIP TC 11 22nd International Information Security Conference (SEC 2007), 14-16 May 2007, Sandton, South Africa
The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.
NETWORKING 2002 : Networking technologies, services, and protocols ; performance of computer and communication Networks, mobile and wireless communications ; 2nd International IFIP-TC6 Networking Conference, Pisa, Italy, May 19-24, 2002 Proceedings
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second IFIP-TC6 Netw- king Conference, Networking 2002. Networking 2002 was sponsored bythe IFIP Working Groups 6.2, 6.3, and 6.8. For this reason the conference was structured into three tracks: i) Networking Technologies, Services, and Protocols, ii) Perf- mance of Computer and Communication Networks, and iii) Mobile and Wireless Communications. This year the conference received 314 submissions coming from 42 countries from all ?ve continents Africa (4), Asia (84), America (63), Europe (158), and Oc- nia (5).
Multinational Enterprises, Foreign Direct Investment and Growth in Africa : South African Perspectives
How can Africa, the world’s most lagging region, benefit from globalisation and achieve sustained economic growth? Africa needs greater investment by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) to improve competitiveness and generate more growth through positive spill-over effects. Despite the fact that Africa’s returns on investment averaged 29% since 1990, Africa has gained merely 1% of global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows. The challenge for African countries is how to be a more desirable destination for FDI. The study integrates three currents of economic research, namely from the literature on (endogenous) economic growth, convergence and regional integration, the explanations for Africa’s poor growth and the growing understanding of the role of MNEs in a global economy. The empirical side of the book is based on an econometric study of the determinants of FDI in Africa as well as a detailed firm-level survey conducted in 2000.
mODa 8 - Advances in Model-Oriented Design and Analysis ; Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop in Model-Oriented Design and Analysis held in Almagro, Spain, June 4–8, 2007
The volume contains the proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Model-Oriented Design and Analysis. This book offers leading and pioneering work on optimal experimental designs, both from a mathematical/statistical point of view and with regard to real applications. Scientists from all over the world, from Eastern and Western Europe, the USA, Latin-America, Asia and Africa, have contributed to this volume. Primary topics are designs for nonlinear models and applications to experimental medicine.
Mobile Professional Voluntarism and International Development : Killing Me Softly?
This book explores the impact that professional volunteers have on the low resource countries they choose to spend time in. Whilst individual volunteering may be of immediate benefit to individual patients, this intervention may have detrimental effects on local health systems; distorting labour markets, accentuating dependencies and creating opportunities for corruption. Improved volunteer deployment may avoid these risks and present opportunities for sustainable systems change. The empirical research presented in this book stems from a specific volunteering intervention funded by the Tropical Health Education Trust and focused on improving maternal and newborn health in Uganda.
Microalgae Building Enclosures : Design and Engineering Principles
Aims to provide design, engineering, and biotechnical guidelines for microalgae building enclosures that need to be considered for symbiotic relations among the built environment, humans, and ecosystems. Introduces the theoretical background of microalgae as a bioremediator and future energy system and their potential roles toward sustainable and healthy built environments. Part II exemplifies interventions and multiple benefits of microalgae systems in product, architecture, urban, and infrastructure applications across the globe including Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, South America, and North America. Part III explains the design and engineering criteria, biotechnical design requirements, and various performance metrics for microalgae architecture. Finally, Part IV investigates potential building applications in low-rise buildings, high-rise buildings, and energy-efficient retrofitting. The book also includes international case studies of microalgae building systems within various building types and climates.
Methods for measuring greenhouse Gas balances and evaluating mitigation options in smallholder agriculture
This book provides standards and guidelines for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions and removals in smallholder agricultural systems and comparing options for climate change mitigation based on emission reductions and livelihood trade-offs. Globally, agriculture is directly responsible for about 11% of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and induces an additional 17% through land use change, mostly in developing countries. Farms in the developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are predominately managed by smallholders, with 80% of land holdings smaller than ten hectares. However, little to no information exists on greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation potentials in smallholder agriculture.
Medicinal Plants for Holistic Health and Well-Being
Medicinal Plants for Holistic Health and Well-Being discusses, in depth, the use of South African plants to treat a variety of ailments, including tuberculosis, cancer, periodontal diseases, acne, postmacular hypomelanosis, and more. Plants were selected on the basis of their traditional use, and the book details the scientific evidence that supports their pharmacological and therapeutic potential to safely and effectively treat each disease. Thus, this book is a valuable resource for all researchers, students and professors involved in advancing global medicinal plant research
Medicinal plants for cosmetics : Health and diseases
Describes diseases and ailments occurring in individuals worldwide including acne, ageing, various cancers, eczema and other conditions. This book explains each disease and ailment, allowing the reader to gain a better perspective on misunderstood and underestimated assumptions accompanying the ailment or condition. Not only does this book present information on different diseases and ailments, it presents a variety of plants and plant-based compounds demonstrating potential health benefits.
Measuring Methane Production from Ruminants
The world’s livestock sector is amidst a major transformation, fuelled by high demand for meat and milk, which is likely to double over the next two decades in developing countries. The challenge is to enhance animal productivity without adversely affecting the environment. A key to this is reducing methane emissions from ruminants. The major limitation to ruminant production in many tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where a large proportion of the global ruminant population is located, is poor nutrition. The productivity of animals is restricted by the low nitrogen and high fibre content of the native grasses and crop residues, which form the basis of the diets in these regions. Animals on these types of diets emit more methane than animals fed better quality temperate forages. These methane emissions represent a loss of digestible energy to the animal (up to 15%) as well as a threat to the environment.The challenge is to devise nutritional strategies and identify dietary components, particularly from locally available plant resources, that reduce methane emissions.
Mathematics Education in East Africa : Towards Harmonization and Enhancement of Education Quality
In the increasingly global and technological world mathematics is seen as a significant gatekeeper of opportunities for social and economic advancement and mobility. Hence, countries and development agencies in the broader sub-Saharan Africa region are looking towards increasing access to relevant and high-quality secondary education as a lever towards economic development. Policy makers and other key decision makers in education look towards improvement in mathematics teaching and learning as a key focus in education reform. In the East Africa region also a number of initiatives have been taken at the national level in the respective countries to improve the quality of mathematics education. This book provides an in-depth comparative analysis of the developments and issues in mathematics education in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda, and advances our understanding of the state of secondary mathematics education in East Africa.
International Perspectives in Values-Based Mental Health Practice: Case Studies and Commentaries
This book offers essential information on values-based practice (VBP): the clinical skills involved, teamwork and person-centered care, links between values and evidence, and the importance of partnerships in shared decision-making. Different cultures have different values; for example, partnership in decision-making looks very different, from the highly individualized perspective of European and North American cultures to the collective and family-oriented perspectives common in South East Asia. In turn, African cultures offer yet another perspective, one that falls between these two extremes (called batho pele).
International Competitiveness in Africa : Policy Implications in the Sub-Saharan Region
The effects of international trade and foreign direct investment on developing economies have always been controversial. With the unstoppable spread of globalization and the supremacy of "open" policies over "closed" ones, the debate between "participating" and "not participating" in the world economy has been superseded by discussions on the best policy measures for expanding participation and enhancing the accrued welfare gains. Policies to strengthen international competitiveness are almost unanimously considered important means towards those ends. This book examines two policies frequently used to enhance international competitiveness in Sub-Saharan African economies: exchange rate policy and productivity-related policy.
Intelligent Virtual Agents ; Vol.3661 : 5th International Working Conference, IVA 2005, Kos, Greece, September 12-14, 2005, Proceedings
The origin of the Intelligent Virtual Agents conference dates from a successful workshop on Intelligent Virtual Environments held in Brighton at the 13th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI'98). This workshop was followed by a second one held in Salford in Manchester in 1999. Subsequent events took place in Madrid, Spain in 2001 and Irsee, Germany in 2003 and attracted participants from both sides of the Atlantic as well as Asia. th This volume contains the proceedings of the 5 International Working Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2005, held on Kos Island, Greece, September 12–14, 2005, which highlighted once again the importance and vigor of the research field. A half-day workshop under the title “Socially Competent IVA’s: We are not alone in this (virtual) world!” also took place as part of this event. IVA 2005 received 69 submissions from Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia. The papers published here are the 26 full papers and 14 short papers presented at the conference, as well as one-page descriptions of the 15 posters and the descriptions of the featured invited talks by Prof. Justine Cassell, of Northwestern University and Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn, of the University of Hertfordshire. We would like to thank a number of people that have contributed to the success of this conference. First of all, we thank the authors for their high-quality work and their willingness to share their ideas.
Insurance distribution directive : A legal analysis
This book of the AIDA Europe Research Series on Insurance Law and Regulation offers the first comprehensive legal and regulatory analysis of the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD).
Innovative Models for Sustainable Development in Emerging African Countries
Explores key issues and presents recent case studies in areas of importance for the transition to a circular model of development in emerging African countries that will minimize resource consumption and waste production.
Information Retrieval Technology ; Vol. 3689 ; 2nd Asia information retrieval symposium, AIRS 2005, Jeju Island, Korea, October 13-15, 2005, Proceedings
Asia Information Retrieval Symposium (AIRS) was established in 2004 by the Asian information retrieval community after the successful series of Information Retrieval with Asian Languages (IRAL) workshops held in six different locations in Asia, starting from 1996. The AIRS symposium aims to bring together international researchers and developers to exchange new ideas and the latest results in the field of information retrieval (IR). The scope of the symposium covers applications, systems, technologies and theoretical aspects of information retrieval in text, audio, image, video and multi-media data. We are very pleased to report that we saw a sharp and steady increase in the number of submissions and their qualities, compared with previous IRAL workshop series. We received 136 submissions from all over the world including Asia, North America, Europe, Australia, and even Africa, from which 32 papers (23%) were presented in oral sessions and 36 papers in poster sessions (26%). We also held a special session called “Digital Photo Albuming,” where 4 oral papers and 3 posters were presented. It was a great challenge and hard work for the program committee to select the best among the excellent papers. The high acceptance rates witness the success and stability of the AIRS series. All the papers and posters are included in this LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) proceedings volume, which is S- indexed. The technical program included two keynote talks by Prof. Walter Bender and Prof.
Indigenous Knowledge and Education in Africa
This book presents a strong philosophical, theoretical and practical argument for the mainstreaming of indigenous knowledge in curricula development, and in teaching and learning across the African continent. Since the dawn of political independence in Africa, there has been an ongoing search for the kind of education that will create a class of principled and innovative citizens who are sensitive to and committed to the needs of the continent. When indigenous or environment-generated knowledge forms the basis of learning in classrooms, learners are able to immediately connect their education with their lived reality. The result is much introspection, creativity and innovation across fields, sectors and disciplines, leading to societal transformation. Drawing on several theoretical assertions, examples from a wide range of disciplines, and experiences gathered from different continents at different points in history, the book establishes that for education to trigger the necessary transformation in Africa, it should be constructed on a strong foundation of learners’ indigenous knowledge. The book presents a distinct and uncharted pathway for Africa to advance sustainably through home-grown and grassroots based ideas, leading to advances in science and technology, growth of indigenous African business and the transformation of Africans into conscious and active participants in the continent’s progress.
