This volume investigates crucial ways in which nature has been apprehended, understood and valued in different cultures and over time. It is grounded in current global concerns about growing threats to the natural environment. Through a critical appraisal of specific examples, it ranges widely over historical and contemporary attitudes and behaviours. It presents a wide ranging analysis of…
This book presents how Digital Transformation is a requirement to upgrade Latin American universities to a next level in management, lecturing and learning processes and strategies. The book starts with a thorough introduction of the Latin American context addressing the three main topics in the book: Digital Transformation, Higher Education and Artificial Intelligence & Industry 4.0. They will…
This book presents the select proceedings of the International Conference on Sustainable Practices and Innovations in Civil Engineering (SPICE 2019). The chapters discuss emerging and current research in sustainability in different areas of civil engineering, which aim to provide solutions to sustainable development. The contents are broadly divided into the following six categories: (i) struct…
This book is reflective of a science-based vision of the future development paradigm of economic and social systems. It deals with the digitization as the technological basis for the future development of economic and social systems and presents a review of groundbreaking technologies and prospects for their application. The specific character of the industry and prospects for the application o…
This book explores the narratives of a group of four-year-old children in a composition project in an Australian early learning centre. The participants, centre staff and a composer, Stephen Leek, contributed a number of music sessions for the children, including five original songs. The book showcases young children’s communicative ability and sensitivity to wider issues. The staff in the ce…
This book asks how education can be developed to facilitate the radical social, cultural and economic transformations needed to deal with the ongoing climate emergency. The author illuminates important links between the work currently being done in climate change and education and the broader and older theories of radical education: an area of education theory and practice that has long grapple…
This open access proceedings presents new approaches to Machine Learning for Cyber Physical Systems, experiences and visions. It contains selected papers from the fifth international Conference ML4CPS – Machine Learning for Cyber Physical Systems, which was held in Berlin, March 12-13, 2020. Cyber Physical Systems are characterized by their ability to adapt and to learn: They analyze th…
This book presents a comprehensive account of the educational experiences of community college students in Hong Kong, analyzed through a theoretical lens that intersects sociological theories of inequality, including Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital. The student narratives featured in this book reveal the interweaving personal, academic, and professional considerations and challenges affe…
This book explores the role universities have to play in fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the heart of “sustainable development” is the legacy of unsustainable development with its roots in modernity and colonialism. Critical engagement with the SDGs involves recognising these roots are shared by universities and the reciprocal need for maintenance, repair and regener…
This book highlights the current research, conceptual and practical utilization of waste in building materials. It examines the production of industrial and agricultural wastes that have been generated worldwide and have significant environmental impact. The book discusses how to incorporate these wastes effectively with greener technology and how to address its environmental impact in order to…
This book provides the theoretical and analytical resources for an urgent rethinking of the social project of educating and educational leading. It examines what educational leadership is, namely the politics and power of leadership as a practice, and what it can and should be, offering a pedagogical and praxis-informed approach to educational practice. Drawing on research conducted at vari…
This open access book critiques real world learning across both the curriculum and extracurricular activities. Drawing on disciplines as diverse as business, health, fashion, sociology and geography, the editors and authors employ a cross-disciplinary approach to examine how this concept is being applied in higher education. Divided into three parts, the authors and contributors analyse broader…
This book is the first volume in a collection of contributions arising from a multidisciplinary project developed in the field of agri-food value chain analysis. The respective papers combine a range of disciplines to analyse major agri-food challenges in Europe and South America, offering readers a practical understanding of how risk and uncertainties can be managed by means of validated data …
The book presents a collection of peer-reviewed articles from the International Conference on Innovations in Cyber Physical Systems (ICICPS 2020). The conference provided opportunities for the presentation of new research results and discussion about them. It was also an opportunity to generation of new ideas in all CPS aspects, including theory, tools, applications, systems, test-beds and fiel…
People who work in an office spend at least a third of their lifetime in these spaces. The planning of office and administration buildings can therefore contribute a great deal to the satisfaction and well-being of future users. The book looks at the health-relevant factors that affect people in office and administration buildings and therefore deserve special attention in the planning process.…
This book consists of chapters dedicated to the questions of cyber-physical system design and its usage for the chemical industry and new material design. Also, the contribution of the book covers scientific research and their results for cyber-physical systems design and application in the energy domain and solutions regarding engineering education for cyber-physical systems design. The book o…
This book examines the human auditory effects of exposure to directed beams of high-power microwave pulses, which research results have shown can cause a cascade of health events when aimed at a human subject or the subject’s head. The book details multidisciplinary investigations using physical theories and models, physiological events and phenomena, and computer analysis and simulation. Cov…
This book evaluates the seismic performance of concrete gravity dams, considering the effects of strong motion duration, mainshock-aftershock seismic sequence, and near-fault ground motion. It employs both the extended finite element method (XFEM) and concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) models to characterize the mechanical behavior of concrete gravity dams under strong ground motions, including …
This book is about recent research in the area of profiling humans from their voice, which seeks to deduce and describe the speaker's entire persona and their surroundings from voice alone. It covers several key aspects of this technology, describing how the human voice is unique in its ability to both capture and influence the human persona -- how, in some ways, voice is more potent and valuab…
The aim of this book is to stimulate research on the topic of the Social Internet of Things, and explore how Internet of Things architectures, tools, and services can be conceptualized and developed so as to reveal, amplify and inspire the capacities of people, including the socialization or collaborations that happen through or around smart objects and smart environments. From new ways of n…
This book offers an in-depth and systematic introduction to improved failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) methods for proactive healthcare risk analysis. Healthcare risk management has become an increasingly important issue for hospitals and managers. As a prospective reliability analysis technique, FMEA has been widely used for identifying and eliminating known and potential failures in sy…
The book introduces the reader to game-changing ways of building and utilizing Internet-based services related to design and manufacture activities through the cloud. In a broader sense, CBDM refers to a new product realization model that enables collective open innovation and rapid product development with minimum costs through social networking and negotiation platforms between service provid…
This book highlights the challenges and potential of educational learning or industry-based training using serious games and social media platforms. In particular, the book addresses applications used in businesses and education-related organizations in Asia, where the framework and experience of serious games have been used to address specific problems in the real world. The topics that will b…
This book explores the differences in cultural attributes and management factors to enable managers working for Japanese contractors to reduce misunderstandings and misinterpretations when communicating with project team members from different cultural backgrounds. It focuses on Japanese contractors operating in Singapore, since the Singapore construction industry has, for many years, been one …
This book focuses on the seismic design of Structures, Piping Systems and Components (SSC). It explains the basic mechanisms of earthquakes, generation of design basis ground motion, and fundamentals of structural dynamics; further, it delves into geotechnical aspects related to the earthquake design, analysis of multi degree-of-freedom systems, and seismic design of RC structures and steel str…
This book showcases cutting-edge research papers from the 7th International Conference on Research into Design (ICoRD 2019) – the largest in India in this area – written by eminent researchers from across the world on design processes, technologies, methods and tools, and their impact on innovation, for supporting design for a connected world. The theme of ICoRD‘19 has been “Design for …