The Higher Education Learners' Learning Outcomes (HELLO) project offers a comprehensive solution to the challenge of creating comparative metrics of learning outcomes that are valid across various cultures, languages, and higher education institution types. Traditional methods of assessing learning outcomes in higher education have limited institutions' abilities to compare student performance to that of their peers, hindering efforts to improve teaching practices and enhance student learning. This project creates learning outcome measures that are culturally and linguistically appropriate for different types of higher education institutions, enabling institutions to compare student performance to that of their peers as part of efforts to improve teaching practices and enhance student learning. Design and Implementation of Higher Education Learners' Learning Outcomes (HELLO), edited by Kuntal Barua, Neyara Radwan Mohammed, Virendra Singh, and Ronnie Figueiredo, provides a persuasive account of the HELLO project and is intended for all students, teachers, administrations, and higher education institutions interested in improving teaching practices and enhancing student learning outcomes. The book presents the challenges in traditional methods of assessing learning outcomes, the limitations of diverse attempts to fill the quality information gap, and the rationale for HELLO beyond collegial approaches and student-centered learning. The book also explores key challenges in developing and executing HELLO, such as the risks of ranking and value-added methodologies. By offering a comprehensive overview of the HELLO project, this book provides higher education institutions with the information and motivation they need to participate in the project and enhance their students' learning outcomes.

Employee sustainability and well-being have been increasingly important discussions in today's business world. Businesses may have difficulty implementing a successful long-term policy due to a lack of knowledge, limited resources, and a short-term focus; however, the effects have shown a potential strategic and growth advantage. Promoting employee sustainability is an important step towards greater competitive advantage, creation of added value to the business, and a greater identity among society and within the organization itself. Developing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies for Promoting Employee Sustainability and Well-Being analyzes the current state of employee sustainability policies, systematizes the factors that promote a more sustainable and healthier workplace, explores the implications of diversity and inclusion practices on the well-being of employees, and collects policy options aimed at finding solutions to enhance well-being. Covering topics such as emotional health, organizational behavior, and work satisfaction, this reference work is ideal for academicians, researchers, scholars, practitioners, policymakers, business owners, managers, government officials, instructors, and students.

Dante, the pilgrim, is the image of an author who stubbornly looks ahead, seeking and building the "Great Beyond" (Manguel). Following in his footsteps is therefore not a return to the past, going a rebours, but a commitment to the future, to exploring the potential of humanity to "transhumanise". This dynamic of self-transcendence in Dante's humanism (Ossola), which claims for European civilisation a vocation for universalism (Ferroni), is analysed in the volume at three crucial moments: Firstly, the establishment of an emancipatory relationship between author and reader (Ascoli), in which authorship is authority and not power; secondly, the conception of vision as a learning process and horizon of eschatological overcoming (Mendonca); finally, the relationship with the past, which is never purely monumental, but ethically and intertextually dynamic, in an original rewriting of the original scriptural, medieval, and classical culture (Nasti, Bolzoni, Bartolomei). A second group of contributions is dedicated to the reconstruction of Dante's presence in Portuguese literature (Almeida, Espirito Santo, Figueiredo, Marnoto, Vaz de Carvalho): they attest to the innovative impact of Dante's work even in literary traditions more distant from it.

Human Resource Development is a very important scientific topic in the world today and due to the globalization process, it will only become more important in the next decades. This happens because the effort to develop in a sustained way the world will need more and more talent. In this context, we do not believe robots or Artificial Intelligence and digitalization will decrease the need for Humans in organizations; quite on the contrary we consider that the so-called 4.0 revolution will only increase the need for more highly developed human potential. It is within this context that we believe a Handbook of Research on Human Resource Development will be important because it will help individuals, organization managers, and national deciders to invest in HRD. The book is needed because it fills a gap given that many disperse publications exist but no one that really covers in 25 chapters the essence of the topic. Researchers from all disciplines covering business sciences and social and human sciences working on a range possible topic of the project. This project will emphasize the importance of HRD in the current and future context. Learning and development are fundamental to the digital and technological world. Researchers will be encouraged to push the boundaries of their respective disciplines and to see how theories and methodologies can be used to design rich research projects to study the complex dynamics and interactions of HRD. This project is an opportunity to involve several stakeholders, including professionals from public and private companies, human resources professionals, specialists, academics, and researchers from several countries.

Advances in communication technologies have created an overabundance of available information and knowledge to people in contemporary society. Consequently, it has become pivotal to develop new approaches for information processing and understanding. Information and Communication Overload in the Digital Age is a comprehensive reference source for the latest scholarly material on the increased amount of information created by evolving technologies, examining creative methods for improved control of information overload. Focusing on theoretical and experimental topics, such as media consumption, media literacy, and business applications, this book is ideally designed for researchers, practitioners, academics, graduate students, and professionals seeking emerging perspectives on information and communication management.

This book brings together two broad themes that have generated a great deal of interest and excitement in the scientific and technical community in the last 100 years or so: quantum tunnelling and nonlinear dynamical systems. It applies these themes to nanostructured solid state heterostructures operating at room temperature to gain insight into novel photonic devices, systems and applications.

Kalanchoe (Crassulaceae) in Southern Africa: Classification, Biology, and Cultivation provides a highly readable, illustrated account of the Kalanchoe species. The book includes an overview of the family Crassulaceae and genus Kalanchoe in global and subcontinental contexts that is followed by information on the taxonomic history of the genus. The characters and ecology of the species are also discussed, including their distribution ranges, where they occur, their habitat preferences, and where the species were formally recorded for the first time. For each indigenous and naturalized species, comprehensive taxonomic, descriptive and other information of interest is provided. This is the must-have resource for plant scientists, plant taxonomists, ethnobotanists, herbarium curators, ecologists, pharmacologists, invasions scientists, horticulturalists and landscape designers.

This book gathers peer-reviewed contributions presented at the 3rd RILEM Spring Convention and Conference, held at Guimaraes and hosted by the University of Minho, Portugal, on March 9-14, 2020. The theme of the Conference was "Ambitioning a Sustainable Future for Built Environment: comprehensive strategies for unprecedented challenges", which was aimed at discussing current challenges and impacts of the built environment on sustainability. The present volume is dedicated to the topic "Strategies for a resilient built environment", which covers the current and emerging approaches that lead to an optimized design and maintenance of constructions and systems. It includes the development of service life models and life cycle design, in order to maximise longevity and level of service while minimising the environmental impact of constructions and systems. It also includes the analysis and design of larger systems, such as communities, cities or regions, aiming at reducing risk and increasing resilience. The following subtopics are included: resilience and robustness of the built environment and communities at local and global scales; risk based inspection and maintenance; life cycle analysis and service models; performance based design; improved design strategies by integrating materials and structures.

Originally published in French, this updated and expanded English translation offers a definitive treatment on clays and effects on human health including the long history of clays used as pharmaceutical and therapeutic agents, the origins of clays, their structural properties and modes of action.

Special economic zones (SEZs) are important doorways for countries to attract foreign investment and promote trade. A strong correlation between the creation of SEZs and economic development indicators has also been identified in previous studies, at the municipal level, in China. Thus, the fundamental question that needs to be explored is to what extent SEZs can play the role of development enablers in different regions, development states, and institutional settings. Special Economic Zones as Regional Development Enablers discusses the diverse and international track records in the implementation of SEZs, the interplay of SEZ models and local institutional infrastructure and stakeholders, and the SEZ models that can best fit certain development states and/or settings. Covering topics such as the Belt and Road Initiative, local and national economies, and regional integration, this book is essential for government officials, development officers, scholars, students, researchers, entrepreneurs, public decision makers, aid agencies, company executives, investors, and academicians.

Shaping Rural Areas in Europe. Perceptions and Outcomes on the Present and the Future sets out to investigate the effect of urban perceptions about the rural and consequent demands on rurality on the present and future configurations of rural territories in Europe in the early twenty-first century. This volume presents and discusses a broad range of case studies and theoretical and methodological approaches from different academic fields, mainly Anthropology, Sociology and Geography.

This book provides techniques to tackle the design challenges raised by the increasing diversity and complexity of emerging, heterogeneous architectures for embedded systems. It describes an approach based on techniques from software engineering called aspect-oriented programming, which allow designers to control today's sophisticated design tool chains, while maintaining a single application source code. Readers are introduced to the basic concepts of an aspect-oriented, domain specific language that enables control of a wide range of compilation and synthesis tools in the partitioning and mapping of an application to a heterogeneous (and possibly multi-core) target architecture. Several examples are presented that illustrate the benefits of the approach developed for applications from avionics and digital signal processing. Using the aspect-oriented programming techniques presented in this book, developers can reuse extensive sections of their designs, while preserving the original application source-code, thus promoting developer productivity as well as architecture and performance portability. Describes an aspect-oriented approach for the compilation and synthesis of applications targeting heterogeneous embedded computing architectures. Includes examples using an integrated tool chain for compilation and synthesis. Provides validation and evaluation for targeted reconfigurable heterogeneous architectures. Enables design portability, given changing target devices* Allows developers to maintain a single application source code when targeting multiple architectures.

The effects of recent economic and financial crises have reached an international scale. A number of different nations have experienced the fallout of these events, calling into question issues of accountability and reform in public management. The Handbook of Research on Modernization and Accountability in Public Sector Management is an essential scholarly publication that focuses on responsibility within public sector institutions and the importance of these institutions being ethical, transparent, and rigorous. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics, such as corporate social responsibility, e-government, and financial accountability, this publication is geared toward regulatory authorities, researchers, managers, and professionals working in the public domain.

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is easy to define yet difficult to predict. Encompassing the management, study, planning, and design of the ways in which users interact with computers, this field has evolved from using punch cards to force touch in a matter of decades. What was once considered science fiction is now ubiquitous. The future of HCI is mercurial, yet predictions point to the effortless use of high-functioning services. The Handbook of Research on Human-Computer Interfaces, Developments, and Applications is primarily concerned with emerging research regarding gesture interaction, augmented reality, and assistive technologies and their place within HCI. From gaming to rehabilitation systems, these new technologies share the need to interface with humans, and as computers become thoroughly integrated into everyday life, so does the necessity of HCI research. This handbook of research benefits the research needs of programmers, developers, students and educators in computer science, and researchers.

This book focuses on the next generation optical networks as well as mobile communication technologies. The reader will find chapters on Cognitive Optical Network, 5G Cognitive Wireless, LTE, Data Analysis and Natural Language Processing. It also presents a comprehensive view of the enhancements and requirements foreseen for Machine Type Communication. Moreover, some data analysis techniques and Brazilian Portuguese natural language processing technologies are also described here.

This book contains selected papers of NSC08, the 2nd Conference on Nonlinear Science and Complexity, held 28-31 July, 2008, Porto, Portugal. It focuses on fundamental theories and principles, analytical and symbolic approaches, computational techniques in nonlinear physics and mathematics. Topics treated include - Chaotic Dynamics and Transport in Classic and Quantum Systems - Complexity and Nonlinearity in Molecular Dynamics and Nano-Science - Complexity and Fractals in Nonlinear Biological Physics and Social Systems - Lie Group Analysis and Applications in Nonlinear Science - Nonlinear Hydrodynamics and Turbulence - Bifurcation and Stability in Nonlinear Dynamic Systems - Nonlinear Oscillations and Control with Applications - Celestial Physics and Deep Space Exploration - Nonlinear Mechanics and Nonlinear Structural Dynamics - Non-smooth Systems and Hybrid Systems - Fractional dynamical systems