It’s almost impossible to feel confident we’ve made the right choice when we are constantly faced with conflicting data. From choosing the right school for our children to understanding major social and political events, making informed decisions can feel overwhelming. In a world overflowing with data, it is more important than ever to decipher what the numbers tell us.

Drawing on years of work interpreting and explaining data about almost anything, renowned data journalist Kiko Llaneras offers practical tools and shortcuts to help you understand the numbers and make better decisions using a quantitative lens. Through a series of compelling examples, he reveals some of the surprising insights that a data-driven perspective can offer such as:

• What caused the Chernobyl disaster
• How Barack Obama made decisions and slept so peacefully during his presidency
• Why so many footballers are born in January

An essential guide for decoding the complexities of our modern world, Think Clearly will transform the way you view and use data in every aspect of your life.

Drawing on the concept of resilient healthcare, this book explores multimodally embedded everyday practices of healthcare professionals in the UK and Japan, utilising novel technology, such as eye-tracking glasses, to inform what constitutes good practice. Providing an interdisciplinary examination of the theories and rationales of resilient healthcare, the book engages with a range of case studies from a variety of healthcare settings in the UK and Japan and considers the application of advanced technologies for visualising healthcare interactions and implementing virtual healthcare simulation. In doing so, it showcases a number of multimodal approaches and highlights the potential benefits of multimodal and multidisciplinary approaches to healthcare communication research for enhancing resilience in their local contexts.

Hydraulic gates are utilized in multiple capacities in modern society. As such, the failure of these gates can have disastrous consequences, and it is imperative to develop new methods to avoid these occurrences. Dynamic Stability of Hydraulic Gates and Engineering for Flood Prevention is a critical reference source containing scholarly research on engineering techniques and mechanisms to decrease the failure rate of hydraulic gates. Including a range of perspectives on topics such as fluid dynamics, vibration mechanisms, and flow stability, this book is ideally designed for researchers, academics, engineers, graduate students, and practitioners interested in the study of hydraulic gate structure.

Twenty-four-year-old Miami fireman Eric Montana loves his job and won't consider changing careers or quitting. His high school sweetheart, Barbie, who is launching a singing career, has suggested otherwise. But the two lovers, who plan to marry, may never have to worry about Eric's job again. While on a fishing trip with his buddies, Eric falls overboard during a boating accident. When he's rescued by twenty-three-year-old Christina Milan, the daughter of a millionaire, he can't remember who he is. Christina, a manipulative diva, wants to marry him and tries to prevent Eric from learning his true identity. Meanwhile, Barbie tries to learn to live without Eric; she throws her energy into her singing career as the pop singer, Safire. Barbie's agent, Karl, wants her and her career all to himself; he tries to erase Eric from Barbie's memory. Battling manipulation and deceit from all sides, Eric and Barbie face many challenges in their quest to spend the rest of their life together as husband and wife.

Frontiers of Ottoman Studies provides a comprehensive overview of the surge in research into Ottoman history and culture of the past two decades. The second volume covers Ottoman-European International Relations; Ottoman manuscripts in Europe; Ottoman-European cultural exchange and Christian influence and the advent of the Europeans. The work makes a significant contribution to diplomatic history and international relations; Ottoman geographical knowledge; the nature of Ottoman artistic and cultural aesthetics and the intellectual, cultural, technological and human interactions between the Ottoman world and Europe.

This book examines new trends and developments in research related to the mathematical education of pre-service elementary teachers, and explores the implications of these research advances for theory and practice in teacher education. The book is organized around the following four overarching themes: pre-service teachers' mathematics content and mathematics-specific pedagogical preparation; professional growth through activities and assessment tools used in mathematics teacher preparation programs; pre-service mathematics teachers' knowledge and beliefs; and perspectives on noticing in the preparation of elementary mathematics teachers. Including contributions from researchers working in 11 different countries, the book offers a forum for discussing and debating the state of the art regarding the mathematical preparation of pre-service elementary teachers. By presenting and discussing the findings of research conducted in different countries, the book offers also opportunities to readers to learn about varying teacher education practices around the world, such as: innovative practices in advancing or assessing teachers' knowledge and beliefs, similarities and differences in the formal mathematics education of teachers, types of and routes in teacher education, and factors that can influence similarities or differences.

Reading a Japanese Film, written by a pioneer of Japanese film studies in the United States, provides viewers new to Japanese cinema with the necessary tools to construct a deeper understanding of some of the most critically acclaimed and thoroughly entertaining films ever made. In her introduction, Keiko McDonald presents a historical overview and outlines a unified approach to film analysis. Sixteen "readings" of films currently available on DVD with English subtitles put theory into practice as she considers a wide range of work, from familiar classics by Ozu and Kurosawa to the films of a younger generation of directors.

The authors are very glad to see the publication ofThermodynamicEquilibriaand Extrema in English and would like to express their gratitude to everybody who contributed to this end. The book is devoted to the analysis of attainability regions and partial equilibria in physicochemical and other systems. This analysis employs the extreme models ofclassicalequilibriumthermodynamics. Considerationisgiventotheproblemof choosing, from the set of equilibrium states belonging to the attainability regions, that equilibrium corresponding to the extreme values of a property of interest to a researcher. For example, one might desire to maximize the concentration of target products of a chemical reaction. The problem of coordinating thermodynamics and kinetics is very important in the analysis presented. Ataglance, itmayseemthattheobjectsofstudyinthermodynamics(thescience ofequilibria)andkinetics(thescienceofmotiontowardequilibrium)coincideonly in the case of complete and ?nal equilibrium. In reality, joint application of th- modynamics and kinetic models gives a clearer understanding of the regularities of the kinetics involved. Relativity of the notions of rest and motion was already ?rmly established in mechanics when the principles of equilibrium were formulated by Galilei, D'Alembert, and Lagrange. Historically, the theories of motion and equilibrium states are related. It is precisely the study of gas kinetics that led Clausius and Boltzmann to the main principles of thermodynamics. The systematic analysis of theseprinciplesintheclassicbookbyGibbs, OntheEquilibriumofHeterogeneous Substances 54], demonstrated the feasibility of substituting the models of rest for themodelsofmotionwhenstudyingvariousphysicochemicalprocesses.

Providing a comprehensive treatment of a full range of migrant destinies in East Asia by scholars from both Asia and North America, this volume captures the way migrants are changing the face of Asia, especially in cities, such as Beijing, Hong Kong, Hamamatsu, Osaka, Tokyo, and Singapore. It investigates how the crossing of geographical boundaries should also be recognized as a crossing of cultural and social categories that reveals the extraordinary variation in the migrants' origins and trajectories. These migrants span the spectrum: from Korean bar hostesses in Osaka to African entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, from Vietnamese women seeking husbands across the Chinese border to Pakistani Muslim men marrying women in Japan, from short-term business travelers in China to long-term tourists from Japan who ultimately decide to retire overseas. Illuminating the ways in which an Asian-based analysis of migration can yield new data on global migration patterns, the contributors provide important new theoretical insights for a broader understanding of global migration, and innovative methodological approaches to the spatial and temporal complexity of human migration.

"Frontiers of Ottoman Studies" provides a comprehensive overview of the surge in research into Ottoman history and culture over the past two decades. This first volume reflects the growing interest in the provinces, communities and cultures outside the imperial capital of Istanbul and covers four major areas: politics and Islam; economy and taxation; and development of Ottoman towns and Arab and Jewish communities. Chapters on the development of Ottoman legal and fiscal institutions provide a fascinating insight into the Ottoman government's interaction with the Empire's subjects, while reviews of Egypt and the Arab provinces emphasize the stirrings of Arab nationalism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that ultimately contributed to the demise of the Empire.

Advertising Language analyses the ways advertisers use language to gain and retain the attention of their audience, with particular emphasis on puns and metaphors. The book contains a unique chapter on images of women in Japanese advertising and is the only book to contrast British and Japanese advertising, subsequently revealing penetrating insights into these two cultures.

Keiko Tanaka offers an analysis of the linguistic devices that are used in advertisements, looking at the stratagems which advertisers employ to gain and retain the attention of their audience. Using Relevance Theory as a framework, she sets out the key aspects, then applies these to the language of written advertising in Britain and Japan. Particular emphasis is placed on "covert communication" and puns and metaphors, and the book contains a unique chapter on images of women in Japanese advertising. It is fully illustrated throughout with recent contrastive advertisements drawn from the two countries.

This book focuses on the Frobenius theorem regarding a nonlinear simultaneous system. The Frobenius theorem is well known as a condition for a linear simultaneous system’s having a nonnegative solution. Generally, however, the condition of a simultaneous system, including a non-linear system’s having a nonnegative solution, is hardly discussed at all. This book, therefore, extends the conventional Frobenius theorem for nonlinear simultaneous systems for economic analysis.  Almost all static optimization problems in economics involve nonlinear programing. Theoretical models in economics are described in the form of a simultaneous system resulting from the rational optimization behavior of households and enterprises. On the other hand, rational optimization behavior of households and enterprises is, mathematically speaking, expressed as nonlinear programing. For this reason it is important to understand the meaning of nonlinear programing. Because this book includes explanations of the relations among various restrictions in a nonlinear programing systematically and clearly, this book is suitable for students in graduate school programs in economics.

This book offers a unique grounded analysis of recent crises and transformations in academic work. It charts international and Australia-based efforts to overcome academic fragmentation and precarity, and to advance agendas for the public university. It is based on extensive qualitative interviews with academics and managers across several universities in Australia. It finds new grounds for ‘universal’ universities, with decent jobs, to serve the public good. The book is aimed at students and scholars from sociology, education, politics and industrial relations, and a wider readership concerned about the future of universities. Analysis centres on a trade union-led initiative in Australia aimed at decasualising universities, and ensuing debates about the impact of academic fragmentation. The authors argue for strengthening the teaching/research nexus as the foundation-stone for public purpose universities.

This book is a work that focuses on the forest environmental tax. Forest resources have played a major role in preventing global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide and supplying oxygen. However, global economic growth has adversely affected the global environment and has exacerbated global warming due to excessive consumption of forest resources. The functions or "services" of forests are diverse, but the interest of the citizenry in forest cultivation is scarce since forests are public goods. Concurrently, Japanese forestry, which has played an important role in forest conservation, is steadily declining, and it is no longer possible for private forest operators to maintain the forest environment. Therefore, in order to realize sustainable economic growth, it is necessary to formulate policies for the conservation of appropriate forest environments. Forest conservation is an especially important policy issue for Japan, where two-thirds of the country is forested. In Japan, a forest environmental tax is being introduced as a forest conservation policy. As of 2021, the forest environmental tax has already been introduced in about two-thirds of the prefectures and soon will be introduced as a national tax. In this book, the significance and issues of the forest environmental tax will be sorted out, and the status of the introduction of the forest environmental tax in Japan will be compared with that of other countries. In addition, there is additional material regarding the water source conservation fund in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, a system similar to the forest environmental tax.

This edited book reflects the state of the art in learner corpus and related approaches to Chinese as a second language (CSL). CSL as a field has flourished in the past few decades due to the increasingly important role of the Chinese language at the world stage, yet studies of Chinese as a second language based on learner corpora have been less well developed due to the limited availability of data and lack of theoretical insights. This book  represents the latest research in this area by 1) assembling a large group of active researchers from multiple international research communities (USA, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Taiwan, and France); 2) discussing the latest resources and technologies in Chinese and other Asian languages learner corpora and corpus building; 3) basing Chinese as a second language studies on data from learners of Chinese with a wide range of first language backgrounds (English, Japanese, Korean, French, among others); and 4) integrating corpus methods with a wide range of related methods in allied fields—language acquisition, usage-based linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics. This comprehensive collection is  indispensable for anyone who is interested in corpus approaches to CSL and Chinese applied language studies in general.

A Practical Guide for Scholarly Reading in Japanese is an innovative reference guide for scholars specializing in Asian studies, with a special focus on Chinese studies. The book aims to prepare those scholars to conduct research with primary sources from a variety of genres in the 20th century. The book contains concise descriptions of grammar points essential for reading scholarly writings in Japanese and exercises based on excerpts taken from prominent Japanese scholarly texts. Each exercise reading provides a list of vocabulary and explanations of expressions. The reading materials provided mainly cover Chinese history, comparative literature, religion, and culture. The book can be used as a textbook or self-study guide for scholars of Asian studies, as well as students who have completed two years of basic language learning and need to learn to read scholarly Japanese.

This monograph presents potential remedies for some of the current environmental issues in developed countries in a theoretical or empirical manner with the interdisciplinary approaches of economics, statistics, and engineering. The book illustrates effective economic and environmental policies for environmental challenges and factors where corrective policies to date may have failed. The importance of this essential book has is related to the transition in the major concerns of the people or governments in developed countries shifting from economic growth to the stability of life and environmental preservation as their economies have matured. The environmental issues dealt with here include forest environment tax introduced as part of local taxes, air pollution reduction policies for mobile emission sources, introduction of renewable energies and power fuel cell technology, the mechanism of city agglomeration and dispersion, and measurement of environmental sustainability. In analytical methods, some research employs theoretical approaches such as the mathematical economic model or nonlinear dynamic model. Other analyses are implemented with empirical or statistical tools such as the long-run general equilibrium model, the input-output model, and the dynamic optimization model, among others.

This book analyzes housing policy in terms of the quality of housing, theoretically and empirically. The analysis is prompted by the Japanese government's success in increasing the volume of housing through interest rate policy, as is shown by Vector Autoregession (VAR) analysis in this book; consequently, the focus of housing policy in Japan is now the quality of housing. This is the first book to analyze and propose housing monetary policy and housing subsidy policy to improve the quality of housing, which increase the number of houses that are barrier-free and earthquake resistant. This book is also the first to focus on appropriate valuation of housing using hedonic price function and the quality of houses. Using the method of valuation developed and proposed in this book, market clearing prices of houses can be calculated without analytical and theoretical error. Toward this end, the disclosure of information - the offer prices and attributes - of houses is proposed as a housing policy. In addition, in this research the author has developed a method to estimate the hedonic price index and rent index using the quality of houses for the first time in Japan. With hedonic price and rent functions, the author shows the extent to which differences in home ownership investment are caused by differences in information about the property. This finding shows the need to explore an appropriate method of valuation of houses. The propositions of this book can help companies benefit from the use of the hedonic housing valuation and hedonic price and rent indexes.