How can human capabilities be articulated and promoted in practice? How can the challenges encountered in its application be addressed? This volume answers these research questions through nine country case studies from the Global North and the Global South.

This book discusses the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) - the UN Poverty Targets for 2015. Part one discusses the background to the MDGs, their value and omissions, what they mean for changing understandings of 'development' and Development Studies and whether the MDGs will be achieved. Part two focuses on each goal or set of goals: extreme poverty (income and hunger); education and health; gender equality and empowerment; environmental sustainability and global partnerships for development.

This cutting-edge book covers emerging, evolutionary and nature inspired optimization techniques in the field of advanced manufacturing. The complexity of real life advanced manufacturing problems often cannot be solved by traditional engineering or computational methods. Hence, in recent years researchers and practitioners have proposed and developed new strands of advanced, intelligent techniques and methodologies. Evolutionary computing approaches are introduced in the context of a wide range of manufacturing activities, and through the examination of practical problems and their solutions, readers will gain confidence to apply these powerful computing solutions. The initial chapters introduce and discuss the well established evolutionary algorithm, to help readers to understand the basic building blocks and steps required to successfully implement their own solutions to real life advanced manufacturing problems. In the later chapters, modified and improved versions of evolutionary algorithms are discussed. The book concludes with appendices which provide general descriptions of several evolutionary algorithms.

How can human capabilities be articulated and promoted in practice? How can the challenges encountered in its application be addressed? This volume answers these research questions through nine country case studies from the Global North and the Global South.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have played a major role in focusing policy since their original incarnation in the mid to late 1990s but what happens when we no longer have the MDGs - what will guide policy after 2015? This book discusses the world and development policy up to and beyond 2015.