Featuring contributions from staff and associates of the Knowledge Media Institute at the UK Open University, this text provides a glimpse into the wide variety of projects undertaken in the development and assessment of distance learning technologies.

This text discusses the educational possibilities of new technologies, and the value of the available applications. It brings together examples of leading research projects from the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute. Each of the 14 chapters is linked to a site on the World Wide Web.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Analytical and Stochastic Modelling Techniques and Applications, ASMTA 2012, held in Grenoble, France, in June 2012. The 20 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on queueing systems; networking applications; Markov chains; stochastic modelling.

Internally displaced persons are those who have been forced to flee their homes and who do not cross an internationally recognized border. There are an astounding 28 million people around the world who currently qualify as IDPs. Unlike refugees, they have no organisation to deal with their plight. Very little is known about how people respond to the experience of displacement. In economic terms, the presence of the internally displaced is obvious. What are less obvious are the informal protection mechanisms that enable people to cope with the experience of displacement: the information networks that warn them of impending danger, or of events in their home villages. This is the first book to put together information on the networks that people have evolved for coping in such situations. Examining those people who have become IDPs as the result of violence and war, it uses case studies from different countries, different settings and different phases of displacement. The authors identify cross-cultural patterns of coping strategies, examine whether these strategies are effective and highlight to what extent they are dependent upon culture or the experience of displacement. Ideal for use as a resource of information on IDPs, it is also a practical handbook that will help international organisations formulate their relief plans to support - rather than inadvertently damage - existing coping mechanisms. Case studies include Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Burma, Colombia, Georgia, Sri Lanka, Serbia, Sudan and Uganda.