This book presents the "New Vision 2050," which adds the concept of the “platinum society” to the “Vision 2050”. The 20th century was a century in which energy led the development of material civilization, resulting in deletion of resources, global warming and climate change. What form should sustainable material and energy take to protect the Earth? The "Vision 2050" was established…
Speech production and perception are two of the most complex actions humans perform. The processing of speech is studied across various fields and using a wide variety of research approaches. These fields include, but are not limited to, (socio)linguistics, phonetics, cognitive psychology, neurophysiology, and cognitive neuroscience. Research approaches range from behavioural studies to neuroim…
With a clear statement of the theoretical issues in the debates about secularization and post-secularism, ‘Religion and the State: A Comparative Sociology’ considers a number of major case studies – from China, Europe, Singapore and South Asia – in order to understand the rise of public religions in the modern state. By distinguishing between political secularization – the separation …
Since process models are nowadays ubiquitous in many applications, the challenges and alternatives related to their development, validation, and efficient use have become more apparent. In addition, the massive amounts of both offline and online data available today open the door for new applications and solutions. However, transforming data into useful models and information in the context of …
This book addresses the practice of social innovation, which is currently very much in the public eye. New ideas and approaches are needed to tackle the severe and wicked problems with which contemporary societies are struggling. Especially in times of economic crisis, social innovation is regarded as one of the crucial elements needed to move forward. Our knowledge of its dynamics has signific…
This open access book provides a glimpse into the Japanese management technique known as “Kaizen,” and the ways it has been disseminated around the developing world. The novelty of this book is three-fold: it provides a contextualized view of the mechanisms of initiatives implementing Kaizen in developing countries; compared with productivity studies, it places the relationship between work…
A ground-breaking collection of essays that explores the place of the Dutch and English East India Companies in Asia and the nature of their interactions with Asian rulers, officials, merchants, soldiers and brokers. The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, raise armies and seize terri…
This open access book brings together a set of original studies that use cutting-edge computational methods to investigate conflict at various geographic scales and degrees of intensity and violence. Methodologically, this book covers a variety of computational approaches from text mining and machine learning to agent-based modelling and social network analysis. Empirical cases range from migra…
One significant area of research in the multifaceted field of bilingualism over the past two decades has been the demonstration, validation, and account of the so-called ‘bilingual advantage’. This refers to the hypothesis that bilingual speakers have advanced abilities in executive functions and other domains of human cognition. Such cognitive benefits of bilingualism have an impact on the…
Acquiring knowledge is a life-long process; we constantly need to keep abreast of developments and progress in science and other disciplines. Embracing a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) means practicing constant self-reflection, involving evaluation of the academic career and the ways in which strategies are designed to examine, interpret, and share learning about teaching. This pra…