The Toulon-Verona Conference was founded in 1998 by prof. Claudio Baccarani of the University of Verona, Italy, and prof. Michel Weill of the University of Toulon, France. It has been organized each year in a different place in Europe in cooperation with a host university (Toulon 1998, Verona 1999, Derby 2000, Mons 2001, Lisbon 2002, Oviedo 2003, Toulon 2004, Palermo 2005, Paisley 2006, Thessaloniki 2007, Florence, 2008). Originally focusing on higher education institutions, the research themes have over the years been extended to the health sector, local government, tourism, logistics, banking services. Around a hundred delegates from about twenty different countries participate each year and nearly one thousand research papers have been published over the last ten years, making of the conference one of the major events in the field of quality in services.
This volume explores several notable themes related to social, political, and religious movements in Latin America and offers insightful historical perspectives to understand national, regional, and global issues from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. This volume’s collected chapters focus on the Latin American society and are divided into three sections. The first section, Social, presents some cultural, demographic, and urban changes that have occurred with increasing frequency in Latin America from the early twentieth century onward. The second section, Political, shows migratory, political, and identity movements that in recent decades have re-emerged with force. Finally, the third section, Religious, analyzes various Latin American religious visions with their particular characteristics. From the religious hegemony of Catholicism, a change in the religious panorama in the last decades can be seen intermingled with politics, history, and society.
This volume explores the use and relevance of qualitative methods for the study of quality of life. It analyzes the role of qualitative researcher and the role of the context and the culture in quality of life studies. It presents the use of qualitative methods in real projects carried out in specific fields: geography, health, community studies, labor life and yoga. Finally, the book proposes the use of mixed methods that are considered as the third methodological approach in social research. The main purpose of using qualitative methods is to understand what it means for participants to be involved in certain events, situations and actions. Such methods help understand the context in which participants act and the influence of that context on their actions. The decision to use a particular methodology implies a philosophic, theoretical and political decision. Qualitative methodology constitutes an approach that is essential for understanding people’s experiences of well-being and discovering new issues related to quality of life.
Corporate success has been changed by the importance of new developments in Business Analytics (BA) and furthermore by the support of computational intelligence- based techniques. This book opens a new avenues in these subjects, identifies key developments and opportunities. The book will be of interest for students, researchers and professionals to identify innovative ways delivered by Business Analytics based on computational intelligence solutions. They help elicit information, handle knowledge and support decision-making for more informed and reliable decisions even under high uncertainty environments.Computational Intelligence for Business Analytics has collected the latest technological innovations in the field of BA to improve business models related to Group Decision-Making, Forecasting, Risk Management, Knowledge Discovery, Data Breach Detection, Social Well-Being, among other key topics related to this field.
During the last decades, our society is witnessing an authentic revolution that, in a dizzying manner has deeply influenced, modified, and transformed the way of life of human beings. This constant and unstoppable revolution is transmuting all areas of our life: social, cultural, personal, labor, economic, training, etc. This new society is characterized by a high generation of knowledge and the constant and fluid processing of information. In this macro-context, the MOOC phenomenon emerged. MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) courses are based on the principles of massive, free access to all materials and resources offered online. This new didactic path can be constituted in an innovative techno-social tendency, especially oriented in the panorama of Higher Education to stimulate university improvement, open opportunities at the same time for education and training or, simply, derive towards a new business model for the universities. In addition to being an entry point for the popularization of science and knowledge, the future possibilities are enormous and are being studied in all their various dimensions. Many initiatives as a result have been developed to implement this new form of education. MOOC Courses and the Future of Higher Education presents the latest research theories and current examples of MOOC courses practices in Higher Education. The chapters represent an extensive assortment of interpretations and practices examples of MOOC courses, across areas as varied as teaching methodologies, instructional innovations, educational technology, etc. This work is structured in three sections, the first one covers the university institution in the knowledge society, the second analyzes the MOOC training proposals, and the third discusses the future role of MOOCs. Technical topics discussed in the book include: The Virtualization of Teaching in Higher EducationTraining and Professional Development at the e-UniversityTaxonomy of MOOCsMOOC: Strengths and WeaknessesMOOCs and the Scientific Community: Challenges and InnovationMOOC PlatformsDirectory of MOOC ResourcesMOOC: Reflections of the Future
This volume presents the proceedings of the CLAIB 2011, held in the Palacio de las Convenciones in Havana, Cuba, from 16 to 21 May 2011. The conferences of the American Congress of Biomedical Engineering are sponsored by the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE), Society for Engineering in Biology and Medicine (EMBS) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), among other organizations and international agencies and bringing together scientists, academics and biomedical engineers in Latin America and other continents in an environment conducive to exchange and professional growth.
