* Examines the new roles and challenges NGOs confront as they grow beyond service delivery and advocacy * Argues for engagement and more effective learning strategies at both global and local levels Written by a dynamic combination of key researchers and practitioners, New Roles and Relevance examines the large range of critical challenges facing development NGOs as they struggle to maintain their integrity and independence, while simultaneously assuming an expanding role in the fight against global poverty. This authoritative book calls for an overall improvement in theory and practice by challenging NGOs to search for greater relevance, improved accountability, and better performance in the globalized world.
Engineering is a small but growing part of Kâ€"12 education. Curricula that use the principles and practices of engineering are providing opportunities for elementary, middle, and high school students to design solutions to problems of immediate practical and societal importance. Professional development programs are showing teachers how to use engineering to engage students, to improve their learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and to spark their interest in engineering careers. However, many of the policies and practices that shape Kâ€"12 engineering education have not been fully or, in some cases, even marginally informed by the knowledge of teacher leaders. To address the lack of teacher leadership in engineering education policymaking and how it might be mitigated as engineering education becomes more widespread in Kâ€"12 education in the United States, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a convocation on September 30â€"October 1, 2016. Participants explored how strategic connections both within and outside classrooms and schools might catalyze new avenues of teacher preparation and professional development, integrated curriculum development, and more comprehensive assessment of knowledge, skills, and attitudes about engineering in the Kâ€"12 curriculum. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the event.
This book presents the results of research project financed by the Hague Institute for the Internationalization of Law (HiiL) and carried out at the Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC) of Tilburg University. The project team shows that globalization, instead of threatening national legal systems, put them in a new role and gives them continuing relevance. First of all, once one takes a more functional view of the law, based on law and economics and comparative law literature, harmonization or unification of national legal systems is no longer a foregone conclusion. Secondly, fundamental constitutional principles continue to bear in the era of multi-level and transnational governance: they become governance principles, divorced from specific institutional settings. Finally, looking beyond regulatory competition and comparative law, legal emulation provides a rich and fruitful model to explain the interplay between legal systems. This book explores these three themes, both at a theoretical level and in the light of specific examples.
Exploring the phenomenon of socio-religio-magico reality in Java called wong pinter, this study is a pioneering academic work based on a first hand data. By interviewing 108 practitioners within the framework of anthropological and ethnographical approaches and putting the discussions in the context of shamanism study, this work is also a unique inquiry on Javanese culture conducted by a native. Wong Pinter delineates significant connectivity between Javanese shamanism and Asian or Southeast Asian shamanism. It also describes various aspect of shamanism practices in Java and assesses the sustainability and challenges of this phenomenon vis-a-vis the suppression of religious and political establishment. Above all, this book is an outstanding report valuable to those who are interested to delve into the core of Javanese culture and to the deliberation of social science in general.
Over the last decades, scientists have been intrigued by the fascinating organisms that inhabit extreme environments. These organisms, known as extremophiles, thrive in habitats which for other terrestrial life-forms are intolerably hostile or even lethal. Based on such technological advances, the study of extremophiles has provided, over the last few years, ground-breaking discoveries that challenge the paradigms of modern biology. In the new bioeconomy, fungi in general, play a very important role in addressing major global challenges, being instrumental for improved resource efficiency, making renewable substitutes for products from fossil resources, upgrading waste streams to valuable food and feed ingredients, counteracting life-style diseases and antibiotic resistance through strengthening the gut biota, making crop plants more robust to survive climate change conditions, and functioning as host organisms for production of new biological drugs. This range of new uses of fungi all stand on the shoulders of the efforts of mycologists over generations. The book is organized in five parts: (I) Biodiversity, Ecology, Genetics and Physiology of Extremophilic Fungi, (II) Biosynthesis of Novel Biomolecules and Extremozymes (III) Bioenergy and Biofuel synthesis, and (IV) Wastewater and biosolids treatment, and (V) Bioremediation.
This book is a collection of papers presented at the “Forum Math-for-Industry 2015” for which the unifying theme was “The Role and Importance of Mathematics in Innovation”, held at the Institute of Mathematics for Industry, Kyushu University, October 26–30, 2015. The theme highlights two key roles that mathematics plays in supporting innovation in science, technology, and daily life, namely, needs-based and idea-based. For the former, mathematics assists with sorting through the possibilities and putting matters on a more rigorous foundation, and for the latter, mathematical models of the possible implementations play a key role. The book gives excellent examples of how mathematics assists with stimulating innovation and, thereby, highlights the importance and relevance of the concept Mathematics_FOR_Industry. The contents of this volume address productive and successful interaction between industry and mathematicians, as well as the cross-fertilization and collaboration that result when mathematics is involved with the advancement of science and technology.
