Designing Schools explores the close connections between the design of school buildings and educational practices throughout the twentieth century to today. Through international cases studies that span the Americas, Europe, Africa and Australia, this volume examines historical innovations in school architecture and situates these within changing pedagogical ideas about the ‘best’ ways to educate children. It also investigates the challenges posed by new technologies and the digital age to the design and use of school places. Set around three interlinked themes – school buildings, school spaces and school cultures – this book argues that education is mediated or framed by the spaces in which it takes place, and that those spaces are in turn influenced by cultural, political and social concerns about teaching, learning and the child.
Latin America suffered a profound state crisis in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide variety of institutional or 'second generation' reforms. 'The State of State Reform in Latin America' reviews and assesses the outcomes of these less studied institutional reforms. This book examines four major areas of institutional reform: a. political institutions and the state organization; b. fiscal institutions, such as budget, tax and decentralization institutions; c. public institutions in charge of sectoral economic policies (financial, industrial, and infrastructure); and d. social sector institutions (pensions, social protection, and education). In each of these areas, the authors summarize the reform objectives, describe and measure their scope, assess the main outcomes, and identify the obstacles for implementation, especially those of an institutional nature.
This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.
The study questions whether, after a decade of remarkable progress in trade reform, Latin America and the Caribbean really integrates into the global market, offering a promising rapid growth, and good jobs for its workers. For despite the incidence of the loosely called "knowledge economy", the concern prevails that most countries' rich natural resources, still are the determining factor for exports. Policy recommendations include fostering openness to trade, market access, and foreign direct investment flows, in addition to building human capital, institutions, and public infrastructure, without disregarding the natural advantages. To this end, policymakers should aim at developing educational systems that provide quality education, focused on lifelong learning, and training activities to build human capital. Emphasis should follow on research and development (R&D) incentives, and innovations systems, arguing that countries should experiment with taxation incentives, and subsidies to promote both private, and public investments in R&D, (dependent on the institutional capacity of governments to enforce tax laws, and monitor the quality of investments). Moreover, evidence in this report, suggests that information, and communications technology (ICT) can reduce coordination costs, enabling an effective industrialization, and market access.
This toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and practical tools for conducting an analysis of a country's trade competitiveness in terms of growth and share performance, diversification, and quality.
This book provides a comprehensive, state-of-the art review of HBV infection and liver disease. It discusses new data on basic and translational medicine, including the viral life cycle, the immunopathogenesis of virus-induced chronic hepatitis, viral and host genetic factors affecting disease progression, and the mechanism of virus-induced hepatocarcinogenesis, as well as their potential applications in daily clinical practice. The clinical aspects of chronic HBV infection are examined in chapters on the global epidemiology, efficacy of HBV vaccination, natural history, co-infections with HCV, HDV or HIV, and management of special populations including children, pregnant women and patients undergoing immunosuppressive therapy. Further, it describes the advances and perspectives in the development of novel antiviral treatments as possible cures for HBV infection. The book is a valuable resource for medical students, physicians, and researchers who are interested in managem ent of patients with chronic HBV infection and investigation of HBV infection.
Since the early 1990s, most developing economies have become more integrated with the world s economy. Trade and foreign investment barriers have been progressively lifted and international trade agreements signed. These reforms have led to important changes in the structures of these economies. The labor markets have adjusted to these major changes, and workers were required to adapt to them in one way or another. In 2006, the Social Protection Unit of the World Bank launched an important research program to understand the impact that these profound structural changes have had on workers in developing countries. 'Globalization, Wages, and the Quality of Jobs: Five Country Studies' presents the findings and insights of this important research program. In particular, the authors present the similar experiences of low-income countries with globalization and suggest that low-income countries working conditions have improved in the sectors exposed to globalization. However, 'Globalization, Wages, and the Quality of Jobs' also highlights concerns about the sustainability of these improvements and that the positive demonstration effects on the rest of the economy are unclear. The empirical literature that exists, although vast, does not lead to a consensus view on globalization s eventual impact on labor markets. Understanding the effects of globalization is crucial for governments concerned about employment, working conditions, and ultimately, poverty reduction. Beyond job creation, improving the quality of those jobs is an essential condition for achieving poverty reduction. 'Globalization, Wages, and the Quality of Jobs' adds to the existing literature in two ways. First, the authors provide a comprehensive literature review on the current wisdom on globalization and present a micro-based framework for analyzing globalization and working conditions in developing countries. Second, the authors apply this framework to five developing countries: Cambodia, El Salvador, Honduras, Indonesia, and Madagascar. This volume will be of interest to government policy makers, trade officials, and others working to expand the benefits of globalization to developing countries.
This textbook takes you on a journey to the basic concepts of cancer biology. It combines developmental, evolutionary and cell biology perspectives, to then wrap-up with an integrated clinical approach. The book starts with an introductory chapter, looking at cancer in a nut shell. The subsequent chapters are detailed and the idea of cancer as a mass of somatic cells undergoing a micro-evolutionary Darwinian process is explored. Further, the main Hanahan and Weinberg “Hallmarks of Cancer” are revisited. In most chapters, the fundamental experiments that led to key concepts, connecting basic biology and biomedicine are highlighted. In the book’s closing section all of these concepts are integrated in clinical studies, where molecular diagnosis as well as the various classical and modern therapeutic strategies are addressed. The book is written in an easy-to-read language, like a one-on-one conversation between the writer and the reader, without compromising the scientific accuracy. Therefore, this book is suited not only for advanced undergraduates and master students but also for patients or curious lay people looking for a further understanding of this shattering disease
