Humanities & Social Sciences

This book is dedicated to addressing the central challenge of making informed business decisions within an environment characterized by uncertainty, employing Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methodologies. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the related concepts of grey systems theory. Chapter 2 proposes evaluation criteria for five major themes, including human resource information systems and contractor selection problems. Chapters 3–6 present four improved grey hybrid weighting methods: the grey rank order centroid method, the grey regulatory focus theory method, the grey step-wise weight analysis ratio evaluation, and the grey point allocation weighting method. Chapters 7–10 introduce four improved hybrid grey evaluation methods: the grey weighted sum model, grey relational analysis, the grey regime method, and the grey integer linear programming method. Chapters 11 and 12 discuss additional grey decision-making methods, and conclusions are drawn along with future prospects.

As the largest ever Australian government investment in creative industries development, the Creative Industries Innovation Centre delivered tailored business services to more than 1500 creative businesses from 2009 to 2015 and provided industry intelligence and advice for public policy and peak sectoral activity. This collection gives an overview of the current ‘state of business’ in Australia’s creative industries – both as an industry sector in its own right and as an enabling sector and skills set for other industries – and reflects on business needs, creative industries policy and support services for the sector. With contributions from the Centre’s team of senior business advisers and from leading Australian researchers who worked closely with the Centre –including experts on design-led innovation and the creative economy – and case studies of leading Australia creative businesses, the book is intended as and industry-relevant contribution to business development and public policy. Content links to the publicly accessible Creative Industries Innovation Centre Collection Archive at the UTS Library, which holds material from Centre’s activities over its six years of operation.

Este libro presenta un análisis de la dimensión social,ambiental, política y jurídica de las principales fuentes de afectación sobrela fauna y flora del país, haciendo énfasis en la identificación de los sujetosinfractores o delincuentes ambientales, su relación con los grupos armados, ylos desafíos institucionales para enfrentar estas acciones a nivel nacional. Laobra se divide estratégicamente en cuatro partes: la primera se centra en lapresentación y análisis de información secundaria, los derechos de petición yentrevistas individuales a funcionarios con el fin de dimensionar los impactosambientales y desafíos institucionales por las afectaciones a la fauna y floraen el país. En la segunda, tercera y cuarta parte, se analizan seis temáticasque fueron concertadas a partir de las principales necesidades o desafíos quetienen los funcionarios públicos que llevan a cabo los operativos contra losdelitos ambientales del país, entre ellos la Fiscalía General de la Nación, laFuerza Pública, el Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Territorial, Ministeriode Defensa, la Unidad de Parques Nacionales Naturales, y los jueces, entreotros.

Chekhov; Criticism; Interpretation

Botanist, zoologist, explorer and anthropologist: between the second half of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth, Odoardo Beccari was all this and more. His fame continues to be linked primarily with the scientific expeditions to south-east Asia, and Borneo in particular, and his work on Palms, as well as his skill as a draughtsman and photographer. The material conserved in his personal archive is of fundamental importance for a reconstruction, not only of the his scientific career but also of his private life. This inventory finally provides us with the key to find our way around a very significant body of documents ranging from correspondence, notes and preparatory materials to manuscript drafts, travel journals, map sketches, drawings and photographs.

E. M. Forster first encountered Billy Budd in 1926. Some twenty years later, he embarked on a collaboration with Benjamin Britten and Eric Crozier, adapting Melville’s novella for the opera stage. The libretto they produced poignantly reaffirms the Forsterian creed of salvation through personal relationships. This study presents an extensive exploration of Forster’s involvement in the interpretation, transformation and re-creation of Melville’s text. It situates the story of the Handsome Sailor in the wider context of Forster’s literary oeuvre, his life, and his life writings. In detailed readings, Billy Budd becomes a lens through which the themes, patterns and leitmotifs of Forsterian thought and creative imagination are brought into focus. A close re-examination of the libretto sketches serves to shed new light on the collaborative process in which Melville’s story was changed to fit an archetypal array of plot and character types that is central to Forster’s own storytelling.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of documents of all sorts have been unearthed in China, opening whole new fields of study and transforming our modern understanding of ancient China. While these discoveries have necessarily taken place in China, Western scholars have also contributed to the study of these documents throughout this entire period. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of these Western scholars to the field of Chinese paleography, and especially to study of oracle-bone inscriptions, bronze and stone inscriptions, and manuscripts written on bamboo and silk. Each of these topics is provided with a comprehensive narrative history of studies by Western scholars, as well as an exhaustive bibliography and biographies of important scholars in the field. It is also supplied with a list of Chinese translations of these studies, as well as a complete index of authors and their works. Whether the reader is interested in the history of ancient China, ancient Chinese paleographic documents, or just in the history of the study of China as it has developed in the West, this book provides one of the most complete accounts available to date.

This open access book provides a comprehensive overview and in-depth coverage of contemporary aspects of leadership in the field of education in Finland. It brings together Finnish scholars to critically explore and discuss leadership in education in the context of the Finnish education system and in relation to international discourses around the topic. It discusses the phenomenon of leadership in educational contexts through several novel empirical and theoretical research designs. It includes themes such as distributed leadership and collaborative governance, changing aspects in the leadership profession, and contradictions in everyday organizational practices and realities. The work also combines conceptual discussions in educational and pedagogical leadership to analyze and to clarify the theoretical and conceptual multidimensionality and ambiguities.

Japan-Pop boomt: Auf der ganzen Welt konsumieren junge Menschen Manga, verkleiden sich wie japanische Fantasy-Figuren und hören die Musik von „Visual- Kei”-Bands. Für die junge Generation in Japan ist die Populärkultur ein Mittel, ihre Lebenswelt zu reflektieren und ihr Lebensgefühl zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Medien wie Anime, Fernsehserien oder Computerspiel sagen viel über die Verfassung der japanischen Gesellschaft aus und sind deshalb zum Gegenstand ernsthafter Forschung geworden. Elf angehende Japanologen der Uni Düsseldorf zeigen in diesem Band mit ihren Analysen, wie brisante gesellschaftliche Themen in der Populärkultur reflektiert werden: Multikulturalismus, Identitätsbildung, Homosexualität, häusliche Gewalt, das Leben in sozialer Isolation (hikikomori). Dabei offenbart sich ein subversives Potential, das im Denken und Fühlen junger Japaner/innen tiefgreifende Veränderungen bewirken könnte. Dieneun Aufsätze in diesem Buch gebenaufschlussreiche Einblicke in die heutige japanische Gesellschaft – nicht nur für Fans der japanischen Populärkultur.

The civitas Batavorum was a settlement on the north-western frontier of the Roman Empire, and it is now the site of numerous archaeological excavations. This book offers the most up-to-date look yet at what has been discovered, using the newest archaeological techniques, about the town and its economy, its military importance, and the religious and domestic buildings it held. It will be essential reading for anyone studying the economy of the Roman provincial countryside or the details of food supply for the Roman army and town.

Ministers, deacons, catechists and cantors are among the church professionals laypeople meet in the context of worship, other church services, and congregational activities. These professionals are upholding a social mission, influencing church practices, setting the tone and developing programs and services within their congregations. What are the hallmarks of the different professions within the church? What insight should church professionals have into each other’s identities and areas of expertise to collaborate and participate in interdisciplinary teamwork? And how, in practical terms, should they be lead? Profession and Leadership in the Church of Norway: Organizing Work of a Church in Change provides sociological and administrative insights into general and contextual phenomena in the church professions. Relationships between professions, administration and organization in the Church of Norway are analyzed in light of empirical studies and an institutional theoretical framework. The author discusses how the professions derive appropriate ways of organizing their work. A key finding in the book is that church professions are characterized by calling, autonomy and complexity. These particular features make value-based leadership especially well-suited to the church professions. Part of the work on a new national church law includes addressing central questions about how the Church of Norway, with its extensive range of services and activities, should be led and organized. This book contributes to a broader base of knowledge about administration and the role of the church professions in this complex. Profession and Leadership in the Church of Norway will be of interest to researchers in professional studies and in organization and management, as well as practitioners: employees, church leaders and advisory council members. Thematically, the book is also relevant for students in educational programs that lead to church employment. Stephen Sirris (PhD) is a professor and leader of the Centre for Values-Based Leadership and Innovation at VID Specialized University’s Faculty of Theology, Diaconia and Leadership Studies.

The challenge of fighting corruption is strategic at a global and European level, and the inadequacy of the repressive and penal response alone has now been evidenced: corruption must not only be fought, but understood, and preventive administrative measures must be taken. Anti-corruption is not an issue that concerns only the judiciary branch, the legal system, and police authorities, but it is, above all, a challenge for society and institutions as a whole. And it is a challenge to be transformed, in particular, into a change in administrations and institutions, in their way of organizing and operating. This volume the result of the Project “Administrative Prevention through Targeted Anti-corruption MODels for candidate countries” – APTAMOD, co-funded by the European Union’s HERCULE III programme, which has conducted comparative law studies and high-profile research activities in the field of administrative prevention of corruption, with specific focus on Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Wigmakers and Hairdressers in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850 From the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, wigmakers and hairdressers were at the heart of a fashion-driven and socially influential trade. Across Northern Europe, the creation, styling, and maintenance of wigs engaged thousands of skilled craftsmen and women. Drawing on extensive archival sources, this book reconstructs the lives and work of masters, apprentices, hair workers, and informal practitioners. It explores the professionalisation of the trade, the role of guilds, training systems, entrepreneurship, and the complex interplay between regulation and economic policy. The book also examines the social networks, welfare structures, and the shifting tastes that led to the rise and eventual decline of the wig industry. By restoring a human dimension to this often-dismissed trade, the book uncovers a dynamic occupational world shaped by fashion cycles, economic regulation, and evolving political contexts.

There is a need for understanding an individual’s total exposure, including simultaneous, cumulative, and latent exposure to multiple environmental contaminants. While exact contributions differ, multiple studies suggest that the majority of a person’s health can be attributed to their environment, lifestyle, and behavior. This chapter describes the University of Utah’s Exposure Health Informatics Ecosystem (EHIE), a sensor-based, data-intensive infrastructure for measuring environmental, physiological, and behavioral factors for performing pediatric and adult epidemiological studies. EHIE is a generalizable multi-scale and multi-omics platform providing robust pipelines for reproducible exposomic research and uses real-time, low-cost sensors to provide spatio-temporal records of environmental exposures. Furthermore, this chapter provides details on how EHIE supports the Pediatric Research using Integrated Sensor Monitoring Systems (PRISMS) and the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) programs. Initial results from these pilots demonstrate the feasibility of using informatics ecosystems like EHIE to perform sensor-based longitudinal cohort studies.

Band 1 der "Acta Cusana" findet mit der hier vorgelegten vierten Lieferung seinen Abschluß. Sie umfaßt die volle Titelwiedergabe der 1130 in der Edition lediglich abgekürzt zitierten Quellenwerke und Literatur, gefolgt von mehreren Registern, die den ganzen Band weiter erschließen. Voran geht eine Liste der in ihm verwendeten Abkürzungen und Siglen. Der Orientierung im Band dient im übrigen ein abschließendes Gesamtinhaltsverzeichnis.