Humanities & Social Sciences

This book couples data analytics with social behavioural studies and participatory design to derive deeper insights on city dwellers’ present needs and future aspirations, thereby enabling the development of targeted spatial and programmatic interventions for diverse communities. Public housing in Singapore has been regarded internationally as a success story. This book outlines the latest strategies and concepts for addressing the emerging social challenges of the ageing population: shrinking household size, increasingly diverse demographics and widening inequality, and fostering inclusive and resilient neighbourhoods. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this book: Outlines an innovative data-driven planning process for housing neighbourhood and community design Provides a framework for planners and designers to synthesise qualitative and quantitative data analyses Presents a comprehensive set of tested urban analytics tools, digital platforms and participatory toolkits used to design and develop community initiatives. A recommended text for students undertaking urban planning, urban design, housing design, architecture, real estate, urban sociology and community design, the book’s strategies for evidence-based neighbourhood designs will also appeal to practitioners and policymakers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

This book brings together scholarly contributions that explore the evolving nature of Postgraduate Diplomas in Higher Education offered across varied higher education contexts. Through fourteen chapters, the book provides rich insights into the complexities of academic staff development and the professional learning of university educators. The collection adds to the body of knowledge in the field of higher education studies by deepening understanding of academic development and highlighting innovative practices that shape teaching and learning in higher education.

The Angkorian World explores the history of Southeast Asia’s largest ancient state from the first to mid-second millennium CE. Chapters by leading scholars combine evidence from archaeology, texts, and the natural sciences to introduce the Angkorian state, describe its structure, and explain its persistence over more than six centuries. Comprehensive and accessible, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone studying premodern Asia. The volume’s first of six sections provides historical and environmental contexts and discusses data sources and the nature of knowledge production. The next three sections examine the anthropogenic landscapes of Angkor (agrarian, urban, and hydraulic), the state institutions that shaped the Angkorian state, and the economic foundations on which Angkor operated. Part V explores Angkorian ideologies and realities, from religion and nation to identity. The volume’s last part reviews political and aesthetic Angkorian legacies in an effort to explain why the idea of Angkor remains central to its Cambodian descendants. Maps, graphics, and photographs guide readers through the content of each chapter. Chapters in this volume synthesise more than a century of work at Angkor and in the regions it influenced. The Angkorian World will satisfy students, researchers, academics, and the knowledgeable layperson who seeks to understand how this great Angkorian Empire arose and functioned in the premodern world.

Higher Education; Administration, Organization and Leadership; Educational Policy and Politics; International and Comparative Education; Knowledge - Discourse; Universities; Research; Community

Die Produkte und Dienstleistungen der Gesundheitswirtschaft gelten als Kostentreiber, zugleich werden die Wirtschaftskraft der Branche und ihr exzellentes Wachstumspotential durchaus wahrgenommen. Diese empirische Untersuchung geht dieser widersprüchlich geführten Diskussion auf den Grund. Der Verfasser vertritt die These, dass die Gesundheitswirtschaft einen positiven Einfluss auf die Konjunkturentwicklung besitzt und darüber hinaus als automatischer Stabilisator der Volkswirtschaft fungiert. Auf Basis der Gesundheitswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnungen des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Technologie analysiert die Studie den Einfluss der vier Stabilitätskriterien Beschäftigungsstand, Preisniveau, Außenwirtschaft und Wirtschaftswachstum. Zudem stellt sie die automatische Stabilisierungsfunktion der Gesundheitswirtschaft auf den Prüfstand, indem der Nettoeffekt aus der Transformation verfügbaren Einkommens in Einnahmen der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherungen untersucht wird.

The URA periodical is an annual open-access publication, which will accompany the Sino-German research and development project Urban-Rural Assembly (URA, 01LE1804A-D), sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the FONA program Sustainable Development of Urban Regions (NUR). By combining scientific texts and essays, photographic works, and/or ethnographic studies including interviews, spatial mapping and drawings, the URA periodical will seek to bridge academic, practice and policy discourses around global sustainability challenges and integrated planning and governance approaches at the urban rural interface.

On the one hand, sport like any other activity in society is burdened with public taxes, and on the other hand, in comparison to similar activities, is tax-free and even publicly supported. This ambivalence of tax treatment of sport has repeatedly raised questions about the public financing of sport: To what extent are services provided by the public sector justified, and to what extent do sporting events trigger taxation? This volume, edited by Hans-Peter Büch, Wolfgang Maennig and Hans-Jürgen Schulke, attempts to answer selected questions on this problem from a scientific and sports-political point of view under the motto "Science meets Practice".

This book, "Multilayer Thin Films-Versatile Applications for Materials Engineering", includes thirteen chapters related to the preparations, characterizations, and applications in the modern research of materials engineering. The evaluation of nanomaterials in the form of different shapes, sizes, and volumes needed for utilization in different kinds of gadgets and devices. Since the recently developed two-dimensional carbon materials are proving to be immensely important for new configurations in the miniature scale in the modern technology, it is imperative to innovate various atomic and molecular arrangements for the modifications of structural properties.

Inclusive teaching and school development is currently a central topic of educational research on schools, teaching, and professionalization. However, the German school type of Gymnasium (grammar school) is rarely taken into account. Nevertheless, changes in the general conditions and the associated reform expectations of the last decades are also reflected in studies on Gymnasium. With the three exploratory studies contained in this volume, we ask how inclusion at respectively for the Gymnasium is addressed by teachers at that type of school and by students in a Gymnasium teacher training program. The state of research on the perspectives of teachers as well as students in teacher training programs on inclusion is presented in a separate article. The discussion will be introduced with a contribution on the position of Gymnasium in the structured school system in Germany and the resulting challenges for an inclusive school development that includes the Gymnasium.

As the first study of manuscript collections, this book asks what changes when sayings, stories, songs, and spells are brought together on the same carrier. Covering a plethora of manuscripts from the Warring States and early empires, and spanning sources from philosophy, historiography, poetry, and technical literature, this study describes the whole life-cycle of multiple texts collected on a single manuscript. Drawing on comparative and interdisciplinary advances and based on careful study of manuscript materiality and textuality, this book shows the importance of collections in the development of and access to text and knowledge in early China.

Building on previous work in rural criminology, this book casts a global and comparative look across 19 countries, drawing on themes of crime and victimisation, safety and fear, practices of policing and police trust, and crime prevention practices. Combining reports on survey findings, country case studies, and crosscutting analyses, "Crime, Peoples and Places" offers empirical, theoretical, and policy-oriented contributions to the field of rural criminology, adopting the notion of a rural-urban continuum that captures the nuances of places of varied nature, spanning from remote and desolate spaces to accessible and connected environments of the urban fringe. The book examines the challenges of areas on the rural-urban continuum that are in constant transformation, given local and global influences, including the most recent developments in countries of the Global South. It identifies commonalities and disparities between different country cases, draws conclusions over global evidence, and highlights how partnerships, collaboration, and unity in crime prevention action can yield dividends for all people, regardless of age, gender, or whether they live in urban or rural areas.

Compared with STEM fields, foreign language (FL) education and second language acquisition have only slowly embraced open education and the new knowledge ecologies it produces. FL educators may have been hesitant to participate in the open education movement due to a lack of research which investigates the benefits and challenges of FL learning and teaching in open environments. This book contextualizes open education in FL learning and teaching via an historical overview of the movement, along with an in-depth exploration of how the open movement affects FL education beyond the classroom context; fills the research void by exploring aspects of open second language learning and teaching across a range of educational contexts; and illustrates new ways of creating, adapting and curating FL materials that are freely shared among FL educators and students. This book is open access under a CC BY ND licence.

"How normal is the norm?" is the title of a research project on the relation of "sprachpflegerischer Normpostulat" and "Normbewusstheit" of the German language. The present volume assembles the findings of the linguistic research undertaken in the project.

The early second millennium was a pivotal moment in the history of Theravāda Buddhism. Religious reforms carried out at Poḷonnaruva, then-capital of Sri Lanka, shaped the latter course of Buddhism across South and Southeast Asia. However, our understanding of these reforms has been over-determined by retrospective accounts written by male monastics, who focused on the heroic deeds of male monarchs. This book offers a radical revision of this narrative. Drawing on textual, inscriptional, numismatic, and material evidence from within the period itself, it reveals how the intellectual and social histories of Buddhism, politics, and gender were inextricably intertwined in Poḷonnaruva. In particular, it argues that debates over what it meant to be a “good Buddhist king” were intrinsically debates about Buddhist masculinity and about the proper relationship of gender to power.