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Summary: "Foreword Big data and analytics promise to change virtually every industry and business function over the next decade. Any organization that gets started early with big data can gain a significant competitive edge. Just as early analytical competitors in the "small data" era (including Capital One bank, Progressive Insurance, and Marriott hotels) moved out ahead of their competitors and built a sizable competitive edge, the time is now for firms to seize the big data opportunity. As this book describes, the potential of big data is enabled by ubiquitous computing and data gathering devices; sensors and microprocessors will soon be everywhere. Virtually every mechanical or electronic device can leave a trail that describes its performance, location, or state. These devices, and the people who use them, communicate through the Internet--which leads to another vast data source. When all these bits are combined with those from other media--wireless and wired telephony, cable, satellite, and so forth--the future of data appears even bigger. The availability of all this data means that virtually every business or organizational activity can be viewed as a big data problem or initiative. Manufacturing, in which most machines already have one or more microprocessors, is increasingly a big data environment. Consumer marketing, with myriad customer touchpoints and clickstreams, is already a big data problem. Google has even described its self-driving car as a big data project. Big data is undeniably a big deal, but it needs to be put in context"-- Provided by publisher.

Summary: "In the last decade, wireless or wired sensor networks have attracted much attention. However, most designs target general sensor network issues including protocol stack (routing, MAC, etc.) and security issues. This book focuses on the close integration of sensing, networking, and smart signal processing via machine learning. Based on their world-class research, the authors present the fundamentals of intelligent sensor networks. They cover sensing and sampling, distributed signal processing, and intelligent signal learning. In addition, they present cutting-edge research results from leading experts"-- Provided by publisher.

Summary: Why is there a need to 'innovate healthcare'? The basic reason stems from the sheer scale of the challenges now facing healthcare provision in the UK and across many other countries. The aim of this book is to interrogate past and current attempts to innovate in this arena and to draw-out the key lessons. Innovating Healthcare: The Role of Political, Managerial and Clinical Leadership presents the latest state of knowledge based on original data from a series of NIHR-funded research projects set in the context of a review of extensive secondary research. The book draws upon first-person verbatim accounts of change attempts made by doctors and other clinicians as well as upon research findings about the roles played by policy-makers and managers. The analysis draws upon theory and practice in leadership, innovation and institution-building. The mutually-reinforcing contributions of political, managerial and clinical leadership are at the core of the investigative narrative. This book will be of interest to students and researchers, clinicians and managers in the health and care sectors as well as policy-makers. While the focus in on healthcare, the book has wider relevance for students of management, leadership, innovation and organizational studies.

Summary: This comprehensive scholarly book on comparative federalism and the Covid-19 pandemic is written by some of the world's leading federal scholars and national experts. The Covid-19 pandemic presented an unprecedented emergency for countries worldwide, including all those with a federal or hybrid-federal system of government, which account for more than 40 per cent of the world's population. With case studies from 19 federal countries, this book explores the core elements of federalism that came to the fore in combatting the pandemic: the division of responsibilities (disaster management, health care, social welfare, and education), the need for centralisation, and intergovernmental relations and cooperation. As the pandemic struck federal countries at roughly the same time, it provided a unique opportunity for comparative research on the question of how the various federal systems responded. The authors adopt a multidisciplinary approach to question whether federalism has been a help or a hindrance in tackling the pandemic. The value of the book lies in understanding how the Covid-19 pandemic affected federal dynamics and how it may have changed them, as well as providing useful lessons for how to combat such pandemics in federal countries in the future. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of politics and international relations, comparative federalism, health care, and disaster management.

Summary: This book traverses the cultural landscape of Colombia through in-depth analyses of displacement, local and global cultures, human rights abuses, and literary and media production. Through an exploration of the cultural processes that perpetuate the "darker side" of Latin America for global consumption, it investigates the "condition" that has led writers, filmmakers, and artists to embrace (purposefully or not) the incessant violence in Colombian society as the object of their own creative endeavors. In this examination of mass-marketed cultural products such as narco-stories, captivity memoirs, gritty travel narratives, and films, Herrero-Olaizola seeks to offer a hemispheric approach to the role played by Colombia in cultural production across the continent where the illicit drug trade has made significant inroads. To this end, he identifies the "Colombian condition" within the parameters of the global economy while concentrating on the commodification of Latin America's violence for cultural consumption. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Summary: "This book integrates insights from dialogic theory and systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to extend our understandings of engagement in medical research articles, going beyond notions of the role of verbal dialogue to encompass mathematical and visual semiotics and consider text not just as language but as multisemiosis. The volume begins by outlining the engagement framework and offering a brief overview of historical developments in medical research discourse. This discussion culminates in the introduction of the corpus used for analysis, drawing on original research articles from key medical journals to explore verbal, mathematical, and visual engagement in turn. A subsequent chapter brings these perspectives together to demonstrate intersemiotic engagement across different stages and phases of the medical research article and how such resources work together to construe and maintain the authoritative position commonly associated with medical discourse. The book looks ahead to engagement in other related disciplinary fields and future directions for work on multisemiosis and medical research discourse more generally. This book will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in multimodality, critical discourse analysis, applied linguistics, SFL, and science education."

Summary: This fascinating book is the first comprehensive analysis of the economic, social and political interrelationships between tourism and global environmental change: one of the most significant issues facing humankind today. Its contributors argue that the impacts of these changes are potentially extremely serious both for the tourism industry, and for the communities dependent upon it. Integrating knowledge from the social and physical sciences, this significant book explores they key issues surrounding global environmental change, as well as government and industry willingness to meet the challenges posed by it. Divided into four main sections, it investigates: the tourism and global environmental change relationship in specific environments global issues related to environmental change differing perceptions of global environmental change held by tourists and the tourist industry. Comprehensive in scope, topical and integrative, this key text is essential reading for students, scholars and researchers in all aspects of tourism, geography and environmental studies.

Summary: This book explains and discusses how a child's right to freedom of expression is upheld through practice and decision-making in Child Protection Services (CPS). Using the right to expression as stipulated in Article 12.2 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a point of departure, it explains what CPS practices should look like and how they must operate to uphold and enforce the rights of the child by providing ""the opportunity to be heard"" in any administrative practice. Current research literature documents extensively, and across countries, how either the voice of the child is not heard or, alternatively, the existence of a pro forma/tokenistic approach to listening to the child throughout CPS practices. Taking a three-fold approach, this book establishes a clearer connection between rights and professional practice according to Article 12 extrapolates how rights-based practice is achieved during CPS practices provides a comprehensive answer to the challenge of implementing Article 12.2 through policy and legislation. It will be of interest to all students, academic and professionals working within child protection including social workers, probation officers, health and social care workers, lawyers and teachers.