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Books in Social sciences and humanities

  • Virtual Business Models

    Entrepreneurial Risks and Rewards
    • 1st Edition
    • February 5, 2016
    • Karin Bryder + 2 more
    • English
    Virtual Business Models: Entrepreneurial Risks and Rewards focuses on companies with technology development, offering inspiration, guidance, and hands-on advice on how to utilize the potential of a virtual company format. The book provides an overview of key aspects of the company's activities, putting them into a comprehensive structure. In addition, both the rewards and risks of using the virtual company format are explored. The virtual company format is here defined as a company with a small dedicated core staff. The company's development is performed by strategic alliances with external resource providers. In this way, the utilization of financial resources can be optimized with cost-effective product development. The book explores this concept and why it is attractive in a start-up phase for both companies who want to remain virtual and those that eventually want to develop into integrated traditional companies.
  • Forensic Fingerprints

    • 1st Edition
    • February 3, 2016
    • Max M. Houck
    • English
    Forensic Fingerprints, the latest in the Advanced Forensic Science Series which grew out of the recommendations from the 2009 NAS Report: Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward, serves as a graduate level text for those studying and teaching fingerprint detection and analysis, and will also prove to be an excellent reference for forensic practitioner libraries and for use in casework. Coverage includes fingerprint science, friction ridge print examination, AFIS, foot and palm prints, and the professional issues practitioners may encounter. Edited by a world-renowned leading forensic expert, this book is a long overdue solution for the forensic science community.
  • Blinding as a Solution to Bias

    Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law
    • 1st Edition
    • January 30, 2016
    • Christopher T Robertson + 1 more
    • English
    What information should jurors have during court proceedings to render a just decision? Should politicians know who is donating money to their campaigns? Will scientists draw biased conclusions about drug efficacy when they know more about the patient or study population? The potential for bias in decision-making by physicians, lawyers, politicians, and scientists has been recognized for hundreds of years and drawn attention from media and scholars seeking to understand the role that conflicts of interests and other psychological processes play. However, commonly proposed solutions to biased decision-making, such as transparency (disclosing conflicts) or exclusion (avoiding conflicts) do not directly solve the underlying problem of bias and may have unintended consequences. Robertson and Kesselheim bring together a renowned group of interdisciplinary scholars to consider another way to reduce the risk of biased decision-making: blinding. What are the advantages and limitations of blinding? How can we quantify the biases in unblinded research? Can we develop new ways to blind decision-makers? What are the ethical problems with withholding information from decision-makers in the course of blinding? How can blinding be adapted to legal and scientific procedures and in institutions not previously open to this approach? Fundamentally, these sorts of questions—about who needs to know what—open new doors of inquiry for the design of scientific research studies, regulatory institutions, and courts. The volume surveys the theory, practice, and future of blinding, drawing upon leading authors with a diverse range of methodologies and areas of expertise, including forensic sciences, medicine, law, philosophy, economics, psychology, sociology, and statistics.
  • The Search for Sanity

    The Commonwealth and International Library
    • 1st Edition
    • January 26, 2016
    • S. Leff + 1 more
    • Robert Robinson + 1 more
    • English
    The Search for Sanity provides a comprehensive discussion of the issue of mental illness. The book begins by addressing the question of whether society is sick. This is followed by separate chapters on the social aspects of mental health; the problems caused by sex such as prostitution, sexually transmitted disease, and illegitimate births; how the quest for power can destroy people; and ways people try to escape from reality, including drug use and alcohol consumption. Subsequent chapters cover the treatment for mental illness, how treatment helps, hospital care, and ways the community can help. The final chapter deals with the promotion of mental health and prevention of mental illness.
  • Stress and Distress in Response to Psychosocial Stimuli

    Laboratory and Real-Life Studies on Sympatho-Adrenomedullary and Related Reactions
    • 1st Edition
    • January 26, 2016
    • Lennart Levi
    • English
    Stress and Distress in Response to Psychosocial Stimuli is a book based on a study spanning over four years about the different psychosocial stimuli and the body's different reactions towards them, especially stress and disease. The book includes a short introduction to psychosocial stimuli and its physiological mechanisms, psychophysiological reactions; psychosomatic research; and psychosocially mediated disease and its hypotheses. Also covered are the study's methodological considerations; sympathoadrenomedull... responses to pleasant and unpleasant pyschosocial stimuli; sympathoadrenomedull... activity; the effects of work conditions; the emotional reactions during visual stimulation; stressor-induced changes to plasma lipids; and the psychological and physiological reactions and psychomotor performance during prolonged and complex stressor exposure. The text is recommended for psychologists and medical doctors, especially those who wish to study further about psychosocial stimuli and what it can do to the human body.
  • Psychology for Psychiatrists

    • 1st Edition
    • January 26, 2016
    • C. G. Costello
    • Hugh L. Freeman
    • English
    Psychology for Psychiatrists covers the aspects of psychology that would be of interest and value to the psychiatrist. This book is composed of 19 chapters, and begins with discussions on the basic research concepts of descriptive statistics, reliability and validity, and drugs research design. The succeeding chapters consider the problems in clinical psychology, including test of thought disorder, organicity, projective techniques, and questionnaires and rating scales. These tests will enable the psychiatrist to better evaluate the received information from clinical psychologists. Other chapters describe the methods and concepts that the clinical psychiatrist may find immediate value in the work. The concluding chapters explore the areas of study that are probably of primary interest to the research psychiatrist and to which they have also contributed. These areas include sleep, hypnosis, and sensory and emotional deprivation. This book is of value to psychologist, and research and clinical psychiatrists.
  • Simulation-Gaming: On the Improvement of Competence in Dealing with Complexity, Uncertainty and Value Conflicts

    Proceedings of the International Simulation and Gaming Association's 19th International Conference, Utrecht University, Netherlands, 16-19 August 1988
    • 1st Edition
    • January 26, 2016
    • J.H.G. Klabbers + 3 more
    • English
    This volume records the Proceedings of the International Simulation and Gaming Association's 19th International Conference which took place at Utrecht University in 1988. Seven sections are contained in the volume. The first section on complexity, uncertainty and conflict deals with theoretical and methodological issues. This is the introduction to the conference theme "On the improvement of competence". The following sections cover broad areas: organizational change, business simulation, policy exercise, methodology, learning environments, and special topics such as environmental planning, health care, diplomatic games and gambling.
  • Subsistence and Survival

    Rural Ecology in the Pacific
    • 1st Edition
    • January 26, 2016
    • Timothy P. Bayliss-Smith
    • English
    Subsistence and Survival: Rural Ecology in the Pacific covers the ecology of man's environment, man's use and perception of biological resources, and the physiology and health of the human organism itself. The geographical range of this text extends from the glaciated uplands of Papua New Guinea, through the montane forests and grasslands of the Highlands, into the coastal jungles, and across to the smaller islands and atolls of the South West Pacific. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 14 chapters. The first part deals with the theory and applications of human ecology. The next part considers first the International Biological Program in New Guinea concerning the link between human ecology and biomedical research. This part also explores the nutritional adaptation among the Enga and in Melanesia, and then introduces the principles of environmental health engineering as human ecology. The subsequent two parts highlight the impact of human activities on the environment, with an emphasis on the association between environmental exploitation and human subsistence. The final part discusses the relevance of self-subsistence communities for world ecosystem management. This book will be of great value to anthropologists, geographers, human biologists, nutritionists, botanists, and public health engineers.
  • The International Monetary System

    An Essay in Interpretation
    • 1st Edition
    • January 26, 2016
    • E. Hoffmeyer
    • English
    This book interprets the historical evolution of how and why the international monetary system has been transformed. The strategies of the major decision-makers are defined and described, and an analysis made of how these strategies were adapted. The structure of the analysis differs from other such contributions, in that it does not concentrate on the way in which disturbances have developed, but rather on describing the pattern of reaction of policy makers to disturbances, and in particular on the political element in the decisions. This structure of analysis makes relevance criteria somewhat different from most academic literature on the international monetary system. A substantial amount of evidence is presented that has hitherto been largely neglected by experts; for example the sterling support schemes, the gold pool transactions, the use of the swap network, Schiller's preparation of the German block floating, the intervention pattern among key currencies, and the views arising from the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee.In order to facilitate comparison with other presentations careful documentation is provided of the points made. Apart from the literature referred to in the Bibliography, all material used - comprising documents, memoranda, publications and communiqués - has been organized in a computer index containing about 500 entries. Background material covered by one or more of these entries is available to the interested reader.
  • Science of Mind

    The Quest for Psychological Reality
    • 1st Edition
    • January 26, 2016
    • Bozzano G Luisa
    • English
    This book explains the social factors that shape the nature of theory and research traditions in psychology. It presents a broad treatment of the construction of theory and knowledge in science and philosophy with particular emphasis on psychological thinking. Du Preez, emphasizing the "evolution of knowledge," discusses theory and research across behaviorism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, cognitive psychology, and many other psychological areas, placing them in their socio-philosophical contexts.