Books on the topic 'Informal Awareness'

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication is revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon’s sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer’s poetry, inquisitors’ accounts of heretic speech, and life-writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

The workshop has been organised with the contribution of three different Institutions such as COST, University of Florence and Florens Foundation. Within the COST, the Action IE0601 - "Wood Science for Conservation of Wooden Cultural Heritage" - has performed an important role in carrying out the Workshop, both conceiving the idea and supporting its organisation. COST Strategic Workshops are instruments typically dedicated to launch new felds of research and or relevant topics. The present Workshop has been proposed in order to achieve the following aims:• To stimulate the discussion process and awareness on the importance of the safeguard of Cultural Heritage, and for highlighting its Cultural, Social and Economical importance. • To support the strengthening of an ERA in the fi eld of Cultural Heritage, and to establish research topics to be suggested as possible programmatic lines of the 8th FP. • To inform political stakeholders on the necessity to support research and European co-operations in the fi eld of Cultural Heritage.

Chapter One offers a brief history of the rise in awareness of the vast numbers of informal, family caregivers caring for aged, demented, and impaired loved ones in the home. The importance of informal caregivers to the healthcare system, both financially and emotionally, emerged in studies exploring the numbers of home caregivers and the nature of their care work. Early studies also focused on the sense of burden caregivers experienced due to caregiving. Since the 1980s, caregiving studies have been a constant in research, and have become increasingly complex in the use of large data sets and advanced technology to study the number of caregivers, their characteristics and labors, and the outcomes of caregiving on their emotional and physical health. Few studies have focused solely on the experience of caregiving in African-American elder male caregivers, and in the way we accomplish here.

In its milder forms, autism is widespread, but often not considered as an explanation for odd, egocentric, rigid, and/or potentially socially problematic behaviour. The reader is encouraged in this chapter to consider how autism might present in the world in which (s)he works and lives. A series of case vignettes are then used (in this chapter), drawn from ordinary life settings (work, college, neighbourhood, family, etc.) to illustrate and inform awareness, and possible consideration of autism that has been missed earlier in the person’s life. Questions are posed following each case vignette that the reader is asked to try to answer. Care recommendations then follow.

A psychiatric patient may experience both involuntary and voluntary care at different times. Some voluntary patients perceive that their care involves coercion (‘coerced voluntaries’), while others subject to compulsion willingly accept care (‘uncoerced involuntaries’). It is increasingly recognized that patients’ awareness of the possibility of compulsory treatment can disable them from fully exercising their right to make decisions about treatment. This was first observed in inpatient environments, but also occurs when coercion is increasingly applied in community settings. The possibility of coercive measures being used is part of the situational context in which community psychiatric treatment occurs. This chapter discusses how staff might invoke ‘coercion contexts’ with non-compliant patients who may not be fully aware of what is and isn’t lawful. The chapter thus provides a framework for understanding the mechanisms of informal coercion in everyday interactions, including mismatches in patient perceptions about coercion and ambiguities over legal status.

This chapter examines a number of global financial institutions. The first is the Group of Eight (G8)—currently known as the Group of 7 (G7)—an informal international forum comprising seven of the world’s leading industrialized nations (US, Japan, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Canada) and Russia. Next, is the G20, which aims to expand the G8. BRICs represents the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), meanwhile, is tasked with becoming an authoritative centre of research and initiative in economic thought and development. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has four main areas of focus: energy security, economic development, environmental awareness, and engagement worldwide. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an institutional body which deals with trade liberalization. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, both established in 1944, aim for international economic cooperation, with the latter focusing on development.

When electoral risks are not understood and addressed, they can undermine the credibility of the process and the results it yields. Electoral management bodies (EMBs) encounter numerous risks across all phases of the electoral cycle. They operate in environments that are increasingly complex and volatile and where factors such as technology, demographics, insecurity, inaccurate or incomplete information and natural calamities, create increasing uncertainty. The experiences of EMBs show that when formal risk management processes are successfully implemented, the benefits are profound. Greater risk awareness helps organizations to focus their resources on where they are most needed, thus achieving cost-effectiveness. Over the last decade it has been observed that EMBs are increasingly moving from informal to formal risk management processes. The purpose of this Guide is to lay out a set of practical steps for EMBs on how to establish or advance their risk management framework. The Guide’s chapters reflect the breadth of key considerations in the implementation process and offer basic resources to assist in the process.

Recent accounts of interoception have highlighted its role for self-awareness, but what gives it such a privileged status compared to other sources of information about the body, and is it actually warranted? This chapter first explores the many ways one might understand the notion of interoception, rejecting most definitions that are too liberal. It further focuses on the interoceptive feelings that we spontaneously experience, such as thirst, fatigue, or hunger, highlighting the limits of the attentional notion of interoceptive awareness in use in the experimental literature. Interoceptive feelings inform us about the welfare of the organism as a whole and their spatial principle of organization is holistic. This chapter then assesses the contribution of these feelings for the awareness of one’s body as one’s own. In brief, their role is not to fix the spatial boundaries of the body but rather to provide an affective background to our bodily sensations.

Formal theological education underwent a twentieth-century revolution that both enriched and fragmented popular Bible reading. Its legacy includes deeper understanding of the Bible and its contexts, new professions of teaching and scholarship, more professional clergy, and liberating critiques of oppressive ideas and practices. Yet its legacy also includes significant fractures, between academy and church, Bible and theology, and so on. Biblical interpretation became marginal to American intellectual life as it became more informed. Theological education’s hermeneutical story highlights the practical-moral agenda of professionals: they sought to inform, frequently even to reform, how Americans approach their Bibles—with historical awareness and various theological-political agendas ideally displacing literalist private application. The mutual popular and professional tensions in this story, given their impact on its interpretation, call for more generous scholarly attention to popular aspirations for understanding the Bible.

This chapter discusses ways in which an awareness of topics might influence performance behaviors. It contrasts topics as understood respectively by Aristotle (abstract concepts) and Vico (potential for action). Through case studies taken from Mozart’s chamber music with piano (specifically in a “period-instrument” context), it investigates subtle interactions between different dance topics (sarabande, gavotte, bourrée), which emerge only through careful consideration of notational features such as beat hierarchy and other aspects of historically informed performance practice hinted at in the notation. Awareness of these interactions, and recognition of their invitations to engage in certain performance gestures, offers the potential to create performance narratives that counterpoint the formal design mapped out in the notated score.

What’s in the Syringe? Principles of Early Integrated Palliative Care, a guide for clinicians, teaches the psychological skills of outpatient palliative care. It does so based on a framework that articulates five challenges faced by patients through the illness trajectory. Each challenge forms the focus of a chapter. By helping patients meet each challenge, clinicians help them cope with serious illness. Patients thereby experience better quality of life and develop prognostic awareness. From this awareness, they can make informed medical and personal decisions. Each chapter focuses on clinical skills to support patients as they take up that challenge. Each chapter then ends with a discussion of how to collaborate with oncology colleagues around that challenge. Rich in illustrative examples and built around case-based chapters, the book draws on two decades of research and clinical experience.

Landscapes of the Song of Songs is a unique, interdisciplinary approach to the ancient poetry of the Song of Songs. It develops a theoretical concept of landscape to explore the Song’s intrinsic interest in the natural world, engaging with work from the fields of geography, landscape architecture, and literature. It emphasizes the made quality of both landscapes and poetry, which are art forms defined by human intervention and vision. In this way it critiques the tendency of scholars to reify a perceived dichotomy in the Song between “nature” and “culture.” Each chapter explores a different imaginational landscape of the Song, using insights from landscape theory to inform close readings of the Song’s poems. The landscape concept emphasizes the material landscape, which is the primary focus of the study of agriculture in the Song. The landscape concept also maintains an insistence on human intervention, which informs the studies of both the garden and the city. Finally, a landscape concept implies an awareness of the viewer, which helps to re-appreciate the descriptive poems as a process of perceiving the lover and the land. With a twofold emphasis on landscape and lyric, this book shows how the Song persistently envisions a world in which human lovers are embedded in the natural world, enfolded in complex relationships of fragility and care. In addition, Landscapes offers new, close readings of selected poems of the Song.

Paine showed throughout his career a historically well-informed awareness of the shortcomings of English monarchs after 1688 and 1714, whom he regarded as usurpers: it was a practical critique that fed his antipathy to monarchy in general. Rather than republicanism, this chapter establishes Paine’s personal links with the ‘Patriot’ opposition to Sir Robert Walpole’s ministry, a movement that had a religiously freethinking element and drew on reconfigured Jacobitism. By contrast, Paine employed none of the other political languages available to him. Instead, Paine spoke a language of anti-Jacobitism; this chapter explores how many of his contemporaries trod a path ‘from Jacobite to Jacobin’. Nor were these old world preoccupations only; this chapter shows how they were shared in the American colonies.

How and where consciousness is generated and maintained remains an unsolved scientific mystery, and this has impeded progress in understanding anaesthesia. In recent years, however, significant progress has been made in understanding the neurobiology of anaesthetic-induced loss of consciousness. This has been made possible by advances in molecular biology techniques, which have helped shed light on the molecular mechanisms of action of the anaesthetic agents. In parallel, the development of neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography, has also provided an enormous impetus. These techniques are providing new insights into the neural correlates of consciousness, and new insights into the alterations in neurophysiology associated with impaired consciousness caused by sleep, sedation, and anaesthesia. The information being gained from these studies on the neurobiology of impairments of attention, awareness, and memory will hopefully eventually not only lead to improvements in our understanding of consciousness and anaesthesia, but also to better clinical care. Understanding of memory functions during sedation and anaesthesia may, for example, lead to better strategies for preventing awareness with subsequent explicit recall of intraoperative events. Further, a better understanding of the neurobiology of anaesthetic-induced unconsciousness may inform future development of better anaesthetic agents, with a broader therapeutic index, and fewer unwanted effects.

This chapter examines Roman imperial power, from its inception under Augustus until the crisis of the third century. The chapter examines the contradictions of the imperial office—where the emperor was at once Republican magistrate subject to the laws and absolute monarch—and how these contradictions helped to destabilize the imperial succession, first in a series of isolated crises (69 and 193 AD), but then ultimately in virtually endemic usurpation and civil war. Finally, it explores the historiographical challenge with which the study of usurpation and civil war presents us. Civil wars are known to us through our texts, and our texts were always written in conformity with the propaganda of the victor, since criticism of living emperors was a virtual impossibility. Awareness of the problem this poses then informs the following chapter.

This chapter explores how skilled performers use topical analysis in their interpretative decision-making, presenting material from lesson-interviews conducted with fortepianists Robert Levin and Bart van Oort. Drawing on treatises by Türk, Quantz, Kirnberger, Koch, and Leopold Mozart, it examines some historical foundations of Leonard Ratner’s topics, their connections with eighteenth-century concepts of musical character and expression, and topics’ limitations as tools in the process of analysis and interpretation. The chapter takes the Allegro movements of Mozart’s Sonata K. 333 as two case studies. It concludes that awareness of topical references in this repertoire aids performers in systematically identifying and executing contrasts, enabling more expressive and communicative performance. It suggests that a sensitive understanding of historically informed performance practices benefits topic theorists, as analyses may be undermined by anachronistic assumptions about how the music sounds in performance.

In the 1960s and 1970s, improvisational artists explored the use of feedback, both as a creative method and a model of the self in relation to its social and physical environment. As an alternative to centralized authority structures, feedback loops could be used to organize decentralized events or activities. The result would be a self-informing system, or autopoiesis. This idea informed the new field of cybernetics and the social philosophy of Paul Goodman and Gregory Bateson. Max Neuhaus’s realization of John Cage’s composition,Fontana Mix—Feed, made use of this structure, as did his later broadcast works,Public SupplyandRadio Net, and the dance form of “contact improvisation” developed by Steve Paxton. In these works, attention to the dynamics of interaction (“deutero-learning”) fostered an improvisational style based on a heightened environmental awareness rather than an exteriorization of the internal psyche, thus pioneering the postmodern, networked self.

This wide-ranging study demonstrates that Woolf, despite her agnostic upbringing, was profoundly interested in, and knowledgeable about, Christianity as a faith and a socio-political movement. Jane de Gay provides a strongly contextual approach, first revealing the extent of the Christian influences on Woolf’s upbringing, including an analysis of the far-reaching influence of the Clapham Sect, and then drawing attention to the importance of Christianity among Woolf’s friends and associates. It shows that Woolf’s awareness of the ongoing influence of Christian ideas and institutions informed her feminist critique of society in Three Guineas. The book sheds new light on works including Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and The Waves by revealing her fascination with the clergy, the Madonna, churches and cathedrals; her interest in the Bible as artefact and literary text; and her wrestling with questions about salvation and the nature of God.

Public history is a large and complex field, with boundaries, methods, and subjects that are hotly debated. This handbook reflects the complexities of the subject, while at the same time helping to shape it. It introduces the major debates within public history; the methods and sources that comprise a public historian’s toolkit; and exemplary examples of practice. The book views public history as a dynamic process combining the hands-on skills of historical research and a wide range of work with and for the public, informed by a conceptual context. It defines public history work as analytical and active—practical work informed by thoughtful reflection—and locates public history as a professional practice within an intellectual framework that is increasingly democratic, technological, and transnational. While the nation state remains the primary means of identification for many, increased mobility and the digital revolution have occasioned a much broader outlook and awareness of the world beyond the local, shaping not only our lives today but also our understanding of the past. This volume will provide the information and inspiration needed by a practitioner to succeed in the wide range of workplaces that characterize public history today, for university teachers of public history to assist their students, and for working public historians to keep up to date with recent research.

Attention is of fundamental importance in the philosophy of mind, in epistemology, in action theory, and in ethics. This book presents an account in which attention, not self, explains the experiential and normative situatedness of human beings in the world. Attention consists in an organization of awareness and action at the centre of which there is neither a practical will nor a phenomenological witness. Attention performs two roles in experience, a selective role of placing and a focal role of access. Attention improves our epistemic standing, because it is in the nature of attention to settle on what is real and to shun what is not real. When attention is informed by expertise, it is sufficient for knowledge. That gives attention a reach beyond the perceptual: for attention is a determinable whose determinates include the episodic memory from which our narrative identities are made, the empathy for others that situates us in a social world, and the introspection that makes us self-aware. Empathy is other-directed attention, placed on you and focused on your states of mind; it is akin to listening. Empathetic attention is central to a range of experiences that constitutively require a contrast between oneself and others, all of which involve an awareness of oneself as the object of another’s attention. An analysis of attention as mental action gainsays authorial conceptions of self, because it is the nature of intending itself, effortful attention in action, to settle on what to do and to shun what not to do.

This chapter explores notions of England and Englishness in the Romantic period, in particular the awareness evident in key literary texts of the complexities attendant on patriotic feeling. The chapter takes its cue from Byron, considering the moment in Don Juan when the protagonist arrives in England in relation to the poet’s conflicted sense of personal and national identity. The approach is informed by two decades of critical debate over the national and global implications of ‘English Romantic literature’, but acknowledges the tendency for the question of Englishness to be overlooked in more devolutionary studies. In order to explore the topic in more detail, the chapter pursues the representation of England and Englishness in three key texts of the period—Austen’s Emma, Cowper’s The Task, and Wordsworth’s ‘Sonnets dedicated to Liberty’—and suggests that in each, expressions of amor patriae (love of country) take the form of a critique as much as a celebration.

The discovery of cancer predisposing genetic mutations has heightened community awareness of the link between family history, genetic constitution, and personal risk. The component of an individual’s cancer risk that is due to their genetic make-up can be described as their ‘genetic risk’. Knowledge of genetic risk can assist both individuals with cancer and unaffected individuals to make decisions about healthcare and inform relatives who may share that genetic risk. Accordingly, patients seek advice about their risk and its implications and management from general practitioners (primary healthcare physician) or cancer specialists. In this chapter, we discuss the interlinked processes of risk assessment, risk perception, and risk communication in the context of genetic risk of cancer. While this is only one component of an individual’s risk of cancer—other factors including lifestyle, medical history, and environmental exposures—the principles of risk communication are applicable to each of these individual risk factors.

The life experiences and sexual identity development of three generations of gay men, the Stonewall, AIDS, and Queer generations, are explored. While there are generational differences in the lived experiences of young gay men shaped by the sociopolitical contexts of the historical epoch in which they emerged into adulthood, and a crisis that has come to define each generation, there also are consistencies across generations and across time in the psychological process of coming out that defines identity formation of gay men, as these individuals transition from a period of sexual identity awareness to sexual identity integration. The life experiences are also shaped by conceptions of hypermasculinity, racism and discrimination, substance use, and adventurous sexuality. Despite the many challenges that have defined the lives of gay men across time and that are informed by the homophobia of American society, the vast majority of the population also has demonstrated resilience and fortitude in achieving both pride and dignity. These ideas are explored through the life narratives of fifteen diverse gay men, across the three generations.

This chapter examines how physicians developed the concept of place to reconcile the complexities of race and sex when defining bodies and their health and sicknesses. In the increasingly contested political arena of the antebellum years, southern physicians knew that their work would most likely be received favorably if it reinforced the region's distinctiveness. Awareness that some places were inherently unhealthy and that some people were more likely to get sick in them was part of the anecdotal medical lore that informed physicians' thinking about bodies as placed. Doctors were well aware that southerners fell victim to different diseases and had to be treated differently from people elsewhere in the nation. Thus, doctors argued that a specifically southern medical theory and practice was necessary. This chapter explores how nineteenth-century physicians seeking to understand the consequences of placed bodies invoked the South's climate and the concept of acclimation to explain disease. It shows that laypeople shared physicians' convictions that medicine was specific to place and that bodies were shaped by their environment.

The first edition of Myths America Lives By explores five Great American Myths—the Chosen Nation, Nature’s Nation, the Christian Nation, the Millennial Nation, and the Innocent Nation. This revised edition introduces a sixth myth—the myth of White Supremacy—and argues, first, that the myth of white supremacy is the primal American myth that informs all the others and, second, that one of the chief functions of the other five myths is to protect and obscure the myth of white supremacy, to hide it from our awareness, and to assure us that we remain innocent after all. With one chapter devoted to each of the myths, the book relies especially on the voices of black Americans to help readers understand the pervasive power of white supremacy in American life and culture and how white supremacy translates into systemic racism, on the one hand, and white privilege, on the other. The book also explores how manifest destiny, the American dream, and capitalism have depended on the Great American Myths for their viability in American culture.

“Evidence-based policy making” (EBPM) has become a popular term to describe the need for more scientific and less ideological policy making. Some compare it to “evidence-based medicine,” which describes moves to produce evidence, using commonly-held scientific principles regarding a hierarchy of evidence, which can directly inform practice. Policy making is different: there is less agreement on what counts as good evidence, and more things to consider when responding to evidence.Our awareness of these differences between science and policy are not new. Current debates resemble a postwar policy science agenda, to produce more scientific and “rational” policy analysis, which faced major empirical and normative obstacles: the world is not that simple, and an overly technocratic approach to policy undermines much-needed political debate. To understand modern discussions of EBPM, key insights from previous discussions must be considered: policy making is both “rational” and “irrational”; it takes place in complex policy environments or systems, whose properties should be understood in some depth; and it can and should not be driven by “the evidence” alone.

Increasing numbers of those with stage 5 chronic kidney disease are older, with multiple co-morbid conditions. There is growing awareness that, while dialysis may provide some survival advantage in this population, there is major disease and treatment burden associated with dialysis, and considerable impact on quality of life. Conservative (non-dialysis) management pathways are therefore increasingly being developed and studied, and more is known about the best ways to optimize quality of life for those managed without dialysis. In low- and middle-income countries, the resources for dialysis are frequently limited and conservative management is often imposed rather than chosen. However, in high-income countries, dialysis is more widely available, and the decision whether to follow a conservative management pathway or not needs to be carefully weighed. This will include the context of the ageing kidney, the overall prognosis, and the trajectory of illness, to inform the best individual decisions. Management of those following a conservative management pathway includes detailed communication and advance care planning, actively managing the kidney disease and minimizing complications, and detailed assessment and proactive management of symptoms.

Reasoning is just beginning to emerge as a central topic in its own right in analytic philosophy. One reason for this is the growing interest in the epistemology of inference. What justifies us in making some inferences and not others, and under what conditions does inference lead to justified belief? This growing interest coincides with a “cognitive turn” in epistemology more generally, an increasing awareness that epistemological theorizing should be informed by what we know from psychology and the philosophy of mind. At the same time, analytic philosophers are also beginning to investigate ways in which notions from epistemology relate to normative notions from the theory of rationality—for example, by looking at how one’s evidence relates to what one ought to believe, or whether reasoning that obeys normative requirements preserves epistemic justification. And finally, there is a growing recognition that many of the central questions about reasoning and rationality are best addressed by setting aside the traditional separation between theoretical and practical reasoning; reasoning has a nature and significance that we should strive to understand independently of whether it is reasoning about what to believe or about how to act. The essays on reasoning in this volume flow from all of these important developments and take them in provocative new directions.

Elusiveness signals are given by prey during the close approach of a predator, acting to inform the predator that the prey would be difficult to catch and subdue, and, therefore, that an attempt to catch the prey is likely to be unsuccessful. These signals will be restricted to mobile prey that can mount an active response to impending attack and they will not normally be displayed continuously, but instead be triggered by the perception by the prey that they are under imminent risk of attack. There are two different types of such elusiveness signals: 1) pursuit deterrent signals, communicating fleetness or strength to coursing predators, and 2) perception advertisement, communicating detection of a stalking or ambushing predator. Elusiveness signals can only be effective if mounting attacks is expensive to predators in some way. There is also an element of generalization required for elusiveness signals to be effective but, by signalling fleetness, strength, or awareness of the predator, the prey also seek to differentiate themselves from other potential prey. We first document current empirical evidence for elusiveness signalling, before discussing evolutionary considerations—starting with theory on how such signalling might evolve and be maintained—ecological aspects, and co-evolutionary considerations.

Career Development is a lifelong process of self-exploration and awareness, continual acquisition of knowledge about the ever-changing world of work, and decision-making. During undergraduation, students face several challenges and can sometimes feel insecure about their career choices, their future as workers, their skills, and therefore be at risk of dropout, disengagement or psychological suffering. Higher Education institutions and career counselors have to be well informed and prepared to provide career interventions that help students in this training and transition period. Orientação, desenvolvimento e aconselhamento de carreira para estudantes universitários no Brasil is a book designed to help teachers, counselors and researchers to better understand students' Career Development and needs during Higher Education. Also, it provides different approaches to intervention (individual, group, curricular, extracurricular) that can inspire professionals and institutions to improve their services in order to maximize students sucess and well-being.The authors are professors and practitioners from different Brazilian and Portuguese Higher Education Institutions, providing diverse and contextualized perspectives of Career Development and counseling. Part 1 of the book discusses some conceptual aspects and describes some empirical studies on Career Development in Higher Education. In Part 2, different experiences of intervention in Career Guidance with university students from private and public institutions in Brazil are presented. It is hoped that this book can foster interest in the topic and inspire the creation of new practices to support students in the university context.

The internet has emerged as an important medium for terrorists. Two key trends can be discerned from cyberterrorism: the democratization of communications driven by user generated content on the internet, and modern terrorists’ growing awareness of the internet’s potential for their purposes. The internet has become a favorite tool of the terrorists because of the many advantages it provides, such as easy access; little or no regulation, censorship, or other forms of government control; potentially huge audiences spread throughout the world; anonymity of communication; fast flow of information; interactivity; inexpensive development and maintenance of a Web presence; a multimedia environment; and the ability to influence coverage in the traditional mass media. These advantages make the network of computer-mediated communication ideal for terrorists-as-communicators. Terrorist groups of all sizes maintain their own websites to spread propaganda, raise funds and launder money, recruit and train members, communicate and conspire, plan and launch attacks. They also rely on e-mail, chatrooms, e-groups, forums, virtual message boards, and resources like YouTube, Facebook, and Google Earth. Fighting online terrorism raises the issue of countermeasures and their cost. The virtual war between terrorists and counterterrorism forces and agencies is certainly a vital, dynamic, and ferocious one. It is imperative that we become better informed about the uses to which terrorists put the internet and better able to monitor their activities. Second, we must defend our societies better against terrorism without undermining the very qualities and values that make our societies worth defending.

Stroke in the Older Person will inform the readers about every aspect of stroke disease and traverses the entire stroke pathway. It explores all aspects of stroke and in particular those singular features of stroke that afflict older people. Nearly three-quarters of all strokes occur in people over the age of sixty-five. Each chapter is a synthesis of up-to-date work and practical approaches, relevant to stroke physicians, geriatricians, neurologists, researchers, doctors of all grades, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, advanced nurse practitioners, and neuropsychologists. The important themes addressed are the patient’s perspective, epidemiology, aetiopathogenesis, clinical presentations, diagnostic work-up including imaging, primary and secondary prevention, thrombolysis, mechanical thrombectomy, and all aspects of rehabilitation. It addresses transient ischaemic attack (TIA), atrial fibrillation, intracerebral haemorrhage, carotid revascularization, nutrition, and stroke mimics, dysphagia, the burden of cerebrovascular disease in the community, cognitive impairment, ethical and moral dilemmas including do not attempt resuscitation (DNAR), advanced directives, and end-of-life care. Stroke predominantly affects older people but there is a great shortage of literature in this age group. The editors have put together an excellent collection of chapters written by frontline clinicians or well-known academicians in their field. Special attention has been paid to make the book very readable, with plenty of practical tips. Only through a greater awareness of every aspect of stroke in older people can we make progress and treat our older people with the excellent care and dignity that they deserve.

Computed tomography (CT) has increased in use exponentially for the assessment of patients with renal tract pathology. This has been promoted by the availability of multidetector thin-slice CT so that intravenous urography has been superseded by CT urography. The latter may be considered as a ‘one-stop’ imaging investigation for haematuria, with increased detection of both urinary tract cancers and urolithiasis. Multiplanar reformats are made possible with the use of thin slices, allowing clear delineation of other pathologies such as urinary tract injury. In the transplant recipient, protocols have been developed for the assessment of more immediate complications such as thrombotic and stenotic disease. During follow-up, CT continues to inform the management of post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder and other immunosuppressant-related complications. Unenhanced CT of the urinary tract has established its role in assessment of patients with renal colic, with the ability to detect pathology outside of the urinary tract. Renal CT has been developed for the characterization of renal masses, accompanied by the now well-established Bosniak renal cyst classification system. As the usefulness of CT increases, clear awareness of safety issues has to be maintained. These include the administration of intravenous iodinated contrast medium in higher-risk patient groups, particularly those with renal impairment. The radiation burden that comes with CT poses an added risk to the patient that should not be ignored. This necessitates clear referral guidelines for its use, which should be applied in careful balance with the global assessment of the patient.

Alzheimer’s is swiftly on the rise: it is estimated that every 67 seconds, someone develops the disease. For many, the words ‘Alzheimer’s disease’ or ‘dementia’ immediately denote severe mental loss and, perhaps, madness. Indeed, the vast majority of media coverage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other types of dementia focuses primarily on the losses experienced by people diagnosed and the terrible burden felt by care partners yearning for a "magic bullet" drug cure. Providing an accessible, question-and-answer-format primer on what touches so many lives, and yet so few of us understand, Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia: What Everyone Needs to Know® contributes what is urgently missing from public knowledge: unsparing investigation of their causes and manifestations, and focus on the strengths possessed by people diagnosed. Steven R. Sabat mines a large body of research to convey the genetic and biological aspects of Alzheimer’s disease, its clinical history, and, most significantly, to reveal the subjective experience of those with Alzheimer’s or dementia. By clarifying the terms surrounding dementia and Alzheimer’s, which are two distinct conditions, Sabat corrects dangerous misconceptions that plague our understanding of memory dysfunction. People diagnosed with AD retain awareness, thinking ability, and sense of self; crucially, Sabat demonstrates that there are ways to facilitate communication even when the person with AD has great difficulty finding the words he or she wants to use. From years spent exploring and observing the points of view and experiences of people diagnosed, Sabat strives to inform as well as to remind readers of the respect and empathy owed to those diagnosed and living with dementia. Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia conveys this type of information and more, which, when applied by family and professional caregivers, will help improve the quality of life of those diagnosed as well as of those who provide support and care.

These Guidelines are one of the results of the four-year research project “Open Online Learning for Digital and Networked Society” (2017-2021). The project objective was to enable university teachers to design open and online learning through open and online learning curriculum and environment applying learning analytics as a metacognitive tool and creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the needs of digital and networked society. The research of the project resulted in 10 scientific publications and 2 studies prepared by Vytautas Magnus university Institute of Innovative Studies research team in collaboration with their international research partners from Germany, Spain and Portugal. The final stage of the research attempted creating open and online learning assessment and recognition practices, responding to the learner needs in contemporary digital and networked society. The need for open learning recognition has been increasing during the recent decade while the developments of open learning related to the Covid 19 pandemics have dramatically increased the need for systematic and high-quality assessment and recognition of learning acquired online. The given time also relates to the increased need to offer micro-credentials to learners, as well as a rising need for universities to prepare for micro-credentialization and issue new digital credentials to learners who are regular students, as well as adult learners joining for single courses. The increased need of all labour - market participants for frequent and fast renewal of competences requires a well working and easy to use system of open learning assessment and recognition. For learners, it is critical that the micro-credentials are well linked to national and European qualification frameworks, as well as European digital credential infrastructures (e.g., Europass and similar). For employers, it is important to receive requested quality information that is encrypted in the metadata of the credential. While for universities, there is the need to properly prepare institutional digital infrastructure, organizational procedures, descriptions of open learning opportunities and virtual learning environments to share, import and export the meta-data easily and seamlessly through European Digital Hub service infrastructures, as well as ensure that academic and administrative staff has digital competencies to design, issue and recognise open learning through digital and micro-credentials. The first chapter of the Guidelines provides a background view of the European Qualification Framework and National Qualification frameworks for the further system of gaining, stacking and modelling further qualifications through open online learning. The second chapter suggests the review of current European policy papers and consultations on the establishment of micro-credentials in European higher education. The findings of the report of micro-credentials higher education consultation group “European Approach to Micro-credentials” is shortly introduced, as well as important policy discussions taking place. Responding to the Rome Bologna Comunique 2020, where the ministers responsible for higher education agreed to support lifelong learning through issuing micro-credentials, a joint endeavour of DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion and DG Research and Innovation resulted in one of the most important political documents highlighting the potential of micro-credentials towards economic, social and education innovations. The consultation group of experts from the Member States defined the approach to micro-credentials to facilitate their validation, recognition and portability, as well as to foster a larger uptake to support individual learning in any subject area and at any stage of life or career. The Consultation Group also suggested further urgent topics to be discussed, including the storage, data exchange, portability, and data standards of micro-credentials and proposed EU Standard of constitutive elements of micro-credentials. The third chapter is devoted to the institutional readiness to issue and to recognize digital and micro-credentials. Universities need strategic decisions and procedures ready to be enacted for assessment of open learning and issuing micro-credentials. The administrative and academic staff needs to be aware and confident to follow these procedures while keeping the quality assurance procedures in place, as well. The process needs to include increasing teacher awareness in the processes of open learning assessment and the role of micro-credentials for the competitiveness of lifelong learners in general. When the strategic documents and procedures to assess open learning are in place and the staff is ready and well aware of the processes, the description of the courses and the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to provide the necessary metadata for the assessment of open learning and issuing of micro-credentials. Different innovation-driven projects offer solutions: OEPass developed a pilot Learning Passport, based on European Diploma Supplement, MicroHE developed a portal Credentify for displaying, verifying and sharing micro-credential data. Credentify platform is using Blockchain technology and is developed to comply with European Qualifications Framework. Institutions, willing to join Credentify platform, should make strategic discussions to apply micro-credential metadata standards. The ECCOE project building on outcomes of OEPass and MicroHE offers an all-encompassing set of quality descriptors for credentials and the descriptions of learning opportunities in higher education. The third chapter also describes the requirements for university structures to interact with the Europass digital credentials infrastructure. In 2020, European Commission launched a new Europass platform with Digital Credential Infrastructure in place. Higher education institutions issuing micro-credentials linked to Europass digital credentials infrastructure may offer added value for the learners and can increase reliability and fraud-resistant information for the employers. However, before using Europass Digital Credentials, universities should fulfil the necessary preconditions that include obtaining a qualified electronic seal, installing additional software and preparing the necessary data templates. Moreover, the virtual learning environment needs to be prepared to export learning outcomes to a digital credential, maintaining and securing learner authentication. Open learning opportunity descriptions also need to be adjusted to transfer and match information for the credential meta-data. The Fourth chapter illustrates how digital badges as a type of micro-credentials in open online learning assessment may be used in higher education to create added value for the learners and employers. An adequately provided metadata allows using digital badges as a valuable tool for recognition in all learning settings, including formal, non-formal and informal.

A key objective of the study of work-family balance detailed in this report was to build an evidence base to inform policy creation or refinement targeting work-family balance and related implementation standards to ensure the protection and preservation of Qatari families. Two complementary projects were designed and implemented to achieve this key objective. The first project was a qualitative study involving in-depth interviews with 20 Qatari working adults (10 males and 10 females). The interviews were designed to learn the meaning of work-family balance among Qataris, identify the factors shaping work-family balance or the lack thereof, and collect firsthand detailed information on the use and value of policy-relevant work-family balance sup - ports for working Qataris. The second component was a survey designed to describe work-family balance among working Qatari adults, determine potential health and well-being consequences of poor work-family balance, and characterize Qataris’ use of and preferences for new work-family balance supports. The data from the qualitative interviews tell a very clear story of work-family balance among Qataris. Work-family balance is primarily viewed as working adults’ ability to meet responsibilities in both the work and family domains. Although work-fam - ily balance was valued and sought after, participants viewed work-family balance as an idyllic goal that is unattainable. Indeed, when individuals were asked about the last time they experienced balance, the most common response was “during my last vacation or extended holiday.” The challenge of achieving work-family balance was equally shared by males and females, although the challenge was heightened for females. Qataris recognized that “work” was essential to securing or providing a desirable family life; that is, work provided the financial wherewithal to obtain the features and comforts of contemporary family life in Qatar. However, the cost of this financial wherewithal was work hours and a psychological toll characterized as “long” and “exhausting” which left workers with insufficient time and energy for the family. Participants commented on the absolute necessity of paid maternity leave for work-family balance, and suggested it be expanded. Participants also discussed the importance of high-quality childcare, and the need for greater flexibility for attending to family responsibilities during the working day. Data from the quantitative national survey reinforce the results from the qualitative interviews. Work-family balance is a challenge for most working adults: if work-fam - ily balance were given scores like academic grades in school, the majority of both males and females would earn a "C" or lower (average, minimal pass or failure). As intimated in the qualitative data, working females’ work-family balance is statistically poorer than that of males. Poor work-family balance is associated with poorer physical and mental health, with particularly strong negative associations with depression. It appears the Human Resource Law of 2016 was effective in raising awareness of and access to paid maternity leave. However, a substantial minority of working Qataris lack access to work-family balance supports from their employer, and the supports that are provided by employers do not meet the expectations of the average Qatari worker.