Books on the topic 'Signals Of Opportunities'

This chapter considers how the cybersecurity dilemma can be mitigated. It considers the ways in which states can act unilaterally to improve their baseline defenses, can form bilateral partnerships with other states, and can take action to signal that they are serious about addressing the problem. These include sending costly signals to other states in order to lend credibility to their professed intentions. In cybersecurity, zero day exploits and encryption policy offer opportunities to send costly signals. The chapter draws on Cold War history to provide conceptual examples for many of these actions.

Fashion is one tool that women employ to enhance their overall attractiveness to increase mating opportunities and repel competition from other females. This essay first discusses how evolution has shaped the female form and how clothing is used to enhance desirable traits. Additionally, this essay addresses how fashion trends have endured throughout history because they have been continually successful in maintaining women’s attractiveness. Further, the reasons why women… clothing when engaging in competitive strategies such as self-promotion and competitor manipulation is also explored. The second section covers how women’s physiological occurrences influence the way they dress and how males perceive them. Third, this essay delves into the social perceptions and consequences of wearing certain kinds of clothing. It explores how fashion is used to attract and retain mates by enabling a woman to stand out among her potential rivals and/or forcing rivals to back down from pursuing a potential partner.

This chapter analyzes the development of the Zapatista cycle of protests from 1994 to 2003 in relation to the political opportunities opened to the movement during Mexico’s democratic transition. In particular, it describes to what extent Zapatista protest activity was affected by the four traditional dimensions identified in the literature of political opportunity: (1) negotiating periods, as well as changes in power as signs of openings in the political system at the local and national levels; (2) the timing and competitiveness of elections as measures of the relative vulnerability of political elites; (3) the presence of a potential political ally in power; and (4) the Mexican state’s capacity for repression. The chapter compares the explanatory power of these factors to another factor that the literature has highlighted as a crucial variable for mobilization, namely the availability of a network of preexisting organizations.

This chapter turns to the topic of organizational cultures and their relation to morality. Although a somewhat elusive topic, organizational cultures deserve to be taken seriously from a moral perspective, because they can make it more or less difficult for individuals in organizations not to violate basic moral norms. For example, by influencing ‘sensemaking’ in organizations, they can make the moral dimensions of decisions more or less visible to them. But organizational cultures often change, especially when individuals send signals that are reinforced in ‘spirals’ of repeated actions that can lead to ‘slippery slopes’. Often, the best strategy for maintaining a morally supportive culture is a firm commitment to moral principles. However, the importance of organizational culture for an organization’s moral life also points to the importance of opportunities of dialogue about this culture.

This book explores the institutional conditions of the origin of innovation, arguing that prior to the emergence of competitive entrepreneurial firms and the onset of new industries is a little-understood but crucial phase of cooperation under uncertainty: the innovation commons. An innovation commons is a governance institution to incentivize cooperation in order to pool distributed information, knowledge, and other inputs into innovation to facilitate the entrepreneurial discovery of an economic opportunity. In other words, the true origin of innovation is not entrepreneurial action per se, but the creation of a common-pool resource from which entrepreneurs can discover opportunities. The true origin of innovation, and therefore of economic evolution, occurs one step further back, in the commons. Innovation has a cooperative institutional origin. When the economic value or worth of a new technological prospect is shrouded in uncertainty—which arises because information is distributed or is only experimental obtained—a commons can be an economically efficient governance institution. Specifically, a commons is efficient compared to the creation of alternative economic institutions that involve extensive contracting and networks, private property rights and price signals, or public goods (i.e., firms, markets, and governments). A commons will often be an efficient governance solution to the hard economic problem of opportunity discovery. This new framework for analysis of the origin of innovation draws on evolutionary theory of cooperation and institutional theory of the commons and carries important implications for our understanding of the origin of firms and industries, and for the design of innovation policy.

The chapter begins with an introduction of the basic Mincer, Shultz and Becker human capital model. Section 2 discusses two theories that question the model’s link between education and labour market skills. The first theory argues that the education is a device to signal to potential employers that the individual has high natural abilities that are unobservable to the employer while the second argues that education sorts workers into different labour markets that are segmented by wider socio-economic forces. Section 3 considers two more recent developments. The first involves sequential analysis in which the decision-maker learns more about his or her abilities and opportunities as a result of participating in education or training, while the second uses a ‘skill ecosystem’ metaphor to express how educational institutions, students, employers and policy makers can combine to sustain a high-skills, high-wage equilibrium or reinforce a low-skills, low-wage equilibrium.

There are many unscheduled contacts between children and clinicians, and therefore many opportunities for clinicians to identify previously unsuspected problems that parents may not already have suspected. There are three distinct foci during assessment, namely the child, the parent(s), and the parent–child relationship. Any of these can alert the practitioner to potential concerns, regardless of the presenting issue. Practitioners need to be aware of, and alert to, concerns about physical and social/emotional development, as well as signs of maltreatment and neglect. In addition, it is important to be able to evaluate the quality of parenting a child experiences, as this is a strong predictor of future mental and physical health. While this is an area in which clinicians may feel less confident or skilled, there is evidence to suggest that continuity of care and a trusting parent–clinician relationship provide an arena in which problems can be raised, aired, and more satisfactorily addressed.

This chapter explores the claims about the social and economic benefits and disadvantages of digital infrastructure investment. The differences between economists' and other social scientists' viewpoints affect the ways in which the outcomes of these industrial policy initiatives might be evaluated. The chapter concentrates on Europe and North America. The Digital Agenda is one of several pillars in the 2020 strategy. The data in support of industrial policies and regulatory measures to promote information and communications technologies (ICTs) and broadband networks appears strong. Investment in ICTs will produce productivity growth. The strategies of the large content-providing firms and the network operators affected the opportunities proposed by the availability of the Internet. There are signs that in both Europe and the United States, research has added to the realisation that ICTs are general purpose technologies, and that they are capable of contributing to extensive and pervasive changes in the economy and society.

This chapter looks at the strong global economic recovery which took place in mid-2004, which accelerated world trade growth to historically high rates—a special advantage to European nations who all rely heavily for their economic well-being on international trade. With improved trade opportunities, even the struggling German economy began to show signs of life. The Eurozone, however, had economic and financial vulnerability. A source of instability inherent to monetary unity was vividly manifest during the crisis of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in the early 1990s. A longer-term problem was the Eurozone's banks. Ultimately, the story of the next three years—between mid-2004 and mid-2007—revolves around a contest between the forces of “great moderation” and “irrational exuberance.” In the Eurozone, as member states benefited from an improving global economy, a belief in the European Central Bank's (ECB) distinctive ability to maintain stability reinforced the narrative of great moderation.

Children’s rights law is a relatively young but rapidly developing discipline. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the field’s core legal instrument, is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Yet, like children themselves, children’s rights are often relegated to the margins in mainstream legal, political, and other discourses, despite their application to approximately one-third of the world’s population and every human being’s first stages of life. Now thirty years old, the CRC signaled a definitive shift in the way children are viewed and understood—from passive objects subsumed within the family to full human beings with a distinct set of rights. Although the CRC and other children’s rights law have spurred positive changes in law, policies, and attitudes toward children in numerous countries, implementation remains a work in progress. We have reached the state in which more critical evaluation and assessment is needed of both the CRC and the large body of children’s rights law and policies that this treaty has inspired. We have moved from conceptualizing and adopting legislation to focusing on implementation and making the content of children’s rights meaningful in the lives of all children. This book provides a critical evaluation and assessment of children’s rights law, including the CRC. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners from around the world, it aims to elucidate the content of children’s rights law, explore the complexities of implementation, and identify critical challenges and opportunities for children’s rights law.

This volume brings together multiple emerging strands of interest in language and linguistics. First is increasing attention on pedagogical scholarship in linguistics, signaled by the 2013 addition to the flagship journal Language of a series on Teaching Linguistics (see for example Sanders 2016) and by many recent panels and workshops on pedagogy at linguistics conferences around the world. Additionally, public outreach has gained greater prominence in the field, with linguists becoming more active and engaged with the public on social media and in podcasts. There has also been an increase in broader public interest in constructed languages (conlangs) and how to build them, indicated by the popularity of conlangs in film and television (e.g. Star Trek, Avatar, and Game of Thrones) and by the success of relevant books (e.g. Okrent 2010; Rosenfelder 2010; Peterson 2014, 2015). This volume showcases a variety of methods which instructors can use to tap into this public interest in conlangs and conlanging to reach a broader student population, increase their engagement with course material, deepen their understanding of linguistics and its interdisciplinary relationships, and provide opportunities for public outreach. Using language invention as a pedagogical tool is an innovative way to capitalize on the effectiveness of many modern educational approaches, such as problem-based learning, collaborative learning, and active learning, especially for a diverse cohort of learners. The methods and materials presented in this volume help cultivate students’ understanding of language, linguistic diversity, linguistic analysis, and the power of creativity.

The criminalization of people with mental illness is a sad commentary on the United States’ mental health system. Yet, the phenomenon presents the field of psychiatry with an opportunity that is now scarce in civil society: lengths of sentence in terms of weeks to years that allow for in-depth observation and treatment of the inmate with mental illness. A few days in a hospital fails to provide the needed opportunity for a detailed and accurate evaluation. Today, people with mental illness account for more than one million annual arrests and many among these individuals will spend weeks to months in jail before being either transferred to a prison for sentences beyond one year or released back into the community. At its core, psychiatric diagnosis relies on the subjective complaints of the patient and objective signs noted on examination. Considering the chronic and fluctuating course of most psychiatric diagnoses, a thorough assessment also requires a review of past documented behaviors. When someone is hospitalized for a psychiatric condition, the first goal is often observation, followed by diagnosis, and then treatment. Psychiatric hospitals are being greatly constrained in the amount of time available for observation and accurate diagnosis; the correctional setting, as an unintended consequence of mass incarceration, provides an extended opportunity to achieve improved diagnostic accuracy. This chapter reflects on the diagnostic opportunities that a jail or a prison setting affords.

Poststructuralism is an International Relations (IR) theory that entered the domain of Security Studies during the Second Cold War. During this period, poststructuralists engaged with power, security, the militarization of the superpower relationship, and the dangers that the nuclear condition was believed to entail. Poststructuralism’s concern with power, structures, and the disciplining effects of knowledge seemed to resonate well with the main themes of classical realist Security Studies. At the same time, the discursive ontology and epistemology of poststructuralism set it apart not only from Strategic Studies, but from traditional peace researchers who insisted on “real world” material referents and objective conceptions of security. The unexpected end of the Cold War brought challenges as well as opportunities for poststructuralism. The most important challenge that arose was whether states needed enemies. The terrorist attacks of September 11 and “The War on Terror” also had a profound impact on poststructuralist discourse. First, poststructuralists held that “terrorism” and “terrorists” had no objective, material referent, but were signs that constituted a radical Other. They viewed the actions on September 11 as “terror,” “acts of war,” and “orchestrated,” rather than “accidents” committed by a few individuals. The construction of “terrorists” as “irrational” intersected with poststructuralist deconstructions of rational–irrational dichotomies that had also been central to Cold War discourse. These responses to “the War on Terror” demonstrated that poststructuralist theory still informs important work in Security Studies and that there are also crucial intersections between poststructuralism and other approaches in IR.

Frequent and fair elections, open to all, are fundamental elements of a democracy. The United States, through its local, state, and national contests, holds more elections, more often, than any other democracy in the world. But in recent years, there have been troubling signs that our system of campaigns and elections has become much more fragile than we had previously thought. More specifically, in the past twenty years, campaigns have changed profoundly: social media and viral messaging compete with traditional media, races once considered local in nature have become nationalized, Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance law now encourage mega-donors, voters are more polarized, party affiliation has waned, and the middle ideological ground has given way to extremist language and voter rage. Twice in sixteen years we have seen winning presidential candidates gaining fewer popular votes than their opponents. The fundamental right of every citizen to vote has been impeded by state legislatures demanding tighter access, more identification, and accusations of voter fraud. And we have faced the real threat of foreign influence in our national elections. This book offers the most up-to-date examination of campaigns and elections, including the challenges and opportunities they present. It addresses fundamental questions about who votes in American elections, how legislative districts are reapportioned and why it matters, the realities of voter fraud, the pros and cons of reforming the Electoral College, the impact of dark money on campaigns, and the role of political consultants and specialists, among other topics. Given the fragility of our election process, what are the threats to a healthy American democracy? Do the candidates with the most money always win? This is not simply a book on how campaigns are run, but why campaigns and elections are integral components of American democracy and how those fundamental elements may be vulnerable to misuse.

The International Conference on Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity in Sports (ICMPEDS) is organized by GESPORT with the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union from the 14th to the 16th of July 2021. The conference is an excellent forum for academics, researchers, practitioners, athletes, man- agers and professionals of federations, associations and sport organizations, and those other- wise involved in sport to share and exchange ideas in different areas of sport related equality worldwide. We will keep you informed by email and post the latest information on this matter on the GESPORT website and social media. Sport and its management continues to be a field where men and masculinity strongly prevail. This conference aims to investigate the complexities attached to the following questions: What does gender openness mean in the context of sport in the 21st century? What persists as gen- der closure in the same context? What are the gender cultures that signify sport continuing to be defined by regimes that resort to a dominant masculinity embodied in a strong and athletic male body? Moreover, and albeit some exceptions, athletes, practitioners, decision and policy makers, and sports spectators are predominantly men. In this sense, gender discrimination and segregation are present in multiple aspects of sport. Some illustrations include: a) male athletes have high salaries, more career opportunities, and get more recognition by society than female athletes; b) management and leadership positions in sports organizations are mainly occupied by men, including in sports traditionally considered as feminine and which have become feminised (e.g. gymnastics and dance); c) masculinised sports and its male athletes have much more attention and recognition from the media than female athletes; d) sports journalism continues to be predominantly produced and managed by men; e) some sports spectatorships cultures are marked by rituals and interactions that resort to masculine tribalism, often leading to aggressive and violent behaviours. Gender discrimination in sport is somehow socially normalised and accepted through a dis- course that essentialises the embodied sexual differences between genders. This gender dis- course legitimises the exclusion of women in some sports modalities and traps female bodies in sociocultural constructions as less able to exercise and engage in sport, or as the second and weaker version of the ideal masculine body. However, there are signs that the context of sport may be changing. The European Union and some national governments have made an effort to promote gender equality and diversity by fostering the adoption of gender equality codes/policies in different modalities and in in- ternational and local sports organizations. These new policies aim to increase female partic- ipation and recognition in sport, their access to leadership positions and involvement in the decision-making in sport structures. Additionally, the number of women practising non-com- petitive sport and as sports spectators have started growing, leading to new representations of sport and challenging the role of women in such a context. Finally, different body constructions and the emergence of alternative embodied femininities and masculinities are also challeng- ing how athletes of both genders experience their bodies and sports practice. Yet, research is scarce about the impact of these changes/challenges in the sports context. This conference will focus on mapping gender relations in sport and its management by taking into account the different modalities, contexts, institutional policies, organizational structures and actors (e.g. athletes, spectators, media professionals, sport decision makers and man- agers). It will treat sport and its management as one avenue where gender segregation and inequality occurs, but also adopt such as a space that presents an opportunity for change and does so as a widely applicable topic whose traits and culture are reflected in organizations and work more broadly. In this sense, the conference is interested in theoretical and empirical research work that may explore, but are not limited to the following issues: • Women representativeness in sports modalities and in sport organizational structures in different countries; • Women and management accounting in sport organizations; • The gender regimes that (re)produce different sports policies, modalities, and institu- tions in sport; • The stories of resistance/conformity of women that already occupy different roles in sport contexts; • The challenges and impact of conventional and new body representations in sports institutions and including athletes of both genders; • The discourses of masculinities in sport and its effect on women and men athletes; • The emergence of nationalism and populist discourses in political and governments states and their impact on the (re)shaping of masculinity and femininity constructions in sport; • The gendered transformations of the spectators’ gaze in what concerns different sports modalities; • The effects of new groups of sports spectators on gender relations in sport; • The discourses in media and its participation in the sports gender (in)equality; • The impact of new technologies, and new practices of training/coaching in the body- work and identities of athletes of both genders.