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This book explores the need for innovative approaches to administrative digitization, leveraging technologies such as AI, blockchain, and smart processes to meet citizens' expectations, with a particular focus on the role of Chief Digital Officers (CDOs) in driving successful digital transformations within public institutions. Administrative digitization requires fresh inputs to match the leaps seen in the industry sector, utilizing technologies like AI-driven automation, blockchain transactions, and security tools. Smart process solutions are seen as transformative in upholding service standards aligned with citizens' state expectations. Unlike commercial companies, collaboration offers those overseeing public sector digitization enhanced scaling opportunities by drawing from experiences in other regions and metropolises, directly applicable and reusable. In the public realm, digital strategies mirror legal and social conditions, necessitating adjustments and adaptation options for Chief Digital Officers as they lead digital transformation. Methodological focal points in task structure redesign, process optimization, and motivating actors yield diverse action areas for the CDO's new role in public institutions. This book explores the instruments, strategies, and attitudes necessary to successfully implement transformative initiatives in organizations, emphasizing proven concepts with practical applicability, enabling readers to derive their own interaction options as digital guidance leaders. The book is a concise introduction to the specific requirements for visionary designers driving dynamic changes in user-centric public services.

This book presents machine learning approaches to identify the most important predictors of crucial variables for dealing with the challenges of managing production units and designing agriculture policies. The book focuses on the agricultural sector in the European Union and considers statistical information from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN).Presently, statistical databases present a lot of information for many indicators and, in these contexts, one of the main tasks is to identify the most important predictors of certain indicators. In this way, the book presents approaches to identifying the most relevant variables that best support the design of adjusted farming policies and management plans. These subjects are currently important for students, public institutions and farmers. To achieve these objectives, the book considers the IBM SPSS Modeler procedures as well as the respective models suggested by this software.The book is read by students in production engineering, economics and agricultural studies, public bodies and managers in the farming sector.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the German Association for Pattern Recognition, DAGM-GCPR 2023, which took place in Heidelberg, Germany, during September 19-22, 2023. The 40 full papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 76 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Segmentation and action recognition; 3D reconstruction and neural rendering; Photogrammetry and remote sensing; Pattern recognition in the life sciences; Interpretable machine learning; Weak supervision and online learning; Robust models.

This volume is envisioned as a primary reference in research, studies and concepts on shame through the lens of gender and from transdisciplinary, cultural and transcultural perspectives. It sheds light on the state of the art regarding shame and its meaning in the context of gender from theoretical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives from the standpoint of positive psychology. Since the experience of shame, the expression of shame as well as the individual or collective handling of shame depends in a special way on cultural factors, special importance has been given in the chapters to the consideration of cultural framework conditions. This volume is founded on the editors' first three publications on shame from positive psychology perspectives and an upcoming work on shame and ageing.

The capacity of humans to destroy their environment is playing out like a Greek tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea. After having coexisted with a diversity of marine animals throughout their history, humans have broken the balance in recent decades, and the survival of countless marine creatures is now increasingly uncertain. However, unlike in classical tragedies, real-life entities are not necessarily doomed by their fate, and there must be hope to turn the tide in nature's favour. Lack of concrete conservation action might be simply due to a lack of awareness: how can we feel sad about a loss if we don't know what we are losing? "Sailing Across a Wounded Sea" is the story of an ideal journey around the Mediterranean to meet its non-human inhabitants, consisting of real episodes collected over half a century as the author observed real animals, exchanged views with a variety of contacts, and argued for such views in the policy arena. Encountering whales, dolphins, seals and rays in their habitat and on their terms will hopefully contribute to building up in readers a collective commitment to help secure a future for these species. A future where they are allowed to flourish as they were meant to - had humans never trod so heavily on the sea's delicate ecological balance and the interwoven natural processes. Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciara has been involved for a lifetime in protecting marine biodiversity in various capacities - as a scientist, civil servant, advocate and sailor. Having studied in California and worked with whales, dolphins and sharks worldwide, he returned to the Mediterranean in 1985, keen on using his acquired tools to discover more about the ancient sea's natural history. Here, he described small but vibrant populations of fin and sperm whales, along with various species of dolphins, manta rays and the monk seal. At the same time, seeing the Mediterranean's progressive degradation at the hands of humans, he felt a surge of rebellion against this squandering of natural values, and wished to raise awareness of the existence of these marine natural treasures and the risk of losing them.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of research and concepts related to shame and aging, in the context of social change, upheavals and paradigm shifts, from transdisciplinary, cultural and transcultural perspectives. Drawing upon the editors' previous works on the topic of shame, this volume discusses the contexts of shame and aging from theoretical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives. The toxic and stressful aspects of shame have been the focus of scientific analysis and discourse on shame and aging. This volume explicitly makes the dimensions of shame a resource for individuals, and collective transformation processes the object of research in the context of aging. It looks at emerging lifestyle, political, socio-economic and health contexts. It looks at how and why the frequency, intensity and handling of feelings of shame change over the course of life; the impact of shame on emotional well-being and mental health of older people; the impact of shame on social relationships and social engagement of older people in different cultures; the role of cultural values and norms in the development and processing of feelings of shame, especially in older people, and how these can be used for self-development; and the differences in the way older people in different cultures deal with feelings of shame and the way these can be used to develop effective strategies and techniques for older people to cope with shame. The editors and contributors thereby take cultural and gender aspects, as well as positive psychology and resource-orientated concepts, such as salutogenesis, resilience, happiness, fortitude, locus of control, faith- or strengths-based approaches into account and contextualize them against processes of social upheaval and transformation.

This volume discusses the adsorptive profiles of microplastic (MP) pollutants, covering their structural identity, sorption ability and degradation due to photolytic, hydrolytic, mechanical, and other environmental factors. In addition to the quantitation of (MPs) in the environment, the book unveils the deleterious effects on aquatic species and humans due to adsorbed inorganic/organic contaminants on the surface of MPs. The present book finds its uniqueness by presenting in-depth discussions on the interactions and mechanisms of microplastics with organic pollutants, microalgae, and human systems. The interactions and mechanisms between microplastics and microalgae are explored to understand the possible remediation pathways in microplastic contaminated water resources. Students and researchers in the fields of environmental science and engineering, biotechnology, aquaculture, marine technology, and water chemistry can benefit from this book. Furthermore, industries, NGOs and stakeholders dealing with wastewater, solid waste/environmental pollution will find this book useful.

This book celebrates and explores some philosophical issues raised by the work of Alan Weir, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Glasgow, having previously held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Queen's, Belfast. In a number of areas, Weir has elaborated strikingly original views which involve a radical departure from the mainstream. These include formalism in the philosophy of mathematics, and as well as naïve set theory, with a universal set, and a naïve theory of truth. In contrast to other contemporary defenders of the latter two theories, Weir rejects dialetheism and accepts classical rules for the logical connectives. He avoids contradictions by restricting certain structural inference rules, specifically some generalized versions of transitivity. In addition, Weir has developed radical versions of naturalism and physicalism (partly informed by his work on Quine) and perceptual realism. This collection includes contributions by a distinguished group of philosophers on Weir's philosophy, as well as a memoir and a new essay on the philosophy of mathematics by Weir himself.

This is an updated version of what is still the only text to address basic questions about how to model uncertainty in mathematical programming, including how to reformulate a deterministic model so that it can be analyzed in a stochastic setting. This second edition has important extensions regarding how to represent random phenomena in the models (also called scenario generation) as well as a new chapter on multi-stage models. This text would be suitable as a stand-alone or supplement for a second course in OR/MS or in optimization-oriented engineering disciplines where the instructor wants to explain where models come from and what the fundamental modeling issues are. The book is easy-to-read, highly illustrated with lots of examples and discussions. It will be suitable for graduate students and researchers working in operations research, mathematics, engineering and related departments where there is interest in learning how to model uncertainty. Alan King is a Research Staff Member at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York. Stein W. Wallace is a Professor of Operational Research and head of Center for Shipping and Logistics at NHH Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway.

The three-volume set LNICST 561, 562 563 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 19th EAI International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, CollaborateCom 2023, held in Corfu Island, Greece, during October 4-6, 2023. The 72 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 176 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Collaborative Computing, Edge Computing & Collaborative working, Blockchain applications, Code Search and Completion, Edge Computing Scheduling and Offloading.Volume II: Deep Learning and Application, Graph Computing, Security and Privacy Protection and Processing and Recognition.Volume III: Onsite Session Day2, Federated learning and application, Collaborative working, Edge Computing and Prediction, Optimization and Applications.

The three-volume set LNICST 561, 562 563 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 19th EAI International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, CollaborateCom 2023, held in Corfu Island, Greece, during October 4-6, 2023. The 72 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 176 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Collaborative Computing, Edge Computing & Collaborative working, Blockchain applications, Code Search and Completion, Edge Computing Scheduling and Offloading.Volume II: Deep Learning and Application, Graph Computing, Security and Privacy Protection and Processing and Recognition.Volume III: Onsite Session Day2, Federated learning and application, Collaborative working, Edge Computing and Prediction, Optimization and Applications.

The three-volume set LNICST 561, 562 563 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 19th EAI International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing, CollaborateCom 2023, held in Corfu Island, Greece, during October 4-6, 2023. The 72 full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 176 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Collaborative Computing, Edge Computing & Collaborative working, Blockchain applications, Code Search and Completion, Edge Computing Scheduling and Offloading.Volume II: Deep Learning and Application, Graph Computing, Security and Privacy Protection and Processing and Recognition.Volume III: Onsite Session Day2, Federated learning and application, Collaborative working, Edge Computing and Prediction, Optimization and Applications.

This volume comprises selected papers presented at the 14th International Conference on Scientific Computing in Electrical Engineering, SCEE 2022, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in July 2022. The aim of the SCEE 2022 conference was to bring together scientists - mathematicians, electrical engineers, computer scientists, and physicists, from universities and industry - to have in-depth discussions of the latest scientific results in Computational Science and Engineering relevant to Electrical Engineering and to stimulate and inspire active participation of young researchers.This extensive reference work is divided into four parts: Part I Circuit Simulation and Design.- Part II Device Simulation.- Part III Computational Electromagnetics.- Part IV Mathematical and Computational Methods. Each part starts with a general introduction, followed by the respective contributions. The book will appeal to mathematicians and electricalengineers. Further, it introduces algorithm and program developers to recent advances in the other fields, while industry experts will be introduced to new programming tools and mathematical methods.

This new edition builds upon the foundational knowledge covered in the first edition, covering the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and clinical presentation of atopic dermatitis in both pediatric and adult patients. It provides an overview of the mechanism and presentation of atopic dermatitis and focuses on the management methods experienced dermatologists have used to successfully manage atopic dermatitis. The book includes new chapters describing the special considerations for atopic dermatitis in skin of color patients, dedicated chapters on topical and oral prescription management reflected the latest FDA-approved treatments, and also a chapter covering the updated guidelines from the American Academy of Dermatology. A final chapter includes updates on the future of atopic dermatitis treatment.This book provides physicians with insights into the management of atopic dermatitis, such as alternative treatments for pruritus, psychosocial impact on patients and families,assessing patient compliance, and patient resources.

This book provides a comprehensive review on tensor algebra, including tensor products, tensor unfolding, tensor eigenvalues, and tensor decompositions. Tensors are multidimensional arrays generalized from vectors and matrices, which can capture higher-order interactions within multiway data. In addition, tensors have wide applications in many domains such as signal processing, machine learning, and data analysis, and the author explores the role of tensors/tensor algebra in tensor-based dynamical systems where system evolutions are captured through various tensor products. The author provides an overview of existing literature on the topic and aims to inspire readers to learn, develop, and apply the framework of tensor-based dynamical systems.

This book explores the dynamics of how AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology intersects with cybersecurity challenges and threat intelligence as they evolve. Integrating AI into cybersecurity not only offers enhanced defense mechanisms, but this book introduces a paradigm shift illustrating how one conceptualize, detect and mitigate cyber threats. An in-depth exploration of AI-driven solutions is presented, including machine learning algorithms, data science modeling, generative AI modeling, threat intelligence frameworks and Explainable AI (XAI) models. As a roadmap or comprehensive guide to leveraging AI/XAI to defend digital ecosystems against evolving cyber threats, this book provides insights, modeling, real-world applications and research issues. Throughout this journey, the authors discover innovation, challenges, and opportunities. It provides a holistic perspective on the transformative role of AI in securing the digital world.Overall, the useof AI can transform the way one detects, responds and defends against threats, by enabling proactive threat detection, rapid response and adaptive defense mechanisms. AI-driven cybersecurity systems excel at analyzing vast datasets rapidly, identifying patterns that indicate malicious activities, detecting threats in real time as well as conducting predictive analytics for proactive solution. Moreover, AI enhances the ability to detect anomalies, predict potential threats, and respond swiftly, preventing risks from escalated. As cyber threats become increasingly diverse and relentless, incorporating AI/XAI into cybersecurity is not just a choice, but a necessity for improving resilience and staying ahead of ever-changing threats. This book targets advanced-level students in computer science as a secondary textbook. Researchers and industry professionals working in various areas, such as Cyber AI, Explainable and Responsible AI, Human-AI Collaboration, Automation and Intelligent Systems, Adaptive and Robust Security Systems, Cybersecurity Data Science and Data-Driven Decision Making will also find this book useful as reference book.

This book explores various technical domains, including industrial engineering, computer sciences, process engineering, and system engineering, seamlessly integrated with management theories. It explores how this fusion of knowledge can drive improvements, transformations, and the design of new processes, products, or organizational structures, ultimately generating significant value for both society and the market. The book introduces the concept of management engineering and delves into its implementation process, including the development of new methodologies or frameworks designed to solve complex problems effectively. It provides a comprehensive perspective on the evolution of management engineering, presenting the most relevant strategies for assimilating this approach to generate value, especially in the context of emerging economies.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of human echinococcosis, a zoonotic disease caused by tapeworm parasites of the genus Echinococcus. Both cystic- (hydatid disease) and alveolar echinococcosis are included, covering the most important disease forms of medical and public health relevance. Presented findings focus China and Europe and are at the same time of global significance for clinical management and control programs under the One Health approach.Echinococcosis is a relevant neglected tropical disease (NTD) and targeted for elimination by the WHO as a public health problem. The present book aids the critical actions for understanding the disease and its surveillance. In addition to fundamental information on tapeworm epidemiology, biology and immunopathogenesis, the chapters spotlight details on ultrasound diagnosis and staging, CT and MRI imaging. Moreover, molecular diagnostic tools, novel chemotherapeutics, and current vaccine research are discussed.The book is a valuable resource for human and veterinary medicine considering the Sustainable Development Goals research (SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being). Scientists, students, and medical professionals will find significant content on animal reservoirs, parasite transmission, prevention and treatment options.

This is the second edition of the first ever research monograph that explores the exciting field of augmented reality games and their enabling technologies. The new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with 6 new chapters included. As well as investigating augmented reality games in education, the book covers the gamification of medicine, healthcare, and art. It has been written by a team of 43 researchers, practitioners, and artists from 12 countries, pioneering in developing and researching the new type of computer games.This book deals with a systematic analysis of educational augmented reality games, the gamification of elementary and secondary education, teachers' novel key skills and new teaching methods in the classroom, creating immersive and playful reading experiences, augmented reality games for health promotion in old age and for transforming dental and physical education and practice, the gamification of augmented reality art, pervasive games, and gaming in public spaces, among other topics.Intended as a starting point for exploring this new fascinating area of research and game development, it will be essential reading not only for researchers, practitioners, game developers, and artists, but also for students (graduates and undergraduates) and all those interested in the rapidly developing area of augmented reality games.

This book collects together selected peer-reviewed contributions presented at the European Conference on Data Analysis, ECDA 2022, held in Naples, Italy, September 14-16, 2022. Highlighting the role of statistics in discovering novel and interesting patterns in the era of big data, it follows the motto of the conference: "Avoiding drowning in the data: recent trends and future challenges in learning from data". The central focus is on multidisciplinary approaches to data analysis, classification, and the interface between computer science, data mining and statistics. Both methodological and applied topics are covered. The former includes supervised and unsupervised techniques with particular emphasis on advances in regression and clustering analysis and constructing composite indicators. The applications are mainly in risk analysis, biology, and education. The volume is organized into four main macro themes: methodological contributions in the social sciences and education, multivariate analysis methods for big data, innovative contributions for applications inspired by biology, and strategies for analyzing complex data in finance.

This book explains and discusses in simple language the structure and function of botulinum toxin and other neurotoxins as well as the rational for its utility in different disease conditions. Safety, factors affecting efficacy and duration of action, as well as cost and insurance issues are also addressed. Updates to the new edition include information on new indications, new approvals by FDA, new positive information on childhood indications, as well as data on long-term use of botulinum toxins therapy in several medical ailments (particularly migraine) that demonstrate its safety when applied properly and according to the published guidelines, are all included. In addition, two new chapters cover botulinum toxin therapy in dentistry and in veterinary medicine.

This open access comprehensive methodological book offers a much-needed answer to the lack of resources and methodological guidance in learning analytics, which has been a problem ever since the field started. The book covers all important quantitative topics in education at large as well as the latest in learning analytics and education data mining. The book also goes deeper into advanced methods that are at the forefront of novel methodological innovations. Authors of the book include world-renowned learning analytics researchers, R package developers, and methodological experts from diverse fields offering an unprecedented interdisciplinary reference on novel topics that is hard to find elsewhere.The book starts with the basics of R as a programming language, the basics of data cleaning, data manipulation, statistics, and analytics. In doing so, the book is suitable for newcomers as they can find an easy entry to the field, as well as being comprehensive of all the major methodologies. For every method, the corresponding chapter starts with the basics, explains the main concepts, and reviews examples from the literature. Every chapter has a detailed explanation of the essential techniques and basic functions combined with code and a full tutorial of the analysis with open-access real-life data. A total of 22 chapters are included in the book covering a wide range of methods such as predictive learning analytics, network analysis, temporal networks, epistemic networks, sequence analysis, process mining, factor analysis, structural topic modeling, clustering, longitudinal analysis, and Markov models. What is really unique about the book is that researchers can perform the most advanced analysis with the included code using the step-by-step tutorial and the included data without the need for any extra resources.This is an open access book.

This monograph provides a comprehensive treatment of the classification of small fusion systems, that is, fusion systems with few essential subgroups. It demonstrates a broad range of techniques from local group theory and fusion systems, several of which can be applied in more general settings. Addressing research problems that have not been treated in the past, it is the first text to explicitly use the amalgam method in this context. Fusion systems offer an enticing way to unify various p-local methods employed in group theory, representation theory and homotopy theory; but as abstract constructions they are still somewhat mysterious. This book paves the way to a broad and systematic study of these categories by applying the amalgam method, thus modernizing a methodology widely used to understand the local structure of finite groups. With this comes an introduction to several vital techniques in local group theory, a generous survey of the structure and modular representation theory of some important families of finite groups, and a demonstration of the value of combinatorial methods in finite group theory and fusion systems. Primarily aimed at researchers active in fusion systems and group amalgams, the book will also be of interest to anyone working with finite groups and their modular representations, group actions on trees, or classifying spaces. The inclusion of preliminary chapters outlining the theoretical prerequisites make it ideal for a short lecture course or as a reading group text for early career researchers and graduate students.

This book offers a systematic introduction to the Hopf algebra of renormalization in quantum field theory, with a special focus on physical motivation, the role of Dyson-Schwinger equations, and the renormalization group. All necessary physical and mathematical constructions are reviewed and motivated in a self-contained introduction. The main part of the book concerns the interplay between Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs) and renormalization conditions. The book is explicit and consistent about whether a statement is true in general or only in particular renormalization schemes or approximations and about the dependence of quantities on regularization parameters or coupling constants. With over 600 references, the original literature is cited whenever possible and the book contains numerous references to other works discussing further details, generalizations, or alternative approaches. There are explicit examples and remarks to make the connection from the scalar fields at hand toQED and QCD. The book is primarily targeted at the mathematically oriented physicist who seeks a systematic conceptual overview of renormalization, Hopf algebra, and DSEs. These may be graduate students entering the field as well as practitioners seeking a self-contained account of the Hopf algebra construction. Conversely, the book also benefits the mathematician who is interested in the physical background of the exciting interplay between Hopf algebra, combinatorics and physics that is renormalization theory today.

This book presents the 20th edition of the Inter-Academia Conference which aims to be a valuable resource for academic institutions in search for novel approaches for a global education, for industry partners exploring new fundamental research ideas, for government bodies seeking international projects that promote sustainable growth, and most certainly for the global scientific community, more and more invested in the multi-disciplinarity of modern research. Interdisciplinary research collaboration is crucial for solving many pressing issues and challenges facing society today. Bringing together researchers and educators from different disciplines allows a more holistic understanding of complex problems, providing also the opportunity for new learning and for collaboration on complex projects. Beyond its scientific merits and value, Inter-Academia also promotes a culture of intellectual diversity, innovative thinking, and global perspective that can foster breakthrough discoveries, unexpected advancements in research, and, last but not least, a sense of belonging to a global community. Being established in 2002, the Inter-Academia Community currently gathers researchers from 14 leading Universities in Eastern and Central Europe, together with Shizuoka University, in Japan. As such, the Inter-Academia Community serves as a strong bond across continents, allowing the development of a number of global projects for student and researcher mobility, with a significant impact on the broader scientific community. The peer-reviewed papers included in this book hopefully stimulate further interactions and collaborations covering both fundamental and applied research, with benefits for the global society.

This book provides higher education students with a comprehensive resource to assist them in their academic persistence in an online course or program. It addresses a wide selection of topics emphasizing a myriad of factors that impact a student's persistence, and ultimate success, in an online program or course. The book helps students to gain insight into the skills, knowledge, and attributes needed to succeed in the autonomous nature of an online learning environment. Thus, this book helps students to proactively engage in activities to prepare for online learning. Information presented in each chapter is drawn from theory and recent research centered on persistence of online students in higher education. It incorporates hands-on practical activities to promote application of theory and research, and encourages students to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities through the use of reflective and thought-provoking activities. Hence, this book provides online students with an up-to-date resource they can use to develop an awareness of their readiness and preparedness for online learning. Additionally, this book equips students with information and strategies aimed at helping them to address gaps in their skills and knowledge that may present them with barriers to academic success. The content of this book is aligned with widely used student learning outcomes and objectives of first-year student seminar courses and orientation programs for graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in online programs. Furthermore, it is deliberately organized and structured to support an online student's academic journey as they navigate the online learning environment. As such, these features make it an ideal book for use by students, instructors, and academic advisors or college and university academic support staff.

This volume elucidates international biographical and narrative perspectives on how COVID-19 influenced people¿s daily lives across different countries and contexts. It draws together global interdisciplinary scholarly contributions and conceptualizes the lived life as a complex, multilayered and multidimensional phenomenon that is constantly unfolding both in and across time. Significantly, this volume focuses on seldom-heard groups including persons diagnosed with HIV, COVID-19 dissenters, prisoners, essential workers, waste pickers, refugees and migrants. The chapters focus on the pandemic's multifarious impacts on people¿s lived realities in personal and professional domains, exploring the complexity of people¿s relationships with family, friends, interactions with colleagues and students and the centrality of emotions, to everyday human experiences, including grief, loss and loneliness as well as moments of joy and processes of personal renewal. This volume explores innovative questions, issues and challenges on the development and utilization of rich, biographical narrative methodologies during COVID-19, addressing important issues like power and voice, and pragmatic questions of how to do biographic research whilst socially distant. Contributions to this work illuminate the multidimensionality of human experiences, adaptability to adverse circumstances and the complexity of working through unanticipated global events whilst reimagining novel social futures.

Entrepreneurship depends on the decisions that people make about how to undertake that process; however, in recent years, entrepreneurship research has focused largely on the environmental characteristics influencing firm founding and the characteristics of entrepreneurial opportunities, ignoring the role of human agency. This book, therefore, focuses on how human motivations influence the entrepreneurial process. It argues that the attributes of people making decisions about the entrepreneurial process influence the decisions that they make. The book particularly investigates whether entrepreneurial role models, social valuation of entrepreneurship, perceived knowledge of entrepreneurial support and barriers to starting a business, entrepreneurial intention, and its determinants are related to entrepreneurial motivation.Featuring case studies that analyze the motivations that researchers have suggested should influence the entrepreneurial process, this book is beneficial to students, scholars, and practitioners in entrepreneurship.

This book explores modern European religious and non-religious rituals and their main features by focusing on music as a key element required for the full expression of beliefs. It specifically examines the relationship between religious, non-religious, pagan, cultural, celebratory, and traditional rituals. In doing so, this text focuses on the extent to which the rituals overlap, replace, or feed religious or pseudo-religious beliefs to create alternative beliefs (individual or collective) that systematically ignore any religion. The book further analyses the relationship between daily habits, holidays, sports, politics, culture, and other pagan rituals as forms that represent social feelings by identifying, enjoying, or impersonating emotions; and transversally, it explores how music facilitates and fosters those emotions. The volume also investigates how rituals coexist and mutually influence each other through a representation of religious and non-religious rituals, and how music plays a central role in that phenomenology. The author argues that music is a key part of various types of rituals (e.g. rites of passage), and that music supports and enriches the meaning of the ritual, to ultimately strengthen the bond of communication with the individual and the group. This monograph appeals to students and researchers working in religious studies and in music theory.