This Little Data Book on Information and Communications Technology 2015 presents tables for over 213 economies showing the most recent national data on key indicators of information and communications technology (ICT), including access, quality, affordability, efficiency,sustainability, and applications.

Since the late 1990s access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) has seen tremendous growth-driven primarily by the wireless technologies and liberalization of telecommunications markets. Mobile communications have evolved from simple voice and text services to diversified innovative applications and mobile broadband Internet. In 2016, there were more than 7.3 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions worldwide. Globally, 3.5 billion people were using the Internet, of which 2.5 billion were from developing countries. Mobile-broadband subscriptions have risen constantly to reach 3.6 billion, while the number of fixed-broadband subscriptions reached more than 884 million during the same period. The impacts of ICTs cross all sectors. Research has shown that investment in information and communication technoslogies is associated with sucheconomic benefits as higher productivity, lower costs, new economic opportunities, job creation, innovation, and increased trade. ICTS also help provide better services in health and education, and strengthen social cohesion. The Little Data Book on Information and Communication Technology 2017 Illustrates the progress of this revolution for 217 economies around the world. It provides comparable statistics on the sector for 2005 and 2015 across a range of indicators, enabling readers to readily compare economies. This book includes indicators covering the economic and social context, the structure of the information and communication technology sector, sector efficiency and capacity, and sector performance related to access, usage, quality, affordability, trade, and applications. The glossary contains definitions of the terms used in the tables.

The continuous development of new technologies has led to significant socio-economic advances in modern society. When applied in the medical sector, healthcare delivery techniques are optimized. Health Information Systems and the Advancement of Medical Practice in Developing Countries is a comprehensive reference source for the latest scholarly research on technology utilization for delivering reliable and accurate health information to patients and clinical staff. Highlighting pivotal perspectives on topics such as mobile health, telemedicine, and healthcare access, this book is ideally designed for professionals, practitioners, researchers, academics, and graduate students interested in the benefits and challenges of technology applications in healthcare systems.

Volume XIII includes scientific articles and reports from the 16th International Scientific Conference on the topic of „The science and digitalisation in help of business, education and tourism“, September 7th -8th , 2020, Varna, Bulgaria.

This collection of essays explores the intersection of religious, psychosocial, economic and cultural issues in relation to the dramatic demographic shifts we are facing on a global scale. Theologians, gerontologists, anthropologists and practitioners reflect on the meaning of aging in diverse contexts such as Indonesia, South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana, Germany, Mexico, and Switzerland. Assuming that aging is an intricate process that encompasses enrichment and loss, the gain of wisdom and the loss of memory, and the expansion as well as the constraint of agency, the essays analyze how these dynamics play out in different cultural contexts. Special attention is given to the role of religion in processes of aging. [Religion und Altwerden. Interkulturelle und interdisziplinäre Erkundungen] Der Sammelband untersucht das Zusammenspiel religiöser, psychosozialer, ökonomischer und kultureller Aspekte in Bezug auf die dramatischen demographischen Veränderungen, mit denen wir in globaler Perspektive konfrontiert sind. Wissenschaftler und Praktiker reflektieren aus theologischer, gerontologischer, sozialpsychologischer und anthropologischer Perspektive die Bedeutung von Alterungsprozessen in unterschiedlichen Kontexten, z. B. in Indonesien, Südafrika, Tansania, Botswana, Deutschland, Mexiko und der Schweiz. Ausgehend von Überlegungen, die zeigen, dass Alterungsprozesse komplex sind und sowohl Bereicherung und Verlust, den Zugewinn an Weisheit und den Verlust von Erinnerungsfähigkeit sowie die Ausweitung als auch die Einschränkung von Handlungsfähigkeit beinhalten können, wird danach gefragt, welche Gestalt diese Dynamiken in unterschiedlichen Kontexten annehmen. Dabei kommt insbesondere die Bedeutung von Religion in den Blick.

This edited volume brings together cutting-edge studies from emerging scholars of East/Southeast Asia who explore the role of mobile media in the contemporary transformation of the region’s social intimacies, from the romantic to the familial to the communal. By providing a regional and transnational overview of such studies, it affords new insights into how these mobile technologies have contributed to the rise of ‘glocal intimacies’. This pertains to the normalisation and intensification of how people’s relationships of closeness are entangled in the ever-shifting and constantly negotiated flows between global modernity and local everyday life. In providing case studies of mobile media and glocal intimacies, the chapters in the volume attend to a broad range of countries that include China, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and Taiwan. This illustrates the differing ways in which mobile media might be embedded in the region’s divergent articulations of social intimacies, which reflect the ongoing tensions between Western and Asian imaginaries of modernity. The chapters also discuss a wide array of mobile media that people use, from social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, to messaging apps like KakaoTalk and WhatsApp, to dating apps like Tinder and Blued. This allows for a mapping out of the different levels of impact that mobile media might have on social intimacies in a region that contains some of the most technologically advanced as well as the most technologically behind societies in the world. In summary, this book allows readers to take a comparative approach to understanding the complexity of the glocal intimacies that are emerging from the ways people in Asia use mobile media to reconfigure their local ties and to enact global relationships. This volume will benefit students, academics, and researchers who are keen in media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and Asian studies. “This exciting and much-needed book will greatly advance our efforts to decolonise media and communications research. The chapters offer empirically rich and nuanced accounts that challenge the dominant paradigms about mediated intimacy.” Mirca Madianou, Goldsmiths, University of London “This collection develops the original concept of ‘glocal intimacies’ to describe how mobile media have become a crucial site where new social intimacies are enacted, reinforced and transformed in Asia. It introduces fresh empirical research from emerging scholars to furnish deep theoretical insights into these imaginaries and practices.” Audrey Yue, National University of Singapore