By cutting across party and committee lines, legislative member organizations facilitate the flow of vital information

Legislative member organizations (LMOs)—such as caucuses in the U.S. Congress and intergroups in the European Parliament—exist in lawmaking bodies around the world. Unlike parties and committees, LMOs play no obvious, predefined role in the legislative process. They provide legislators with opportunities to establish social networks with colleagues who share common interests. In turn, such networks offer valuable opportunities for the efficient exchange of policy-relevant—and sometimes otherwise unattainable—information between legislative offices. Building on classic insights from the study of social networks, the authors provide a comparative overview of LMOs across advanced, liberal democracies. In two nuanced case studies of LMOs in the European Parliament and the U.S. Congress, the authors rely on a mix of social network analysis, sophisticated statistical methods, and careful qualitative analysis of a large number of in-depth interviews.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in all industrial countries have a great need for technical and scientific data and product and market information. SMEs also produce useful information of mutual benefit for themselves. A proper and healthy development of SMEs in developing, as well as in many industrialized countries in Europe and elsewhere will require a number of support services, among which the development of infrastructural information services is a key element. Rapid progress in information technologies has reduced the cost and increased the availability of powerful workstations, personal computers and new communication facilities. This has created new opportunities for using these and other appropriate technologies to conceive practical information services for SMEs. This book contains the proceedings of an international seminar on distri- buted database systems for SMEs held in Beijing, People's Republic of China, in May 1989. The seminar was organized as a joint undertaking of the Institute of Scientific and Technological Information of China (ISTIC), the United Nations Centre for Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) and the Commission of the European Communities (CEC). Recommendations cover operational concepts, methodology and technologies to be applied in the various stages of infrastructural evolution. Dr. Ganzhorn is a member of the United Nations Advisory Committee on Science and Technology for Development, a body composed of 28 personalities of repute with diverse backgrounds from all over the world. He is a former Director of Science and Technology of IBM Europe, an Honorary Professor at the University of Karlsruhe and a former President of the German Physical Society. Dr. Faustoferri is an Information Systems Officer of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). At the time of the Beijing seminar, he was an Associate Expert with the United Nations Centre for Science and Technology for Development (CSTD).

In the age of information, an essential priority in the context of international education is the development of language learning and its inconsistencies. The gap between language and education has intermittently grown through time, with mistaken assumptions about how linguistic shortcomings are being solved around the world. Research on comparative educational approaches to teaching verbiage and the foundation of future language development are instrumental in positively impacting the global narrative of dialectal education. International Approaches to Bridging the Language Gap is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of second language teaching as well as social developments regarding intercultural learning. While highlighting topics including curricular approaches, digital competence, and linguistic disparities, this book is ideally designed for language instructors, linguists, teachers, researchers, public administrators, cultural centers, policymakers, government officials, academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on the latest advancements of multilingual education.

This first-of-a-kind volume provides a snapshot of existing science communication policy and practice in India across different S&T sectors, and offers solutions to building effective communication. It provides an understanding on how to avoid societal clashes in situations when science meets the public in these sectors. The editors and contributors argue that effective S&T communication leads not only to a more informed public but also benefits research itself, and in a changing society like India this is a crucial element related to good governance and policy making. In this volume, experienced masters of the craft provide practical solutions to making S&T communication more effective in a vast democracy like India, which has complex issues related to literacy levels, diverse languages, varying political will, reach, and resources. Through, discussions on cases of creating information modules for the public on the Internet, television and radio, social media, as well a s traditional ways of outreach like people’s science movements, holding popular science events, and fairs, the volume provides highly valuable directions on how developing countries with low resources and complex populations can communicate S&T research to the public and bridge communication gaps. This volume will interest researchers from science, social science, mass communication and public relations departments, journalists, as well as practitioners and policy makers from government and non-government institutions involved in S&T policy, practice and communication and people who want to understand the complex S&T landscape of India.

The achievement gap between white students and African American and Hispanic students has been debated by scholars and lamented by policymakers since it was first documented in 1966. The average black or Hispanic secondary school student currently achieves at about the same level as the average white student in the lowest quartile of white achievement. Black and Hispanic students are much less likely than white students to graduate from high school, acquire a college or advanced degree, or earn a middle-class living. They are also much more likely than whites to suffer social problems that often accompany low income. While educators have gained an understanding of the causes and effects of the education achievement gap, they have been less successful in finding ways to eliminate it—until now. This book provides, for the first time in one place, evidence that the achievement gap can be bridged. A variety of schools and school reforms are boosting the achievement of black and Hispanic students to levels nearing those of whites. Bridging the Achievement Gap brings together the findings of renowned education scholars who show how various states, school districts, and individual schools have lifted the achievement levels of poor and minority students. The most promising strategies include focusing on core academic skills, reducing class size, enrolling students in more challenging courses, administering annual achievement assessment tests, creating schools with a culture of competition and success, and offering vouchers in big-city school districts. While implementing new educational programs on a large scale is fraught with difficulties, these successful reform efforts offer what could be the start of widespread effective solutions for bridging the achievement gap.

Presents the advances in decision support theory and practice with a focus on bridging the socio-technical gap. This book covers a wide range of topics including: Understanding DM, Design of DSS, Web 2.0 Systems in Decision Support, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, Applications of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, and more.