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Our health, our income and our social networks at older ages are the consequence of what has happened to us over the course of our lives. The situation at age 50+ reflects our own decisions as well as many environmental factors, especially interventions by the welfare state. This book explores the richness of 28,000 life histories in thirteen European countries, collected as part of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Combining these data with a comprehensive account of European welfare state interventions provides a unique opportunity to answer the important public policy questions of our time – how the welfare state affects people’s incomes, housing, families, retirement, volunteering and health. The overarching theme of the welfare state creates a book of genuinely interdisciplinary analyses, a valuable resource for economists, gerontologists, historians, political scientists, public health analysts, and sociologists alike.
While today's game engines and multi-agent platforms cross-fertilize each other to some extent, the technologies used in these areas are not readily compatible due to some differences in their primary concerns. Where game engines prioritize efficiency and central control, multi-agent platforms focus on agent autonomy and sophisticated communication capabilities. This volume gives an overview of the current state of the art for people wishing to combine agent technology with (serious) games. This state-of-the-art survey contains a collection of papers presented at AGS 2010; the Second International Workshop on Agents for Games and Simulations, held on May 10, 2010, in Toronto, as well as extended versions of papers from other workshops and from the AAMAS conference. The 14 papers are organized in three topical sections focusing on architectures combining agents and game engines, on the training aspects of the games, on social and organizational aspects of games and agents, respectively.
For too long Belgium remained an unexplored terrain by comparative political scientists. Belgium's politics were best known through the writings of Arend Lijphart, who considered it a model case of consociationalism. Over the past ten to fifteen years, the analysis of consociationalism has been complemented by a more detailed coverage of Belgium's spectacular transformation process from a unitary into a federal state, moving rapidly now to disintegration. Likewise, several peculiar aspects of Belgian politics, such as the record fragmentation of its party system, have been covered in edited volumes or international journals. However, given the complexity of the Belgian configuration of polit...
This is part of a ten volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. This work explores the business end of politics, where theory meets practice in the pursuit of public good.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, IVA 2011, held in Reykjavik, Island, in September 2011. The 18 revised full papers and 27 revised short papers presented together with 25 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 91 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on social and dramatic interaction; guides and relational agents; nonverbal behavior; adaptation and coordination; listening and feedback; frameworks and tools; cooperation and copresence; emotion; poster abstracts.
The main purpose of the book is the analysis of income inequality and poverty in a comparative context. The book contains articles on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia under transition. Western European countries which are under consideration are: Belgium, Catalonia, France, Germany (East and West), Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lorraine, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom. Objective as well as subjective approaches for measurement of poverty are used. The book gives references to public use files which could be used for own research of readers.
A foreword for the present workshop proceedings cannot be provided without first looking at the larger context of the AMI conference in which the workshops were organized. The AMI 2007 conference has roots in preceding events, but in many respects, AMI can be called a novel conference format and hence a premiere. Among the several aims that inspired and shaped this new conference format, the following two are particularly worth considering: (1) to provide a forum for the ambient intel- gence flavor of research on the Post-PC era of computer science, complementing the ubiquitous computing and pervasive computing flavors emphasized by alrea- existing conferences; (2) to offer an event that att...
This volume 39 presents new results on the dynamics of social assistance, minimum-income and related out-of-work benefits in a range of different country contexts.
Welcome to the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, held September 14–16, 2009 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are interactive characters that exhibit hum- like qualities and communicate with humans or with each other using natural human modalities such as speech and gesture. They are capable of real-time perception, cognition and action, allowing them to participate in a dynamic physical and social environment. IVA is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main forum for p- senting research on modeling, developing and evaluating IVAs with a focus on communicative abilities and social behavior. The developme...
Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681) was unequalled among his Dutch peers for capturing the elegance & grace of wealthy Dutch society in his portraiture. A major influence on Vermeer, ter Borch has not received the attention he deserves & this is the first major English language text about his work.