This text summarizes the research on, and experiences of, democratic legislatures around the world. It focuses on what legislatures are and what they do - as both consequence of and contributor to democratic self-government.

This book presents data mining methods in the field of healthcare management in a practical way. Healthcare quality and disease prevention are essential in today’s world. Healthcare management faces a number of challenges, e.g. reducing patient growth through disease prevention, stopping or slowing disease progression, and reducing healthcare costs while improving quality of care. The book provides an overview of current healthcare management problems and highlights how analytics and knowl...

What role have parliaments played in the dramatic changes occurring in Eastern and Central Europe? Adopting a common research framework, the contributors analyse in detail the role and operations of parliaments in ten of the new democracies. They focus on what determines their capacity to have some impact on public policy. They identify the significance of parliaments operating in often hybrid systems of government, with the relationship between the executive and legislature not well defin...

At the end of the "founding" or initial decade, the new parliaments of post-Communist Europe had developed two distinct types: democratic and presidentially-dominated. Whilst in the early years, they had been characterised as "parliaments in adolescence," they have - through the second decade - continued to improvise but also elaborate their working relationships with both their chief executives and electorates.This book examines these adaptations in seven parliaments, comparing bo...

The sudden collapse of communism stimulated both the rapid emergence of fledgling democracies and scholarly attention to the post-communist transition. These newly democratized parliaments have been described as "parliaments in adolescence".This book identifies six parliaments which exemplify the wide range of developments in the new post-communist political systems, from the stable consolidated democracies to the less stable and more authoritarian states, within which their respec...

Supply chain operations face many risks, including political, environmental, and economic. The past five years have seen major challenges, from pandemic, impacts of global warming, wars, and tariff impositions. In this rapidly changing world, risks appear in every aspect of operations. This book presents data mining and analytics tools with R programming as well as a brief presentation of Monte Carlo simulation that can be used to anticipate and manage these risks. RStudio software and R p...

Convergenomics is about the megatrends that are shaping how people behave and organizations work. In this insightful analysis, Sang Lee and David Olson describe how globalization, digitization, changing demographics, changing industry mix, deregulation and privatization, commoditization of processes, new value chains, emerging new economies, deteriorating environment, and cultural conflicts have led to what they define as a convergence revolution. Lee and Olson discuss this convergence rev...

Since the 1970s, the corrections system has experienced exponential growth. Over the past four decades, the number of inmates held in US prisons and jails has quadrupled. This massive growth is associated with a number of different issues and challenges within prisons and jails, including overcrowding; gang activity and misconduct; a shift away from rehabilitation and programming; expanded use of solitary confinement; inmates’ human rights; criticisms of health care; and massive, publicly ...

In this absorbing new collection, Short and Hughes and their distinguished coauthors investigate why and how we study youth gangs. Over the last half-century of research by criminologists, sociologists, and gang experts, investigations of gang behavior have become increasingly specialized and isolated from studies of delinquency and deviance. The authors challenge popular and inaccurate definitions of gangs vs. non-gang youth groups, and show how the amazing diversity of gangs_both domesti...

A book and online profile that identifies a couple's strengths to help them build a more vital relationship.Based on an unprecedented national survey of 50,000 marriages, The Couple Checkup presents the principles for creating a successful couple relationship. The free online profile includes fifteen to twenty categories that are customized based on the relationship stage-whether dating, engaged, or married-the age, and whether or not children are involved...

This functional new volume introduces professionals to the Circumplex Model of Family Systems--one of the most respected and widely used approaches of its kind in family studies. Internationally known scholar/practitioners in the marriage and family therapy field demonstrate how the model can be used to assess couple and family dynamics and plan treatment interventions. They extend the use of the Circumplex Model for treating problem families using a range of clinical interventions at both...

Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book.In this revolutionary book, it is a comprehensive book designed to help unravel the risk factors and present the latest studies for Alzheimer's, and proven strategies to improve cognition and slow progression in those who have already been diagnosed. David Olson identifies the risk factors that anyone can control, and shatters the myth that Alzheimer’s is caused just by genes.