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Elsevier

Books in Social sciences

The Social Sciences collection forms a definitive resource for those entering, researching, or teaching in any of the many disciplines making up this interdisciplinary area of study. Written by experts and researchers from both Academic and Commercial domains, titles offer global scope and perspectives.

Key subject areas include: Library and Information Science; Transportation; Urban Studies; Geography, Planning, and Development; Security; Emergency Management.

  • Integrative Approaches for Health

    Biomedical Research, Ayurveda and Yoga
    • 1st Edition
    • Bhushan Patwardhan + 2 more
    • English
    Despite spectacular advances, modern medicine faces formidable global challenges in several key areas—notably the persistence of major killer diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, and newer threats including HIV/AIDS, resistant infections, and Ebola. As such, modern medicine has not led to a significant decrease in chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and other degenerative and autoimmune diseases. The authors believe that modern medicine needs to experience a paradigm shift, an integration of traditions—in particular from the ancient systems like Ayurveda and Yoga. Integrative Approaches for Health: Biomedical Research, Ayurveda and Yoga brings together the basic principles of interdisciplinary systems approach for an evolving construct of future medicine. Such an approach is already emerging at the cutting edge of current research in omics, bioinformatics, computational and systems biology. Several leading institutions of medicine have adopted Yoga and complementary medicine to widen their reach, and deepen effectiveness in therapeutic practices. The amalgam of modern medicine, with its strengths in scientific rigor, blended with the basic principles of life drawn from Ayurveda and Yoga might evolve into a medicine of tomorrow. Integrative approaches are no longer alternative, perhaps taking these approaches is the only possible way to heal our sick planet. This book introduces important trends and tools for biomedical researchers and physicians alike, to innovate the practice of medicine for the better.

  • Corporate Security Management

    Challenges, Risks, and Strategies
    • 1st Edition
    • Marko Cabric
    • English
    Corporate Security Management provides practical advice on efficiently and effectively protecting an organization's processes, tangible and intangible assets, and people. The book merges business and security perspectives to help transform this often conflicted relationship into a successful and sustainable partnership. It combines security doctrine, business priorities, and best practices to uniquely answer the Who, What, Where, Why, When and How of corporate security. Corporate Security Management explores the diverse structures of security organizations in different industries. It shows the crucial corporate security competencies needed and demonstrates how they blend with the competencies of the entire organization. This book shows how to identify, understand, evaluate and anticipate the specific risks that threaten enterprises and how to design successful protection strategies against them. It guides readers in developing a systematic approach to assessing, analyzing, planning, quantifying, administrating, and measuring the security function.

  • The Transformation of Academic Health Centers

    Meeting the Challenges of Healthcare’s Changing Landscape
    • 1st Edition
    • Steven Wartman
    • English
    The Transformation of Academic Health Centers: The Institutional Challenge to Improve Health and Well-Being in Healthcare’s Changing Landscape presents the direct knowledge and vision of accomplished academic leaders whose unique positions as managers of some of the most complex academic and business enterprises make them expert contributors. Users will find invaluable insights and leadership perspectives on healthcare, health professions education, and bio-medical and clinical research that systematically explores the evolving role of global academic health centers with an eye focused on the transformation necessary to be successful in challenging environments. The book is divided into five sections moving from the broad perspective of the role of academic health centers to the role of education, training, and disruptive technologies. It then addresses the discovery processes, improving funding models, and research efficiency. Subsequent sections address the coming changes in healthcare delivery and future perspectives, providing a complete picture of the needs of the growing and influential healthcare sector.

  • Measuring and Communicating Security's Value

    A Compendium of Metrics for Enterprise Protection
    • 1st Edition
    • George Campbell
    • English
    In corporate security today, while the topic of information technology (IT) security metrics has been extensively covered, there are too few knowledgeable contributions to the significantly larger field of global enterprise protection. Measuring and Communicating Security’s Value addresses this dearth of information by offering a collection of lessons learned and proven approaches to enterprise security management. Authored by George Campbell, emeritus faculty of the Security Executive Council and former chief security officer of Fidelity Investments, this book can be used in conjunction with Measures and Metrics in Corporate Security, the foundational text for security metrics. This book builds on that foundation and covers the why, what, and how of a security metrics program, risk reporting, insider risk, building influence, business alignment, and much more.

  • Digital Identity Management

    • 1st Edition
    • Maryline Laurent + 1 more
    • English
    In the past four decades, information technology has altered chains of value production, distribution, and information access at a significant rate. These changes, although they have shaken up numerous economic models, have so far not radically challenged the bases of our society.This book addresses our current progress and viewpoints on digital identity management in different fields (social networks, cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), with input from experts in computer science, law, economics and sociology. Within this multidisciplinary and scientific context, having crossed analysis on the digital ID issue, it describes the different technical and legal approaches to protect digital identities with a focus on authentication systems, identity federation techniques and privacy preservation solutions. The limitations of these solutions and research issues in this field are also discussed to further understand the changes that are taking place.

  • Information Cosmopolitics

    An Actor-Network Theory Approach to Information Practices
    • 1st Edition
    • Edin Tabak
    • English
    Information Cosmopolitics explores interaction between nationalist and information sharing practices in academic communities with a view to understanding the potential impacts of these interactions. This book is also a resounding critique of existing theories and methods as well as the launching point for the proposition of an alternate approach. Dominant approaches in the Information Behaviour (IB) field are investigated, as well as questions existing theoretical approaches to nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The concept of information cosmopolitics is introduced as an approach for tracing information practices and enabling research participants to perform their own narratives and positionings, and that the focus of information studies should be on tracing the continuous circulation of processes of individualisation and collectivization.

  • Business Espionage

    Risks, Threats, and Countermeasures
    • 1st Edition
    • Bruce Wimmer CPP
    • English
    Business Espionage: Risk, Threats, and Countermeasures provides the best practices needed to protect a company's most sensitive information. It takes a proactive approach, explaining the measures and countermeasures that can be enacted to identify both threats and weaknesses. The text fully explains the threat landscape, showing not only how spies operate, but how they can be detected. Drawn from the author’s 40 years of experience, this vital resource will give readers a true understanding of the threat of business spying and what businesses can do to protect themselves. It is ideal for use as a tool to educate staff on the seriousness of the threat of business espionage.

  • Introduction to Social Media Investigation

    A Hands-on Approach
    • 1st Edition
    • Jennifer Golbeck
    • English
    If you’re interested in using social media as an investigative tool, Introduction to Social Media Investigation will show you how! Social networks and social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, are some of the most popular services on the Web, with hundreds of millions of users. The public information that people share on these sites can be valuable for anyone interested in investigating people of interest through open, public sources. Social media as an investigative device is in its infancy and not well understood. This book presents an overview of social media and discusses special skills and techniques to use when conducting investigations. The book features hands-on tutorials and case studies and offers additional data-gathering techniques.

  • Information Science as an Interscience

    Rethinking Science, Method and Practice
    • 1st Edition
    • Fanie de Beer
    • English
    Science is first and foremost an intellectual activity, an activity of thought. Therefore, how do we, as information scientists, respond intellectually to what is happening in the world of information and knowledge development, given the context of new sociocultural and knowledge landscapes? Information Science as an Interscience poses many challenges both to information science, philosophy and to information practice, and only when information science is understood as an interscience that operates in a multifaceted way, will it be able to comply with these challenges. In the fulfilment of this task it needs to be accompanied by a philosophical approach that will take it beyond the merely critical and linear approach to scientific work. For this reason a critical philosophical approach is proposed that will be characterised by multiple styles of thinking and organised by a compositional inspiration. This initiative is carried by the conviction that information science will hereby be enabled to make contributions to significant knowledge inventions that may bring about a better world. Chapters focus on the rethinking of human thinking, our unique ability that enables us to cope with the world in which we live, in terms of the unique science with which we are involved. Subsequent chapters explore different approaches to the establishment of a new scientific spirit, the demands these developments pose for human thinking, for questions of method and the implications for information science regarding its proposed functioning as a nomad science in the context of information practice and information work. Final chapters highlight the proposed responsibility of focusing on information and inventiveness and new styles of information and knowledge work.

  • Evolutionary Criminology

    Towards a Comprehensive Explanation of Crime
    • 1st Edition
    • Russil Durrant + 1 more
    • English
    In our attempts to understand crime, researchers typically focus on proximate factors such as the psychology of offenders, their developmental history, and the social structure in which they are embedded. While these factors are important, they don't tell the whole story. Evolutionary Criminology: Towards a Comprehensive Explanation of Crime explores how evolutionary biology adds to our understanding of why crime is committed, by whom, and our response to norm violations. This understanding is important both for a better understanding of what precipitates crime and to guide approaches for effectively managing criminal behavior. This book is divided into three parts. Part I reviews evolutionary biology concepts important for understanding human behavior, including crime. Part II focuses on theoretical approaches to explaining crime, including the evolution of cooperation, and the evolutionary history and function of violent crime, drug use, property offending, and white collar crime. The developmental origins of criminal behavior are described to account for the increase in offending during adolescence and early adulthood as well as to explain why some offenders are more likely to desist than others. Proximal causes of crime are examined, as well as cultural and structural processes influencing crime. Part III considers human motivation to punish norm violators and what this means for the development of a criminal justice system. This section also considers how an evolutionary approach contributes to our understanding of crime prevention and reduction. The section closes with an evolutionary approach to understanding offender rehabilitation and reintegration.

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