The devastating impacts of the recent global financial crisis underscore the need for both financial institutions and banking supervision to develop more appropriate credit risk models to ensure the stability of the financial system. This work contributes to quantitative credit portfolio risk modeling in three ways. First, it introduces a general credit portfolio modeling concept that comprises specific credit risk management models as special cases. Second, analytical techniques are presented for specifying asset correlations in a credit portfolio through systematic factors. Finally, a new...

Many foreign-born students show weak performances in Europe, educational hurdles for them seem virtually insurmountable. It is frequently claimed that the disadvantaged socio-economic situation of their families and lack of fluency in local languages are the main causes. What is frequently overlooked, though, is the role of teachers, schools, and educational systems in general. The latter effects are the main focus of this book which reviews theoretical and empirical work focused on educational inequalities and migration, and offers new insights following empirical investigation. With a major...

This book discusses the personal and social lives of e-actors interacting within the socio-technical structures of the evolving broadband society by exploring the different ways in which individuals, social groups, institutions, operators, manufactures, policy makers, designers and other parties contribute to human communication and social interaction in contemporary media societies. The volume covers four theoretical and empirical areas of research: the conceptual perspectives of e-actors, the emergence of new forms of agency, subjectivity, and mediated interpersonal communication, the...

The idea for this book arose from presentations delivered at two conferences in Tartu and in Tallinn in Estonia. These conferences brought together many professionals and researchers working in early education, many from Europe, and also Australia and the USA. This book, written by 37 authors, consists of chapters about the development of early childhood education, children s developing skills and the early childhood curriculum, and about the role of early childhood teachers. Further topics are the role of parents in early childhood education, and the work with children with special needs in...

This book contains selected contributions from the international workshop Learning, Adjustment and Stress Disorders with special reference to Tsunami affected Regions organised by Evelin Witruk and the team of Educational and Rehabilitative Psychology at the University of Leipzig in January 2006. The book contains new results and the state of the art in Psychology, Neuropsychology, Special Education, Rehabilitative Sport and Pharmacology of learning, adjustment and stress disorders. The book has an interdisciplinary character. It aims not only at bringing together different...

Current and future adversaries will likely simultaneously employ a combination of different types of warfare. Non-state actors may mostly employ irregular forms of warfare, but will also clearly support, encourage, and participate in conventional conflicts if it serves their ends to do so. Similarly, nation-states may well engage in irregular conflicts in addition to conventional types of warfare to achieve their goals. The emerging theaters of hybrid and cyber-warfare reflect this changing nature of contemporary warfare. They transcend national boundaries, social and economic classes, and...

This wide-ranging dictionary contains definitions for more than 5,000 words, phrases and sentences from every major dialect of Embosi language. It is a compilation of expressions and popular sayings likely to be used in a face-to-face communication, palavers or any other ceremonies. The entries in this dictionary reflect the increasing connection between Embosi-language dialects, because in addition to the equivalent meaning in English, indications to dialect synonyms are provided. The Embosi-English Dictionary is extraordinary useful for linguists, ethnologists, anthropologists, students,...

This collection of essays in American Studies investigates how American cultural production intersects with public memory. The contributions present the results of diverse fields of research. While most are literary analyses, others focus on film, art works, monuments, and other means by which public memory is shaped. The essays in this collection also analyze travel writings, records of political history, and the ways American agricultural landscape preserves traces of the country s past."

With this study the author -opened up a previously locked door of Beethoven research- (Martin Geck). The book presents conclusive answers to questions that had occupied critics for more than a century. It makes clear what exactly Beethoven and his contemporaries meant by the term -heroic-. It proves that the -heroic-allegorical ballet- The Creatures of Prometheus is a key work for an understanding of the Eroica, and shows that Beethoven associated the First Consul of the French Republic, Napoleon Bonaparte, with the mythical figure of the Titan Prometheus. The book draws on...

The alleged or the wrongly conceived teaching that it is God s will that human beings exploit nature for their proper ends has largely contributed to the present global environmental predicament. Environmentally speaking, Africa as a continent is today experiencing one epidemic after another. Poverty (material and mental), population pollution, sinful structures, economic disaster, drastic climatic changes, unequal distribution of land, ethnic conflicts, squalor and the degradation of ecosystems are among the most pressing issues undermining lasting sustainable development in Africa. This...