1 Europe in the twenty-first century Europe is changing, but so is the way in which it is governed. The beginning of the twenty-first century sees a new Europe emerging that is in many ways different from that which previously existed. Europe is less divided than it has been for most of its history, and certainly less than it was for the war-torn first half of the twentieth century or most of the ideologically divided decades of the second half. It is incomparably richer than at any other stage of its development, and seems to e
Learning outcomes After studying this unit you will be able to: appreciate the historical development of ‘Europe’ as a political and economic entity; understand the rationale for the emergence of the idea of ‘Europe’ in policy making; see the difficulty in defining what Europe is and its limits; understand the contested nature of the idea of Europe; understand that ‘Europe’ is not coterminous with the European Union;
5.3.2 Productivity difference The preceding discussion has only considered what would happen if all women undertake less investment in human capital than men. If men and women invest to the same extent, human capital theory suggests that no wage differences would be observed. What happens, however, if there are differences in skill levels both between genders and within gender groups? To consider this we will also make the additional assumption that firms do not know when recruiting workers who are the most productive. Ho
3.3 Other disadvantaged groups Information on other disadvantaged groups, such as older workers or people with disabilities, is even harder to come by. The problems faced by older workers in the labour market have become an increasing cause for concern in recent years. The nature of the disadvantage faced by older workers is, however, much harder to uncover and the evidence is often anecdotal. One trend that has become evident during the past three decades is the difficulty older workers have in obtaining any work and, in
3.2 Ethnicity and disadvantage Detailed information on other disadvantaged groups in the UK is more limited. Recent studies of the labour market disadvantage faced by Britain's ethnic minorities indicate not only that they fare badly relative to white employees, but also that their relative position deteriorated throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. According to the General Household Survey, non-white employees in the UK earned 7.3 per cent less, on average, than white employees over the period 1973–9: this deteri
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6.1 Legitimating the powerful The labelling perspective associated with Berger and Luckmann focuses on the processes by which some behaviours and types of people become marked out for social disapproval – targeted by the wider society as different and requiring some form of social response. Its virtue is that it challenges conventional assumptions that social problems exist ‘out there’ as obvious and commonly understood facts. Berger and Luckmann's perspective stresses the importance of language in shaping how we de
4.1 Natural/social In the previous section we looked at the issue of competing explanations of social problems. Here we want to take a rather different approach by starting from one of the major dividing lines between different types of explanation. These dividing lines are ones that recur in the definition, interpretation and explanation of a range of social issues: for example, patterns of inequality between men and women; crime and juvenile delinquency; the persistence of poverty, and so on. Despite the fact
3.1 Competing explanations of social problems If we can agree that poverty is a social problem, we are led to another question: what sort of social problem is it? For some, it is a social problem because people should not be poor: it involves social injustice. For others, poverty is a social problem because poor people behave badly (or bring up children poorly): it involves social disorder. We therefore have another parting of the ways, with some believing that social justice requires poor people to become less poor, and others believing
Objectives for Section 3
After studying this section you should be able to do the following.
Recognise and use the terminology: disjoint union; power set (of a set); representation (of a data abstraction). Use and interpret the notation: Â
X
2.3 Truth values We will want to distinguish between statements that are true and statements that are false. Another fundamental form of data allows us to do this. This form of data consists of just two values, which we shall write as true and false. Not all texts use the same notation: some use T and F; others may use 0 for false and 1 for true (or the reverse!). We may refer to true and false as truth values, or Boolean values
6.5.1 Virtual worlds Are you bored with your surroundings? Do you sometimes wish you were someone else? Help may be at hand. All the digital models we have looked at so far are based on our own world. But we needn't be limited by this. Why not create completely new worlds inside the computer and live in them whenever we wish? It has already been done.
6.1 Kings of infinite space? I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. (Shakespeare, Hamlet) This section draws together the themes of the previous sections by: discussing how the digital world can be manipulated; explaining how this process has significant implications for science, politics
5.5.5 Summary In this section I've briefly considered the very contentious question of what digital representations mean, but this debate must be left to another course. I have also described some of the devices that take digital information back into the analogue world of sight and sound, presenting it in a form that is meaningful to human eyes and ears.
5.3 Regaining meaning Suppose for a minute that the numbers I presented above were generated by a scanner as it produced a bitmap of a photograph. Clearly, the machine on which they are stored will have to get the image back to us by means of a device that can render it into a form meaningful to the human eye – an output device. I shall shortly review such devices. However, there is still work to be done before the computer can pass digitally-encoded data to such a device. For a start it will need to have
Acknowledgements All materials included in this unit are derived from content originated at the Open University. Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence 1. Join the 200,000 students cur
7.6 Arithmetic with binary fractions My final point in the preceding section brings home the fact that integer arithmetic is not really suitable when divisions are to be performed. It is also not suitable where some or all of the values involved in the arithmetic are not – or are not necessarily – integers, and this is often the case. In such cases, arithmetic has to be performed on non-integers. The most common representation for non-integers is the floating-point representation that I mentioned briefly in Box 3. You
2.2.1 Positive integers: denary numbers The number system which we all use in everyday life is called the denary representation, or sometimes the decimal representation, of numbers. In this system, the ten digits 0 to 9 are used, either singly or in ordered groups. The important point for you to grasp is that when the digits are used in ordered groups, each digit is understood to have a weighting. For example, consider the denary number 549. Here 5 has the weighting of hundreds, 4 has the weighting of tens and
16.7 A loyalty card scheme Supermarkets, and other types of retailer, use loyalty cards to encourage customers to use their particular shops. Points are awarded when a customer spends money in the shop. Supermarkets ‘reward’ their customers by converting loyalty card points into vouchers. They may also give them discount vouchers for a range of products. Supermarkets use their loyalty card schemes to collect data about their customers. Data about each customer is held in a large database where each customer i
Learning outcomes This is what you should have achieved when you have completed your study of this unit: Know the meaning of all the terms highlighted in the text. Be aware of the main processes in an ICT system (sending, receiving, storing, retrieving, manipulating, conveying). Be aware of some of the hardware, software and communication components used in ICT systems. Use a system map or a block diagram to identify the components of an ICT system.
