Portugal’s education progress from 2003 to 2015 has been praised as one of the most successful cases in OECD countries. This chapter describes the main factors of this evolution, highlighting policy measures taken on the aftermath of the 1995 TIMSS and 2000 PISA shocks. These policy measures include a more detailed curricular development, the improvement of standard assessment and the disclosure of schools’ results. These changes acted against the background of an experienced teacher body and counted with a discreet, but powerful factor: the reliance on quality textbooks. This chapter describes the recent evolution of textbooks’ role and their part in keeping both stability and improvement in the taught and assessed curriculum. It concludes with an account of how these apparently successful reforms were halted after years of bipartisan support.

As the nineteenth turned into the twentieth century, Japan remained an enthusiastic participant at exhibitions overseas (Chicago 1893, Paris 1900, St Louis 1904, London 1910), showing off both its indigenous endowments (art and architecture, imperial history) and modern achievements (burgeoning industry, victorious military, and emergent empire). It was not able to prevent others supplying the more familiar Japan demanded by white audiences, who were interested in exoticism but dismissive of seeming mimicry. At home, too, the government was beginning to endorse, and cities to exploit, the use of exhibitions as much for municipal development as industrial promotion. This chapter examines in detail how Kyoto in 1895, Osaka in 1903, and Tokyo in 1907 used ‘industrial’ exhibitions to present themselves as tourist destination, industrial powerhouse, and metropolitan primate, respectively. To do it, exhibitions increasingly supplemented didactic exhibits with popular attractions, opening up a space where the press could use exhibitions as much for social commentary as economic report.

Chapter 5 focuses on the different temporalities that are interwoven in the station, feeding into everyday experiences and informing patterns of action. In Accra’s station, just as in most bus stations in Ghana, departures do not follow designated scripts dictated by clock time; instead, they are collectively timed by the inflow of passengers. These inflows follow different rhythmic temporalities co-composed in Accra and in the destinations served by the station. By detailing the daily work activities of an inexperienced and an experienced station worker, it teases out different levels of perceptual attunement to movement and rhythm taking shape hundreds of kilometres away. It argues that the tacit dimension of temporal and kinaesthetic enskilment highlights important qualities needed to make hustle successful, which essentially requires the ability to ‘read’ the different rhythms of eruptive situations and to align and time one’s actions accordingly.

In Chapter 13 we saw that the general choice of financing—debt or equity—affected overall firm value only due to frictions such as agency problems or asymmetric information. Debt and equity financing can come from many different sources in the financial system, and the institutional details of these sources can introduce important considerations for the firms seeking financing. In this chapter we explore the different sources of financing that may be available and/or feasible for firms to use at various stages of their lives: from new startup firms to mature and stable publicly traded corporations. Broadly speaking, the global financial system successfully meets the financial needs of the many different types of firms that operate in the economy. However, firms are constantly in flux, and as a result so are their financial needs. While the financial sources we discuss in this chapter continue to be important to the financial system, in response to the evolving nature of firms, new financial innovations and different ways of financing are always being introduced.

The safe and effective delivery of neuroanaesthesia in children requires knowledge of normal development and neurophysiology. Preoperative assessment must pay particular attention to the symptoms and signs of raised intracranial pressure. The conduct of anaesthesia is influenced by the underlying pathology, the procedure being performed and the need for intraoperative neuromonitoring. Extreme vigilance is required in circumstances where venous air embolus (VAE) is a risk, and the provision of appropriate facilities is essential.

Chapter 6 examines the social and economic implications of the station’s unscheduled departures by exploring the practices and experiences of waiting at the station, which, in a major public transport hub, is a quintessential property of social action. Building on a ‘slow’ ethnographic elaboration of the minutiae of loading a bus (which took six and a half hours), it presents the positions of three groups of actors in relation to the temporalities of waiting at the station: the passengers, the drivers, and the station workers responsible for organising departures. A focus on the dimensions of ‘empty time’ contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the station hustle, one that goes beyond its seemingly perpetual busyness and ceaseless activity, and that facilitates a subtle analysis of the social and economic relations in contexts of contingent and involuting organisations of labour and time.

The conclusions commence with the warnings against idolatry contained in the ancient inscriptions of the basilica of San Marco, words that appear to have taken on a new resonance in light of the image debates of the Cinquecento. Some observations on the prevailing mindset with regard to majestically constructed and adorned churches are then made, contrasting the wide acceptance for such projects amongst late sixteenth-century Catholics to the Protestant distaste for the ‘idolatrous’ statues and images to be found throughout Venice. This book closes by reasserting one its central themes: the ability of contemporary artists in the city to invent novel visual solutions that encouraged certain beliefs at a fertile moment in the history of art.

In this chapter, we investigate whether Fox News’ presence in districts shaped the competitive electoral landscape by influencing potential candidates’ perceptions about the partisan make-up of the constituency in the district and shaping their perceived chances of winning or losing. Specifically, in this chapter, we test whether the entry of Fox News created the perception of a rightward shift in district party composition among potential Republican candidates considering a run in the district. We find that in districts with more Fox News availability, high-quality potential Republican candidates were more likely to challenge Democratic incumbents, especially if the districts were closely competitive.