This book discusses the local effects of globalization, especially in the context of social work and health, as well as the challenges of higher education. The more globalized the world becomes, the more important local identities are. This phenomenon, called "glocalisation," poses many challenges to people and to social structures.

The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) has become the focus of academic attention again owing to the recent observance of the 100-year anniversary of the war. This survey article examines new scholarship that has appeared on the historical significance of the war in the wake of this anniversary from among researchers located around the world. This paper will focus on the causes of the war, by questioning the significance of Korea and Manchuria in the diplomatic negotiations leading up to the outbreak of the war. The origins of the war are closely connected to the Korea question and the Manchuria question: if Korea was the reason for the Russo-Japanese War, the war was a defensive war for Japan; if Manchuria was the reason for the war, it was an imperial war. However, I believe that the connections between the Korea question and the Manchuria question became entangled in a way that the actors involved did not realize clearly at the time.

In the human placenta, fetal blood circulates in the blood vessels of the villous tree while maternal one circulates in the intervillous space, the surroundings of the villous tree. Previously, the computational model of the villous tree, whose stem villi actively contract because of the contractile cells, has been developed. The result of the computation indicated that the displacement caused by the contraction would be helpful for the fetal and maternal circulations and can be combined with the other measurements for blood circulations in the placenta. Hypoxia in the placenta is classified into the following categories: preplacental hypoxia, uteroplacental hypoxia, and postplacental hypoxia. The number and the form of the terminal villi are altered by hypoxia. Assuming that increase in the terminal villi causes a higher shear elastic modulus of the placenta, this villous tree model is useful to estimate the influence of hypoxia on the blood circulations. In this chapter, how these three types of hypoxia influence the blood circulation in the placenta by the aforementioned computational model are discussed. While preplacental hypoxia and uteroplacental hypoxia would cause similar displacement in large regions, postplacental hypoxia would do vice versa. All the types might make the fetal and maternal blood circulations difficult.

Despite significant technological advances in recent years, their impact on our overall health and social, well-being is not always clear to see. Perhaps, one of the best examples of this can be highlighted by the fact that mortality rates as a result of cerebrovascular diseases have hardly changed, if at all. This places cerebrovascular diseases as one of the most prominent causes of both disability and death. In Cuba, for instance, a total of 22,000 cases of cerebrovascular diseases are reported each year in a country where life expectancy should increase to 80 years in the near future. In such a situation, to have a book that includes in a clear and summarized way, a group of topics directly related to the preclinical investigations advances and the therapeutic procedures for the cerebrovascular disease in its acute phase constitutes a useful tool for the wide range of the contributors to this affection's problems solution. In this group is included students, professors, researchers, and health policy makers whose work represents one of the greatest social and human impact challenges of the XXI century basic and clinical neurosciences.