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All humans have an innate ability to learn multiple languages and with ­increasing mobility across linguistic boundaries, people are more than ever embracing multilingualism. This chapter examines international students’ perceptions of their third language (L3) learning experience in their second language (L2) English context. Challenges and strategies of L3 learning are explored as data from a survey and interviews were analyzed. Twenty-eight (n = 28) international students were asked to answer Likert-scale and ­open-­ended questions regarding their L3 learning experience. Select ­participants were also interviewed. The quantitative and qualitative results show that learning an L3 not only offered international students an opportunity to strengthen their understanding of the relationship between language and culture, but also allowed them to position themselves as multilinguals within the globalized world context. Furthermore, the data reveal that technology is an integral part of international students’ L3 learning process, but that additional support is needed. This chapter also discusses ideas including technology-e­nhanced language learning to assist international students in their L3 learning experience in higher education.

Sub-Saharan African cities suffer from poor quality transport options, excessive congestion and pollution. The informal transport sector contributes to these problems, but also represents part of the solution. This chapter reflects upon research undertaken to better understand the nature of these services, in the hope of providing insights into possible remediation.

Three case cities were studied: Cape Town; Dar es Salaam; and Nairobi. Each was examined by resident universities with respect to the quantity and quality of paratransit services provided, user satisfaction, business models and industry governance.

Each city has differences, but there are recurring themes. All are experiencing population growth and increased motorization, which steadily deteriorates operating environments. Law enforcement capability is limited and sometimes impeded by corruption. Operating enterprises tend to be fragmented. Financial resources are typically limited such that vehicle maintenance and replacement suffers. The safety and quality of service for passengers are therefore often poor. The prevalence of paratransit services is, however, such that any strategy to reform public transport systems needs to consider a role for them within a scheduled-paratransit hybrid network. Numerous challenges will need to be overcome for successful integration, but significant improvements to service quality can be made in the near- to medium-term through supporting interventions in business development, operating environment, vehicle fleets and operations.

Extension of the research programme could yield some significant improvements to operations and financial sustainability, through the piloting of innovative, lower cost technologies based on smartphone and other ICT technologies.

The chapter reveals that significant improvements to service quality can be made in the near- to medium-term through supporting interventions in business development, operating environment, vehicle fleets and operations.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.