Andrzej Klimczuk

New technologies are often radical innovations that change current activities across different areas of social and economic life. At the beginning of the 21st century, some of these technologies are information and communications technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. These innovations stimulate new opportunities for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, and thus can help solve social problems. But they also cause new social risks and inequalities.

Measurement of ability or inability to perform activities of daily living is important to in describing the functional status of a person and then implementing an intervention. Evaluations of ADLs are mainly used in nursing and in rehabilitation of people with disabilities and the elderly. Measuring ability to perform ADLs is crucial for the management of healthcare in aging societies. It is important to understand differences between categories of ADLs and challenges in their evaluation that are connected to the roles of family members.

Adulthood is usually defined as the period of human development in which the physical development, cognitive development, and psychosocial development of women and men slow and reach their highest level. Although scholars strive to build consistent theories, the description of the developmentally highest level differs between countries and cultures due to economic factors and sociocultural factors. After presenting some basic concepts of adulthood from different cultures, this entry continues with a psychological definition of adulthood, a discussion of characteristics of maturity, and brief descriptions of various theories about what constitutes adulthood. It ends with suggestions for the direction of future discussions on adulthood.

The members of the International Network for the Analysis of Intergenerational Relations proudly present the most recent issue of the jointly produced compendium "Generations, Intergenerational Relations and Generational Policy". This new version includes 17 languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Hungarian, Turkish, Romanian, Lithuanian, Slovenian, Bosnian, Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese. The layout of the compendium is designed for using it to translate the specific concepts and terminology of research on generations and intergenerational relations from one language into another. **** K. Lüscher, A. Klimczuk, Generations, intergenerational relationships, generational policy: A multilingual compendium, 17 languages, Universität Konstanz, Konstanz 2017, 428pp.