springer international publishing feb 2016 (563 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Ever since its invention in the 1980s, the compound semiconductor heterojunction-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) has been widely used in radio frequency (RF) applications. This book provides readers with broad coverage on techniques and new trends of HEMT, employing leading compound semiconductors, III-N and III-V materials.The content includes an overview of GaN HEMT device-scaling technologies and experimental research breakthroughs in fabricating various GaN MOSHEMT transistors. Readers are offered an inspiring example of monolithic integration of HEMT with LEDs, too. The authors compile the most relevant aspects of III-V HEMT, including the current status of state-of-art HEMTs, their possibility of replacing the Si CMOS transistor channel, and growth opportunities of III-V materials on an Si substrate.With detailed exploration and explanations, the book is a helpful source suitable for anyone learning about and working on compound semiconductor devices.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 76 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In order to sustain Moore's Law-based device scaling, principal attention has focused on toward device architectural innovations for improved device performance as per ITRS projections for technology nodes up to 10 nm. Efficient integration of lower substrate temperatures (Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 84 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -As technologists, we are constantly exploring and pushing the limits of our own disciplines, and we accept the notion that the efficiencies of new technologies are advancing at a very rapid rate. However, we rarely have time to contemplate the broader impact of these technologies as they impact and amplify adjacent technology disciplines.This book therefore focuses on the potential impact of those technologies, but it is not intended as a technical manuscript. In this book, we consider our progress and current position %toward on arbitrary popular concepts of future scenarios rather than the typical measurements of cycles per second or milliwatts. We compare our current human cultural situation to other past historic events as we anticipate the future social impact of rapidly accelerating technologies.We also rely on measurements based on specific events highlighting the breadth of the impact of accelerating semiconductor technologies rather than the specific rate of advance of any particular semiconductor technology.These measurements certainly lack the mathematic precision and repeatability to which technologists are accustomed, but the material that we are dealing with¿the social objectives and future political structures of humanity¿does not permit a high degree of mathematic accuracy.Our conclusion draws from the concept of Singularity. It seems certain that at the rate at which our technologies are advancing, we will exceed the ability of our post¿Industrial Revolution structures to absorb these new challenges, and we cannot accurately anticipate what those future social structures will resemble.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 112 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -With the rapid development of cloud computing, the enterprises and individuals can outsource their sensitive data into the cloud server where they can enjoy high quality data storage and computing services in a ubiquitous manner. This is known as the outsourcing computation paradigm. Recently, the problem for securely outsourcing various expensive computations or storage has attracted considerable attention in the academic community. In this book, we focus on the latest technologies and applications of secure outsourcing computations. Specially, we introduce the state-of-the-art research for secure outsourcing some specific functions such as scientific computations, cryptographic basic operations, and verifiable large database with update. The constructions for specific functions use various design tricks and thus result in very efficient protocols for real-world applications. The topic of outsourcing computation is a hot research issue nowadays. Thus, this book will be beneficial to academic researchers in the field of cloud computing and big data security.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 96 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -An era of big data demands datacenters, which house the computing infrastructure that translates raw data into valuable information. This book defines datacenters broadly, as large distributed systems that perform parallel computation for diverse users. These systems exist in multiple forms¿private and public¿and are built at multiple scales. Datacenter design and management is multifaceted, requiring the simultaneous pursuit of multiple objectives. Performance, efficiency, and fairness are first-order design and management objectives, which can each be viewed from several perspectives. This book surveys datacenter research from a computer architect's perspective, addressing challenges in applications, design, management, server simulation, and system simulation. This perspective complements the rich bodies of work in datacenters as a warehouse-scale system, which study the implications for infrastructure that encloses computing equipment, and in datacenters as distributed systems, which employ abstract details in processor and memory subsystems. This book is written for first- or second-year graduate students in computer architecture and may be helpful for those in computer systems. The goal of this book is to prepare computer architects for datacenter-oriented research by describing prevalent perspectives and the state-of-the-art.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This undergraduate textbook is based on lectures given by the author on the differential and integral calculus of functions of several real variables. The book has a modern approach and includes topics such as:¿The p-norms on vector space and their equivalence¿The Weierstrass and Stone-Weierstrass approximation theorems¿The differential as a linear functional; Jacobians, Hessians, and Taylor's theorem in several variables¿The Implicit Function Theorem for a system of equations, proved via Banach¿s Fixed Point Theorem¿Applications to Ordinary Differential Equations¿Line integrals and an introduction to surface integralsThis book features numerous examples, detailed proofs, as well as exercises at the end of sections. Many of the exercises have detailed solutions, making the book suitable for self-study.Several Real Variables will be useful for undergraduate students in mathematics who have completed first courses in linear algebra and analysis of one real variable.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Providing an elementary introduction to branching random walks, the main focus of these lecture notes is on the asymptotic properties of one-dimensional discrete-time supercritical branching random walks, and in particular, on extreme positions in each generation, as well as the evolution of these positions over time.Starting with the simple case of Galton-Watson trees, the text primarily concentrates on exploiting, in various contexts, the spinal structure of branching random walks. The notes end with some applications to biased random walks on trees.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This gentle introduction to High Performance Computing (HPC) for DataScience using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard has beendesigned as a first course for undergraduates on parallel programming ondistributed memory models, and requires only basic programming notions.Dividedinto two parts the first part covers high performance computing usingC++ with the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard followed by asecond part providing high-performance data analytics on computerclusters.In the first part, the fundamental notions of blockingversus non-blocking point-to-point communications, global communications(like broadcast or scatter) and collaborative computations (reduce)with Amdalh and Gustafson speed-up laws are described before addressingparallel sorting and parallel linear algebra on computer clusters. Thecommon ring, torus and hypercube topologies of clusters are thenexplained and global communication procedures on these topologies arestudied. This first part closes with the MapReduce (MR) model ofcomputation well-suited to processing big data using the MPI framework.Inthe second part, the book focuses on high-performance data analytics.Flat and hierarchical clustering algorithms are introduced for dataexploration along with how to program these algorithms on computerclusters, followed by machine learning classification, and anintroduction to graph analytics. This part closes with a conciseintroduction to data core-sets that let big data problems be amenable totiny data problems.Exercises are included at the end of eachchapter in order for students to practice the concepts learned, and afinal section contains an overall exam which allows them to evaluate howwell they have assimilated the material covered in the book.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 316 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Astronomer Peter Linde takes the reader through the story of the search for extraterrestrial life in a captivating and thought-provoking way, specifically addressing the new research that is currently devoted towards discovering other planets with life. He discusses the methods used to detect possible signals from other civilizations and the ways that the space sciences are changing as a result of this new field. ¿Are we alone ¿ is a mystery that has forever fascinated mankind, gaining momentum by scientists since the 1995 discovery of the existence of exoplanets began to inspire new ways of thinking in astronomy. Here, Linde tries to answer many philosophical questions that derive from this area of research: Is humanity facing a change of paradigm, that we are not unique as intelligent beings Is it possible to communicate with others out there, and even if we can¿should we Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 404 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes revised selected papers from the18th Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods, SBMF 2015, which took place in BeloHorizonte, Brazil, in September 2015.The 11 papers presented in this volume were carefullyreviewed and selected from 25 submissions. They were organized in topicalsections named: model checking; languages and semantics; refinement andverification; testing and evaluation.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly revised selected papers of the 6th workshop on Big Data Benchmarks, Performance Optimization, and Emerging Hardware, BPOE 2015, held in Kohala Coast, HI, USA, in August/September 2015 as satellite event of VLDB 2015, the 41st International Conference on Very Large Data Bases.The 8 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 10 submissions. The workshop focuses on architecture and system support for big data systems, aiming at bringing researchers and practitioners from data management, architecture, and systems research communities together to discuss the research issues at the intersection of these areas. This book also invites three papers from several industrial partners, including two papers describing tools used in system benchmarking and monitoring and one paper discussing principles and methodologies in existing big data benchmarks.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereedpost-conference proceedings of the Second International Workshop on AdaptiveResource Management and Scheduling for Cloud Computing, ARMS-CC 2015, held inConjunction with ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC2015, in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, in July 2015.The 12 revised full papers, including 1 invited paperwere carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. The papers haveidentified several important aspects of the problem addressed by ARMS-CC:self-\* and autonomous cloud systems, cloud quality management and service levelagreement (SLA), scalable computing, mobile cloud computing, cloud computingtechniques for big data, high performance cloud computing, resource managementin big data platforms, scheduling algorithms for big data processing, cloudcomposition, federation, bridging, and bursting, cloud resource virtualizationand composition, load-balancing and co-allocation, fault tolerancereliability, and availability of cloud systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 200 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -TheLASER Summer School is intended for professionals from industry (engineers andmanagers) as well as university researchers, including PhD students.Participants learn about the most important software technology advances from pioneersin the field.Since its inception in 2004, the LASER Summer Schoolhas focused on an important software engineering topic each year. This volumecontains selected lecture notes from the 10th LASER Summer School on SoftwareEngineering: Leading-Edge Software Engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 200 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This volume constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Graphical Models for Security, GraMSec 2015, held in Verona, Italy, in July 2015.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 116 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereedpost-conference proceedings of the First International Workshop on AlgorithmicAspects of Cloud Computing, ALGOCLOUD 2015, held in Patras, Greece, inSeptember 2015 in conjunction with ALGO 2015.The 13 revised full papers presented together with 2tutorial papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 initialsubmissions. They cover a wide range of topics in two main tracks: algorithmicaspects of large-scale data stores, and software tools and distributedarchitectures for cloud-based data management.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 208 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereedpost-conference proceedings of the Second International Workshop on ComputerAssisted and Robotic Endoscopy, CARE 2015, held in conjunction with MICCAI2015, in Munich, Germany, in October 2015.The 15 revised full papers were carefully selected out of20 initial submissions and focus on recent technical advances associated withcomputer vision; graphics; robotics and medical imaging; external trackingsystems; medical device control systems; information processing techniques;endoscopy; planning and simulation.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The literary imagination may take flight on the wings of metaphor, but hard-headed scientists are just as likely as doe-eyed poets to reach for a metaphor when the descriptive need arises. Metaphor is a pervasive aspect of every genre of text and every register of speech, and is as useful for describing the inner workings of a 'black hole' (itself a metaphor) as it is the affairs of the human heart. The ubiquity of metaphor in natural language thus poses a significant challenge for Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems and their builders, who cannot afford to wait until the problems of literal language have been solved before turning their attention to figurative phenomena. This book offers a comprehensive approach to the computational treatment of metaphor and its figurative brethren¿including simile, analogy, and conceptual blending¿that does not shy away from their important cognitive and philosophical dimensions. Veale, Shutova, and Beigman Klebanov approach metaphor from multiple computational perspectives, providing coverage of both symbolic and statistical approaches to interpretation and paraphrase generation, while also considering key contributions from philosophy on what constitutes the 'meaning' of a metaphor. This book also surveys available metaphor corpora and discusses protocols for metaphor annotation. Any reader with an interest in metaphor, from beginning researchers to seasoned scholars, will find this book to be an invaluable guide to what is a fascinating linguistic phenomenon.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 164 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Involving rigorous analysis, computational dexterity, and a breadth of applications, this text is ideal for an undergraduate honors calculus course or for an introduction to analysis. This fourth edition includes corrections as well as some additional material.Some features of the text:¿ The text is completely self-contained and starts with the real number axioms;¿ The integral is defined as the area under the graph, while the area is defined for every subset of the plane;¿ There is a heavy emphasis on computational problems, from the high-school quadratic formula to the formula for the derivative of the zeta function at zero;¿ There are applications from many parts of analysis, e.g., convexity, the Cantor set, continued fractions, the AGM, the theta and zeta functions, transcendental numbers, the Bessel and gamma functions, and many more;¿ Traditionally transcendentally presented material, such as infinite products, the Bernoulli series, and the zeta functional equation, is developed over the reals;¿ self-contained treatment of the fundamental theorems of calculus in the general case using the Sunrise Lemma¿ There are 450 problems with all the solutions at the back of the text.Reviews from previous editions:'This is a very intriguing, decidedly unusual, and very satisfying treatment of calculus and introductory analysis. It's full of quirky little approaches to standard topics that make one wonder over and over again, 'Why is it never done like this ''¿John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper'Chapter 5 is. an astonishing tour de force'¿Steven G. Krantz, The American Mathematical Monthly'For a treatment [of infinite products and the Bernoulli series] that is very close to Euler¿s and even more elementary.' ¿ V.S. Varadarajan, Bulletin of the American Mathematical SocietySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 444 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This course-based primer provides newcomers to the field with a concise introduction to some of the core topics in the emerging field of topological insulators.The aim is to provide a basic understanding of edge states, bulk topological invariants, and of the bulk--boundary correspondence with as simple mathematical tools as possible.The present approach uses noninteracting lattice models of topological insulators, building gradually on these to arrive from the simplest one-dimensional case (the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model for polyacetylene) to two-dimensional time-reversal invariant topological insulators (the Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model for HgTe). In each case the discussion of simple toy models is followed by the formulation of the general arguments regarding topological insulators.The only prerequisite for the reader is a working knowledge in quantum mechanics, the relevant solid state physics background is provided as part of this self-containedtext, which is complemented by end-of-chapter problems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This bookconstitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Functionaland Logic Programming, FLOPS 2016, held in Kochi, Japan, in March 2016.The 14 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selectedfrom 36 submissions. They cover the following topics: functional and logicprogramming; program transformation and re-writing; and extracting programsfrom proofs of their correctness.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 268 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart: Imaging and Modelling Challenges, STACOM 2015, held in conjunction with MICCAI 2015, in Munich, Germany, in October 2015.The 23 revised full workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 34 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics such cardiac image processing, atlas construction, statistical modeling of cardiac function across different patient populations, cardiac mapping, cardiac computational physiology, model customization, image-based modelling and image-guided interventional procedures, atlas based functional analysis, ontological schemata for data and results, integrated functional and structural analysis.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 232 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshopproceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Approximation andOnline Algorithms, WAOA 2015, held in Patras, Greece, in September 2015 as part of ALGO 2015.The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. Topics of interest for WAOA 2015 were: algorithmic game theory, algorithmic trading, coloring and partitioning, competitive analysis, computational advertising, computational finance, cuts and connectivity, geometric problems, graph algorithms, inapproximability, mechanism design, natural algorithms, network design, packing and covering, paradigms for the design and analysis of approximation and online algorithms, parameterized complexity, scheduling problems,and real-world applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This bookconstitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference andSchool of Network Science, NetSci-X 2016, held in Wroclaw, Poland, in January2016.The 12 fulland 6 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions.The papers deal with the study of network models in domains ranging frombiology and physics to computer science, from financial markets to culturalintegration, and from social media to infectious diseases.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 228 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Workshop on the Theory and Applications of Formal Argumentation, TAFA 2015, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 2015. The workshop was co-located with IJCAI 2015. The 15 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 25 submissions. The papers deal with formal theoretical models of argumentation and application of such models in subfields of AI, evaluation of models, both theoretical and practical, and theories and applications developed through inter-disciplinary collaboration.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 272 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This bookconstitutes revised selected papers from the 11th International Symposium onAlgorithms and Experiments for Wireless Sensor Networks, ALGOSENSORS 2015, heldin Patras, Greece, in September 2015.The 16 fullpapers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 30submissions. The deal with algorithms analysis and problem complexity; computercommunication networks; computation by abstract devices; and mathematics ofcomputing.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 240 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This Brief provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of proactive strategies for management transitions in criminal justice and other public administration civic service agencies. These organizations have a unique need for managing transitions effectively.Compared to private organizations: they have a relatively high frequency of management transitions due to the terms of elected and appointed officials, and these new managers more often come from outside the organization.Through an mixed-methods study of criminal justice command level staff in New York state, researchers found a number of key components to successful transitions. Based on their study, the researchers prepared a set of guidelines called the Command Transition Matrix. This tool is aimed at police and public administration leadership. The methodology used to develop it will be of interest to researchers in Criminal Justice Administration, Public Policy, and Management Science.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 68 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book presents a systematic overview of cutting-edge research in the field of parametric modeling of personal income and wealth distribution, which allows one to represent how income/wealth is distributed within a given population. The estimated parameters may be used to gain insights into the causes of the evolution of income/wealth distribution over time, or to interpret the differences between distributions across countries. Moreover, once a given parametric model has been fitted to a data set, one can straightforwardly compute inequality and poverty measures. Finally, estimated parameters may be used in empirical modeling of the impact of macroeconomic conditions on the evolution of personal income/wealth distribution. In reviewing the state of the art in the field, the authors provide a thorough discussion of parametric models belonging to the ¿¿-generalized¿ family, a new and fruitful set of statistical models for the size distribution of income and wealth that they have developed over several years of collaborative and multidisciplinary research. This book will be of interest to all who share the belief that problems of income and wealth distribution merit detailed conceptual and methodological attention.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 196 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book aims to explore stability in an international financial system using disequilibrium theory. It examines historical cases of both instability and stability and reviews price-disequilibrium theory to construct a theoretical model for a stable international financial system. In the modern knowledge economy in a global world, financial socio-technical systems still continue to be central to global commerce. Moreover, technological advances in computer and communications have changed both the knowledge economy and the financial system. While globalization and technology have made international finance more powerful and important to knowledge economies, they have also increased the volatility, instability, and fraudulent use of international finance. The international world has not experienced a long-term, stable financial system after 1913. International financial systems have been periodically unstable, triggering financial crises and resultant economicdepressions in different nations. Yet the global economy cannot develop properly without a stable international system, which distributes wealth to economically productive activities. How then can a stable and modern international-financial-system be constructed In this provocative volume, the authors applies the cross-disciplinary analysis of societal dynamics to important economic writers to derive a new approach to the problem of stabilizing international financial systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 196 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In honour of Prof. Kalevi Holsti¿s 80th birthday, this collection presents 15 of the renowned Political Scientist¿s major essays and research projects. It also offers a collection of his writings and essays on theories of international relations, foreign policy analysis, security and the world order. These previously published works address issues that remain ¿hot topics¿ on the international agenda, such as the changing nature of warfare and the causes of failed states; major essays also evaluate the current search for international order. Prof. Holsti is the author of a major textbook that has been translated into Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, and Bahasa Indonesian. Thousands of undergraduates around the world are acquainted with his work.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This volume examines corruption and provides tools and that can be utilized to combat it and encourage development. Using Romania as a case study, the authors argue that corruption can be reduced via institutional reforms and effective civic education. Describing various causes and types of corruption, the authors explore the causes and influences that result in corruption and the current political and bureaucratic practices that inhibit social, political or economic reform.The nations of Europe, including Romania, have different civil traditions varying in their intensity, cultural heritage, scope of activity, religious or non-religious affiliation, among other factors. Western Europe has experienced over a century of modern government involvement crowding out the efforts of traditional civil society, while Romania, along with the other Eastern nations of the former Soviet bloc, experienced almost a half-century of systematic efforts by communist regimes to eradicate and control all spheres of voluntary, nongovernmental civil life. Moreover, the inexperience and immaturity of Romanian society in the early transition period after communism, particularly its so-called ¿entrepreneurial class,¿ have discredited and abused the concept of civil society, utilizing it solely for tax benefits and selfish purposes. Having had to learn the hard way about some of the key aspects of public administration often taken for granted in other countries more experienced in democratic participation, Romania has most recently made significant progress toward overcoming corruption and implementing reforms and policies that will allow it to participate more fully in the global arena.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 156 pp. Englisch.