springer international publishing springer international publishing jun 2015 (946 risultati)

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In this book, Giovanni Bignami, the outstanding Italian scientist and astronomer, takes the reader on a journey through the ¿seven spheres¿, from our own planet to neighboring stars. The author offers a gripping account of the evolution of Homo Sapiens to the stage where our species is developing capabilities, in the form of new energy propulsion systems, that will enable us to conquer space. The reader will learn how we first expanded our activities to reach beyond our planet, to the Moon, and how nuclear energy, nuclear fusion, and matter¿antimatter annihilation will enable us to extend our exploration. After Mars and Jupiter we shall finally reach the nearest stars, which we now know are surrounded by numerous planets, some of which are bound to be habitable. The book includes enticing descriptions of such newly discovered planets and also brings alive key historical characters in our story, such as Jules Verne and Werner von Braun.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 124 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The word ¿landscape¿ can mean picture as well as natural scenery. Recent advances in space exploration imaging have allowed us to now have landscapes never before possible, and this book collects some of the greatest views and vistas of Mars, Venus¿s Titan, Io and more in their full glory, with background information to put into context the foreign landforms of our Solar System. Here, literally, are 'other-worldly' visions of strange new scenes, all captured by the latest technology by landing and roving vehicles or by very low-flying spacecraft.There is more than scientific interest in these views. They are also aesthetically beautiful and intriguing, and Dr. Murdin in a final chapter compares them to terrestrial landscapes in fine art.Planetary Vistas is a science book and a travel book across the planets and moons of the Solar System for armchair space explorers who want to be amazed and informed. This book shows what future space explorers will experience, because these are the landscapes that astronauts and space tourists will see.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 200 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Rendering photorealistic images is a costly process which can take up to several days in the case of high quality images. In most cases, the task of sampling the incident radiance function to evaluate the illumination integral is responsible for an important share of the computation time. Therefore, to reach acceptable rendering times, the illumination integral must be evaluated using a limited set of samples. Such a restriction raises the question of how to obtain the most accurate approximation possible with such a limited set of samples. One must thus ensure that sampling produces the highest amount of information possible by carefully placing and weighting the limited set of samples. Furthermore, the integral evaluation should take into account not only the information brought by sampling but also possible information available prior to sampling, such as the integrand smoothness. This idea of sparse information and the need to fully exploit the little information available is present throughout this book. The presented methods correspond to the state-of-the-art solutions in computer graphics, and take into account information which had so far been underexploited (or even neglected) by the previous approaches. The intended audiences are Ph.D. students and researchers in the field of realistic image synthesis or global illumination algorithms, or any person with a solid background in graphics and numerical techniques.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 96 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Introducing the reader to the mathematics beyond complex networked systems, these lecture notes investigate graph theory, graphical models, and methods from statistical physics. Complex networked systems play a fundamental role in our society, both in everyday life and in scientific research, with applications ranging from physics and biology to economics and finance.The book is self-contained, and requires only an undergraduate mathematical background.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 148 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The emerging three-dimensional (3D) chip architectures, with their intrinsic capability of reducing the wire length, promise attractive solutions to reduce the delay of interconnects in future microprocessors. 3D memory stacking enables much higher memory bandwidth for future chip-multiprocessor design, mitigating the 'memory wall' problem. In addition, heterogenous integration enabled by 3D technology can also result in innovative designs for future microprocessors. This book first provides a brief introduction to this emerging technology, and then presents a variety of approaches to designing future 3D microprocessor systems, by leveraging the benefits of low latency, high bandwidth, and heterogeneous integration capability which are offered by 3D technology.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 128 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Visualization has become a valuable means for data exploration and analysis. Interactive visualization combines expressive graphical representations and effective user interaction. Although interaction is an important component of visualization approaches, much of the visualization literature tends to pay more attention to the graphical representation than to interaction.The goal of this work is to strengthen the interaction side of visualization. Based on a brief review of general aspects of interaction, we develop an interaction-oriented view on visualization. This view comprises five key aspects: the data, the tasks, the technology, the human, as well as the implementation. Picking up these aspects individually, we elaborate several interaction methods for visualization. We introduce a multi-threading architecture for efficient interactive exploration. We present interaction techniques for different types of data e.g., multivariate data, spatio-temporal data, graphs) and different visualization tasks (e.g., exploratory navigation, visual comparison, visual editing). With respect to technology, we illustrate approaches that utilize modern interaction modalities (e.g., touch, tangibles, proxemics) as well as classic ones. While the human is important throughout this work, we also consider automatic methods to assist the interactive part.In addition to solutions for individual problems, a major contribution of this work is the overarching view of interaction in visualization as a whole. This includes a critical discussion of interaction, the identification of links between the key aspects of interaction, and the formulation of research topics for future work with a focus on interaction.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 108 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Intelligent Cloud Computing, held in Muscat, Oman, in February 2014. The 10 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 18 submissions. The papers cover topics in the areas of resource management and energy efficiency and security. They include 5 invited talks from leading organizations working in cloud computing in Oman and in the region.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Big Data Benchmarking, WBDB 2014, held in Potsdam, Germany, in August 2014.The 13 papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and cover topics such as benchmarks specifications and proposals, Hadoop and MapReduce - in the different context such as virtualization and cloud - as well as in-memory, data generation, and graphs.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 168 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed and revised selected papers from the 10th International Workshop on Agents and Data Mining Interactions, ADMI 2014, held in Paris, France, in May 2014 as satellite workshop of AAMAS 2014, the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.The 11 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions for inclusion in this volume. They present current research and engineering results, as well as potential challenges and prospects encountered in the respective communities and the coupling between agents and data mining.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 140 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages, PADL 2015, held in Portland, OR, USA, in June 2015.The 10 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover all forms of declarative concepts, including, functional, logic, constraints, etc.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Arts and Technology, ArtsIT 2014, held in Istanbul, Turkey, in November 2014. The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully selected and reviewed from numerous submissions. ArtsIT has become a leading scientific forum for the dissemination of cutting-edge research results in the area of arts, design and technology. The papers focus on IT technologies, artists, designers and industrial members and offer content creators tools that expand the means of expression of the traditional design field.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 172 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book provides readers with a concise introduction to current studies on operator-algebras and their generalizations, operator spaces and operator systems, with a special focus on their application in quantum information science. This basic framework for the mathematical formulation of quantum information can be traced back to the mathematical work of John von Neumann, one of the pioneers of operator algebras, which forms the underpinning of most current mathematical treatments of the quantum theory, besides being one of the most dynamic areas of twentieth century functional analysis. Today, von Neumann¿s foresight finds expression in the rapidly growing field of quantum information theory. These notes gather the content of lectures given by a very distinguished group of mathematicians and quantum information theorists, held at the IMSc in Chennai some years ago, and great care has been taken to present the material as a primer on the subject matter. Starting from the basic definitions of operator spaces and operator systems, this text proceeds to discuss several important theorems including Stinespring¿s dilation theorem for completely positive maps and Kirchberg¿s theorem on tensor products of C\*-algebras. It also takes a closer look at the abstract characterization of operator systems and, motivated by the requirements of different tensor products in quantum information theory, the theory of tensor products in operator systems is discussed in detail. On the quantum information side, the book offers a rigorous treatment of quantifying entanglement in bipartite quantum systems, and moves on to review four different areas in which ideas from the theory of operator systems and operator algebras play a natural role: the issue of zero-error communication over quantum channels, the strong subadditivity property of quantum entropy, the different norms on quantum states and the corresponding induced norms on quantum channels, and, lastly, the applications of matrix-valued random variables in the quantum information setting.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 152 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This is an introductory textbook on general and algebraic topology, aimed at anyone with a basic knowledge of calculus and linear algebra. It provides full proofs and includes many examples and exercises.The covered topics include:set theory and cardinal arithmetic; axiom of choice and Zorn's lemma; topological spaces and continuous functions; connectedness and compactness; Alexandrov compactification; quotient topologies; countability and separation axioms; prebasis and Alexander's theorem; the Tychonoff theorem and paracompactness; complete metric spaces and function spaces; Baire spaces; homotopy of maps; the fundamental group;the van Kampen theorem;covering spaces; Brouwer andBorsuk's theorems; free groups and free product of groups; and basic category theory. While itis very concrete at the beginning, abstract concepts are gradually introduced. It is suitable for anyone needing a basic, comprehensive introduction to general and algebraic topology and its applications.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 324 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Among resummation techniques for perturbative QCD in the context of collider and flavor physics, soft-collinear effective theory (SCET) has emerged as both a powerful and versatile tool, having been applied to a large variety of processes, from B-meson decays to jet production at the LHC.This book provides a concise, pedagogical introduction to this technique. It discusses the expansion of Feynman diagrams around the high-energy limit, followed by the explicit construction of the effective Lagrangian - first for a scalar theory, then for QCD. The underlying concepts are illustrated with the quark vector form factor at large momentum transfer, and the formalism is applied to compute soft-gluon resummation and to perform transverse-momentum resummation for the Drell-Yan process utilizing renormalization group evolution in SCET. Finally, the infrared structure of n-point gauge-theory amplitudes is analyzed by relating them to effective-theory operators.This text is suitable for graduate students and non-specialist researchers alike as it requires only basic knowledge of perturbative QCD.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 220 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This volume presents five different methods recently developed to tackle the large scalebehavior of highly correlated random systems, such as spin glasses, random polymers, local times and loopsoups and random matrices.These methods, presented in a series of lectures delivered within the Jean-Morletinitiative (Spring 2013), play a fundamental role in thecurrent development of probabilitytheoryand statisticalmechanics.The lectures were: Random Polymers by E. Bolthausen, Spontaneous Replica Symmetry Breaking and Interpolation Methods by F. Guerra, Derrida's Random Energy Modelsby N. Kistler, Isomorphism Theoremsby J. Rosen and Spectral Properties of Wigner Matrices by B. Schlein.This book is the first in a co-edition between the Jean-Morlet Chair at CIRM and the Springer Lecture Notesin Mathematics which aims to collect together courses and lectures on cutting-edge subjects given during the term of the Jean-Morlet Chair, as well as new material produced in its wake. It is targeted at researchers, in particular PhDstudents and postdocs, working in probability theory and statistical physics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2015, held in Chicago, IL, USA in June 2015. The 19 revised full papers and 5 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. The papers are grouped in topical sections on understanding individuals, empowering individuals and understanding and empowering communities.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 280 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th Ada-Europe International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies, Ada-Europe 2015, held in Madrid, Spain, in June 2015.The revised 12 full papers presented together with two keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. They are organized in topical sections on language technology, real-time applications, critical systems, and multicore and distributed systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 30th British International Conference on Databases, BICOD 2015 - formerly known as BNCOD (British National Conference on Databases) - held in Edinburgh, UK, in July 2015.The 19 revised full papers, presented together with three invitedkeynotes and three invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. Special focus of the conference has been 'Data Science' and so the papers cover a wide range of topics related to databases and data-centric computation.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the proceedings of the CAiSE Forum from the 26th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, CAiSE 2014, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, June 2014.The CAiSE 2014 Forum was a place to present and discuss new ideas, emerging topics, and controversial positions, and to demonstrate innovative tools and systems related to information systems engineering. To this end, three types of submissions were invited: visionary papers presenting innovative research projects at an early stage, demo papers describing novel tools and prototypes; and case studies reporting industrial applications. The 17 papers in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions and include 12 visionary papers, four demo papers, and one case study. The reworked and extended versions of the original presentations cover topics such as business process management, process mining, enterprise architecture and modeling, model-driven development, and requirements engineering.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Multiple Classifier Systems, MCS 2015, held in Günzburg, Germany, in June/July 2015. The 19 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from25 submissions. The papers address issues in multiple classifier systems and ensemble methods, including pattern recognition, machine learning, neural network, data mining and statistics. They are organized in topical sections on theory and algorithms and application and evaluation.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the proceedings of the First Joint International Conference on Serious Games, JCSG 2015, held in Huddersfield, UK, in June 2015. This conference bundles the activities of the International Conference on Serious Games Development and Applications, SGDA, and the Conference on Serious Games, GameDays. The total of 12 full papers and 5 short papers was carefully reviewed and selected from 31 submissions. The book also contains one full invited talk. The papers were organized in topical sections named: games for health; games for learning; games for other purposes; game design and development; and poster and demo papers.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 212 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This open access book collects ten essays that look at intra-regional migration in the Southern Balkans from the late Ottoman period to the present. It examines forced as well as voluntary migrations and places these movements within their historical context, including ethnic cleansing, population exchanges, and demographic engineering in the service of nation-building as well as more recent labor migration due to globalization.Inside, readers will find the work of international experts that cuts across national and disciplinary lines. This cross-cultural, comparative approach fully captures the complexity of this highly fractured, yet interconnected, region.Coverage explores the role of population exchanges in the process of nation-building and irredentist policies in interwar Bulgaria, the story of Thracian refugees and their organizations in Bulgaria, the changing waves of migration from the Balkans to Turkey, Albanian immigrants in Greece, and the diminished importance of ethnic migration after the 1990s. In addition, the collection looks at such under-researched aspects of migration as memory, gender, and religion.The field of migration studies in the Southern Balkans is still fragmented along national and disciplinary lines. Moreover, the study of forced and voluntary migrations is often separate with few interconnections. The essays collected in this book bring these different traditions together. This complete portrait will help readers gain deep insight and better understanding into the diverse migration flows and intercultural exchanges that have occurred in the Southern Balkans in the last two centuries.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book addresses an essential gap in the regulatory regime, which provides legislation, statements and guidelines on airlines, airports, air navigation services providers and States in the field of aviation, but is notably lacking when it comes to the rights of the airline passenger, and the average citizen who is threatened by military air strikes. It addresses subjects such as international resolutions on human rights and other human rights conventions related to aviation that impact both air transport consumers and people on the ground who are threatened by air strikes through drone attacks; disabled and obese airline passengers; compensation for delayed carriage and the denial of carriage; noise and air pollution caused by aviation and their effects on human health and wellbeing; prevention of death or injury to passengers and attendant compensatory rights; risk management; relief flights; and racial profiling. These subjects are addressed against the backdrop of real case studies that include but are not limited to instances of drone attacks, and contentious flights in the year 2014 such as MH 370, MH 17 and QZ 8501.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 304 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) are used in hospitals for the reimbursement of inpatient services. The assignment of a patient to a DRG can be distinguished into billing- and operations-driven DRG classification. The topic of this monograph is operations-drivenDRG classification, in which DRGs of inpatients are employed to improve contribution margin-based patient scheduling decisions. In the first part, attribute selection and classification techniques are evaluated in order to increase early DRG classification accuracy. Employing mathematical programming, the hospital-wide flow of elective patients is modelled taking into account DRGs, clinical pathways and scarce hospital resources. The results of the early DRG classification part reveal that a small set of attributes is sufficient in order to substantially improve DRG classification accuracy as compared to the current approach of many hospitals. Moreover, the results of the patient scheduling part reveal that the contribution margin can be increased as compared to current practice.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 136 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book presents a state-of-the art collection of original contributions on democracy, addressing three related themes: the complexity of modern democracies and their structural diversity; coping strategies of democracies in times of crises; and current and potential trajectories and transformations of democracy. The first part of the book maps the democratic landscape by revealing the diversity of democratic political systems, through either comparative analysis or case studies on the specific nature of political and administrative systems in interest intermediation and identity construction. The second part presents articles that investigate the response of democracies to times of crisis, with an emphasis on political economies and policy processes within the European Union. The third part offers studies on democracies that explore their adaptive potential in the context of globalization and in that of broader technical, institutional or cultural changes.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 300 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book includes case studies that examine the application of operations research to improve or increase efficiency in industry and operational activities. This collection of ¿living case studies¿ is all based on the author¿s 30-year career of consulting and advisory work. These true-to life industrial applications illustrate the research and development of solutions, as well as potential implementation and integration problems that may occur when adopting these methods into a business. Among the topics covered in the chapters include optimization in circuit board manufacturing, Decision Support System (DSS) for plant loading and dispatch planning, as well as development of important test procedures for tyre and pharma industry with shelf life constraints. In particular, the study on deckle optimization should be of great help to managers in paper industry and consultants for development of deckle optimization software. The application of operations research throughout the industry makes it an ideal guide for industrial executives, professionals and practitioners responsible for quality and productivity improvement.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 292 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book provides research findings and practical information on online communication strategies in politics. Based on communication research and real-world political-campaign experience, the author examines how to use the Web and social media to create public visibility, build trust and consensus and boost political participation. It offers a useful guide for practitioners working in the political arena, as well as for those managing communication projects in institutions or companies.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 204 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produced through empirical work are quite different from those gained through the kind of introspective conceptual analysis more typical of philosophy. This volume explores the benefits and challenges of an empirical philosophy of science and addresses questions such as: What do philosophers gain from empirical work How can empirical research help to develop philosophical concepts How do we integrate philosophical frameworks and empirical research What constraints do we accept when choosing an empirical approach What constraints does a pronounced theoretical focus impose on empirical work Nine experts discuss their thoughts and empirical results in the chapters of this book with the aim of providing readers with an answer to these questions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 180 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The People¿s Republic of Chinäs tax policies and international obligations are as multifaceted and dynamic as they are complex, developing closely with the nation¿s rise to the world¿s fastest-growing major economy. Today, after decades of reform and the entry into the World Trade Organization, China has developed regulatory systems that enable it to provide stable administration, including a tax structure. Chinäs main tax reform can be attributed to the enactment of the Enterprise Income Tax Law, which came into effect on January 1, 2008. Chinese tax regulations include direct taxes, indirect taxes, other taxes, and custom duties and from a collection point of view, Chinäs tax administration adopts a very devolved system, with revenue collected and shared between different levels of government in accordance with contracts between the different levels of the tax administration system. With respect to international treaties, China has established a network of bilateral tax treaties and regional free trade agreements. This publication describes in detail Chinäs complex tax system and policies, as well as major bilateral treaties in which China has entered into using country-by-country analysis.Lorenzo Riccardi is Tax Advisor and Certified Public Accountant specialized in international taxation. He is based in Shanghai, where he focuses on business and tax law, assisting foreign investments in East Asia. He is an auditor and an advisor for several corporate groups and he is partner and Head of Tax of the consulting firm GWA, specializing in emerging markets.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book offers a framework for the analysis of political communication in election campaigns based on digital trace data that documents political behavior, interests and opinions. The author investigates the data-generating processes leading users to interact with digital services in politically relevant contexts. These interactions produce digital traces, which in turn can be analyzed to draw inferences on political events or the phenomena that give rise to them. Various factors mediate the image of political reality emerging from digital trace data, such as the users of digital services¿ political interests, attitudes or attention to politics. In order to arrive at valid inferences about the political reality on the basis of digital trace data, these mediating factors have to be accounted for. The author presents this interpretative framework in a detailed analysis of Twitter messages referring to politics in the context of the 2009 federal elections in Germany. This book will appeal to scholars interested in the field of political communication, as well as practitioners active in the political arena.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 244 pp. Englisch.