springer jan 2007 (325 risultati)

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Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -I was delighted to be invited by my colleagues Alessandra Celletti and Ettore Perozzi to provide a foreword to their book, Celestial Mechanics: The Waltz of the Planets. Having known them for many years and long admired their work in the subject so many of us love and are fascinated by, 1 read with great attention and pleasure the text when it arrived. It is a formidable task they have set themselves, to provide a book that describes attempts by successive generations of astronomers from the dawn of history five millennia ago to observe, record and understand the phenomena of the heavens, particularly the intricate and perplexing behaviour of the planets. Sun and Moon. As naked eye astronomy became aided by the telescope and the photographic plate, and since the middle of the twentieth century, by instruments launched on spacecraft into circum- Earth orbit or to the Moon and planets and beyond, the discovery of new satellites, scores of them, and ring systems displaying new and initially perplexing behaviour also demanded explanations for that behaviour. It is also the inspiring story of science itself with special reference to how lonely individuals, impelled by curiosity and dedicated to seeking the truth, and nothing but the truth, about the fascinating phenomena of nature, ultimately became accepted as scientists, those players in the most successful endeavour ever engaged in by the human race.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 288 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -ReOrganization has been written as a practical guide for anyone faced with organizing a business. Because every organization situation is unique, the reader should be familiar with a number of conceptual models and tools which can be of help when creating a theory for a particular situation. As consultants and businessmen, as well as through the elaboration of certain methods, the authors have developed a sense of what is important in the work of shaping or redesigning an organization. This book will therefore be of interest to anyone on the point of realising a development in their organization and wishing to know how this can best be accomplished most effectively and successfully.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 160 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -It was more than ten years ago that an original version of this monograph was published with the title Quantum Optics in Japanese from Iwanami Shoten in Tokyo. Therefore, making the best use of this chance to translate the book into an English version, we have tried to include the exciting developments of the relevant subjects in these ten years, especially novel nonlinear optical responses of materials. The rst example of these nonlinear optical phen- ena is laser cooling and subsequent observation of Bose¿Einstein and Fermi condensation of neutral atoms. Second, it is now possible to generate f- tosecond laser pulses. Then higher-harmonics in the extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray regions and higher-order Raman scattering can be generated by irradiating these ultrashort laser pulses on atomic and molecular gases and crystals. These multistep signals are applied to the generation of attosecond laser pulses. Third, interference e ects of the second harmonics are used to observe the ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic domain structures of crystals with a strongly correlated electronic system. These novel nonlinear optical phenomena could not be treated without the quantized radiation eld. We already have classical textbooks treating, individually, the quantum theory of the radiation eld and nonlinear optics. Taking account of these situations, we have described these exciting nonlinear optical responses as well as laser oscillation and supperradiance, based upon the quantum theory of the radiation eld. At the same time, we have changed the title of this monograph toQuantum Nonlinear Optics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 240 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Recent years have witnessed exciting and important scientific breakthroughs in the study of Neanderthals and their place in human evolution which have transformed our appreciation of this group¿s paleobiology and evolution. This volume presents cutting-edge research by leading scientists re-examining the major debates in Neanderthal research with the use of innovative state-of-the art methods and exciting new theoretical approaches.Topics addressed include the re-evaluation of Neanderthal anatomy, inferred adaptations and habitual activities, developmental patterns, phylogenetic relationships, and the Neanderthal extinction; new methods include computer tomography, 3D geometric morphometrics, ancient DNA and bioenergetics. The diverse contributions offer fresh insights and advances in Neanderthal and modern human origins research.This is a Volume in The Max-Planck-Institute Subseries in Human Evolution coordinated by Jean-Jacques Hublin, Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Human Evolution, Leipzig, GermanySpringer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 348 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Engineering litigation is rarely about who is right or who has been wronged. It is mostly about which side develops and secures a winning line of argument that will, at worst, persuade a ruling body to settle the litigation in their favour or, at best, dissuade the other side from proceeding with the litigation. It rarely proceeds without some doubt in the case evidence. The settlement of this doubt requires the judgement of a ruling body. Expert witnesses can add substance and credibility to the formalised litigation drama.This book provides a unique sourcebook for expert witness and underwriters in engineering litigation of a range of case examples that can be used to plan their future litigation work and to help them develop their own winning lines of arguments. These examples are based on the author¿s 30-year experience in engineering litigation and include. Students in forensic engineering and risk engineering will find the book¿s cross-displinary approach an ideal introduction to the subject.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 376 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of two joint RECOMB 2005 satellite events: the First Annual Workshop on Systems Biology, RSB 2005 and the Second Annual Workshop on Regulatory Genomics, RRG 2005, held in San Diego, CA, USA in December 2005. It contains 21 revised full papers that address a broad variety of topics in systems biology and regulatory genomics.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 272 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 29th Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, KI 2006, held in Bremen, Germany, in June 2006. This was co-located with RoboCup 2006, the innovative robot soccer world championship, and with ACTUATOR 2006, the 10th International Conference on New Actuators. The 29 revised full papers presented together with two invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 112 submissions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 476 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Although the Web is growing at an astounding pace, surpassing the 8 billion page mark, most pages are still designed for human consumption and cannot be processed by machines. Computers are used to display the information, but human intervention is still required to interpret the results. The Semantic Web unleashes a revolution of new possibilities in which content is given formal, machine processable semantics.This book provides a well-paced introduction to the Semantic Web. It covers a wide range of topics, from new trends (ontologies, rules) to existing technologies (Web Services and software agents) to more formal aspects (logic and inference). It includes: real-world (and complete) examples of the application of Semantic Web concepts; how the technology presented and discussed throughout the book can be extended to other application areas, i.e. Geographic Information Sciences, Bioinformatics and Fine Arts.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The growing demand of speed, accuracy, and reliability in scientific and engineering computing has been accelerating the merging of symbolic and numeric computations, two types of computation coexisting in mathematics yet separated in traditional research of mathematical computation. This book presents 23 research articles on the integration and interaction of symbolic and numeric computation.Springer Basel AG in Springer Science + Business Media, Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin 404 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -The book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation, VMCAI 2007, held in Nice, France in January 2007. This event was co-located with the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL 2007). The 21 revised full papers presented together with three invited lectures and three invited tutorials were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 85 submissions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 412 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -A woman¿s middle age had traditionally been regarded as a time of loss and decline. But in the wake of the women's movement and other societal and cultural events, a profound shift has taken place. Far from being marginalized, midlife women stand at the forefront of a great transformation of cultural perceptions and attitudes. They are rejecting stereotypes, embracing new opportunities, and forming what this important book terms 'a new collective middle-aged identity.'Women over 50: Psychological Perspectives analyzes the challenges, benefits, coping strategies, problems, and accomplishments associated with the midlife experience. Ten chapters present the state of research (and correct longstanding myths) regarding significant aspects of middle-aged women's lives:Mind-body: illness, body image, exerciseLove, romance, and sexualityFriendship and support systems'The sandwich generation'Re-creating the role of grandmothersRetirement and financial stabilityUsing personal empowerment to empower othersQuality of life and future directionsWomen over 50 bridges a major knowledge gap in the feminist-psychology literature, making it an essential resource for clinicians and advanced students. It balances optimism and realism about older women¿s lives¿and younger women¿s futures.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Many readers will doubtless be astonished to learn that animals were being fired aloft in U.S. and Soviet research rockets in the late 1940s. In fact most people not only believe that the Russian space dog Laika was the first canine to be launched into space, but also that the high-profile, precursory Mercury flights of chimps Ham and Enos were the only primate flights conducted by the United States. In fact, both countries had sent literally dozens of animals aloft for many years prior to these events and continued to do so for many years after. Other latter-day space nations, such as France and China, would also begin to use animals in their own space research. Animals in Space will explain why dogs, primates, mice and other rodents were chosen and tested, at a time when dedicated scientists from both space nations were determined to establish the survivability of human subjects on both ballistic and orbital space flights. It will also recount the way this happened; the secrecy involved and the methods employed, and offer an objective analysis of how the role of animals as spaceflight test subjects not only evolved, but subsequently changed over the years in response to a public outcry led by animal activists. It will explore the ways in which animal high-altitude and space flight research impacted on space flight biomedicine and technology, and how the results - both successful and disappointing - allowed human beings to then undertake that same hazardous journey with far greater understanding and confidence.This book is intended as a detailed yet highly readable and balanced account of the history of animal space flights, and the resultant application of hard-won research to space technology and astrobiology. It will undoubtedly become the ultimate authority on animal space flights.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - No statistical model is 'true' or 'false,' 'right' or 'wrong'; the models just have varying performance, which can be assessed. The main theme in this book is to teach modeling based on the principle that the objective is to extract the information from data that can be learned with suggested classes of probability models. The intuitive and fundamental concepts of complexity, learnable information, and noise are formalized, which provides a firm information theoretic foundation for statistical modeling. Inspired by Kolmogorov's structure function in the algorithmic theory of complexity, this is accomplished by finding the shortest code length, called the stochastic complexity, with which the data can be encoded when advantage is taken of the models in a suggested class, which amounts to the MDL (Minimum Description Length) principle. The complexity, in turn, breaks up into the shortest code length for the optimal model in a set of models that can be optimally distinguished from the given data and the rest, which defines 'noise' as the incompressible part in the data without useful information.Such a view of the modeling problem permits a unified treatment of any type of parameters, their number, and even their structure. Since only optimally distinguished models are worthy of testing, we get a logically sound and straightforward treatment of hypothesis testing, in which for the first time the confidence in the test result can be assessed. Although the prerequisites include only basic probability calculus and statistics, a moderate level of mathematical proficiency would be beneficial. The different and logically unassailable view of statistical modelling should provide excellent grounds for further research and suggest topics for graduate students in all fields of modern engineering, including and not restricted to signal and image processing, bioinformatics, pattern recognition, and machine learning to mention just a few.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - Modern computer algebra systems are revolutionizing the teaching and learning of mathematically intensive subjects in science and engineering, enabling students to explore increasingly complex and computationally intensive models that provide analytic solutions, animated numerical solutions, and complex two- and three-dimensional graphic displays.This self-contained text benefits from a spiral structure that regularly revisits the general topics of graphics, symbolic computation, and numerical simulation with increasing intricacy at each turn. The text is built around a large number of computer algebra worksheets or 'recipes' that have been designed using MAPLE to provide tools for problem solving and to stimulate critical thinking. No prior knowledge of MAPLE is assumed. All relevant commands are introduced on a need-to-know basis and are indexed for easy reference. Each recipe is associated with a scientific model or method and an interesting or amusing story designed to both entertain and enhance concept comprehension and retention. Aimed at third- and fourth-year undergraduates in science and engineering, the text contains numerous examples in disciplines that will challenge students progressing in mathematics, physics, engineering, game theory, and physical chemistry. Computer Algebra Recipes: An Advanced Guide to Mathematical Modeling can serve as an effective computational science text, with a set of problems following each section of recipes to enable readers to apply and confirm their understanding. The book may also be used as a reference, for self-study, or as the basis of an on-line course.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware - All real surfaces, both those occurring naturally, and those fabricated artificially and with great care, are rough to some degree. It is therefore of interest, and often of importance, to know the extent to which this roughness affects physical p- cesses occurring at a surface. A particularly interesting class of physical processes occurring at a rough surface is the scattering of electromagnetic waves from it, or their transmission through it. In this case the degree of the surface roughness is referred to the wavelength of the waves incident on it. The study of the scattering of electromagnetic waves from rough surfaces has been actively carried out for more than a century now, since Rayleigh's inves- gations of the scattering of a monochromatic plane wave incident normally on a 1 sinusoidal interface between two different media. The first theoretical treatment of the scattering of an electromagnetic wave from a randomly rough surface was due to Mandel'shtam/ in the context of the scattering of light from a liquid s- face. In these pioneering studies the angular dependence of the intensity of the scattered field was calculated by perturbation theory as an expansion in powers of the surface profile function though the first nonzero term, a single scattering approximation.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Over the last years, due to intensive competition in the knowledge economy, legal aspects surrounding intellectual property (IP) rights - including litigation and settlement - have continuously gained in importance. Correspondingly, professional IP management has become an indispensable element of successful value-based management (VBM) in research-intensive firms.With this text, the author proposes an integrated approach to patent risk and capital budgeting in pharmaceutical research and development (R and D), developing an option-based view (OBV) of imperfect patent protection, which draws upon contingent-claims analysis, stochastic game theory, as well as novel numerical methods. Bridging a widening gap between recent advances in the theory of financial analysis and current challenges faced by pharmaceutical companies, the text re-initiates a discussion about the contribution of quantitative frameworks to value-based R and D management.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 290 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -It is my great pleasure to introduce The Legal Environment and Risks for Foreign Investment in China by Shoushuang Li, a star young lawyer in Beijing. Mr. Li has a wealth of experience in foreign investment law and joint ventures, which he brings to bear in his analysis of this dynamic and critical field. Chinäs investment climate continues to evolve. Less than thirty years after the introduction of market reforms, China has become one of the world¿s most attr- tive investment locations. The legal system has developed a good deal, although there are still plenty of pitfalls that await investors who are not sufficiently careful. Foreign observers of the legal system remain divided as to whether the proverbial glass is half full, or rather half empty¿some believe that Chinäs efforts to - velop the rule of law have already born fruit while others are more skeptical. Li¿s strength is to combine the specific details of the various regimes governing investment in China with a broader perspective on risk management. He begins with an introduction to general issues related to foreign investment, tax law, land use right and labor law. These are likely to be of concern to investors in a wide array of fields. He then goes on to provide a wealth of detail on particular sectors of education, water, and insurance.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 344 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -'Modelling and Analysis of Hybrid Supervisory Systems' introduces a modelling formalism that merges Petri nets, differential equation systems and object-oriented methods; a formalism that is adequate for modelling complex and large-scale systems. To guide the designer and conduct hybrid modelling, the book describes a method that starts from the requirements of a supervisory system and results in a proposal for such a system. The method is mainly based on UML diagrams, well-known tools in both academia and industry. In order to ensure that the supervisory system will behave as expected, a validation procedure that allows verification of the formal properties of the hybrid model is presented.In building a bridge between what is developed in academic research and what is available to the industrial professional, this monograph places particular emphasis on the description of real-world examples; three of these ¿ an HVAC management system, a landing system and a cane-sugar factory ¿ are discussed at length.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 248 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Nanotechnology is rapidly invading many aspects of modern society - from science, research and engineering to industrial and commercial applications and, inevitably, to man and his environment. One of the biggest challenges, therefore, is managing environmental, health and safety risks of nanomaterials. Yet, the information necessary to assess their long term effects is scarce. Systematic research into what potentially makes engineered nanomaterials hazardous, how this translates into risk, and how these can be managed will be vital and involves interdisciplinary collaboration.The first International Symposium on Nanotechnology and Occupational Health, in 2004, brought together hygienists, manufacturers, toxicologists, materials scientists, regulators and researchers. It pointed the way to what needs to be done. The second International Symposium, 2005, Minneapolis, Minnesota, demonstrated the power and potential where there is a will: with nearly three times as many attendants, and with contributions from academics, industry, policymakers, non-government organizations and even lawyers, this second symposium established that, while there is international concern over how to ensure safe nanotech-workplaces, there is also progress being made in developing the required knowledge.This volume, a reprint from a special issue of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research, mainly draws from work presented at the 2005 symposium, diverse but united by the need for a holistic view of nanotechnology and risk.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 192 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Systems biology is defined for the purpose of this study as the understanding of biological network behaviors, and in particular their dynamic aspects, which requires the utilization of mathematical modeling tightly linked to experiment. This involves a variety of approaches, such as the identification and validation of networks, the creation of appropriate datasets, the development of tools for data acquisition and software development, and the use of modeling and simulation software in close linkage with experiment. All of these are discussed in this volume. Of course, the definition becomes ambiguous at the margins, but at the core is the focus on networks, which makes it clear that the goal is to understand the operation of the systems, rather than the component parts.It was concluded that the U.S. is currently ahead of the rest of the world in systems biology, largely because of earlier investment by funding organizations and research institutions. This is reflected in a large number of active research groups, and educational programs, and a diverse and growing funding base. However, there is evidence of rapid development outside the U.S., much of it begun in the last two to three years. Overall, however, the picture is of an active field in the early stages of explosive growth.This volume is aimed at academic researchers, government research agency representatives and graduate students.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 284 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Optically Anomalous Crystals begins with an historical introduction covering the contributions of Brewster, Biot, Mallard, Brauns, Tamman, and many other distinguished crystallographers. From this follows a tutorial in crystal optics. Further chapters discuss the two main mechanisms of optical dissymmetry: 1. the piezo-optic effect, and 2. the kinetic ordering of atoms. The text then tackles complex, inhomogeneous crystals, and the complex optical properties resulting from the superposition of anomalies having various etiologies. The book treats the literature comprehensively, but uses illustrations from the authors¿ laboratories as the subjects of detailed analyses.This is an invaluable text for crystallographers, mineralogists, and petrologists interested in the growth of minerals and synthetic crystals, and their optical properties. It is also ideally suited to students of optical mineralogy, professional scientists and engineers as well as historians of science.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 288 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Long gone are the days when program veri cation was a task carried out merely by hand with paper and pen. For one, we are increasingly interested in proving actual program artifacts, not just abstractions thereof or core algorithms. The programs we want to verify today are thus longer, including whole classes and modules. As we consider larger programs, the number of cases to be considered in a proof increases. The creative and insightful parts of a proof can easily be lost in scores of mundane cases. Another problem with paper-and-pen proofs is that the features of the programming languages we employ in these programs are plentiful, including object-oriented organizations of data, facilities for specifying di erent c- trol ow for rare situations, constructs for iterating over the elements of a collection, and the grouping together of operations into atomic transactions. These language features were designed to facilitate simpler and more natural encodings of programs, and ideally they are accompanied by simpler proof rules. But the variety and increased number of these features make it harder to remember all that needs to be proved about their uses. As a third problem, we have come to expect a higher degree of rigor from our proofs. A proof carried out or replayed by a machine somehow gets more credibility than one that requires human intellect to understand.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 692 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Seasonality is so obvious that we very often forget about it when doing landscape research. Seasonality is the interface where humans and nature really interact. Seasonality is expressed both in the natural rhythms of the landscape as well as in human lifestyles. Seasonality creates varying patterns of use and appears in spatial practices, paintings, human behaviour. Also, seasonality itself changes together with societal changes ¿ in agricultural societies, summer used to be the working season and winter the resting one; now we are more and more used to summer holidays¿Landscapes are seasonal both in terms of time and space, the boundaries between seasons are celebrated ¿ do different seasonalities influence also our mindsets In most cases we talk about (and paint and study) summer landscapes, but there are more than that. There are times with less light, less leaves on the trees to influence visibility, times when moist or snow make places inaccessible. Should seasonality be taken into account in planning, and if yes, then how This book studies seasonal landscape in Scandinavia and Brazil, on the Aegean islands and in European mountains, in agriculture tourism, in cities and in the countryside.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 272 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In recent years, scientists have applied the principles of complex systems science to increasingly diverse fields. The results have been nothing short of remarkable: their novel approaches have provided answers to long-standing questions in biology, ecology, physics, engineering, computer science, economics, psychology and sociology.The Third International Conference on Complex Systems attracted over 400 researchers from around the world. The conference aimed to encourage cross-fertilization between the many disciplines represented and to deepen our understanding of the properties common to all complex systems.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 408 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -This book examines the historical roots and evolution of simulation from an epistemological, institutional and technical perspective. Rich case studies go far beyond documentation of simulation¿s capacity for application in many domains, they also explore the 'functional' and 'structural' debate that continues to traverse simulation thought and action. One here asks if simulation deeply transforms science, or instead constitutes a limited tool that principally extends the repertory of erstwhile practice. Does simulation comprise a novel form of experiment, or rather operate as a mechanism which extends standing forms of experimentation What are simulation¿s relations with models or theory, for example These studies further query to what extent and in what ways simulation may be regarded as a discipline, a special species of instrument, or as transdisciplinary.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are harmful to human health and to the environment. Their fate in the marine environment is not yet fully understood. An ocean model (FANTOM) has been developed to investigate the fate of selected POPs in the North Sea. The main focus of the model is on quantifying the distribution of POPs and their aquatic pathways. This is the first time that a spatially-resolved, measurement-based ocean transport model has been used to study POP-like substances, at least on the regional scale. The model was applied for the southern North Sea and tested by studying the behaviour of g-HCH, a-HCH and PCB 153 in sea water. This model study proves that transport models, such as FANTOM, are capable of reproducing realistic multi-year temporal and spatial trends of selected POPs and can be used to address further scientific questions.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 152 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -Over the past fifty years, local government in Europe has been confronted with escalating scales of production, population migration and market pressures. These developments have complicated its performance, challenged its domain and even threatened its existence. A popular coping strategy is inter-municipal cooperation, a phenomenon that, despite its ubiquity, has not been subject to systematic comparative research.This book presents an overview of inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries. Each country study sketches its attendant forms, their institutional design, the tasks and competencies attributed to joint authorities of municipalities and the way inter-municipal cooperation operates in practice. Both performance and democratic aspects of cooperation are recurring topics. The last chapter of the book presents a comparative analysis and reflects on the future of inter-municipal cooperation.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 252 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. Neuware -In 2004, the discipline of sociology celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Sociological Association. In 2005, the Section on Medical Sociology celebrated 50 years since the formation of the Committee on Medical Sociology within the ASA. And, in 2003, the Section on the Sociology of Mental Health celebrated ten years since its founding within the American branch of the discipline. This brief accounting marks the American-based or- nizational landmarks central to concerns about how social factors shape the mental health problems individuals face as well as the individual and system responses that follow. This history also lays a trail of how the focus on mental health and illness has narrowed from a general concern of the discipline to a more intense, substantively-focused community of scholars targeting a common set of specific theoretical and empirical questions. While mental health and illness figured prominently in the writings of classical sociologists, contem- rary sociologists often view research on mental health as peripheral to the ¿real work¿ of the discipline. The sentiment, real or perceived, is that the sociology of mental health, along with its sister, medical sociology, may be in danger of both losing its prominence in the discipline and losing its connection to the ma- stream core of sociological knowledge (Pescosolido & Kronenfeld, 1995).Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 496 pp. Englisch.