This book provides key strategic principles and best practices to guide the design and implementation of digital government strategies. It provides a series of recommendations and findings to think about IT applications in government as a platform for information, services and collaboration, and strategies to avoid identified pitfalls. Digital government research suggests that information technologies have the potential to generate immense public value and transform the relationships between governments, citizens, businesses and other stakeholders. However, developing innovative and high impact solutions for citizens hinges on the development of strategic institutional, organizational and technical capabilities. Thus far, particular characteristics and problems of the public sector organization promote the development of poorly integrated and difficult to maintain applications. For example, governments maintain separate applications for open data, transparency, and public services, leading to duplication of efforts and a waste of resources. The costs associated with maintaining such sets of poorly integrated systems may limit the use of resources to future projects and innovation. This book provides best practices and recommendations based on extensive research in both Mexico and the United States on how governments can develop a digital government strategy for creating public value, how to finance digital innovation in the public sector, how to building successful collaboration networks and foster citizen engagement, and how to correctly implement open government projects and open data. It will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, students, and public sector IT professionals that work in the design and implementation of technology-based projects and programs.

It is now more than five years since the Belgian block cipher Rijndael was chosen as the Advanced Encryption Standard {AES). Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmcn used algebraic techniques to provide an unparalleled level of assurance against many standard statistical cryptanalytic tech- niques. The cipher is a fitting tribute to their distinctive approach to cipher design. Since the publication of the AES, however, the very same algebraic structures have been the subject of increasing cryptanalytic attention and this monograph has been written to summarise current research. We hope that this work will be of interest to both cryptogra- phers and algebraists and will stimulate future research. During the writing of this monograph we have found reasons to thank many people. We are especially grateful to the British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for their funding of the research project Security Analysis of the Advanced Encryption System (Grant GR/S42637), and to Susan Lagerstrom-Fifc and Sharon Palleschi at Springer. Wo would also hke to thank Glaus Diem, Maura Paterson, and Ludovic Perret for their valuable comments. Finally, the support of our families at home and our colleagues at work has been invaluable and particularly appreciated.

The book is an authoritative collection of contributions by leading experts on the topics of fuzzy logic, multi-valued logic and neural network. Originally written as an homage to Claudio Moraga, seen by his colleagues as an example of concentration, discipline and passion for science, the book also represents a timely reference guide for advance students and researchers in the field of soft computing, and multiple-valued logic.

First and pioneering in the field Presents an authoritative description of a young field of research, with a long life ahead Clearly shows the role of multidisciplinary and team work, particularly addressed by combining theoretical/experimental expertise

Metal Nanostructures for Photonics presents updates on the development of materials with enhanced optical properties and the demand for novel metal-dielectric nanocomposites and nanostructured materials. The book covers various aspects of metal-dielectric nanocomposites and metallic-nanostructures and illustrates techniques used to prepare and characterize materials and their physical properties. It focuses on three main sections, nanocomposites with enhanced luminescence properties due to contributions of metal nanoparticles hosted in photonic glasses, near and far-field optical phenomena, and the optical response of single nanoparticles that reveal quantum phenomena in the nanoscale, amongst other topics. This book will serve as an important research reference for materials scientists who want to learn more on how a range of metallic nanostructured materials are used in photonics.

South Los Angeles is often seen as ground zero for inter-racial conflict and violence in the United States. Since the 1940s, South LA has been predominantly a low-income African American neighborhood, and yet since the early 1990s Latino immigrants-mostly from Mexico and many undocumented-have moved in record numbers to the area. Given that more than a quarter million people live in South LA and that poverty rates exceed 30 percent, inter-racial conflict and violence surprises no one. The real question is: why hasn't there been more? Through vivid stories and interviews, The Neighborhood Has Its Own Rules provides an answer to this question. Based on in-depth ethnographic field work collected when the author, Cid Martinez, lived and worked in schools in South Central, this study reveals the day-to-day ways in which vibrant social institutions in South LA- its churches, its local politicians, and even its gangs-have reduced conflict and kept violence to a level that is manageable for its residents. Martinez argues that inter-racial conflict has not been managed through any coalition between different groups, but rather that these institutions have allowed established African Americans and newcomer Latinos to co-exist through avoidance-an under-appreciated strategy for managing conflict that plays a crucial role in America's low-income communities. Ultimately, this book proposes a different understanding of how neighborhood institutions are able to mitigate conflict and violence through several community dimensions of informal social controls.

Basho (1644-1694) is the most famous Haiku poet of Japan. He made his living as a teacher and writer of Haiku and is celebrated for his many travels around Japan, which he recorded in travel journals. This translation of his most mature journal, Oku-No-Hosomichi, details the most arduous part of a nine-month journey with his friend and disciple, Sora, through the backlands north of the capital, west to the Japan Sea and back toward Kyoto. More than a record of the journey, Basho's journal is a poetic sequence that has become a centre of the Japanese mind/heart. Ten illustrations by Hide Oshiro illuminate the text.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting, E-Vote-ID 2018, held in Bregenz, Austria, in October 2018. The 13 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 45 submissions. The papers deal with topics connected with electronic voting including experiences and revisions of the real uses of E-voting systems and corresponding processes in elections.

The book is an authoritative collection of contributions by leading experts on the topics of fuzzy logic, multi-valued logic and neural network. Originally written as an homage to Claudio Moraga, seen by his colleagues as an example of concentration, discipline and passion for science, the book also represents a timely reference guide for advance students and researchers in the field of soft computing, and multiple-valued logic.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 21st International Workshop on Fast Software Encryption, held in London, UK, March 3-5, 2014. The 31 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 initial submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on designs; cryptanalysis; authenticated encryption; foundations and theory; stream ciphers; hash functions; advanced constructions.

Organosulfur Chemistry has enjoyed a renaissance of interest over the last few years, fuelled by its impact in the areas of heterocyclic and radical chemistry, and particularly stereocontrolled processes including asymmetric synthesis. One result of this resurgence of interest in the field is a rapidly escalating number of related publications. This volume is intended to provide coverage of some of the highlights of contemporary organosulfur chemistry chosen from the entire range of current activity.

It is now more than five years since the Belgian block cipher Rijndael was chosen as the Advanced Encryption Standard {AES). Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmcn used algebraic techniques to provide an unparalleled level of assurance against many standard statistical cryptanalytic tech- niques. The cipher is a fitting tribute to their distinctive approach to cipher design. Since the publication of the AES, however, the very same algebraic structures have been the subject of increasing cryptanalytic attention and this monograph has been written to summarise current research. We hope that this work will be of interest to both cryptogra- phers and algebraists and will stimulate future research. During the writing of this monograph we have found reasons to thank many people. We are especially grateful to the British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for their funding of the research project Security Analysis of the Advanced Encryption System (Grant GR/S42637), and to Susan Lagerstrom-Fifc and Sharon Palleschi at Springer. Wo would also hke to thank Glaus Diem, Maura Paterson, and Ludovic Perret for their valuable comments. Finally, the support of our families at home and our colleagues at work has been invaluable and particularly appreciated.

The mendicant friars, especially the Dominicans and the Franciscans, made an enormous impact in thirteenth-century Spain influencing almost every aspect of society. In a revolutionary break from the Church's past, these religious orders were deeply involved in earthly matters while preaching the Gospel to the laity and producing many of the greatest scholars of the time. Furthermore, the friars reshaped the hierarchy of the Church, often taking up significant positions in the episcopate. They were prominent in the establishment of the Inquisition in Aragon and at the same time they played a major part in interfaith relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians. In addition, they were key contributors in the transformation of urban life, becoming an essential part of the fabric of late medieval cities, while influencing policies of monarchs such as James I of Aragon and Ferdinand III of Castile. Their missions in the towns and their educational role, as well as their robust associations with the papacy and the crown, often raised criticism and lead to internal tensions and conflict with other clergymen and secular society. They were to be both widely admired and the subjects of biting literary satire. As this collection demonstrates, the story of medieval Spain cannot possibly be fully told without mention of the critical role of the friars.