This is a collection of articles reflecting the contemporary life of rural and urban Kazakhs. A common theme is the socio-cultural aspects of how their way of life has changed since independence.

This volume examines the spread and character of Islam in non-Arab countries, focusing particularly on the contemporary situation. It deals with Sufism, which is the predominant form of Islam in non-Arab countries, and the growing significance of Islamism, which challenges secularism and Sufism.

This work presents a practical explanation of how system-level design and implementation choices affect the performance and maintainability of embedded communications software. It outlines the architectural requirements of software for various communications devices, and explains the programming techniques (state tables, upper and lower level interfaces, configuration techniques, buffer and timer management) that enable clean, understandable implementations of complex protocols.