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Masters of Tonewood: The Hidden Art of Fine Stringed-Instrument Making
by Jeffrey GreeneThe wood used by master craftsmen to create many of the world’s legendary stringed instruments—violins and cellos, mandolins and guitars—comes from seven near-mythic European forests. In his latest book, Jeffrey Greene takes the reader into those woodlands and into luthiers’ workshops to show us how the world’s finest instruments not only contribute to great musical art but are prized works of art in themselves.Masters of Tonewood describes the "hidden life" of stringed instruments, beginning with the unique wood, expertly chosen and sometimes cured for decades, that gives them voices that rivet audiences. Greene takes us to forests in Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Romania, Poland, and the Czech Republic. We are introduced to the acoustical and aesthetic properties of the spruce that Stradivari treasured, and the mystery of why just one in a thousand maple trees contains decorative figuring worthy of the highest-quality instruments. Greene visits the greatest traditional centers of this craft, from Spain to the United States. He recounts the ideas and experiences of tonewood millers, luthiers, and musicians and discusses their concerns about environmental issues associated with a tradition dependent on ancient woodlands in a modern world.
Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth
by Phaedra DaiphaThough we commonly make them the butt of our jokes, weather forecasters are in fact exceptionally good at managing uncertainty. They consistently do a better job calibrating their performance than stockbrokers, physicians, or other decision-making experts precisely because they receive feedback on their decisions in near real time. Following forecasters in their quest for truth and accuracy, therefore, holds the key to the analytically elusive process of decision making as it actually happens. In Masters of Uncertainty, Phaedra Daipha develops a new conceptual framework for the process of decision making, after spending years immersed in the life of a northeastern office of the National Weather Service. Arguing that predicting the weather will always be more craft than science, Daipha shows how forecasters have made a virtue of the unpredictability of the weather. Impressive data infrastructures and powerful computer models are still only a substitute for the real thing outside, and so forecasters also enlist improvisational collage techniques and an omnivorous appetite for information to create a locally meaningful forecast on their computer screens. Intent on capturing decision making in action, Daipha takes the reader through engrossing firsthand accounts of several forecasting episodes (hits and misses) and offers a rare fly-on-the-wall insight into the process and challenges of producing meteorological predictions come rain or come shine. Combining rich detail with lucid argument, Masters of Uncertainty advances a theory of decision making that foregrounds the pragmatic and situated nature of expert cognition and casts into new light how we make decisions in the digital age.
Materan Contradictions: Architecture, Preservation and Politics (Ashgate Studies In Architecture Ser.)
by Anne Parmly ToxeyShaped by encrusted layers of development spanning millennia, the southern Italian city of Matera is the ultimate palimpsest. Known as the Sassi, the majority of the ancient city is composed of thousands of structures carved into a limestone cliff and clinging to its walls. The resultant menagerie of forms possesses a surprising visual uniformity and an ineffable allure. Conversely, in the 1950s Matera also served as a crucible for Italian postwar urban and architectural theory, witnessed by the Neorealist, modernist expansion of the city that developed in aversion to the Sassi. In another about-face, the previously disparaged cave city has now been recast as a major tourist destination, UNESCO World Heritage Monument, and test subject for ideas and methods of preservation. Set within a sociopolitical and architectural history of Matera from 1950 to the present, this book analyses the contemporary effects of preservation on the city and surrounding province. More broadly, it examines the relationship between and interdependence of preservation and modernism within architectural thought. To understand inconsistencies inherent to preservation, in particular its effect of catalyzing change, the study lays bare planners' and developers' use of preservation, especially for economic goals and political will. The work asserts that preservation is not a passive, curatorial pursuit: it is a cloaked manifestation of modernism and a powerful tool often used to control economies. The study demonstrates that preservation also serves to influence societies through the shaping of memory and circulation of narratives.
Material Concerns: Pollution, Profit and Quality of Life
by Tim JacksonMaterial Concerns offers new perspectives on key environmental issues - pollution prevention, ecological economics, limits to sustainability, consumer behaviour and government policy. The first non-technical introduction to preventative environmental management, Material Concerns offers realistic prospects for improving the quality of life.
Material Cycling of Wetland Soils Driven by Freeze-Thaw Effects
by Xiaofei YuFreezing and thawing of soils is a common phenomenon in the winter-cold zone. The thesis titled "Material Cycling of Wetland Soils Driven by Freeze-Thaw Effects" systematically explores the freeze-thaw effects on the accumulation and release processes of carbon and nitrogen in wetland soils, which is a good step toward the investigation of biogeochemical processes in wetlands in seasonal freeze-thaw areas. It is also developing strategies aimed at global warming effects on the accumulation and release of carbon and nitrogen in wetlands. Dr. Xiaofei Yu works at the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Material Ecocriticism
by Serenella Iovino Serpil OppermannMaterial Ecocriticism offers new ways to analyze language and reality, human and nonhuman life, mind and matter, without falling into well-worn paths of thinking. Bringing ecocriticism closer to the material turn, the contributions to this landmark volume focus on material forces and substances, the agency of things, processes, narratives and stories, and making meaning out of the world. This broad-ranging reflection on contemporary human experience and expression provokes new understandings of the planet to which we are intimately connected.
Material Geographies of Household Sustainability
by Andrew Gorman-MurrayCharting new research directions, this book constructs a series of imperatives for linking culturally informed research around household sustainability with policy and planning. The household, or 'home', is a critical scale for understanding activities that connect individual behaviours and societal attitudes. The focus on the household in this collection provides a window into the sheer diversity of homemaking and maintenance activities that entail resource use. These practices have affective or emotive dimensions as well as habitual aspects. Diversity, innovation and change at the household scale is often missed in policy approaches which assume that simplistic economic motivations drive demand and this can in turn be 'managed' through regulation or market pricing. The research challenge extends beyond describing existing unsustainable economies driving resource intensive behaviour to consider realistic options for transformations in cultural practices, material relationships and, ultimately, the political economies they sit within. Without change in these systems, government initiatives to promote ecological modernisation run the risk of simply green-washing the very economies of consumption that currently drive unsustainable practices. Social and cultural change at the household level is critical to promoting sustainability at a range of wider scales.
Material Imagination in Architecture
by David Dernie Jacopo GaspariMaterial Imagination in Architecture draws on history and the visual arts, and contemporary architecture to explore this popular theme in architectural practice and education. In the context of a discipline increasingly driven by digital production, this text explores architecture and making and the diverse influences on the material reality of architectural form: it argues that the crafts, fabrication and assemblage of its making remain vital elements of contemporary architectural language. This broad-ranging text bridges the gap between a technical or otherwise fragmentary knowledge of materials of the specialist, and the tacit or instinctive understanding of materials that the artist, sculptor or architect may have. It identifies key material themes pertinent to contemporary architectural debate and develops a discourse about future practice that is framed by environmental imperatives and grounded in a historical understanding of the meaning and use of materials. Material iconology in architecture is a well-established tradition and this book draws on that background to investigate the possibilities, and limits, of using materials in contemporary design to communicate the themes and contexts of an architectural project, a material’s relationship to context, and to the history of practices that belong to the traditions of making buildings. Each theme is explored in case studies from twelve countries around the world, including the UK, USA, Spain, Italy, Germany, Australia and China.
The Material Limits of Energy Transition: Thanatia
by Alicia Valero Antonio Valero Guiomar CalvoEarth has become a huge mine, with a greater quantity and variety of fundamental mineral resources being extracted year after year. Technology, from electric cars to everyday electrical equipment, consume vast amounts of scarce raw materials. On a planet with limited resources, are these minerals being properly assessed? Will there be enough raw materials to meet the demand of a world population on track to reach 10 billion people? What will be the consequences of accelerated resource depredation? Will the planet one day become 'Thanatia', a resource-exhausted Earth?This book allows readers to understand the mineral heritage of the Earth, considering the demand for raw materials in society, comparing it with the availability of resources on Earth and the impact of mining. The basics of physical geonomics are exlpained, allowing readers to analyse the loss of mineral resources on the planet. The impact of renewable energies and technologies, including electric vehicles, are studied. The book concludes with possible solutions to mineral depletion, from increasing recycling rates, ecodesign measures or alternative sources of mineral resources. Providing numerous tables and illustrations, 'The Material Limits of Energy Transition: Thanatia' gives readers a thorough understanding of mineral depletion. Exploring geology, geochemistry, mining, metallurgy, the environment and thermodynamics, this is a truly holistic book.
Material Matters: Developing Business for a Circular Economy
by Thomas Rau Sabine OberhuberOur planet is a closed system with limited material resources, yet our current economic model is designed in a one-way direction from resource extraction to disposal, leading to resource depletion. This book proposes a new economic model, offering an alternative to this linear ‘take-make-waste’ economy. Material Matters shows a way of creating a circular economy by using the unlimited resources we have: renewable energy, data and intelligence. It describes a system based on circular business models centred on selling performance rather than ownership, designing products and buildings as resource banks and equipping products with a ‘material passport’ to ensure their usability for future generations. Businesses thereby become custodians of materials, rather than consumers of materials and sellers of products. The book evokes the vision of a radically new economic model based on a compelling narrative, supported with cases that have been developed in conjunction with major companies, for example, convincing Philips to sell light instead of lamps, saving energy and materials by creating a whole new business model, a case which has become iconic for the circular economy. Material Matters is not a somber analysis of the state of the planet but a concrete and comprehensive agenda for change, offering perspectives for taking action for business and individual consumers alike.
The Material Point Method: Theory, Implementations and Applications (Scientific Computation)
by Vinh Phu Nguyen Alban de Vaucorbeil Stephane BordasThis book provides an introduction to the fundamental theory, practical implementation, and core and emerging applications of the material point method (MPM) and its variants. The MPM combines the advantages of both finite element analysis (FEM) and meshless/meshfree methods (MMs) by representing the material by a set of particles overlaid on a background mesh that serves as a computational scratchpad.The book shows how MPM allows a robust, accurate, and efficient simulation of a wide variety of material behaviors without requiring overly complex implementations. MPM and its variants have been shown to be successful in simulating a large number of high deformation and complicated engineering problems such as densification of foam, sea ice dynamics, landslides, and energetic device explosions, to name a few, and have recently found applications in the movie industry. It is hoped that this comprehensive exposition on MPM variants and their applications will not only provide an opportunity to re-examine previous contributions, but also to re-organize them in a coherent fashion and in anticipation of new advances.Sample algorithms for the solutions of benchmark problems are provided online so that researchers and graduate students can modify these algorithms and develop their own solution algorithms for specific problems. The goal of this book is to provide students and researchers with a theoretical and practical knowledge of the material point method to analyze engineering problems, and it may help initiate and promote further in-depth studies on the subjects discussed.
The Material Point Method for Geotechnical Engineering: A Practical Guide
by James Fern Alexander Rohe Kenichi Soga Eduardo AlonsoThis practical guide provides the best introduction to large deformation material point method (MPM) simulations for geotechnical engineering. It provides the basic theory, discusses the different numerical features used in large deformation simulations, and presents a number of applications -- providing references, examples and guidance when using MPM for practical applications. <P><P>MPM covers problems in static and dynamic situations within a common framework. It also opens new frontiers in geotechnical modelling and numerical analysis. It represents a powerful tool for exploring large deformation behaviours of soils, structures and fluids, and their interactions, such as internal and external erosion, and post-liquefaction analysis; for instance the post-failure liquid-like behaviours of landslides, penetration problems such as CPT and pile installation, and scouring problems related to underwater pipelines. In the recent years, MPM has developed enough for its practical use in industry, apart from the increasing interest in the academic world.
Material Politics: Disputes Along the Pipeline (RGS-IBG Book Series)
by Andrew BarryIn Material Politics, author Andrew Barry reveals that as we are beginning to attend to the importance of materials in political life, materials has become increasingly bound up with the production of information about their performance, origins, and impact. Presents an original theoretical approach to political geography by revealing the paradoxical relationship between materials and politics Explores how political disputes have come to revolve not around objects in isolation, but objects that are entangled in ever growing quantities of information about their performance, origins, and impact Studies the example of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline – a fascinating experiment in transparency and corporate social responsibility – and its wide-spread negative political impact Capitalizes on the growing interdisciplinary interest, especially within geography and social theory, about the critical role of material artefacts in political life
Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
by Ed ConwaySand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future. • Finalist for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year AwardThe fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway calls &“the ethereal world&”—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material.In fact, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. For every ton of fossil fuels, we extract six tons of other materials, from sand to stone to wood to metal. And in Material World, Conway embarks on an epic journey across continents, cultures, and epochs to reveal the underpinnings of modern life on Earth—traveling from the sweltering depths of the deepest mine in Europe to spotless silicon chip factories in Taiwan to the eerie green pools where lithium originates.Material World is a celebration of the humans and the human networks, the miraculous processes and the little-known companies, that combine to turn raw materials into things of wonder. This is the story of human civilization from an entirely new perspective: the ground up.
The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History (Routledge Advances in Urban History)
by Lieven Ameel Jason Finch Silja Laine Richard DennisThe Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History explores a variety of geographical and cultural contexts to examine what literary texts, grasped as material objects and reflections on urban materialities, have to offer for urban history. The contributing writers’ approach to literary narratives and materialities in urban history is summarised within the conceptualisation ‘materiality in/of literature’: the way in which literary narratives at once refer to the material world and actively partake in the material construction of the world. This book takes a geographically multipolar and multidisciplinary approach to discuss cities in the UK, the US, India, South Africa, Finland, and France whilst examining a wide range of textual genres from the novel to cartoons, advertising copy, architecture and urban planning, and archaeological writing. In the process, attention is drawn to narrative complexities embedded within literary fiction and to the dialogue between narratives and historical change. The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History has three areas of focus: literary fiction as form of urban materiality, literary narratives as social investigations of the material city, and the narrating of silenced material lives as witnessed in various narrative sources.
Materials and Sustainability: Building a Circular Future
by Julia L Goldstein Paul Foulkes-ArellanoThis book examines sustainable manufacturing, from the extraction of materials to processing, use, and disposal, and argues that significant changes in all of the above are needed for the world to progress toward a more circular economy.Materials and processing methods are usually chosen with performance as the key metric. Why has our society embraced plastics? Because they work. In most cases, they are lighter, easier to manufacture, and less expensive than the metal, wood, glass, or stone they have replaced. Why do industrial manufacturers use toxic chemicals? Because they are effective, but the unintended consequences may be severe. By learning how various materials are made and what happens when they are recycled, readers will better understand the value of materials and the challenges that manufacturers face when trying to make their facilities and products less toxic and less wasteful. The three chapters in Part I provide essential background about materials in the circular economy, chemicals, and waste. Part II delves into specific materials. It includes chapters on plastics, metals, wood and paper products, glass, and novel materials. Part III covers recycling and manufacturing processes, and Part IV delves into practical considerations, including the effect of regulations, concluding with a chapter that helps readers translate the information presented into action. Interviews with industry experts round out the chapters and offer valuable insights.Materials and Sustainability is a must-read for business professionals who are serious about making their companies as environmentally responsible as possible and for business and engineering students who want to begin their careers with practical knowledge about materials and their impacts.
Materials Discovery and Design: By Means of Data Science and Optimal Learning (Springer Series in Materials Science #280)
by Turab Lookman Stephan Eidenbenz Frank Alexander Cris BarnesThis book addresses the current status, challenges and future directions of data-driven materials discovery and design. It presents the analysis and learning from data as a key theme in many science and cyber related applications. The challenging open questions as well as future directions in the application of data science to materials problems are sketched. Computational and experimental facilities today generate vast amounts of data at an unprecedented rate. The book gives guidance to discover new knowledge that enables materials innovation to address grand challenges in energy, environment and security, the clearer link needed between the data from these facilities and the theory and underlying science. The role of inference and optimization methods in distilling the data and constraining predictions using insights and results from theory is key to achieving the desired goals of real time analysis and feedback. Thus, the importance of this book lies in emphasizing that the full value of knowledge driven discovery using data can only be realized by integrating statistical and information sciences with materials science, which is increasingly dependent on high throughput and large scale computational and experimental data gathering efforts. This is especially the case as we enter a new era of big data in materials science with the planning of future experimental facilities such as the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford (LCLS-II), the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (EXFEL) and MaRIE (Matter Radiation in Extremes), the signature concept facility from Los Alamos National Laboratory. These facilities are expected to generate hundreds of terabytes to several petabytes of in situ spatially and temporally resolved data per sample. The questions that then arise include how we can learn from the data to accelerate the processing and analysis of reconstructed microstructure, rapidly map spatially resolved properties from high throughput data, devise diagnostics for pattern detection, and guide experiments towards desired targeted properties. The authors are an interdisciplinary group of leading experts who bring the excitement of the nascent and rapidly emerging field of materials informatics to the reader.
Materials for Sustainable Energy Storage at the Nanoscale
by Fabian I. Ezema M. Anusuya Assumpta C. NwanyaThe book Materials for Sustainable Energy Storage Devices at the Nanoscale anticipates covering all electrochemical energy storage devices such as supercapacitors, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), and fuel cells,transformation and enhancement materials for solar cells, photocatalysis, etc. The focal objective ofthe book is to deliver stunning and current information to the materials application at nanoscale toresearchers and scientists in our contemporary time towardthe enhancement of energy conversion andstorage devices. However, the contents of the proposed book, Materials for Sustainable Energy Storageat the Nanoscale, will cover various fundamental principles and wide knowledge of different energyconversion and storage devices with respect to their advancement due to the emergence of nanoscalematerials for sustainable storage devices. This book is targeted to be award-winning as well as a referencebook for researchers and scientists working on different types of nanoscale materials-based energystorage and conversion devices. Features Comprehensive overview of energy storage devices, an important field of interest for researchers worldwide Explores the importance and growing impact of batteries and supercapacitors Emphasizes the fundamental theories, electrochemical mechanism, and its computational viewpoint and discusses recent developments in electrode designing based on nanomaterials, separators,and fabrication of advanced devices and their performances Fabian I. Ezema is a professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He earned a PhD in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His research focused on several areas of Materials Science, from synthesis and characterizations of particles and thin-film materials through chemical routes with emphasis on energy applications. For the last 15 years, he has been working on energy conversion and storage (cathodes, anodes, supercapacitors, solar cells, among others), including novel methods of synthesis, characterization and evaluation of the electrochemical and optical properties. He has published about 180 papers in various international journals and given over 50 talks at various conferences. His h-index is 21 with over 1500 citations and he has served as reviewer for several high impact journals and as an editorial board member. Dr. M.Anusuya, M.Sc., M.Phil., B.Ed., PhD is specialized in Material science, Thin Film Technology, Nano Science, and Crystallography. She is working as a Registrar of Indra Ganesan Group of Institutions, Trichy, Tamilnadu, India. Earlier to this, she served as a Vice-Principal at Trichy Engineering College, Trichy, Tamilnadu, India.. Being an administrator and teacher, with more than 25 years’ experience, for her perpetual excellence in academics she has been recognized with many awards. She has received over 45 awards in Academic and Social Activity. She has published more than 30 research papers in National and International journals, 7 chapters in edited books, 5 patents, presented 50 papers in the conferences and organized more than 200 webinars, both national and internationally. Dr Assumpta C. Nwanya is a Lecturer and a FLAIR (Future Leaders - African Independent Research) Scholar at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She obtained her PhD in 2017 (University of Nigeria, Nsukka) with specialisation in the synthesis of nanostructured materials for applications in photovoltaics and electrochemical energy storage (batteries and supercapacitors) as well as for sensing. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow under the UNESCO-University of South Africa (UNISA) Africa Chair in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2018-2020). She is a research Affiliate with the SensorLab, University of the Western Cape Sensor Laboratories, Cape Town, South Africa. Dr Nw
Materials Interaction with Femtosecond Lasers: Theory and Ultra-Large-Scale Simulations of Thermal and Nonthermal Pheomena
by Bernd BauerhenneThis book presents a unified view of the response of materials as a result of femtosecond laser excitation, introducing a general theory that captures both ultrashort-time non-thermal and long-time thermal phenomena. It includes a novel method for performing ultra-large-scale molecular dynamics simulations extending into experimental and technological spatial dimensions with ab-initio precision. For this, it introduces a new class of interatomic potentials, constructed from ab-initio data with the help of a self-learning algorithm, and verified by direct comparison with experiments in two different materials — the semiconductor silicon and the semimetal antimony.In addition to a detailed description of the new concepts introduced, as well as giving a timely review of ultrafast phenomena, the book provides a rigorous introduction to the field of laser–matter interaction and ab-initio description of solids, delivering a complete and self-contained examination of the topic from the very first principles. It explains, step by step from the basic physical principles, the underlying concepts in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and electrodynamics, introducing all necessary mathematical theorems as well as their proofs. A collection of appendices provide the reader with an appropriate review of many fundamental mathematical concepts, as well as important analytical and numerical parameters used in the simulations.
Materials Processing Fundamentals 2023 (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series)
by Samuel Wagstaff Alexandra Anderson Adrian S. SabauThis volume covers various aspects of the fundamentals, synthesis, analysis, design, monitoring, and control of metals, materials, and metallurgical processes and phenomena. Topics represented include but are not limited to:• Use of artificial intelligence or big data in the control or optimization of industrial processes • Modelling or optimization of recycle streams and scrap loops • Measurement and control in hostile environments • Modeling transport phenomena in materials processing and metallurgical processes involving iron, steel, nonferrous metals, and composites • Thermodynamics, kinetics, and physical chemistry of materials processes and modelling thereof
Materials Science for Structural Geology
by Mervyn S. PatersonThis book sets out the basic materials science needed for understanding the plastic deformation of rocks and minerals. Although at atmospheric pressure or at relatively low environmental pressures, these materials tend to be brittle, that is, to fracture with little prior plastic deformation when non-hydrostatically stressed, they can undergo substantial permanent strain when stressed under environmental conditions of high confining pressure and high temperature, such as occur geologically in the Earth's crust and upper mantle. Thus the plastic deformation of rocks and minerals is of fundamental interest in structural geology and geodynamics. In mountain-building processes and during convective stirring in the Earth's mantle, rocks can undergo very large amounts of plastic flow, accompanied by substantial changes in microstructure. These changes in microstructure remain in the rocks as evidence of the past deformation history. There are a number of types of physical processes whereby rock and minerals can undergo deformation under geological conditions. The physics of these processes is set out in this book.
Maternities: Gender, Bodies and Space (Routledge International Studies of Women and Place)
by Robyn LonghurstOver the past decade geographers have shown a growing interest in 'the body' as an important co-ordinate of subjectivity and as a way of understanding further relationships between people, place and space. To date, however geographers have published little on what is one of, if not the, most important of all bodies - bodies that conceive, give birth and nurture other bodies. It is time that feminist, social, and cultural geographers contributed more to debates about maternal bodies. This book offers a series of windows on the ways in which maternal bodies influence, and are influenced by, social and spatial processes. Topics covered include women ‘coming out’ as pregnant at work, changing fashion for pregnant women, being disabled and pregnant, the politics of home versus hospital birth, breastfeeding practices that sit outside the norm, women who are constructed as ‘bad’ mothers, and ‘e-mums’ (mothers who go on-line).
Math Physics Foundation of Advanced Remote Sensing Digital Image Processing
by Lei Yan Hongying Zhao Yi Lin Yanbiao SunThis book focuses on the mathematical and physical foundations of remote sensing digital image processing and introduces key algorithms utilized in this area. The book fully introduces the basic mathematical and physical process of digital imaging, the basic theory and algorithm of pixel image processing, and the higher-order image processing algorithm and its application. This book skillfully and closely integrates theory, algorithms, and applications, making it simple for readers to understand and use. Researchers and students working in the fields of remote sensing, computer vision, geographic information science, electronic information, etc., can profit from this book. For their work and research in digital image processing, they can master the fundamentals of imaging and image processing techniques.
Mathematica for Physicists and Engineers
by K. B. Kumar Antony P. MonteiroMathematica for Physicists and Engineers Hands-on textbook for learning how to use Mathematica to solve real-life problems in physics and engineering Mathematica for Physicists and Engineers provides the basic concepts of Mathematica for scientists and engineers, highlights Mathematica’s several built-in functions, demonstrates mathematical concepts that can be employed to solve problems in physics and engineering, and addresses problems in basic arithmetic to more advanced topics such as quantum mechanics. The text views mathematics and physics through the eye of computer programming, fulfilling the needs of students at master’s levels and researchers from a physics and engineering background and bridging the gap between the elementary books written on Mathematica and the reference books written for advanced users. Mathematica for Physicists and Engineers contains information on: Basics to Mathematica, its nomenclature and programming language, and possibilities for graphic output Vector calculus, solving real, complex and matrix equations and systems of equations, and solving quantum mechanical problems in infinite-dimensional linear vector spaces Differential and integral calculus in one and more dimensions and the powerful but elusive Dirac Delta function Fourier and Laplace transform, two integral transformations that are instrumental in many fields of physics and engineering for the solution of ordinary and partial differential equations Serving as a complete first course in Mathematica to solve problems in science and engineering, Mathematica for Physicists and Engineers is an essential learning resource for students in physics and engineering, master’s students in material sciences, geology, biological sciences theoretical chemists. Also lecturers in these and related subjects will benefit from the book.
Mathematical Advances Towards Sustainable Environmental Systems
by James N. Furze Kelly Swing Anil K. Gupta Richard H. Mcclatchey Darren M. ReynoldsThis edited volume focuses on how we can protect our environment and enhance environmental sustainability when faced with changes and pressures imposed by our expansive needs. The volume unites multiple subject areas within sustainability, enabling the techniques and philosophy in the chapters to be applied to research areas in environmental science, plant sciences, energy, biodiversity and conservation. The chapters from expert contributors cover topics such as mathematical modelling tools used to monitor diversity of plant species, and the stability of ecosystem services such as biogeochemical cycling. Empirical research presented here also brings together mathematical developments in the important fields of robotics including kinematics, dynamics, path planning, control, vision, and swarmanoids. Through this book readers will also discover about rainfall-runoff modelling which will give them a better idea of the effects of climate change on the sustainability of water resources at the watershed scale. Modelling approaches will also be examined that maximize readers insights into the global problem of energy transition, i. e. the switch to an energy production system using renewable resources only. Collective and discrete insights are made to assist with synergy which should progress well beyond this book. Insight is also given to assist policy formations, development and implementations. The book has a strong multi-disciplinary nature at its core, and will appeal to both generalist readers and specialists in information technology, mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry and environmental sciences.