This book gives physical chemists a broader view of potential biological applications of their techniques for the study of nucleic acids in the gas phase. It provides organic chemists, biophysicists, and pharmacologists with an introduction to new techniques they can use to find the answers to yet unsolved questions. Laboratory sciences have bloomed with a variety of techniques to decipher the properties of the molecules of life. This volume introduces techniques used to investigate the properties of nucleic acids in the absence of solvent. It highlights the specificities pertaining to the studies of nucleic acids, although some of the techniques can similarly be applied to the study of other biomolecules, like proteins. The first part of the book introduces the techniques, from the transfer of nucleic acids to the gas-phase, to their detailed physico-chemical investigation. Each chapter is devoted to a specific molecular property, and illustrates how various approaches (experimental and theoretical) can be combined for the interpretation.
The second part of the book is devoted to applying the gas-phase approaches to solve specific questions related to the biophysics, biochemistry or pharmacology of nucleic acids.

The original work presented in this thesis constitutes an important contribution to modern Cosmic Ray (CR) physics, and comes during one of the most exciting periods of this field. The first part introduces a new numerical code (DRAGON) to model the CR propagation in our Galaxy. The code is then used to perform a combined analysis of CR data, making it possible to determine their propagation properties with unprecedented accuracy. The second part is dedicated to a theoretical interpretation of the recent crucial experimental results on cosmic electron and positron spectra (PAMELA, Fermi-LAT experiments). Using the tools developed in the first part of the thesis, the author convincingly argues for the existence of a new spectral component, which could arise either from local astrophysical sources, such as pulsars, or from Dark Matter annihilation or decay. This thesis is a highly advanced work; the methods, analysis and results are clearly and carefully presented. This work is set to become an important reference document for any future work in this area.

This volume is a review on coherent states and some of their applications. The usefulness of the concept of coherent states is illustrated by considering specific examples from the fields of physics and mathematical physics. Particular emphasis is given to a general historical introduction, general continuous representations, generalized coherent states, classical and quantum correspondence, path integrals and canonical formalism. Applications are considered in quantum mechanics, optics, quantum chemistry, atomic physics, statistical physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and cosmology. A selection of original papers is reprinted.

Market: Researchers in solid earth geophysics and planetary geophysics. This book is a record of the one-day symposium organized by the Space Policy Institute of the George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs, in cooperation with NASA's Office of Mission to Planet Earth. The meeting provided an authoritative overview of the progress that had been made to date in the study of Earth from space and identified the steps being taken to ensure that future space-based Earth observation missions make as great a scientific contribution as possible in support of the Earth system science concept.

These proceedings present selected research papers from CSNC 2018, held during 23rd-25th May in Harbin, China. The theme of CSNC 2018 is Location, Time of Augmentation. These papers discuss the technologies and applications of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and the latest progress made in the China BeiDou System (BDS) especially. They are divided into 12 topics to match the corresponding sessions in CSNC 2018, which broadly covered key topics in GNSS. Readers can learn about the BDS and keep abreast of the latest advances in GNSS techniques and applications.

It is only since recent years that the importance of the effects of outdoor lighting on the night-time environment and on the physical and mental health of humans is recognized on a wider scale. The related issue of light pollution is a particularly complex one, with potential conflicts of interest between the utilities, environmentalists, astronomers, the lighting industry and various government departments. Energy politics are always a sensitive issue, and light pollution is no exception to this rule.

The effects of light pollution on flora, fauna -including humans and their widely varying night-time activities- are often subtle and need extensive field studies to be quantified in a sensible manner.

The present conference, initiated by Commission 50 of the International Astronomical Union, is an attempt to bring together the astronomical community, the lighting industry, end-users, the utilities, and public authorities for a discussion and an exchange of ideas and information that will create goodwill among these groups and will thus contribute to making the global efforts to reduce pollution more efficient and effective.

Radio frequency pollution was also discussed in the context of radio astronomy and its efforts to create radio-quiet zones in collaboration with the government authorities that allocate frequency bands to the various users -mainly the telecommunications industry- and to protect the major planned and present radio observatories of the world.
The 3-day conference was attended by more than 130 representatives from 12 countries of all the above-mentioned groups, and a wide range of topics was discussed.

Some of the highlights were:
The presentationof the 1st world atlas of artificial night sky brightness (Cinzano et al.); the article by the International Darksky Association on their world-wide efforts to curb light pollution (Alvarez del Castillo et al.); the laws controlling light pollution implemented in Spain (Diaz et al.) and Chile (Sanhueza et al.), an overview of the work on radio frequency protection of sites (Cohen et al.) and the excellent introduction to the topic from the Chilean point of view (Daud).

Related topics in the book are light pollution education, aircraft contrails, space advertising (with an added document provided by the relevant UN commission), and an experiment on involving the population of an entire country in measuring sky brightness, by using the internet and the media.

The text is aimed at professionals from a wide range of disciplines related to lighting and its effects on the night-time environment in the broadest sense of the word. Lay persons interested in this emerging multi-disciplinary field can also find much of interest in this book.

Our contemporary understanding of brain function is deeply rooted in the ideas of the nonlinear dynamics of distributed networks. Cognition and motor coordination seem to arise from the interactions of local neuronal networks, which themselves are connected in large scales across the entire brain. The spatial architectures between various scales inevitably influence the dynamics of the brain and thereby its function. But how can we integrate brain connectivity amongst these structural and functional domains? Our Handbook provides an account of the current knowledge on the measurement, analysis and theory of the anatomical and functional connectivity of the brain. All contributors are leading experts in various fields concerning structural and functional brain connectivity. In the first part of the Handbook, the chapters focus on an introduction and discussion of the principles underlying connected neural systems. The second part introduces the currently available non-invasive technologies for measuring structural and functional connectivity in the brain. Part three provides an overview of the analysis techniques currently available and highlights new developments. Part four introduces the application and translation of the concepts of brain connectivity to behavior, cognition and the clinical domain. Written for: Researchers, engineers, graduate students in complexity, applied nonlinear dynamics, neuroscience

A quantitative measure of the accuracy of the rate coefficients and the excess energies is a desirable goal of this analysis. There are two major sources of uncertainties: The atomic and molecular data and the solar irradiance. The cross sections and branching ratios used in this analysis come from many different sources; many of them without any error indications. For this reason, we must confine ourselves to a qualitative indication of the reliability of the results. Specifically we give a quality scale in Table II for the data of each mother molecule; A indicating the highest quality of atomic and molecular data and F the lowest quality. The letter B typically means that the threshold is uncertain. For most molecules the cross section at threshold is very small and the rate coefficient for these molecules is therefore not influenced by this uncertainty. For atomic species the cross section is usually large near threshold, but for these species the threshold is known quite accurately. The letter B, therefore, indicates that the rate coefficient is most likely quite accurate, but the excess energy is less accurately known. The letter C usually means that the branching ratios are not well known. This means that the total rate coefficient is very good, but the rate coefficients and the excess energies for the individual branches are less accurate.

The present set of lectures is devoted to magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in astrophysics with strong emphasis on numerical simulations. The book strives for a balance between state-of-the-art reports and a tutorial approach. It is thus particularly suited as an introduction to the field for nonspecialist researchers and postgraduate students, while experienced scientists will find the book to be a comprehensive source of reference for their research.

The accretion process is thought to play a key role in the Universe. This book explains, in a form intelligible to graduate students, its relation to the formation of new stars, to the energy release in compact objects and to the formation of black holes. The monograph describes how accretion processes are related to the presence of jets in stellar objects and active galactic nuclei and to jet formation. The authors treat theoretical work as well as current observational facts. This volume of the highly esteemed Les Houches series is meant as an advanced text that can serve to attract students to exciting new research work in astrophysics.

In the context of the NASA Deep Impact space mission, comet 9P/Tempel1 has been at the focus of an unprecedented worldwide long-term multi-wavelength observation campaign. The comet was also studied throughout its perihelion passage by various sources including the Deep Impact mission itself, the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer, Rosetta, XMM and all major ground-based observatories in a wavelength band from cm-wave radio astronomy to x-rays.

This book includes the proceedings of a meeting that brought together an audience of theoreticians and observers - across the electromagnetic spectrum and from different sites and projects - to make full use of the massive ground-based observing data set. The coherent presentation of all data sets illustrates and examines the various observational constraints on modelling the cometary nucleus, cometary gas, cometary plasma, cometary dust, and the comet's surface and its activity.

We stand at the threshold of an exciting era of Asteroseismology. In a few months' time, the Canadian small-satellite asteroseismology mission MOST will be laun ched. Danish and French missions MONS and COROT should follow, with the ESA mission Eddington following in 2007/8. Helioseismology has proved spec tacularly successful in imaging the internal structure and dynamics of the Sun and probing the physics of the solar interior. Ground-based observations have detected solar-like oscillations on alpha Centauri A and other Sun-like stars, and diagnostics similar to those used in helioseismology are now being used to test and constrain the physics and evolutionary state of these stars. Multi-mode oscillations are being observed in an abundance of other stars, including slowly pulsating B stars (SPB stars), delta Scuti stars, Ap stars and the pulsating white dwarfs. New classes of pulsators continue to be discovered across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. For good reason it was decided to entitle our conference 'Asteroseismology Across the HR Diagram' . Yet the challenges still to be faced to make asteroseismology across the HR diagram a reality are formidable. Observation, data analysis and theory all pose hard problems to be overcome. In conceiving this meeting, the aim of the organisers was to facilitate a cross-fertilization of ideas and approaches between researchers working on different pulsators and with different areas of expertise. We venture to suggest that in this the conference was a great success."

Networks can provide a useful model and graphic image useful for the description of a wide variety of web-like structures in the physical and man-made realms, e.g. protein networks, food webs and the Internet. The contributions gathered in the present volume provide both an introduction to, and an overview of, the multifaceted phenomenology of complex networks. Statistical Mechanics of Complex Networks also provides a state-of-the-art picture of current theoretical methods and approaches.

This review of the most up-to-date observational and theoretical information concerning the chemical evolution of the Milky Way compares the abundances derived from field stars and clusters, giving information on the abundances and dynamics of gas.

Medical electronics, or more specifically the instrumentation used in physiological measurement, has changed significantly over the last few years. Developments in electronics technology have offered new and enhanced applications, especially in the areas of data recording and analysis and imaging technology. These changes have been accompanied by more stringent legislation on safety and liability. This book is designed to meet the needs of students on the growing number of courses, undergraduate and MSc. It is a concise and accessible introduction offering a broad overview that encompasses the various contributing disciplines.

Refrigeration plays a prominent role in our everyday lives, and cryogenics plays a major role in medical science, space technology and the cooling of low-temperature electronics. This volume contains chapters on basic refrigeration systems, non-compression refrigeration and cooling, and topics related to global environmental issues, alternative refrigerants, optimum refrigerant selection, cost-quality optimization of refrigerants, advanced thermodynamics of reverse-cycle machines, applications in medicine, cryogenics, heat pipes, gas-solid absorption refrigeration, multisalt resorption heat pumps, cryocoolers, thermoacoustic refrigeration, cryogenic heat transfer and enhancement and other topics covering theory, design, and applications, such as pulse tube refrigeration, which is the most efficient of all cryocoolers and can be used in space missions.

The 2008 Spring Meeting of the Arbeitskreis Festkorperphysik was held in Berlin, Germany, between February 24 and February 29, 2008 in conjunction with the 72nd Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The 2008 meeting was the largest physics meeting in Europe and among the largest physics meetings in the world in 2008."

This textbook provides students with a solid introduction to the techniques of approximation commonly used in data analysis across physics and astronomy. The choice of methods included is based on their usefulness and educational value, their applicability to a broad range of problems and their utility in highlighting key mathematical concepts. Modern astronomy reveals an evolving universe rife with transient sources, mostly discovered - few predicted - in multi-wavelength observations. Our window of observations now includes electromagnetic radiation, gravitational waves and neutrinos. For the practicing astronomer, these are highly interdisciplinary developments that pose a novel challenge to be well-versed in astroparticle physics and data-analysis. The book is organized to be largely self-contained, starting from basic concepts and techniques in the formulation of problems and methods of approximation commonly used in computation and numerical analysis. This includes root finding, integration, signal detection algorithms involving the Fourier transform and examples of numerical integration of ordinary differential equations and some illustrative aspects of modern computational implementation. Some of the topics highlighted introduce the reader to selected problems with comments on numerical methods and implementation on modern platforms including CPU-GPU computing. Developed from lectures on mathematical physics in astronomy to advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students, this book will be a valuable guide for students and a useful reference for practicing researchers. To aid understanding, exercises are included at the end of each chapter. Furthermore, some of the exercises are tailored to introduce modern symbolic computation.

The book describes first the principle photon generation processes from nuclear reactions, electron motion and from discrete quantum transitions. It then focuses on the use of photons in various selected fields of modern natural and life sciences. It bridges disciplines such as physics, chemistry, earth- and materials science, proteomics, information technology, photoelectrochemistry, photosynthesis and spintronics. Advanced light sources and their use in natural and life sciences are emphasized and the effects related to the quantum nature of photons (quantum computing, teleportation) are described. The content encompasses among many other examples the role of photons on the origin of life and on homochirality in biology, femtosecond laser slicing, photothermal cancer therapy, the use of gamma rays in materials science, photoelectrochemical surface conditioning, quantum information aspects and photo-spintronics. The book is written for scientists and graduate students from all related disciplines who are interested in the science beyond their immediate research field. It is meant to encourage interdisciplinary research and development in an age where nanoscience results in a convergence of formerly more disparate science.

This textbook is for mathematicians and mathematical physicists and is mainly concerned with the physical justification of both the mathematical framework and the foundations of the theory of general relativity. Previous knowledge of the relevant physics is not assumed. This book is also suitable as an introduction to pseudo-Riemannian geometry with emphasis on geometrical concepts. A significant part of the text is devoted to the discussion of causality and singularity theorems. The insights obtained are applied to black hole astrophysics, thereby making the connection to current active research in mathematical physics and cosmology.

While the emergence and evolution of solar surface magnetic flux reveals what goes on in the solar interior, the interplay of convection and magnetic field in the photosphere regulates the field dispersal and drives the instabilities which heat the outer solar atmosphere. This book presents a synthesis between observers and theorists, both with regard to the magnetic elements which make up solar magnetic fields (ranging from tiny flux tubes to whole active regions), and to the surface patterns in which these elements display properties of the subsurface dynamo. A major breakthrough comes from numerical simulations. Modelling of flux concentration, flux tube dynamics, penumbral toplogy, umbral fine structure, and so on, turns solar physics into an experimental science. The reviews and research papers in this volume provide an overview of the solar frontier of astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics. The elements and patterns of solar surface magnetism contain much information about the subsurface solar dynamo, as well as on the magnetically-dominated energy budget and structuring of the outer solar atmosphere. The volume treats high-resolution solar polarimetry, the physics of solar magnetic elements, and the information contained in their patterns of emergence on the solar surface in depth, with a balance between theoretical and observational studies.

This book addresses current activities in strong-motion networks around the globe, covering issues related to designing, maintaining and disseminating information from these arrays. The book is divided in three principal sections. The first section includes recent developments in regional and global ground-motion predictive models. It presents discussions on the similarities and differences of ground motion estimations from these models and their application to design spectra as well as other novel procedures for predicting engineering parameters in seismic regions with sparse data. The second section introduces topics about the particular methodologies being implemented in the recently established global and regional strong-motion databanks in Europe to maintain and disseminate the archived accelerometric data. The final section describes major strong-motion arrays around the world and their historical developments. The last three chapters of this section introduce projects carried out within the context of arrays deployed for seismic risk studies in metropolitan areas. Audience: This timely book will be of particular interest for researchers who use accelerometric data extensively to conduct studies in earthquake engineering and engineering seismology.

Dramatic progress is a trademark of the recent study of globular cluster systems. Considerations about the formation and evolution compose the first chapter, followed by a chapter on young star clusters. Then come four chapters reviewing the globular cluster system of early-type, late-type and dwarf galaxies, as well as of groups of galaxies. One chapter is dedicated to stellar population models and their applications to the field. Finally a chapter reviews the kinematics of galaxies derived from globular cluster systems and another their role in the context of galaxy formation and evolution studies. As a whole, the book gives an up-to-date view of the field at the beginning of the new decade, which will without doubt again bring significant progress in our understanding of globular cluster systems and galaxy formation and evolution.

This doctoral thesis applies measurements of ground deformation from satellite radar using their potential to play a key role in understanding volcanic and magmatic processes throughout the eruption cycle. However, making these measurements is often problematic, and the processes driving ground deformation are commonly poorly understood. These problems are approached in this thesis in the context of the Cascades Volcanic Arc. From a technical perspective, the thesis develops a new way of using regional-scale weather models to assess a priori the influence of atmospheric uncertainties on satellite measurements of volcano deformation, providing key parameters for volcano monitoring. Next, it presents detailed geodetic studies of two volcanoes in northern California: Medicine Lake Volcano and Lassen Volcanic Centre. Finally, the thesis combines geodetic constraints with petrological inputs to develop a thermal model of cooling magma intrusions. The novelty and range of topics covered in this thesis mean that it is a seminal work in volcanic and magmatic studies.

This volume documents the contributions presented at the III Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA). Covering a wide range of topics, the 92 contributed papers give a comprehensive overview of the current state of Spanish astronomy. The Proceedings include special reviews dealing with the cosmological evolution of star-forming galaxies, the nature of cosmic gamma-ray bursts, infrared astrophysics with ISO, and the distance scale after Hipparcos, with special emphasis on the development of the next generation of instruments to propel astrophysical research into the new century. The contents of these Proceedings thus reflect the broad interests of the Spanish astronomical community. The significance of these proceedings can hardly be exaggerated, since here, for the first time, the SEA publishes the proceedings of its own scientific meeting. The intended audience is professional astronomers and graduate astronomy students worldwide.