This volume contains the written versions of the lectures given at the 26th course of the renowned Saas-Fee series. The book represents a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the field of galaxy interaction. Nowadays, galaxies are no longer seen as immutable objects: they evolve, interact, merge, blaze, and reshape. Dynamic forces can induce powerful stellar activity able to transform the matter composition and morphology of galaxies. The lectures included in this book aim at a better understanding of these remarkable and fascinating phenomena. Though the book is intended for graduate students and young post-docs in astrophysics, it contains more advanced and original material, as well as historical perspectives, which will be of great interest to experts and astronomy teachers also.

Polarization Spectroscopy of Ionized Gases describes the physical principles of the technique and its applications to remote sensing. Transport phenomena and local anisotropies can be studied. The theoretical part of the book considers the basic phenomena of the ordering of the velocities of fast exciting charged particles. The polarization of the outer electron shells of excited atoms or molecules is described, and a variety of effects are examined in detail. An integral equation is derived which gives the intensity and polarization of emitted lines. Methods for solving the equation are analyzed. Universal spectropolarimetric remote sensing has been applied to low pressure gas discharges in the laboratory and to non-thermal processes in the solar atmosphere. For researchers interested in the remote sensing of ionized gases.

Significant advances in the scientific use of space based data were achieved in three joint interdisciplinary projects based on data of the satellite missions CHAMP, GRACE and GOCE within the R&D program GEOTECHNOLOGIEN. It was possible to explore and monitor changes related to the Earth's surface, the boundary layer between atmosphere and solid earth, and the oceans and ice shields. This boundary layer is our habitat and therefore is in the focus of our interests. The Earth's surface is subject to anthropogenetic changes, to changes driven by the Sun, Moon and planets, and by changes caused by processes in the Earth system. The state parameters and their changes are best monitored from space. The theme "Observation of the System Earth from Space" offers comprehensive insights into a broad range of research topics relevant to society including geodesy, oceanography, atmospheric science (from meteorology to climatology), hydrology and glaciology.

The enormous advances in observational techniques over the last two decades has produced a wealth of data and unexpected discoveries which have helped to reshape astrophysics as a field with well-formulated theories and sophisticated numerical calculations. In nuclear particle physics, plasma physics, as well as in general relativity, the Universe has become a laboratory for cutting-edge research. The courses collected in the book are intended to provide students with this insight, giving a general background on each topic such as cosmic rays, nuclear and neutrino astrophysics, solar physics and strong fields, as well as a presentation of the current research and open problems. The book is aimed at graduate students in physics and astrophysics, as well as researchers, bridging a gap between the specialized reviews and the comprehensive books.

Significant advances have been made recently in both the theoretical understanding and observation of small-scale turbulence in different layers of the Sun, and in the instabilities that give rise to them. The general development of solar physics, however, has led to such a degree of specialization as to hinder interaction between workers in the field. This book therefore presents studies of different layers and regions of the Sun, but from the same aspect, concentrating on the study of small-scale motions. The main emphasis is on the common theoretical roots of these phenomena, but the book also contains an extensive treatment of the observational aspects.

SYNER-G, a multidisciplinary effort funded by the European Union, allowed the development of an innovative methodological framework for the assessment of physical as well as socio-economic seismic vulnerability and risk at urban and regional level. The results of SYNER-G are presented in two books both published by Springer, the present and a second one, entitled SYNER-G: Typology Definition and Fragility Functions for Physical Elements at Seismic Risk: Buildings, Lifelines, Transportation Networks and Critical Facilities (*), which provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art of the fragility curves, an alternative way to express physical vulnerability of elements at risk.

In this second volume of SYNER-G, the focus has been on presenting a unified holistic methodology for assessing vulnerability at systems level considering interactions between elements at risk (physical and non-physical) and between different systems. The proposed methodology and tool encompasses in an integrated fashion all aspects in the chain, from hazard to the vulnerability assessment of components and systems and to the socio-economic impacts of an earthquake, accounting for most relevant uncertainties within an efficient quantitative simulation scheme. It systematically integrates the most advanced fragility functions to assess the vulnerability of physical assets for buildings, utility systems, transportation networks and complex infrastructures such as harbours and hospitals. The increasing impact due to interactionsbetween different components and systems is treated in a comprehensive way, providing specifications for each network and infrastructure. The proposed socio-economic model integrates social vulnerability into the physical systems modelling approaches providing to decision makers with a dynamic platform to capture post disaster emergency issues like shelter demand and health impact decisions.Application examples at city and regional scale have provided the necessary validation of the methodology and are also included in the book.

The present volume, with its companion volume on fragility functions, represent a significant step forward in the seismic vulnerability and risk assessment of complex interacting urban and regional systems and infrastructures. These volumes are not only of interest to scientists and engineers but also to the insurance industry, decision makers and practitioners in the sector of civil protection and seismic risk management.

(*) Pitilakis K, Crowley E, Kaynia A (eds) (2014) SYNER-G: Typology definition and fragility functions for physical elements at seismic risk, Series: Geotechnical, Geological and Earthquake Engineering 27, ISBN 978-94-007-7872-6, Springer Science+Business Media, Dordrecht.

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Recent state-of-the-art technologies in fabricating low-loss optical and mechanical components have significantly motivated the study of quantum-limited measurements with optomechanical devices. Such research is the main subject of this thesis. In the first part, the author considers various approaches for surpassing the standard quantum limit for force measurements. In the second part, the author proposes different experimental protocols for using optomechanical interactions to explore quantum behaviors of macroscopic mechanical objects. Even though this thesis mostly focuses on large-scale laser interferometer gravitational-wave detectors and related experiments, the general approaches apply equally well for studying small-scale optomechanical devices.

The author is the winner of the 2010 Thesis prize awarded by the Gravitational Wave International Committee.

Effective and ef cient modelling of in nite media is important for the production of accurate and useful solutions for many scienti c and engineering problems invo- ing in nite domains (Bettess 1977, 1980; Chow and Smith 1981; Medina and Taylor 1983; Zhang and Zhao 1987; Zhao et al. 1989; Zhao and Valliappan 1993a, b, c, d; Astley 1996, 1998; Yang et al. 1996; Yang and Huang 2001; Yun et al. 2000, 2007; Wang et al. 2006). Some typical examples involving in nite domains are as follows: (1) earthquake wave propagation within the upper crust of the Earth in the elds of geophysics and seismology; (2) dynamic structure-foundation interaction in the elds of geotechnical, civil and dam engineering; and (3) transient pore- uid ow, heat transfer and mass transport within the interior of the Earth in the elds of g- science and geoenvironmental engineering. Although the solid Earth is viewed as a bounded domain at the terrestrial scale, it can be treated as an unbounded domain at the human scale. For instance, in the case of predicting possible property damages caused by an earthquake, only a limited region around the epicentre is of interest because the earthquake wave energy is signi cantly reduced as the distance from the epicentre is increased.

This book is written in a pedagogical style intelligible for graduate students. It reviews recent progress in black-hole and wormhole theory and in mathematical cosmology within the framework of Einstein's field equations and beyond, including quantum effects. This collection of essays, written by leading scientists of long standing reputation, should become an indispensable source for future research.

The aim of the book is to present, in a novel and unified fashion, the elements of Mechanics in Material Space or Configurational Mechanics, with applications to fracture and defect mechanics. This mechanics, in contrast to Newtonian mechanics in physical space, is concerned with defects such as cracks and dislocations, which are embedded in the material and might move in it. The level is kept accessible to any engineer, scientist or graduate student possessing some knowledge of calculus and partial differential equations, and working in the various areas where rational use of materials is essential.

Non-Newtonian properties on bubble dynamics and cavitation are fundamentally different from those of Newtonian fluids. The most significant effect arises from the dramatic increase in viscosity of polymer solutions in an extensional flow, such as that generated about a spherical bubble during its growth or collapse phase. In addition, many biological fluids, such as blood, synovial fluid, and saliva, have non-Newtonian properties and can display significant viscoelastic behaviour. This monograph elucidates general aspects of bubble dynamics and cavitation in non-Newtonian fluids and applies them to the fields of biomedicine and bioengineering. In addition it presents many examples from the process industries. The field is strongly interdisciplinary and the numerous disciplines involve have and will continue to overlook and reinvent each others' work. This book helps researchers to think intuitively about the diverse physics of these systems, to attempt to bridge the various communities involved, and to convey the interest, elegance, and variety of physical phenomena that manifest themselves on the micrometer and microsecond scales.

Fundamental unsolved problems of stellar astrophysics include the effects of angular momentum on stellar structure and evolution, the nature and efficiency of the processes by which angular momentum is redistributed within and lost from stars, and the role that stellar rotation plays in enhancing or driving stellar mass loss. There appears to be a qualitative change in the nature and efficiency of these mechanisms near spectral type FO: hotter (more massive) stars typically retain more angular momentum at least until they reach the main sequence, while cooler stars typically spin down quickly. For the hotter stars, recent work suggests a strong link between the type of pulsation behavior, the mass loss rates, and the rotation velocity. If the same mechanisms are able to drive mass loss from the main sequence A stars, as has recently been proposed, then the current interpretations of a number of observations will be drastically affected: e. g. the ages of clusters may be incorrect by up to a factor of two, and the surface abundances of isotopes of He, Li and Be may no longer give constraints on cosmological nucleosynthesis. There are also effects on the evolution of the abundances of elements in the interstellar medium and on the general evolution of populations of stars. Thus the questions of the mechanisms of angular momentum and mass loss of stars more massive than the sun is important not only for stellar studies but for the foundations of much of modern astrophysics.

The book reports an extended version of the lectures given by distinguished scholars at the workshop "Fault diagnosis and fault tolerance for dynamic systems" held in conjunction with the 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control in Vancouver, Canada, from 27-30 October 2002. The book collects some of the most recent results in fault diagnosis and fault tolerant systems with particular emphasis on mechatronic systems. Each chapter focuses on either theoretical aspects or applications to different fields of interest in mechatronics such as industrial robotics, underwater vehicles, hydraulic systems, and flight control.

The reader will find in this volume the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held in Maratea-Acquafredda, Italy, between June 29 and July 12, 1997, entitledTHE DYNAMICS OF SMALL BODIES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM: A MAJOR KEY TO SOLAR SYSTEM STUDIES . This Advanced Study Institute was the latest in the 'Cortina' series of NATO ASI's begun in the early 1970's firstly under the directorship of Professor Victor Szebehely and subsequently under Professor Archie Roy. All, except the latest, were held at the Antonelli Institute, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Many of those now active in the field made their first international contacts at these Institutes. The Institutes bring together many of the brightest of our young people working in dynamical astronomy, celestial mechanics and space science, enabling them to obtain an up-to-date synoptic view of their subjects delivered by lecturers of high international reputation. The proceedings from these institutes have been well-received in the internationalcommunity of research workers in the disciplines studied. The present institute included 15 series of lectures given by invited speakers and some 45 presentations made by the other participants. The majority of these contributions are includedinthese proceedings.

The book presents a synopsis of the main results achieved during the 3 year EU-project "Advanced Inflight Measurement Techniques (AIM)" which applied advanced image based measurement techniques to industrial flight testing. The book is intended to be not only an overview on the AIM activities but also a guide on the application of advanced optical measurement techniques for future flight testing. Furthermore it is a useful guide for engineers in the field of experimental methods and flight testing who face the challenge of a future requirement for the development of highly accurate non-intrusive in-flight measurement techniques.

The book gathers the invited talks to the XIII JENAM conference, organized this time by the European Astronomical Society (EAS) and the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA), and hosted by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (CSIC). All branches of astrophysics are encompassed from the largest scales and cosmology to the solar system and the Sun, through the galaxies and the stars, including a section on astronomical instrumentation. Very relevant experts from all over the world speak in a single book about the most recent, exciting results from their fields in a way which is useful for both researchers in these fields and colleagues working in other disciplines. The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM including the remaining contributions of the meeting in PDF format, hence opening a wide panorama of what is going on in astrophysics nowadays.

Self-focusing has been an area of active scientific investigation for nearly 50 years. This book presents a comprehensive treatment of this topic and reviews both theoretical and experimental investigations of self-focusing. This book should be of interest to scientists and engineers working with lasers and their applications. From a practical point of view, self-focusing effects impose a limit on the power that can be transmitted through a material medium. Self-focusing also can reduce the threshold for the occurrence of other nonlinear optical processes. Self-focusing often leads to damage in optical materials and is a limiting factor in the design of high-power laser systems. But it can be harnessed for the design of useful devices such as optical power limiters and switches. At a formal level, the equations for self-focusing are equivalent to those describing Bose-Einstein condensates and certain aspects of plasma physics and hydrodynamics. There is thus a unifying theme between nonlinear optics and these other disciplines. One of the goals of this book is to connect the extensive early literature on self-focusing, filament-ation, self-trapping, and collapse with more recent studies aimed at issues such as self-focusing of fs pulses, white light generation, and the generation of filaments in air with lengths of more than 10 km. It also describes some modern advances in self-focusing theory including the influence of beam nonparaxiality on self-focusing collapse. This book consists of 24 chapters. Among them are three reprinted key landmark articles published earlier. It also contains the first publication of the 1964 paper that describes the first laboratory observation of self-focusing phenomena with photographic evidence.

If our eyes were radio rather than optical wide-band detectors it is well known that for us the brightest object in the sky would still be the Sun; that planets, stars and the Milky Way would still shine feebly (and that we would still occasionally be blinded by man-made sources). What is less well known is that quite a different earthbound overcast would hover about us, with its climatic zones, its seasonal changes, its unpredictable storms and scintillating transparence. To be sure, we can get a sort of glimpse of this peculiar type of weather when we tune our receiver to radio broad casting from some remote spot, or photograph the Earth from space at certain specific wavelengths. Nevertheless no one has ever looked at the ionized shroud of the Earth without the help of sophisticated apparatus, and this is one of the reasons why in this domain the phenomena are not easily abstracted from the use of specific techniques. For generations, the study of the ionosphere has been deeply interwoven with the practice of radio communication and detection. Today however, ionospheric physics is best thought of as a branch of space physics; that part of physics which deals with processes at work in the solar system and methods developed for its exploration."

China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC) 2015 Proceedings presents selected research papers from CSNC2015, held during 13th-15th May in Xian, China. The theme of CSNC2015 is Opening-up, Connectivity and Win-win. 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 10 topics to match the corresponding sessions in CSNC2015, 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. SUN Jiadong is the Chief Designer of the Compass/ BDS, and the academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); LIU Jingnan is a professor at Wuhan University. FAN Shiwei is a researcher at China Satellite Navigation Office; LU Xiaochun is an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

This book is an introduction to the dynamics of reaction-diffusion systems, with a focus on fronts and stationary spatial patterns. Emphasis is on systems that are non-standard in the sense that either the transport is not simply classical diffusion (Brownian motion) or the system is not homogeneous. A important feature is the derivation of the basic phenomenological equations from the mesoscopic system properties. Topics addressed include transport with inertia, described by persistent random walks and hyperbolic reaction-transport equations and transport by anomalous diffusion, in particular subdiffusion, where the mean square displacement grows sublinearly with time. In particular reaction-diffusion systems are studied where the medium is in turn either spatially inhomogeneous, compositionally heterogeneous or spatially discrete. Applications span a vast range of interdisciplinary fields and the systems considered can be as different as human or animal groups migrating under external influences, population ecology and evolution, complex chemical reactions, or networks of biological cells. Several chapters treat these applications in detail.

The 37th Annual Denver Conference on Applications of X-Ray Analysis was held August 1-5, 1988, at the Sheraton Steamboat Resort and Conference Center, Steamboat Springs, Colorado. As usual, alternating with x-ray diffraction, the emphasis this year was x-ray fluorescence, but as has been the pattern for several occasions over the last few years, the Plenary Session did not deal with that subject, specifically. In an attempt to introduce the audience to one of the new developments in x-ray analysis, the title of the session was "High Brilliance Sources/Applications," and dealt exclusively with synchrotron radiation, a topic which has made a very large impact on the x-ray community over the last decade. As the organizer and co-chairman of the Plenary Session (with Paul Predecki), it is my responsibility to report on that session here. The Conference had the privilege of obtaining the services of some of the preeminent practitioners of research using this remarkable x-ray source; they presented the audience with unusually lucid descriptions of the work which has been accomplished in the development and application of the continuous, high intensity, tunable, polarized and collimated x-rays available from no facility other than these specialized storage rings. The opening lecture (and I use that term intentionally) was an enthusiastic description of "What is Synchrotron Radiation?" by Professor Boris Batterman of Cornell University and the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Sourc(! (CHESS).

This book focuses on the assembly, organization and resultant collective dynamics of soft matter systems maintained away from equilibrium by an energy flux. Living matter is the ultimate example of such systems, which are comprised of different constituents on very different scales (ions, nucleic acids, proteins, cells). The result of their diverse interactions, maintained using the energy from physiological processes, is a fantastically well-organized and dynamic whole. This work describes results from minimal, biomimetic systems and primarily investigates membranes and active emulsions, as well as key aspects of both soft matter and non-equilibrium phenomena. It is shown that these minimal reconstitutions are already capable of a range of complex behaviour such as nonlinear electric responses, chemical communication and locomotion. These studies will bring us closer to a fundamental understanding of complex systems by reconstituting key aspects of their form and function in simple model systems. Further, they may also serve as the first technological steps towards artificial soft functional matter.

This volume - like the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on which it is based - addresses the fundamental science that contributes to our understanding of the potential risks from ecological terrorism, i.e. dirty bombs, atomic explosions, intentional release of radionuclides into water or air. Both effects on human health (DNA and systemic effects) and on ecosystems are detailed, with particular focus on environmentally relevant low-dose ranges. The state-of-the-art contributions to the book are authored by leading experts; they tackle the relevant questions from the perspectives of radiation genetics, radiobiology, radioecology, radiation epidemiology and risk assessment.

These are the proceedings of international conference on Numerical As trophysics 1998 (NAP98), held at National Olympic Memorial Youth Cen ter, in Tokyo, Japan in the period of March 10 - 13, 1998, and hosted by the National Astronomical Observatory, Japan (NAOJ). In the last decade numerical simulations have grown up as a major tool for astrophysics. Numerical simulations give us invaluable informa tion on complex systems and physical processes under extreme conditions which can be neither realized by experiments nor directly observed. Super computers and special purpose computers may work as very large telescopes and special purpose telescopes for theoretical astrophysics, respectively. Nu merical astrophysics ranks with other tool-oriented astronomy such as ra dio astronomy, infrared astronomy, ultraviolet astronomy, X-ray astronomy, and ')'-ray astronomy. This conference, NAP98, was planned to explore recent advances in astrophysics aided by numerical simulations. The subjects of the confer ence included the large-scale structure formation, galaxy formation and evolution, star and planets formation, accretion disks, jets, gravitational wave emission, and plasma physics. NAP98 had also sessions on numerical methods and computer science. The conference was attended by 184 sci entists from 21 countries. We enjoyed excellent talks, posters, videos, and discussions: there are 40 oral presentations, 96 posters and 16 video pre sentations. We hope that these proceedings and accompanying CD-ROM replay the friendly but inspiring atmosphere of the conference."

In this book, the author draws on his broad experience to describe both the theory and the applications of wave propagations. The contents are presented in four parts and the sequence of these parts reflect the development of ionospheric and propagational research in areas such as space research geophysics and communications. The first part of the book presents an outline of the theory of electromagnetic waves propagating in a cold electron plasma. For reference, vector analysis, dyadics and eigenvalues introduced in this part are presented in the appendices. Practical aspects of radio wave propagation are the subject of the second part. The typical conditions in different frequency ranges are discussed and the irregular features of the ionospheric structure such as sound and gravity waves are also considered. Warm plasma and the effects of ions are considered in the third part, which includes a discussion of sound-like waves in electron and ion plasmas. Nonlinear effects and instabilities are described in the fourth part.