The idea for organl.zl.ng an Advanced Research Workshop entirely devoted to the Earth rotation was born in 1983 when Professor Raymond Hide suggested this topic to the special NATO panel of global transport mechanism in the Geosciences. Such a specialized meeting did not take place since the GEOP research conference on the rotation of the Earth and polar motion which was held at the Ohio State University (USA) in 1973. In the last ten years, highly precise measurements of the Earth's rotation parameters and new global geophysical data have become available allowing major advance to be made in the under standing of the various irregularities affecting the Earth's rotation. The aim of the workshop was to bring together scientists who have made important contributions in this field during the last decade both at the observational and geophysical interpretation levels. The confe rence was divided into four main topics. The first session was dedicated to the definition, implementation and maintenance of the terrestrial and celestial reference systems. A few critical points have been identified as requiring further improvements: (i) appro priate selection of terrestrial sites recognized for their long term stability, (ii) determination of the relationship between terrestrial and celestial references systems as well as between the various terrestrial ones, (iii) improvment of the theory of a rotating elastic earth (the recently adopted theory needs already some corrections')."

This book's interdisciplinary scope aims at bridging various communities: 1) cosmochemists, who study meteoritic samples from our own solar system, 2) (sub-) millimetre astronomers, who measure the distribution of dust and gas of star-forming regions and planet-forming discs, 3) disc modellers, who describe the complex photo-chemical structure of parametric discs to fit these to observation, 4) computational astrophysicists, who attempt to decipher the dynamical structure of magnetised gaseous discs, and the effects the resulting internal structure has on the aerodynamic re-distribution of embedded solids, 5) theoreticians in planet formation theory, who aim to piece it all together eventually arriving at a coherent holistic picture of the architectures of planetary systems discovered by 6) the exoplanet observers, who provide us with unprecedented samples of exoplanet worlds. Combining these diverse fields the book sheds light onto the riddles that research on planet formation is currently confronted with, and paves the way for a comprehensive understanding of the formation, evolution, and dynamics of young solar systems. The chapters 'Chondrules - Ubiquitous Chondritic Solids Tracking the Evolution of the Solar Protoplanetary Disk', 'Dust Coagulation with Porosity Evolution' and 'The Emerging Paradigm of Pebble Accretion' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

This thesis explores the ability of M. maripaludis to capture and convert CO2 to methane in the presence of free nitrogen, and offers a consolidated review of the metabolic processes and applications of M. maripaludis. Further, it develops, validates and analyzes the first genome-scale metabolic model (iMM518) of M. maripaludis. Readers will discover, for the first time, the impact of nitrogen fixation on methane production. As such, the thesis will be of interest to researchers working on M. maripaludis, biofuels and bioenergy, systems biology modeling and its experimental validation, estimation of maintenance energy parameters, nitrogen fixing microbes, and bioremediation.

This book, which has been in the making for some eighteen years, would never have begun were it not for Dr. David Dewhirst in 1976 kindly having shown the author a packet of papers in the archives of the Cambridge Obser vatories. These letters and miscellaneous papers of Fearon Fallows sparked an interest in the history of the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope which, after the diversion of producing several books on later phases of the Observatory, has finally resulted in a detailed study of the origin and first years of the Observatory's life. Publication of this book coincides with the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Observatory, e.G.H. Observatories are built for the use of astronomers. They are built through astronomers, architects, engineers and contractors acting in concert (if not always in harmony). They are constructed, with whatever techniques and skills are available, from bricks, stones and mortar; but their construction may take a toll of personal relationships, patience, and flesh and blood."

This thesis presents several significant new results that shed light on two major puzzles of modern cosmology: the nature of inflation, the very early phase of the universe that is thought to have given rise to the large-scale structures that we observe today; and that of the current accelerated expansion. In particular, it develops a clean method for characterizing linear cosmological perturbations for general theories where gravity is modified and/or affected by a new component, called dark energy, responsible for the accelerated expansion. It proposes a new extension to what were long thought to be the most general scalar field theories devoid of instabilities, and demonstrates the robustness of the relation between the energy scale of inflation and the predicted amplitude of gravitational waves. Finally, it consolidates a set of consistency relations between correlation functions of the cosmological density field and investigates the phenomenological consequences of their potential violation. Presented in a clear, succinct and rigorous style, each of these original results is both profound and important and will leave a deep mark on the field.

This volume contains papers presented at an international conference on nuclear astrophysics, which brought together astronomers, astrophysicists and nuclear physicists for a discussion of nucleosynthesis, its role in the evolution of the universe and its possibilities as a diagnostic tool for stellar interiors. The contributions have been divided into the following sections: astronomical facts; nuclear physics; the early universe and galactic evolution; and stellar models and nucleosynthesis.

Introd uction The problem of integrability or nonintegrability of dynamical systems is one of the central problems of mathematics and mechanics. Integrable cases are of considerable interest, since, by examining them, one can study general laws of behavior for the solutions of these systems. The classical approach to studying dynamical systems assumes a search for explicit formulas for the solutions of motion equations and then their analysis. This approach stimulated the development of new areas in mathematics, such as the al gebraic integration and the theory of elliptic and theta functions. In spite of this, the qualitative methods of studying dynamical systems are much actual. It was Poincare who founded the qualitative theory of differential equa tions. Poincare, working out qualitative methods, studied the problems of celestial mechanics and cosmology in which it is especially important to understand the behavior of trajectories of motion, i.e., the solutions of differential equations at infinite time. Namely, beginning from Poincare systems of equations (in connection with the study of the problems of ce lestial mechanics), the right-hand parts of which don't depend explicitly on the independent variable of time, i.e., dynamical systems, are studied.

The idea of this Colloquium came during the XVIIth General Assembly of the I. A. U. at Montreal. The meeting was organized under the auspices of I. A. U. Commission 5 (Documentation and Astronomical Data). The Scientific Organizing Committee consisted of C. Jaschek (chairperson), O. Dluzhnevskaya, B. Hauck (vice chairperson), W. Heintz, P. Lantos, Th. Lederle, J. Mead~ G. Ruben, Y. Terashita, G. Wilkins. The members of this Committee are to be thanked for their devotion to the organization of what turned out to be a very successful meeting. The program was organized so as to cover most of the aspects concerning work with machine readable data. In a certain sense it is the develop ment of the subjects of I. A. U. Colloquium 35 "Compilation, critical evaluation and distribution of stellar data" held at Strasbourg in 1976. The meeting was opened by welcoming addresses delivered by Dr A. Florsch, Director of the Strasbourg Observatory, Prof. H. Curien, President of the European Science Foundation and Prof. W. Heintz, President of I. A. U. Commission 5. The sessions were devoted to the fol lowing subjects : Existing data centers, Data networks, New hardware, Recent software developments, Bibliographical services, Copyright, Editorial policies and nomenclature, Data in astronomy and Data in space astronomy. The different sessions were chaired by G. A. Pilkins, J. Mead, S. Lavrov, W. Heintz, P. Lantos, M. McCarthy, J. Delhaye and G. Westerhout. On July 9. Dr A.

This book covers the tremendous progress in the current understanding of the molecular physiology of voltage-gated calcium channels. This book includes unparalleled insights into structural features of calcium channels due to X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM, which in turn yielded critical information into how these channels function under normal and pathophysiological conditions, and how they interact with calcium channel therapeutics. The chapters investigate how, with the advent of high throughput genome sequencing, numerous mutations in various calcium channel genes have been identified in patients with neurological, cardiovascular, neuropsychiatric and other disorders. This is further complemented through a much larger in vivo toolkit such as knock-out and knock-in mice. The chapters further discuss the increased complexity of calcium channel physiology that arises from mRNA editing and splicing. Finally, the book also provides an overview of the updated research on calcium channel inhibitors that can be used both in vivo and in vitro, and which may serve as a spring board for new calcium channel therapeutics for human disease. Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels is useful for academic researchers at all levels in neuroscience, biophysics, cell biology and drug discovery.

The Workshop "Optical Detectors for Astronomy" was held during October 8-10, 1996 at the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. This was the third meeting of its kind, previous meetings being held in 1991 and 1993, but this is the first ESO "CCD Workshop" that has published proceedings. Most of the leading manufacturers and major astronomical observatories were represented, with the 117 attendees coming together from 14 different countries that spanned every continent on Earth. The motivation for the ESO CCD Workshop series is the creation of informal and open venue of information exchange about astronomical CCD detectors and systems. Judging from the reaction and feedback of the participants, the 1996 workshop was as successful as the previous editions, which is a credit to all who attended. The Workshop was organized as a mixture of invited talks, oral presentations, poster sessions and roundtable discussions, the latter used to foster a free exchange of ideas among participants. These technical sessions were complemented by an opening reception and a congenial evening in downtown Munich, which included a walking tour of the historic area followed by dinner at the famous Franziskaner brewery and an after dinner talk by Walter Kosonocky, who reviewed the history of CCD technology.

In the past decade, indirect (Doppler) imaging techniques have opened up a whole new discipline in stellar astronomy, providing increasingly detailed photometric, magnetic, and chemical inhomogeneity images of stellar surfaces. Furthermore, new optical interferometers are already being used with sophisticated interferometer techniques to image stellar surface structures more directly, and in the future the ESO VLT Interferometer and other instruments will extend these capabilities enormously. These developments are highlighted in the first two sections of this book. The large number of recent results, ground-based and space-based, and the lack of a generally accepted dynamo theory with predictive power for the stars and the Sun, result in an ever-growing complexity of interpretation of individual results. The IAU Symposium 176 on Stellar Surface Structure' consequently focused on spatially resolved stellar observations throughout the H-R diagram, from O- and B-stars to late M-stars. Two further sections in this book summarize the current observational data on surface inhomogeneities in stellar photospheres, chromospheres, and coronae. Finally, a special section is devoted to next generation model atmospheres.

The editors invited engineers, who are engaged in not only advanced level geotechnical analyses but also in consulting practice, to write various chapters of this text. These chapters show that a blend of engineering judgement and advanced principles of engineering mechanics may be used to resolve many complex geotechnical engineering problems. It is hoped that these may inspire the geotechnical engineering practice to make more extensive use of them in future. The complex geometrical configurations as well as enormously difficult materials which exhibit strongly path dependent mechanical behaviour have required the development of the advanced computer-based geotechnical analyses presented in this book. A non-linear transient finite element formulation is developed for the complex interaction between fluid and solid skeleton for both static and dynamic loading. Construction methods (for example: compaction, excavation, retaining walls or pile driving) which influence the mechanical behaviour of geotechnical structures are described with modifications to the finite element formulation. The use of the finite layer approach is rehearsed for situations where soil properties do not vary

The study of the fine structure of solar radio emissions is key to understanding plasma processes in the solar corona. It remains a reliable means for both diagnosing the corona and verifying the results of laboratory plasma experiments on wave-wave and wave-particle interactions. This monograph provides a comprehensive review of the fine structure of solar radio bursts. Based on the diversity of experimental data resulting from the progress made in observational techniques, the validity of various theoretical models is reexamined. The book serves as an up-to-date reference work for all researchers in this field.

This book with its clear explanation of the nature of the universe assumes no prior knowledge of astronomy or cosmology and so will attract interested public and new amateur astronomers.It provides much more on large-scale structures than other popular-level cosmology books. The mix of cosmology /large scale structures/anthropic principle and perspective on the universe should, as far as the author knows, be unique. A special colour feature incorporated in the book will offer three-dimensional views of the surrounding universe to ever greater depths.

The revealing of the phenomenon of superhydrophobicity (the "lotus-effect") has stimulated an interest in wetting of real (rough and chemically heterogeneous) surfaces. In spite of the fact that wetting has been exposed to intensive research for more than 200 years, there still is a broad field open for theoretical and experimental research, including recently revealed superhydrophobic, superoleophobic and superhydrophilic surfaces, so-called liquid marbles, wetting transitions, etc. This book integrates all these aspects within a general framework of wetting of real surfaces, where physical and chemical heterogeneity is essential. Wetting of rough/heterogeneous surfaces is discussed through the use of the variational approach developed recently by the author. It allows natural and elegant grounding of main equations describing wetting of solid surfaces, i.e. Young, Wenzel and Cassie-Baxter equations. The problems of superhydrophobicity, wetting transitions and contact angle hysteresis are discussed in much detail, in view of novel models and new experimental data. The second edition surveys the last achievements in the field of wetting of real surfaces, including new chapters devoted to the wetting of lubricated and gradient surfaces and reactive wetting, which have seen the rapid progress in the last decade. Additional reading, surveying the progress across the entire field of wetting of real surfaces, is suggested to the reader. Contents What is surface tension? Wetting of ideal surfaces Contact angle hysteresis Dynamics of wetting Wetting of rough and chemically heterogeneous surfaces: the Wenzel and Cassie Models Superhydrophobicity, superhydrophilicity, and the rose petal effect Wetting transitions on rough surfaces Electrowetting and wetting in the presence of external fields Nonstick droplets Wetting of lubricated surfaces

High Time Resolution Astrophysics (HTRA) is an important new window to the universe and a vital tool in understanding a range of phenomena from diverse objects and radiative processes. This importance is demonstrated in this volume with the description of a number of topics in astrophysics, including quantum optics, cataclysmic variables, pulsars, X-ray binaries and stellar pulsations to name a few. Underlining this science foundation, technological developments in both instrumentation and detectors are described. These instruments and detectors combined cover a wide range of timescales and can measure fluxes, spectra and polarisation. These advances make it possible for HTRA to make a big contribution to our understanding of the Universe in the next decade.

ROSAT Observations G. HASINGER Max-Planck-Institut flir extraterrestrische Physik, D-85740 Garching, Germany Abstract. This review describes the most recent advances in the study of the extragalactic soft X-ray background and what we can learn about its constituents. The deepest pointed observations with the ROSAT PSPC are discussed. The logN-logS relation is presented, which reaches to the faintest X-ray fluxes and to the highest AGN surface densities ever achieved. The N(>S) relation shows a 2 density in excess of 400 deg- at the faintest fluxes and a flattening below the Einstein Deep Survey limit. About 60% of the extragalactic background has been resolved in the deepest field. Detailed source spectra and first optical and radio identifications will be discussed. The results are put into perspective of the higher energy X -ray background. Key words: X-rays, background radiations, active galactic nuclei. 1. Introduction The extragalactic X-ray background (XRB), discovered about 30 years ago, has been studied extensively with many X-ray experiments, in particular with the satel lites HEAO I and II (see ego Boldt 1987) and with ROSAT (e. g. Hasinger et aI. , 1993). Figure 1 shows a compilation of some of the most recent spectral measure ments for the X-ray background. Over the energy range from 3 to about 100 keY its spectrum can be well approximated by an optically thin thermal bremsstrahlung model with kT ~ 40 keY, while at lower X-ray energies a steepening into a new component has been observed observed (e. g.

Line intensity mapping (LIM) is an observational technique that probes the large-scale structure of the Universe by collecting light from a wide field of the sky. This book demonstrates a novel analysis method for LIM using machine learning (ML) technologies. The author develops a conditional generative adversarial network that separates designated emission signals from sources at different epochs. It thus provides, for the first time, an efficient way to extract signals from LIM data with foreground noise. The method is complementary to conventional statistical methods such as cross-correlation analysis. When applied to three-dimensional LIM data with wavelength information, high reproducibility is achieved under realistic conditions. The book further investigates how the trained machine extracts the signals, and discusses the limitation of the ML methods. Lastly an application of the LIM data to a study of cosmic reionization is presented. This book benefits students and researchers who are interested in using machine learning to multi-dimensional data not only in astronomy but also in general applications.

Raman scattering is now being applied with increasing success to a wide range of practical problems at the cutting edge of materials science. The purpose of this book is to make Raman spectroscopy understandable to the non-specialist and thus to bring it into the mainstream of routine materials characterization. The book is pedagogical in approach and focuses on technologically important condensed-matter systems in which the specific use of Raman spectroscopy yields new and useful information. Included are chapters on instrumentation, bulk semiconductors and alloys, heterostructures, high-Tc superconductors, catalysts, carbon-based materials, wide-gap and super-hard materials, and polymers.

This text bridges the gap between introductory physics and its application to the life sciences. It is intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. The Fourth Edition is updated to include new findings, discussion of stochastic processes and expanded coverage of anatomy and biology. The text includes many problems to test the student's understanding, and chapters include useful bibliographies for further reading. Its minimal prerequisites and wide coverage make it ideal for self-study. The fourth edition is updated throughout to reflect new developments.

Through application of the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, this monograph mainly focuses on large deformations and flow failure simulations of geomaterials and movement behavior, which are always involved in geo-disasters. The work covers the theoretical background, numerical techniques, code implementation issues, and many novel and interesting applications. Two-dimensional and three-dimensional SPH models in the framework of both hydrodynamics and solid mechanics are established, with detailed descriptions. The monograph also contains many appealing and practical examples of geo-disaster modeling and analysis, including the fluidized movement of flow-like landslides, lateral spread of liquefied soils, and flow slides in landfills. In the documented SPH simulations, the propagation of geo-disasters is effectively reproduced. Dynamic behaviors of geomaterials during propagation are ascertained, including sliding path, flow velocity, maximum distance reached, and distribution of deposits. In this way, the monograph presents a means for mapping hazardous areas, estimating hazard intensity, and identifying and designing appropriate protective measures.

Cellular Endocrinology in Health and Disease, Second Edition, describes the underlying basis of endocrine function, providing an important tool to understand the fundamentals of endocrine diseases. Delivering a comprehensive review of the basic science of endocrinology, from cell biology to human disease, this work explores and dissects the function of a number of cellular systems. The new edition provides an understanding of how endocrine glands function by integrating information resulting in biological effects on both local and systemic levels, also providing new information on the molecular physiopathogenesis of endocrine neoplasic cells. The new edition expands the most used chapters from the first edition and proposes a series of substitutions and additions to the table of contents. New chapters cover signaling, brown adipose tissue, hypothalamic cell models, cellular basis of insulin resistance, genetics and epigenetics of neuroendocrine tumors, and a series of chapters on endocrine-related cancer. Providing content that crosses disciplines, Cellular Endocrinology in Health and Disease, Second Edition, details how cellular endocrine function contributes to system physiology and mediates endocrine disorders. A methods section proves novel and useful approaches across research focus that will be attractive to medical students, residents, and specialists in the field of endocrinology, as well as to those interested in cellular regulation. Editors Alfredo Ulloa-Aguirre and Ya-Xiong Tao, experts in molecular and cellular aspects of endocrinology, deliver contributions carefully selected for relevance, impact, and clarity of expression from leading field experts

The publication of this book is extremely timely, for the next major advances in manned space flight after Project Apollo will most likely be made in earth orbital operations. Manned exploration of the moon will certainly continue after the initial landing, but it will be performed essentially with the Saturn V launch vehicles and Apollo spacecraft developed in Apollo, especially in the early phases. Modifications to this basic hardware will increase operating capabilities to permit extensive lunar explo ration during prolonged stay times by the astronauts on the moon's surface. Manned orbital space stations have been studied for years, and NASA is already well along in development of its first attempt to provide more spacious accommo dations for astronaut-scientists in its Saturn Workshop program. While the Workshop is certainly not the ultimate space station of which our technology is capable, it is a workable, poor man's approach to the immediate need for using and expanding our present manned space flight capability without a de trimentalloss of momentum. The approach of converting a Saturn rocket stage into a manned laboratory and observatory in space is an improvisation that matches the use of the jerry-built Jupiter C back in 1958 to launch Explorer I. Let's hope that it can get the job done just as effectively.