A few years ago the Helmholtz Association (HGF) consisting of 15 research Institutions including the German Aerospace Center (DLR) started a network research program called 'Virtual Institutes'. The basic idea of this program was to establish research groups formed by Helmholtz research centers and universities to study and develop methods or technologies for future applications and educate young scientists. It should also enable and encourage the partners of this Virtual Institute after 3 years funding to continue their cooperation in other programs. Following this HGF request and chance the DLR Windtunnel Department of the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology took the initiative and established a network with other DLR institutes and German u- versities RWTH Aachen, University of Stuttgart and Technical University Munich. The main goal of this network was to share the experience in system analysis, ae- dynamics and material science for aerospace for improving the understanding and applicability of some key technologies for future reusable space transportation s- tems. Therefore, the virtual institute was named RESPACE (Key Technologies for Re- Usable Space Systems).

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of the classic text on surface mechanics preserves the objectives of the original: the rigorous derivation of surface properties such as temperature and deformation from the differential equations of continuum mechanics. From such solutions for the surfaces of single bodies one can then formulate problems involving two bodies at rest or in relative motion in terms of a singular integral equation. The discussion is analytical and theoretical, but animated by the authors' decades of experience in applications and experimental mechanics. This new edition has been updated to include many technologically motivated problems and solutions, especially computer solutions. Beginning with a survey of the field equations of classical continuum mechanics, the book continues with a discussion of surface temperatures in moving bodies. It then turns to semi-infinite and layered elastic media, discussing stress and deformation as well as thermal stress and associate deformation fields. Treatments of viscoelasticity and perfect plasticity concentrate on semi-infinite solids; these are followed by a discussion of rough surfaces. The book concludes with a lengthy chapter of applications. An appendix discusses integral equations.

Most photovoltaic (PV) installations utilise heavy conventional glass or polycarbonate panels, and even newly developed thin plastic or metal films for PV cell use may fracture during both construction and application. Textile fabrics, the most widespread flexible materials in everyday use, offer a solution to the need for lightweight, flexible solar PV generators. Solar Textiles: The Flexible Solution for Solar Power is about the incorporation and operation of solar cells on textile fabrics. The combination of textile manufacturing and solar PV cell technology opens up further avenues for both the textile and semiconductor industries. Thus, this book reflects the progressively increasing commercial interest in PV cell technology and the versatility that their integration in textiles provides. Discusses textiles as electrical substrates Explains the photovoltaic effect and associated parameters Offers special consideration of solar cells on textiles Compares fibres and fabrics and how to implement PV activity on a textile Describes manufacturing methods outside of semiconductor technology Includes applications open only to textiles This work is aimed at textile technologists, electronic engineers, solar technologists, civil engineers and designers in building fabrics and architecture.

This work describes the different operational regimes and the dominant mechanisms of flows in disperse systems.

In various branches of fluid mechanics, our understanding is inhibited by the presence of turbulence. Although many experimental and theoretical studies have significantly helped to increase our physical understanding, a comp- hensive and predictive theory of turbulent flows has not yet been established. Therefore, the prediction of turbulent flow relies heavily on simulation stra- gies. The development of reliable methods for turbulent flow computation will have a significant impact on a variety of technological advancements. These range from aircraft and car design, to turbomachinery, combustors, and process engineering. Moreover, simulation approaches are important in materials - sign, prediction of biologically relevant flows, and also significantly contribute to the understanding of environmental processes including weather and climate forecasting. The material that is compiled in this book presents a coherent account of contemporary computational approaches for turbulent flows. It aims to p- vide the reader with information about the current state of the art as well as to stimulate directions for future research and development. The book puts part- ular emphasis on computational methods for incompressible and compressible turbulent flows as well as on methods for analysing and quantifying nume- cal errors in turbulent flow computations. In addition, it presents turbulence modelling approaches in the context of large eddy simulation, and unfolds the challenges in the field of simulations for multiphase flows and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of engineering flows in complex geometries. Apart from reviewing main research developments, new material is also included in many of the chapters.

The subject of wave phenomena is well-known for its inter-disciplinary nature. Progress in this field has been made both through the desire to solve very practical problems, arising in acoustics, optics, radiophysics, electronics, oceanography, me teorology and so on, and through the development of mathematical physics which emphasized that completely different physical phenomena are governed by the same (or similar) equations. In the immense literature on physics of waves there is no lack of good presentations of particular branches or general textbooks on mathematical physics. But if one restricts the attention to pulse propagation phenomena, one no tices that many useful facts are scattered among the various books and journals, and their connections are not immediately apparent. For example, the problems involv ing acoustic pulse propagation in bubbly liquids and those related to electromagnetic pulses in resonant media are usually treated without much cross reference in spite of their obvious connections. The authors of this book have attempted to write a coherent account of a few pulse propagation problems selected from different branches of applied physics. Although the basic material on linear pulse propagation is included, some topics have their own unique twists, and a comprehensive treatment of this body of material can hardly be found in other sources. First of all, the problem of pulse propagation in non equilibrium media (unstable or admitting attenuation) is far more delicate than it is apparent at a first glance."

For the past several decades, the study of free boundary problems has been a very active subject of research occurring in a variety of applied sciences. What these problems have in common is their formulation in terms of suitably posed initial and boundary value problems for nonlinear partial differential equations. Such problems arise, for example, in the mathematical treatment of the processes of heat conduction, filtration through porous media, flows of non-Newtonian fluids, boundary layers, chemical reactions, semiconductors, and so on. The growing interest in these problems is reflected by the series of meetings held under the title "Free Boundary Problems: Theory and Applications" (Ox ford 1974, Pavia 1979, Durham 1978, Montecatini 1981, Maubuisson 1984, Irsee 1987, Montreal 1990, Toledo 1993, Zakopane 1995, Crete 1997, Chiba 1999). From the proceedings of these meetings, we can learn about the different kinds of mathematical areas that fall within the scope of free boundary problems. It is worth mentioning that the European Science Foundation supported a vast research project on free boundary problems from 1993 until 1999. The recent creation of the specialized journal Interfaces and Free Boundaries: Modeling, Analysis and Computation gives us an idea of the vitality of the subject and its present state of development. This book is a result of collaboration among the authors over the last 15 years."

This book deals with an original contribution to the hypothetical missing link unifying the two fundamental branches of physics born in the twentieth century, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Namely, the book is devoted to a review of a "covariant approach" to Quantum Mechanics, along with several improvements and new results with respect to the previous related literature. The first part of the book deals with a covariant formulation of Galilean Classical Mechanics, which stands as a suitable background for covariant Quantum Mechanics. The second part deals with an introduction to covariant Quantum Mechanics. Further, in order to show how the presented covariant approach works in the framework of standard Classical Mechanics and standard Quantum Mechanics, the third part provides a detailed analysis of the standard Galilean space-time, along with three dynamical classical and quantum examples. The appendix accounts for several non-standard mathematical methods widely used in the body of the book.

The problems it addresses include emotion representation, annotation of music excerpts, feature extraction, and machine learning. The book chiefly focuses on content-based analysis of music files, a system that automatically analyzes the structures of a music file and annotates the file with the perceived emotions. Further, it explores emotion detection in MIDI and audio files. In the experiments presented here, the categorical and dimensional approaches were used, and the knowledge and expertise of music experts with a university music education were used for music file annotation. The automatic emotion detection systems constructed and described in the book make it possible to index and subsequently search through music databases according to emotion. In turn, the emotion maps of musical compositions provide valuable new insights into the distribution of emotions in music and can be used to compare that distribution in different compositions, or to conduct emotional comparisons of different interpretations of the same composition.

Thermodynamics is not the oldest of sciences. Mechanics can make that claim. Thermodynamicsisaproductofsomeofthegreatestscienti?cmindsofthe19thand 20th centuries. But it is suf?ciently established that most authors of new textbooks in thermodynamics ?nd it necessary to justify their writing of yet another textbook. I ?nd this an unnecessary exercise because of the centrality of thermodynamics as a science in physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. I do acknowledge, however, that instruction in thermodynamics often leaves the student in a confused state. My attempt in this book is to present thermodynamics in as simple and as uni?ed a form as possible. As teachers we identify the failures of our own teachers and attempt to correct them. Although I personally acknowledge with a deep gratitude the appreciation for thermodynamics that I found as an undergraduate, I also realize that my teachers did not convey to me the sweeping grandeur of thermodynamics. Speci?cally the s- plicity and the power that James Clerk Maxwell found in the methods of Gibbs were not part of my undergraduate experience. Unfortunately some modern authors also seem to miss this central theme, choosing instead to introduce the thermodynamic potentials as only useful functions at various points in the development.

This book addresses supergravity and supergravity-motivated effective field theories in the context of cosmological model building. Extracting information about quintessence from string theory has attracted much attention in the past few years. The question became more urgent very recently after the possibility of obtaining de Sitter space was called into question. Therefore, there is an interesting debate as to whether de Sitter space or, even, quintessence can be derived from a fundamental theory, string theory or otherwise. This is a very active field of research, and the topics covered in the book render this work very timely. Throughout the book, special care has been taken in demonstrating historical relevance of the field and describing the set of open questions motivating the state-of-the-art research. The first few chapters in each part provide a detailed review of standard perturbative and non-perturbative techniques in supergravity model building, as a way to prepare the reader for the more technical and original subsequent chapters. These early chapters also represent a self-contained review that would be useful for anyone planning to enter this challenging area of study. The subsequent chapters detail research in supergravity-motivated effective field theories, in the first part, and supergravity models, in the second part. One of the important conclusions in this book is that modelling quintessence in perturbative string theory is at least as challenging as modelling de Sitter, placing the wider programme on a collision course with observations.

The construction of solutions of singularly perturbed systems of equations and boundary value problems that are characteristic for the mechanics of thin-walled structures are the main focus of the book. The theoretical results are supplemented by the analysis of problems and exercises. Some of the topics are rarely discussed in the textbooks, for example, the Newton polyhedron, which is a generalization of the Newton polygon for equations with two or more parameters. After introducing the important concept of the index of variation for functions special attention is devoted to eigenvalue problems containing a small parameter. The main part of the book deals with methods of asymptotic solutions of linear singularly perturbed boundary and boundary value problems without or with turning points, respectively. As examples, one-dimensional equilibrium, dynamics and stability problems for rigid bodies and solids are presented in detail. Numerous exercises and examples as well as vast references to the relevant Russian literature not well known for an English speaking reader makes this a indispensable textbook on the topic.

The major aim of this book is to introduce the ways in which scientists approach and think about a phenomenon -- hearing -- that intersects three quite different disciplines: the physics of sound sources and the propagation of sound through air and other materials, the anatomy and physiology of the transformation of the physical sound into neural activity in the brain, and the psychology of the perception we call hearing. Physics, biology, and psychology each play a role in understanding how and what we hear.
The text evolved over the past decade in an attempt to convey something about scientific thinking, as evidenced in the domain of sounds and their perception, to students whose primary focus is not science. It does so using a minimum of mathematics (high school functions such as linear, logarithmic, sine, and power) without compromising scientific integrity. A significant enrichment is the availability of a compact disc (CD) containing over 20 examples of acoustic demonstrations referred to in the book. These demonstrations, which range from echo effects and filtered noise to categorical speech perception and total more than 45 minutes, are invaluable resources for making the text come alive.

The scope of this book is to present in a systematic and unified manner the ray method (in its various forms) for studying nonlinear wave propagation in situations of physical interest (essentially fluid dynamics and plasma physics). The book could be used for an advanced graduate course on nonlinear waves. It should also be of interest to applied mathematicians, physicists and engineers, working in areas related to nonlinear waves.

This book is an attempt to bring together various and diverse scientific areas of research that have the common theme of wave propagation phenomena. There are few branches of Science and Engineering in which wave propagation phenomena do not have a part to play. Example areas of basic research and technological applications are shock waves in compressible media, stress waves in solid materials, astrophysical flows, electromagnetic waves, magneto gas dynamics, geophysical phenomena, hydraulics, combustion-driven waves and many others. There are fourteen contributions from distinguished researchers from eight countries. The emphasis is on modern numerical methods for waves. The Harten Memorial Lecture presented by P.L. Roe, University of Michigan, USA, deals with state-of-the-art numerical methods with novel applications. The book is suitable for scientists and engineers in all areas involving wave propagation. The level is advanced and suitable for post-graduate students and researchers in academia and industry.

This book presents a comprehensive discussion of the commercial and military applications of small-aperture radio direction finding. Supported by 154 equations and 108 illustrations, it also details the functional elements of radio-direction finding and a definition of small-aperture DF based on linear wavelength criteria.

Nowadays, music-inspired phenomenon-mimicking harmony search algorithm is fast growing with many applications. One of key success factors of the algorithm is the employment of a novel stochastic derivative which can be used even for discrete variables. Instead of traditional calculus-based gradient, the algorithm utilizes musician's experience as a derivative in searching for an optimal solution. This can be a new paradigm and main reason in the successes of various applications.

The goal of this book is to introduce major advances of the harmony search algorithm in recent years. The book contains 14 chapters with the following subjects: State-of-the-art in the harmony search algorithm structure; robotics (robot terrain and manipulator trajectory); visual tracking; web text data mining; power flow planning; fuzzy control system; hybridization (with Taguchi method or SQP method); groundwater management; irrigation; logistics; timetabling; and bioinformatics (RNA structure prediction).

This book collects the above-mentioned theory and applications, which are dispersed in various technical publications, so that readers can have a good grasp of current status of the harmony search algorithm and foster new breakthroughs in their fields using the algorithm.

Proceedings of IAU Symposium No. 48 held in Morioka, Japan, May 9-15, 1971

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 provides a new Unified Strength Theory and describes its applications. The Unified Strength Theory is a system of yield and failure criteria of materials under complex stresses. It covers the entire range of convex failure criteria, from lower bound (Tresca yield criteria and Mohr-Coulomb failure criteria) to upper bound (twin-shear failure criteria). It also includes the non-convex yield and non-convex failure criteria. A series of new failure criteria and previous failure and yield criteria can be deduced from the Unified Strength Theory. The work presented in this book is unprecedented in the field of strength theory. It is useful for students in understanding the strength theory, for engineers to correctly use it and for researchers to choose an appropriate failure criteria in studying the strenth of materials and structures. An experimental verification, engineering applications, a detailed historical review and more than 1000 references are provided.

An image or video sequence is a series of two-dimensional (2-D) images sequen tially ordered in time. Image sequences can be acquired, for instance, by video, motion picture, X-ray, or acoustic cameras, or they can be synthetically gen erated by sequentially ordering 2-D still images as in computer graphics and animation. The use of image sequences in areas such as entertainment, visual communications, multimedia, education, medicine, surveillance, remote control, and scientific research is constantly growing as the use of television and video systems are becoming more and more common. The boosted interest in digital video for both consumer and professional products, along with the availability of fast processors and memory at reasonable costs, has been a major driving force behind this growth. Before we elaborate on the two major terms that appear in the title of this book, namely motion analysis and image sequence processing, we like to place them in their proper contexts within the range of possible operations that involve image sequences. In this book, we choose to classify these operations into three major categories, namely (i) image sequence processing, (ii) image sequence analysis, and (iii) visualization. The interrelationship among these three categories is pictorially described in Figure 1 below in the form of an "image sequence triangle.""

In these lectures, most of them given at the University of Montreal while he held the Aisenstadt Chair, Roman Jackiw provides a view of fluid dynamics from an entirely novel perspective. He begins by explaining the motivation and reviewing the classical theory, but in a manner different from textbook discussions. Among other topics, he discusses conservation laws and Euler equations, and a method for finding their canonical structure; C. Eckart's Lagrangian and a relativistic generalization for vortex-free motion; nonvanishing vorticity and the Clebsch parameterization for the velocity vector. Jackiw then discusses some specific models for nonrelativistic and relativistic fluid mechanics with more than one spatial dimension, including the Chaplygin gas (whose negative pressure is inversely proportional to density), and the scalar Born-Infeld model. He shows how both the Chaplygin gas and the Born-Infeld model devolve from the parameterization-invariant Nambu-Goto action. As in particle physics, Jackiw shows, fluid mechanics enhanced by supersymmetry, non-Abelian degrees of freedon, and non commuting coordinates. Jackiw discusses the need for a non-Abelian fluid mechanics, and proposes a Lagrangian, which involves a non-Abelian auxiliary field, whose Chern-Simons density should be a total derivative. The generalization to magnetohydrodynamics, which results from including a dynamical non-Abelian guage filed, reduces in the Abelian limit to conventional magnetohydrodynamics. For one-dimensional cases, the models mentioned above are completely integrable, and Jackiw gives the general solution of the Chaplygin gas and the Born-Infeld model on a line, as well as a general solution of the Nambu-Goto theory for a 1-brane (string) in two spatial dimensions. Jackiw discusses the need for a non-Abelian fluid mechanics and proposes a Lagrangian, which involves a non-Abelian auxiliary field whose Chern-Simons density should be a total derivative. The generalization to magnetohydrodynamics, which results from including a dynamical non-Abelian gauge field, reduces in the Abelian limit to conventional magnetohydrodynamics.

"Completing Transition: The Main Challenges" was the topic around which the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Joint Vienna Institute organized a high-level conference in 2000, in a continuation of long-standing efforts to promote the dialogue and understanding between various regions in Europe. Given the heterogeneity of the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the heterogeneity of progress toward convergence, the outlook for finishing transition is divergent. However, what will generally be important is corporate governance and institutional reform to sufficiently underpin macroeconomic success, plus a definite commitment of the responsible institutions in the transition countries to follow the chosen policies consistently.

Despite their apparent simplicity, the behaviour of pendulums can be remarkably complicated. Historically, pendulums for specific purposes have been developed using a combination of simplified theory and trial and error. There do not appear to be any introductory books on pendulums, written at an intermediate level, and covering a wide range of topics. This book aims to fill the gap. It is written for readers with some background in elementary geometry, algebra, trigonometry and calculus. Historical information, where available and useful for the understanding of various types of pendulum and their applications, is included. Perhaps the best known use of pendulums is as the basis of clocks in which a pendulum controls the rate at which the clock runs. Interest in theoretical and practical aspects of pendulums, as applied to clocks, goes back more than four centuries. The concept of simple pendulums, which are idealised versions of real pendulums is introduced. The application of pendulums to clocks is described, with detailed discussion of the effect of inevitable differences between real pendulums and simple pendulums. In a clock, the objective is to ensure that the pendulum controls the timekeeping. However, pendulums are sometimes driven, and how this affects their behaviour is described. Pendulums are sometimes used for occult purposes. It is possible to explain some apparently occult results by using modern pendulum theory. For example, why a ring suspended inside a wine glass, by a thread from a finger, eventually strikes the glass. Pendulums have a wide range of uses in scientific instruments, engineering, and entertainment. Some examples are given as case studies. Indexed in the Book Citation Index- Science (BKCI-S)