This book explores different aspects of LA-ICP-MS (laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry). It presents a large array of new analytical protocols for elemental or isotope analysis. LA-ICP-MS is a powerful tool that combines a sampling device able to remove very small quantities of material without leaving visible damage at the surface of an object. Furthermore, it functions as a sensitive analytical instrument that measures, within a few seconds, a wide range of isotopes in inorganic samples. Determining the elemental or the isotopic composition of ancient material is essential to address questions related to ancient technology or provenance and therefore aids archaeologists in reconstructing exchange networks for goods, people and ideas. Recent improvements of LA-ICP-MS have opened new avenues of research that are explored in this volume.

The IoT is the inter-networking of connected and smart devices, buildings, vehicles and other items which are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. A sensor is a detection device that measures, records, or responds to a physical property. Sensors represent the front end of information processing. Progress in communication technologies is part of the multi-factorial advances in electronics, sensors, embedded computing, signal processing and machine learning methods that has led to the development of new capabilities in the IoT. This edited book focuses on the technologies constituting the IoT from a sensor perspective, for an audience of researchers, scientists, engineers and graduate students with an interest in the field. Applications covered include connected sensors for smart cities, energy infrastructure, emergency management, and smart ports.

This thesis presents the first comprehensive analysis of quantum cascade laser nonlinear dynamics and includes the first observation of a temporal chaotic behavior in quantum cascade lasers. It also provides the first analysis of optical instabilities in the mid-infrared range. Mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers are unipolar semiconductor lasers, which have become widely used in applications such as gas spectroscopy, free-space communications or optical countermeasures. Applying external perturbations such as optical feedback or optical injection leads to a strong modification of the quantum cascade laser properties. Optical feedback impacts the static properties of mid-infrared Fabry-Perot and distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers, inducing power increase; threshold reduction; modification of the optical spectrum, which can become either single- or multimode; and enhanced beam quality in broad-area transverse multimode lasers. It also leads to a different dynamical behavior, and a quantum cascade laser subject to optical feedback can oscillate periodically or even become chaotic. A quantum cascade laser under external control could therefore be a source with enhanced properties for the usual mid-infrared applications, but could also address new applications such as tunable photonic oscillators, extreme events generators, chaotic Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), chaos-based secured communications or unpredictable countermeasures.

This book presents a collection of invited research and review contributions on recent advances in (mainly) theoretical condensed matter physics, theoretical chemistry, and theoretical physics. The volume celebrates the 90th birthday of N.H. March (Emeritus Professor, Oxford University, UK), a prominent figure in all of these fields. Given the broad range of interests in the research activity of Professor March, who collaborated with a number of eminent scientists in physics and chemistry, the volume embraces quite diverse topics in physics and chemistry, at various dimensions and energy scales. One thread connecting all these topics is correlation in aggregated states of matter, ranging from nuclear physics to molecules, clusters, disordered condensed phases such as the liquid state, and solid state physics, and the various phase transitions, both structural and electronic, occurring therein. A final chapter leaps to an even larger scale of matter aggregation, namely the universe and gravitation. A further no less important common thread is methodological, with the application of theoretical physics and chemistry, particularly density functional theory and statistical field theory, to both nuclear and condensed matter.

An increasing complexity of models used to predict real-world systems leads to the need for algorithms to replace complex models with far simpler ones, while preserving the accuracy of the predictions. This two-volume handbook covers methods as well as applications. This first volume focuses on real-time control theory, data assimilation, real-time visualization, high-dimensional state spaces and interaction of different reduction techniques.

Power Supplies for LED Driving, Second Edition explores the wide use of light-emitting diodes due to their efficient use of power. The applications for power LEDs include traffic lights, street lamps, automotive lighting, architectural lights, theatre lighting, household light replacements, signage lighting (replacing neon strip lights and fluorescent tubes), LCD display backlighting, and many more. Powering (driving) these LED's is not always simple. Linear driving is inefficient and generates far too much heat. With a switching supply, the main issues are EMI, efficiency, and of course cost. This book covers the design trade-offs involved in LED driving applications, from low-power, to UB-LEDs and beyond.

This book discusses the architecture of modern automated systems for spectrum monitoring including automation components: technical means for spectrum monitoring, special software and engineering infrastructure. The problems of automated system development for search and localization of unauthorized radio emission sources in open localities, mathematical methods and algorithms for modulation of parameter measurements for wireless communication as well as issues of identification and localization of radio emission sources are considered. Constructive solutions and modern technical means for radio monitoring and their application are given. Numerous examples are described for the implementation of automated systems, digital radio receivers and radio direction-finders, analyzers of parameters for GSM, CDMA, LTE, DVB-T/T2, Wi-Fi, DMR, P25, TETRA and DECT signals. Practical implementations of the described methods are presented in applied software packages and in radio monitoring equipment.

This book examines some of the underlying processes behind different forms of information management, including how we store information in our brains, the impact of new technologies such as computers and robots on our efficiency in storing information, and how information is stored in families and in society. The editors brought together experts from a variety of disciplines. While it is generally agreed that information reduces uncertainties and that the ability to store it safely is of vital importance, these authors are open to different meanings of "information": computer science considers the bit as the information block; neuroscience emphasizes the importance of information as sensory inputs that are processed and transformed in the brain; theories in psychology focus more on individual learning and on the acquisition of knowledge; and finally sociology looks at how interpersonal processes within groups or society itself come to the fore. The book will be of value to researchers and students in the areas of information theory, artificial intelligence, and computational neuroscience.

The MOS 2016 Study Guide for Microsoft Outlook covers Microsoft Outlook 2016, specifically the skills required to pass the Outlook 2016 Microsoft Office Specialist exam. The Microsoft Office Specialist Study Guides provide concise descriptions of the tasks that certification candidates must demonstrate to pass the Microsoft Office Specialist exams, step-by-step procedures for performing those tasks, practice tasks based on the MOS exam approach, sample files for practicing the tasks, and solution files so you can check your work.

Collisional Electron Detachment in Dielectric Gases.- A Technique for the Measurement of Electron Attachment to Short-Lived Excited Species.- Total Cross Sections for Electron Scattering and Attachment for SF6 and Its Electrical-Discharge By-Products.- Electron Localization Effects and Resonant Attachment to O2 Impurities in Highly Compressed Neon Gas.- Temperature Dependence of the Dissociative Electron Attachment to CH3Cl and C2H5Cl.- Multibody Electron Capture Processes in the Gas Phase.- Leader Breakdown in Compressed SF6: Recent Concepts and Understanding.- Electrical Breakdown in the Space Environment.- Positive Synergism and Time-Resolved Swarm Experiments.- Discharge Development in Air at Very High Humidity Levels.- Negative $$\bar \eta$$ Synergism in CF2Cl2-N2 and CF2Cl2-CO2 Gas Mixtures.- Excitation and Ionisation in the Transient State Discharge in Pure Nitrogen.- Discussion of Some Space-Charge Effects in the Context of Low-Temperature and High-Field Steady-State Gas Discharges.- Non-equilibrium Effects in the Initiation of Pseudospark Discharges.- Dissociation Processes in Plasma Chemistry and Gaseous Dielectrics.- The Calculation of Leader Propagation in Point/Plane Gaps Under Very Fast Transient Stress.- Fractal Description of Electrical Discharges.- A Two-Dimensional Simulation of A Hollow-Cathode Discharge.- Similarities Between High Electric Field Electron Emission and Consequent Breakdown Processes in Compressed Gases and Vacuo.- Liquid Breakdown and Its Relation to Gas Breakdown.- Corona Discharges in Liquid and Gaseous Hydrocarbons: The Influence of Pressure.- Electron Drift Velocities in Fast Dielectric Liquids and Their Vapors.- Gas Breakdown and Its Relation to Vacuum and Liquid Breakdown Under The Influence of Electric and Magnetic Field.- Measurement of the Figure of Merit M for Several SF6-Based Binary Gas Mixtures.- Mode Transitions in Hollow-Cathode Discharges.- Formation of Cathode Spots by Unipolar Arcing.- Detachment of Electrons From Negative Ions in Electrical Discharges.- Time Lags and Optical Investigations of Pre-Discharge in SF6/N2 - Mixtures at Very Fast Transient Voltages.- Non-Uniform Field Flashover Characteristics in SF6 Gas Under Negative Steep-Front and Oscillating Impulse Voltages.- Breakdown Characteristics of Non-Uniform Gaps in SF6 Under Fast Oscillating Impulse Voltages.- The Effect of Leader Propagation on the V-t Curves Under LI and VFT in GIS.- Insulating Characteristics of Small SF6 Gas Gaps Under Lightning Impulse Voltages.- Low and High Voltage Distribution Along a Cap and Pin Insulator String Subjected to AC and Impulse Voltages.- Starting Processes and the Influence of the Radioactivity of Thorium on the Statistical Lag Time in Metal Halide Lamps.- Breakdown of Air Gaps Under Oscillatory Simulated Switching Surges.- Gas-Solid Interface Emissions Determined by the ESAW Charge Detection Method.- Contribution of a Solid Insulator to an Electron Avalanche in Nitrogen Gas.- Impulse Surface Charging and Flashover.- Particle-Initiated Prebreakdown Characteristics With An Insulator Stressed on 60 Hz Voltage in SF6.- High Power Gaseous Opening and Closing Switches.- Laser Triggering of Gas Filled Spark Gaps.- A New Approach for an Opening Switch for Repetitive Operations.- A Macroscopic Gas Breakdown Relationship.- Mitigation of Potential Health Hazards of Transmission Line Fields.- Electric and Magnetic Fields: An Engineer's Perspective.- Relative Potency as a Means of Evaluating ELF Health Risks.- Influence of Memory on the Statistics of Pulsating Corona.- Pulsed Corona Experiments.- Current Stability of Negative Corona Discharges in SF6 and Delayed Spark Breakdown.- Verification of Direct-Current Corona Models Employing the Deutsch Approximation.- Frequency Effects in Alternating Current Corona.- A Mass Spectrometer Study of Ionization in SF6 Corona: Influence of Water and Neutral By-Products.- High Voltage DC Gas Insulation - A World-Wide Review.- Gas-Insulated Substation...

This book focuses on small flying drones and their applications in conducting geographic surveys. Scholars and professionals will discover the potential of this tool, and hopefully develop a conceptual and methodological framework for doing the following things: a) Translate their data acquisition needs into specifications. (b) Use the developed specifications to choose the best accessible configuration for their drones, and (c) Design and organize effective and low-cost field deployment and flight operations by integrating technical aspects with regulatory and research requirements. Readers can apply this knowledge to work in cartography, environmental monitoring and analysis, land-use studies and landscape archaeology. Particular attention is also given to the reasons why a drone can dramatically boost a geographer's capability to understand geographic phenomena both from hard-science and humanities-oriented approach.

This book contains the proceedings of the KES International conferences on Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare (KES-InMed-19) and Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services (KES-IIMSS-19), held on 17-19 June 2019 and co-located in St. Julians, on the island of Malta, as part of the KES Smart Digital Futures 2019 multi-theme conference. The major areas covered by KES-InMed-19 include: Digital IT Architecture in Healthcare; Advanced ICT for Medical and Healthcare; Biomedical Engineering, Trends, Research and Technologies and Healthcare Support System. The major areas covered by KES-IIMSS-19 were: Interactive Technologies; Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics; Intelligent Services and Architectures and Applications. This book is of use to researchers in these vibrant areas, managers, industrialists and anyone wishing to gain an overview of the latest research in these fields.

This book discusses the design and performance analysis of SDRAM controllers that cater to both real-time and best-effort applications, i.e. mixed-time-criticality memory controllers. The authors describe the state of the art, and then focus on an architecture template for reconfigurable memory controllers that addresses effectively the quickly evolving set of SDRAM standards, in terms of worst-case timing and power analysis, as well as implementation. A prototype implementation of the controller in SystemC and synthesizable VHDL for an FPGA development board are used as a proof of concept of the architecture template.

This book presents the state-of-the-art methods and procedures necessary for operating a power system. It takes into account the theoretical investigations and practical considerations of the modern electrical power system. It highlights in a systematic way the following sections: Power Sector Scenario in India, Distribution Planning and Optimization, Best practices in Operation & Maintenance of Sub-Transmission & Distribution Lines, Best Practices in Operation and Maintenance of Distribution Substation Equipment's and Auxiliaries, Best Practice in Operation & Maintenance of Transformer and Protection Systems, International Best Practices in Operation & Maintenance (Advanced Gadgets), Aerial Bunch Conductor (ABC) based Distribution System, Best Practices in Operation & Maintenance of Energy Meters.

This is an overview of different models and mechanisms developed to describe the capture and relaxation of carriers in quantum-dot systems. Despite their undisputed importance, the mechanisms leading to population and energy exchanges between a quantum dot and its environment are not yet fully understood. The authors develop a first-order approach to such effects, using elementary quantum mechanics and an introduction to the physics of semiconductors. The book results from a series of lectures given by the authors at the Master's level.

Mechanical laws of motion were applied very early for better understanding anthropomorphic action as suggested in advance by Newton "For from hence are easily deduced the forces of machines, which are compounded of wheels, pullies, levers, cords, and weights, ascending directly or obliquely, and other mechanical powers; as also the force of the tendons to move the bones of animals". In the 19th century E.J. Marey and E. Muybridge introduced chronophotography to scientifically investigate animal and human movements. They opened the field of motion analysis by being the first scientists to correlate ground reaction forces with kinetics. Despite of the apparent simplicity of a given skilled movement, the organization of the underlying neuro-musculo-skeletal system remains unknown. A reason is the redundancy of the motor system: a given action can be realized by different muscle and joint activity patterns, and the same underlying activity may give rise to several movements. After the pioneering work of N. Bernstein in the 60's on the existence of motor synergies, numerous researchers "walking on the border" of their disciplines tend to discover laws and principles underlying the human motions and how the brain reduces the redundancy of the system. These synergies represent the fundamental building blocks composing complex movements. In robotics, researchers face the same redundancy and complexity challenges as the researchers in life sciences. This book gathers works of roboticists and researchers in biomechanics in order to promote an interdisciplinary research on anthropomorphic systems at large and on humanoid robotics in particular.

This two-part book puts the spotlight on how a real-time kernel works using Micrium's C/OS-III kernel as a reference. Part I includes an overview of the operation of real-time kernels, and walks through various aspects of C/OS-III implementation and usage. Part II provides application examples (using the versatile Renesas YRDKRX62N Evaluation Board, available separately) that enable readers to rapidly develop their own prototypes. This book is written for serious embedded systems programmers, consultants, hobbyists, and students interested in understanding the inner workings of a real-time kernel. C/OS-III is not just a great learning platform, but also a full commercial-grade software package, ready to be part of a wide range of products. C/OS-III is a highly portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel designed specifically to address the demanding requirements of today 's embedded systems. C/OS-III is the successor to the highly popular C/OS-II real-time kernel but can use most of C/OS-II 's ports with minor modifications. Some of the features of C/OS-III are:

Preemptive multitasking with round-robin scheduling of tasks at the same priority
Supports and unlimited number of tasks and other kernel objects
Rich set of services: semaphores, mutual exclusion semaphores with full priority inheritance, event flags, message queues, timers, fixed-size memory block management, and more.
Built-in performance measurements

This monograph investigates the existence of higher order sliding mode in discrete-time systems and propounds a new concept of discrete-time higher order sliding mode. The authors propose a definition of discrete-time higher order sliding mode and a control law is designed by means of a concept for an uncertain linear-time invariant system, as well as the behavior of the closed-loop system is analyzed. Moreover, the book includes a thorough treatment of the probabilistic and non-deterministic case, i.e. stochastic discrete-time higher order sliding mode. The target audience primarily comprises research experts in control theory but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students alike.

ESC is the premature initiation of cracking and embrittlement of a plastic due to the simultaneous action of stress and strain and contact with specific fluids. This definition provides the key to the problem of predictability. Failure is due to a combination of influences, which would not cause the same problems if encountered individually.
Approximately 15% of all failures of plastics components in service are caused by ESC. Such failures may be costly or life threatening, and consequently the phenomenon has been the subject of intensive research for more than 40 years. This research has revealed a great deal about the casual mechanism, but has not yet brought us to the ideal position of being able to predict and prevent the occurrence of ESC in all situations.

New techniques and technologies for sensors are developing fast and being applied in a wide range of fields for measurement and instrumentation, both for research and commercial purposes. This book aims to provide advanced students and practising engineers with a selective tour of highlights in the topical field of sensors for measurement. The authors provide descriptions of the operation, characteristics and applications of the sensors on which they work, together with recent advances and prospects for the future. The chapters cover both fibre optic and solid state sensing, applied across a wide range of applications. Although primarily aimed at graduate-level students and engineers, the depth of coverage of each sensor type is such that the book will be useful to undergraduates seeking to supplement their knowledge for courses on sensors, measurement and instrumentation.

Analogue filters will always be needed for interfacing between digital systems and the 'real' analogue world. In fact, the high frequency integrated analogue filter has become a key component in achieving ubiquitous communication and computing. In recent years, the renewed interest in analogue, mixed-signal and RF circuits due to the need for system-on-chip design and the market for wireless communications has led to a new peak of research into high frequency integrated analogue filters. This book brings together the leading researchers in high frequency analogue filters to highlight recent advances and identify promising directions for future development. Coverage includes Gm-C filters, MOSFET-C filters, active-LC filters, logdomain filters, switched-current filters, adaptive analogue filters and on-chip automatic filter tuning. The topical nature of the book and calibre of the authors ensures that this book will be of great interest to the electronics and communications communities worldwide.

Lossless Information Hiding in Images introduces many state-of-the-art lossless hiding schemes, most of which come from the authors' publications in the past five years. After reading this book, readers will be able to immediately grasp the status, the typical algorithms, and the trend of the field of lossless information hiding. Lossless information hiding is a technique that enables images to be authenticated and then restored to their original forms by removing the watermark and replacing overridden images. This book focuses on the lossless information hiding in our most popular media, images, classifying them in three categories, i.e., spatial domain based, transform domain based, and compressed domain based. Furthermore, the compressed domain based methods are classified into VQ based, BTC based, and JPEG/JPEG2000 based.

This book serves as a comprehensive, up-to-date reference about this cutting-edge laser technology and its many new and interesting developments. Various aspects and trends of Raman fiber lasers are described in detail by experts in their fields. Raman fiber lasers have progressed quickly in the past decade, and have emerged as a versatile laser technology for generating high power light sources covering a spectral range from visible to mid-infrared. The technology is already being applied in the fields of telecommunication, astronomy, cold atom physics, laser spectroscopy, environmental sensing, and laser medicine. This book covers various topics relating to Raman fiber laser research, including power scaling, cladding and diode pumping, cascade Raman shifting, single frequency operation and power amplification, mid-infrared laser generation, specialty optical fibers, and random distributed feedback Raman fiber lasers. The book will appeal to scientists, students, and technicians seeking to understand the recent developments and future trends of this promising and multifaceted technology.