This book on the theory of three-dimensional spinors and their applications fills an important gap in the literature. It gives an introductory treatment of spinors.

From the reviews:

"Gathers much of what can be done with 3-D spinors in an easy-to-read, self-contained form designed for applications that will supplement many available spinor treatments. The book...should be appealing to graduate students and researchers in relativity and mathematical physics." --MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS

Quantum physicists have reached a point commonly only attained by mystics: they understand something with amazing clarity yet can only talk about it in parables and metaphors. In this context, qigong with its Daoist background is a powerful way to integrate these apparently opposing ways of apperception and understanding. It allows us to realise cosmic oneness in the activities of daily life. This book succeeds in presenting both an easily accessible outline of quantum physics and also an appreciation of mysticism beyond vagueness and obscurity. From here it describes the physical and mental movements of qigong as a way of integrating body and mind, head and heart, detailing specific exercises and outlining their rationale and effects.

This book discusses the classical foundations of field theory, using the language of variational methods and covariance. It explores the limits of what can be achieved with purely classical notions, and shows how these classical notions have a deep and important connection with the second quantized field theory, which follows on from the Schwinger Action Principle. Its pragmatic view of field theory focuses on issues which are usually omitted from quantum field theory texts and catalogs results which are often hard to find in the literature.

In this volume of the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, we present a collection of articles on philosophical issues in contemporary physics. The principal domain of these investigations is quantum physics. There are also articles on questions in classical mechanics (Hooker), and relativity theory (papapetrou and Stachel), as well as a monographic essay in evolutionary epistemology (yilmaz), applying the conceptual and mathematical understanding of special relativistic quantum field theory to set forth a theory of the evolution and adaptation of perceptual structures. Finally, in addition, there are two essays on classical issues in the philosophy of nature - one, on types of continuity (Capek), which suggests an analogy between the perceptual and the quantum domains; the other, on causality, the first translation into English of a minor classic in the philosophical understanding of modern physics, H. Berg- man's well-known but little-read Der Kampf um das Kausalgesetz in der jiingsten Physik (Vieweg, Braunschweig, 1929). On the occasion of this publication, Professor Bergman has kindly contributed an introductory essay, 'Personal Remembrances of Albert Einstein'. Of the seven essays on quantum mechanics, four are on quantum logic (Marlow, Heelan, Bub and Demopoulos, Van Fraassen), the last being a critical survey of various current proposals for quantum logics; the re- maining three (MacKinnon, Stachel and Van Fraassen) are concerned with both the formal issues and the ontological commitments of quantum physics.

* Written by an interdisciplinary group of specialists from the arts, humanities and sciences at Oxford University * Suitable for a wide non-academic readership, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in mathematics, science and philosophy.

This monograph develops a new way of justifying the claims made by science about phenomenon not directly observable by humans, such as atoms and black holes. It details a way of making inferences to the existence and properties of unobservable entities and states of affairs that can be given a probabilistic justification. The inferences used to establish realist claims are not a form of, and neither do they rely on, inference to the best explanation. Scientific Realism maintains that scientific theories and hypotheses refer to real entities, forces, and relations, even if one cannot examine them. But, there are those who doubt these claims. The author develops a novel way of defending Scientific Realism against a range of influential attacks. He argues that in some cases, at least, we can make probabilistically justifiable inferences from observed data to claims about unobservable, theoretical entities. He shows how this enables us to place some scientific realist claims on a firmer epistemological footing than has previously been the case. This also makes it possible to give a unified set of replies to the most common objections to Scientific Realism. The final chapters apply the developed conceptual apparatus to key cases from the history of science and from recent science. One example concerns realism with respect to atoms. Another looks at inferences from recent astronomical data to conclusions about the size and shape of those parts of the universe lying beyond that which we can observe.

The unusual ambition of this volume is to engage scientists, historians, and philosophers in a common quest to delineate the structure of the creative thinking responsible for major advances in physical theory. The topic does not fit anyone discipline's proprietary interests, and can only be pursued cooperatively. This volume was conceived in the hope that the importance of learning something general about how theories are developed and what makes the difference between productive and abortive directions of theo retical inquiry could overcome well-known barriers to such cooperation. The volume originated in a conference held at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro in 1988, as an installment of the annual Greensboro Symposium in Philosophy. Most of the papers descend from papers pre sented on that occasion. The authors are well known in their own disciplines, but should be identified to the wider audience for interdisciplinary work in science studies. Rafael Sorkin, of Syracuse University, and Don Page, of the University of Alberta, are theoretical physicists who have done research in quantum gravity and cosmology. John Stachel, a physicist at Boston University, is widely known as the Director of the Einstein Project and editor of Einstein's papers. William Harper, a historian of science and philosopher at the University of Western Ontario, is a Newton scholar and specialist in decision theory."

Intended for graduates and researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, and applied mathematics, this book provides an up-to-date introduction to current research in fluctuations in spatially extended systems. It covers the theory of stochastic partial differential equations and gives an overview of the effects of external noise on dynamical systems with spatial degrees of freedom. Starting with a general introduction to noise-induced phenomena in dynamical systems, the text moves on to an extensive discussion of analytical and numerical tools needed to gain information from stochastic partial differential equations. It then turns to particular problems described by stochastic PDEs, covering a wide part of the rich phenomenology of spatially extended systems, such as nonequilibrium phase transitions, domain growth, pattern formation, and front propagation. The only prerequisite is a minimal background knowledge of the Langevin and Fokker-Planck equations.

The book contains 11 chapters written by relevant scientists in the field of particle-based methods and their applications in engineering and applied sciences. The chapters cover most particle-based techniques used in practice including the discrete element method, the smooth particle hydrodynamic method and the particle finite element method. The book will be of interest to researchers and engineers interested in the fundamentals of particle-based methods and their applications.

Bioenergy: Principles and Technologies introduces biomass energy resources and then elaborates on bioenergy technologies including biomass combustion, biogas production, biomass briquettes and biomass gasification. With a combination of theories, experiments and case studies, the book is an essential reference for bioenergy researchers, industrial chemists and chemical engineers.

This volume of High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering is fully dedicated to the final report of KONWIHR, the Bavarian Competence Network for Technical and Scientific High Performance Computing. It includes the transactions of the final KONWIHR workshop, that was held at Technische Universitat Munchen, October 14-15, 2004, as well as additional reports of KONWIHR research groups. KONWIHR was established by the Bavarian State Government in order to support the broad application of high performance computing in science and technology throughout the country. KONWIHR is a supporting action to the installation of the German supercomputer Hitachi SR 8000 in the Leibniz Computing Center of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. The report covers projects from basic research in computer science to develop tools for high performance computing as well as applications from biology, chemistry, electrical engineering, geology, mathematics, physics, computational fluid dynamics, materials science and computer science."

Multiphase thermal systems (involving more than one phase or one component) have numerous applications in aerospace, heat-exchanger, transport of contaminants in environmental systems, and energy transport and energy conversion systems. Advances in understanding the behaviour of multiphase thermal systems could lead to higher efficiency energy production systems, improved heat-exchanger design, and safer and enhanced treatment of hazardous waste. But such advances have been greatly hindered by the strong effect of gravitational acceleration on the flow. Depending on the flow orientation and the phase velocities, gravitational forces could significantly alter the flow regime, and hence the pressure-drop and heat-transfer coefficients associated with the flow. A reduced gravity environment (or microgravity), provides an excellent tool to study the flow without the masking effects of gravity.

The conference Operator Theory, Analysis and Mathematical Physics - OTAMP is a regular biennial event devoted to mathematical problems on the border between analysis and mathematical physics. The current volume presents articles written by participants, mostly invited speakers, and is devoted to problems at the forefront of modern mathematical physics such as spectral properties of CMV matrices and inverse problems for the non-classical Schroedinger equation. Other contributions deal with equations from mathematical physics and study their properties using methods of spectral analysis. The volume explores several new directions of research and may serve as a source of new ideas and problems for all scientists interested in modern mathematical physics.

This book is essentially based on the lecture course on "Statistical Physics", which was taught by the author at the physical faculty of the Ural State University in Ekaterinburg since 1992. This course was intended for all physics students, not especially for those specializing in theoretical physics. In this sense the material presented here contains the necessary minimum of knowledge of statistical physics (also often called statistical mechanics), which is in author's opinion necessary for every person wishing to obtain a general education in the field of physics. This posed the rather difficult problem of the choice of material and compact enough presentation. At the same time it necessarily should contain all the basic principles of statistical physics, as well as its main applications to different physical problems, mainly from the field of the theory of condensed matter. Extended version of these lectures were published in Russian in 2003. For the present English edition, some of the material was rewritten and several new sections and paragraphs were added, bringing contents more up to date and adding more discussion on some more difficult cases.

Deformations of elastic bodies are encountered in many areas in science, engineering and technology. In the last decades, various numerical approaches using the finite element technique have been developed, but many are not adequate to address the full complexity. This work treats the elasticity of deformed bodies, including the resulting interior stresses and displacements. Other than comparable books, this work also takes into account that some of constitutive relations can be considered in a weak form. To discuss this problem properly, the method of integrodifferential relations is used, and an advanced numerical technique for stress-strain analysis is presented and evaluated using various discretization techniques. The methods presented in this book are of importance for almost all elasticity problems in materials science and mechanical engineering.

This interdisciplinary thesis involves the design and analysis of coordination algorithms on networks, identification of dynamic networks and estimation on networks with random geometries with implications for networks that support the operation of dynamic systems, e.g., formations of robotic vehicles, distributed estimation via sensor networks. The results have ramifications for fault detection and isolation of large-scale networked systems and optimization models and algorithms for next generation aircraft power systems. The author finds novel applications of the methodology in energy systems, such as residential and industrial smart energy management systems.

The notion of group is fundamental in our days, not only in mathematics, but also in classical mechanics, electromagnetism, theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, theory of elementary particles, etc. This notion has developed during a century and this development is connected with the names of great mathematicians as E. Galois, A. L. Cauchy, C. F. Gauss, W. R. Hamilton, C. Jordan, S. Lie, E. Cartan, H. Weyl, E. Wigner, and of many others. In mathematics, as in other sciences, the simple and fertile ideas make their way with difficulty and slowly; however, this long history would have been of a minor interest, had the notion of group remained connected only with rather restricted domains of mathematics, those in which it occurred at the beginning. But at present, groups have invaded almost all mathematical disciplines, mechanics, the largest part of physics, of chemistry, etc. We may say, without exaggeration, that this is the most important idea that occurred in mathematics since the invention of infinitesimal calculus; indeed, the notion of group expresses, in a precise and operational form, the vague and universal ideas of regularity and symmetry. The notion of group led to a profound understanding of the character of the laws which govern natural phenomena, permitting to formulate new laws, correcting certain inadequate formulations and providing unitary and non contradictory formulations for the investigated phenomena."

Mathematical physics has made enormous strides over the past few decades, with the emergence of many new disciplines and with revolutionary advances in old disciplines. One of the especially interesting features is the link between developments in mathematical physics and in pure mathematics. Many of the exciting advances in mathematics owe their origin to mathematical physics -- superstring theory, for example, has led to remarkable progress in geometry -- while very pure mathematics, such as number theory, has found unexpected applications.

The beginning of a new millennium is an appropriate time to survey the present state of the field and look forward to likely advances in the future. In this book, leading experts give personal views on their subjects and on the wider field of mathematical physics. The topics covered range widely over the whole field, from quantum field theory to turbulence, from the classical three-body problem to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics.

This volume, dedicated to Bertram Kostant on the occasion of his 65th birthday, is a collection of 22 invited papers by leading mathematicians working in Lie theory, geometry, algebra, and mathematical physics. Kostant 's fundamental work in all these areas has provided deep new insights and connections, and has created new fields of research. The papers gathered here present original research articles as well as expository papers, broadly reflecting the range of Kostant 's work.

In the post-quantum-mechanics era, few physicists, if any, have matched Julian Schwinger in contributions to and influence on the development of physics. A deep and provocative thinker, Schwinger left his indelible mark on all areas of theoretical physics; an eloquent lecturer and immensely successful mentor, he was gentle, intensely private, and known for being “modest about everything except his physics”. This book is a collection of talks in memory of him by some of his contemporaries and his former students: A Klein, F Dyson, B DeWitt, W Kohn, D Saxon, P C Martin, K Johnson, S Deser, R Finkelstein, Y J Ng, H Feshbach, L Brown, S Glashow, K A Milton, and C N Yang. From it, one can get a glimpse of Julian Schwinger, the physicist, the teacher, and the man. Altogether, this book is a must for all physicists, physics students, and others who are interested in great legends.

This book is centered around higher algebraic structures stemming from the work of Murray Gerstenhaber and Jim Stasheff that are now ubiquitous in various areas of mathematics such as algebra, algebraic topology, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, mathematical physics and in theoretical physics such as quantum field theory and string theory. These higher algebraic structures provide a common language essential in the study of deformation quantization, theory of algebroids and groupoids, symplectic field theory, and much more. Each contribution in this volume expands on the ideas of Gerstenhaber and Stasheff. The volume is intended for post-graduate students, mathematical and theoretical physicists, and mathematicians interested in higher structures.