With exoplanets being discovered daily, Earth is still the only planet we know of that is home to creatures who seek a coherent explanation for the structure, origins, and fate of the universe, and of humanity s place within it. Today, science and religion are the two major cultural entities on our planet that share this goal of coherent understanding, though their interpretation of evidence differs dramatically. Many scientists look at the known universe and conclude we are here by chance. The renowned astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich looks at the same evidence along with the fact that the universe is comprehensible to our minds and sees it as proof for the planning and intentions of a Creator-God. He believes that the idea of a universe without God is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. God s Planet" exposes the fallacy in thinking that science and religion can be kept apart.

Gingerich frames his argument around three questions: Was Copernicus right, in dethroning Earth from its place at the center of the universe? Was Darwin right, in placing humans securely in an evolving animal kingdom? And was Hoyle right, in identifying physical constants in nature that seem singularly tuned to allow the existence of intelligent life on planet Earth? Using these episodes from the history of science, Gingerich demonstrates that cultural attitudes, including religious or antireligious beliefs, play a significant role in what passes as scientific understanding. The more rigorous science becomes over time, the more clearly God s handiwork can be comprehended."

After the advent of the industrial revolution, the world experienced a rapid change in technology and lifestyle, which has led to a dramatic increase in energy demand. Unfortunately, many of the energy resources used in the past have negatively impacted the environment, from greenhouse gases to the depletion of natural resources. Society now faces the challenge of ensuring sustainable and clean energy production so that society may receive efficient energy without damaging the Earth's health. In order to promote an environmentally healthy society, strategic green policies must be developed. Eco-Friendly and Agile Energy Strategies and Policy Development establishes interdisciplinary coverage in sustainable energy development by strategic thinking and lifestyle changes by designing agile energy strategies and policies. It offers research, experiences, and lessons learned that offer integrated conceptual and empirical contributions from different interrelated fields. Covering topics such as energy security risks, green economy, and solar power plants, this premier reference source is an indispensable resource for engineers, government officials, business leaders, environmentalist organizations, economists, sociologists, students and educators of higher education, libraries, researchers, and academicians.

These Proceedings cover various topics in modern physics in which group theoretical methods can be applied effectively. The two volumes, containing over 100 papers, cover such areas as representation theory, the theory and applications of dynamical symmetries and coherent states, symmetries in atomic, molecular, nuclear and elementary particle physics, field theory including gauge theories, supersymmetry and supergravity, general relativity and cosmology, the theory of space groups and its applications to solid state physics and phase transitions, the problems of quantum and classical mechanics and paraxial optics, and the theory of nonlinear equations and solitons.

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a loving husband and father, an enthusiastic teacher, a surprisingly accomplished bongo player, and a genius of the highest caliber---Richard P. Feynman was all these and more. "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track"--collecting over forty years' worth of Feynman's letters--offers an unprecedented look at the writer and thinker whose scientific mind and lust for life made him a legend in his own time. Containing missives to and from such scientific luminaries as Victor Weisskopf, Stephen Wolfram, James Watson, and Edward Teller, as well as a remarkable selection of letters to and from fans, students, family, and people from around the world eager for Feynman's advice and counsel, "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track" not only illuminates the personal relationships that underwrote the key developments in modern science, but also forms the most intimate look at Feynman yet available. Feynman was a man many felt close to but few really knew, and this collection reveals the full wisdom and private passion of a personality that captivated everyone it touched. "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations From the Beaten Track" is an eloquent testimony to the virtue of approaching the world with an inquiring eye; it demonstrates the full extent of the Feynman legacy like never before. Edited and with additional commentary by his daughter Michelle, it's a must-read for Feynman fans everywhere, and for anyone seeking to better understand one of the towering figures--and defining personalities--of the twentieth century.

A unique "how-to" manual for the management of scientific laboratories

This book presents a complete set of tools for the management of research and development laboratories and projects. With an emphasis on knowledge rather than profit as a measure of output and performance, the authors apply standard management principles and techniques to the needs of high-flux, open-ended, separately funded science and technology enterprises. They also propose the novel idea that failure, and incipient failure, is an important measure of an organization's potential.

From the management of complex, round-the-clock, high-tech operations to strategies for long-term planning, Managing Science: Management for R&D Laboratories discusses how to build projects with the proper research and development, obtain and account for funding, and deal with rapidly changing technologies, facilities, and trends. The entire second part of the book is devoted to personnel issues and the impact of workplace behavior on the various functions of a knowledge-based organization.

Drawing on four decades of involvement with the management of scientific laboratories, the authors thoroughly illustrate their philosophy with real-world examples from the physics field and provide tables and charts. Managers of scientific laboratories as well as scientists and engineers expecting to move into management will find Managing Science: Management for R&D Laboratories an invaluable practical guide.

The development and use of medical and dental materials are highly interdisciplinary endeavors which require expertise in chemistry, materials science, medicine and/or dentistry, mechanics and design engineering. The Symposium upon which this treatise is based was organized to bring members from these communities together to explore problems of mutual interest. The biomaterials which are used in medical or dental prostheses must not only exhibit structural stability and provide the desired function, but they must also perform over extended periods of time in the environment of the body. The latter is a very stringent requirement. The oral and other physiological environments are designed by nature to break down many organic substances. Also of importance is the requirement that materials used in the prosthesis not have a deleterious effect on body tissues. Most foreign (to the body) substances are somewhat toxic to human tissues; in fact, few factors are more limiting in the medical prosthesis field than the biocompatibility problem. Some of these problems and the attempts to solve them are discussed in this volume.

This book describes the physics of baseball and softball, assuming that the reader has a basic background in both physics and mathematics. The physics will be explained in a conversational style, with words and illustrations, so that the explanations make sense. The book provides an excellent opportunity to explain physics at a relatively simple level, even though the primary objective is to explain the many subtle features concerning the physics of baseball. For those readers who already know quite a bit of physics and who will be comfortable with mathematical equations, additional material of this nature will be provided in appendices. The latest research findings and statistical data have been incorporated by the author. The book also contains many simple experiments that the reader can perform to convince themselves that the effects described do indeed exist.

This book focuses on the ellipsoidal function, which serves as an evolution and extension of the circular function (trigonometric function) and elliptic function. It presents an in-depth discussion of the ellipsoidal function (algebra) theory and the conformal mapping (geometry) theory of the ellipsoid function, demonstrating the outstanding performance of the ellipsoid function response filter. Applications of the ellipsoidal function include the capacitance of ellipsoidal conductors and the surface area of ellipsoids, which in turn correspond to ellipsoidal integrals of the first kind and the second kind, respectively. The book offers a valuable reference guide for undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in the related fields.

This book offers a portrait of the research landscape of present-day fundamental theoretical physics. It presents contributions on particle theory, quantum field theory, general relativity, quantum gravity, string theory and cosmology. The book examines a way of communicating about methods, achievements and promises of the different approaches which shape the development of this field.

In this book we gather recent mathematical developments and engineering applications of Trefftz methods, with particular emphasis on the Method of Fundamental Solutions (MFS). These are true meshless methods that have the advantage of avoiding the need to set up a mesh altogether, and therefore going beyond the reduction of the mesh to a boundary. These Trefftz methods have advantages in several engineering applications, for instance in inverse problems where the domain is unknown and some numerical methods would require a remeshing approach. Trefftz methods are also known to perform very well with regular domains and regular data in boundary value problems, achieving exponential convergence. On the other hand, they may also under certain conditions, exhibit instabilities and lead to ill-conditioned systems. This book is divided into ten chapters that illustrate recent advances in Trefftz methods and their application to engineering problems. The first eight chapters are devoted to the MFS and variants whereas the last two chapters are devoted to related meshless engineering applications. Part of these selected contributions were presented in the 9th International Conference on Trefftz Methods and 5th International Conference on the MFS, held in 2019, July 29-31, in Lisbon, Portugal.

In order to cope with the increased radiation level and the challenging pile-up conditions at High Luminosity-LHC, the CMS collaboration will replace its current calorimeter endcaps with the High Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL) in the mid 2020s. This dissertation addresses two important topics related to the preparation of the HGCAL upgrade: experimental validation of its silicon- based design and fast simulation of its data. Beam tests at the DESY (Hamburg) and the CERN SPS beam test facilities in 2018 have been the basis for the design validation. The associated experimental infrastructure, the algorithms deployed in the reconstruction of the recorded data, as well as the respective analyses are reported in this thesis: First, core components of the silicon-based prototype modules are characterised and it is demonstrated that the assembled modules are functional. In particular, their efficiency to detect minimum ionising particles (MIPs) traversing the silicon sensors is found to be more than 98% for most of the modules. No indication of charge sharing between the silicon pads is observed. Subsequently, the energy response is calibrated in situ using the beam test data. Equalisation of the different responses among the readout channels is achieved with MIPs hereby deploying the HGCAL prototype as a MIP-tracking device. The relative variation of the inferred calibration constants amounts to 3% for channels on the same readout chip. The calibration of the time-of-arrival information is performed with an external time reference detector. With it, timing resolutions of single cells including the full prototype readout chain around 60ps in the asymptotic high energy limit are obtained. The calorimetric performance of the HGCAL prototype is validated with particle showers induced by incident positrons and charged pions. For electromagnetic showers, the constant term in the relative energy resolution is measured to be (0.52+/- 0.08) %, whereas the stochastic term amounts to (22.2 +/- 0.3)% GeV. This result is in good agreement with the calorimeter simulation with GEANT4. The prototype's positioning resolution of the shower axis, after subtracting the contribution from the delay wire chambers in the beam line used as reference, is found to be below 0.4 mm at 300 GeV. At the same energy, the angular resolution in the reconstruction of the electromagnetic shower axis in this prototype is measured to be less than 5mrad. The analysis of the hadronic showers in this thesis makes use state-of-the- art machine-learning methods that exploit the calorimeter's granularity. It is indicated that the energy resolution may be improved using software compensation and also that the separation of electromagnetic and charged pion-induced showers in the calorimeter may benefit from such methods. The measurements of the hadronic showers are adequately reproduced by GEANT4 simulation. Altogether, the obtained results from the analysis of the beam test data in this thesis are in agreement with the full functionality of the silicon-based HGCAL design. The final part of this thesis provides a proof of principle that generative modelling based on deep neural networks in conjunction with the Wasserstein distance is a suitable approach for the fast simulation of HGCAL data: Instead of sequential simulation, a deep neural network-based generative model generates all calorimeter energy depositions simultaneously. This genera t or network is optimised throu gh an adversarial training process using a critic network guided by the Wasserstein distance. The developed framework in this thesis is applied to both GEANT4- simulated electromagnetic showers and to positron data from the beam tests. Ultimately, this fast simulation approach is up to four orders of magnitude faster than sequential simulation with GEANT4. It is able to produce realistic calorimeter energy depositions from electromagnetic showers, incorporating their fluctuations and correlations when converted into typical calorimeter observables.

This monograph deals with some inverse problems of mathematical physics. It introduces new methods for studying inverse problems and gives obtained results, which are related to the conditional well posedness of the problems. The main focus lies on time-domain inverse problems for hyperbolic equations and the kinetic transport equation.

Expand and challenge your knowledge and understanding of Physics with this updated, all-in-one textbook for Years 1 and 2 that builds mathematical skills and provides practical assessment guidance. Written for the AQA A-level Physics specification, this revised textbook will: - Provide full coverage of all five option topics: Astrophysics is covered in book, with Turning Points in Physics, Engineering Physics, Medical Physics and Electronics available to download online - Offer support for the mathematical requirements of the course with worked examples of calculations and a dedicated 'Maths in physics' chapter. - Measure progress and assess learning throughout the course with 'Test yourself' and 'Stretch and challenge' questions. - Support all 12 required practicals with applications, worked examples and activities included in each chapter. - Develop understanding with free online access to 'Test yourself' answers and 'Practice' question answers*. DOWNLOADABLE OPTION TOPIC CHAPTERS To request your downloadable copies please email [email protected]

This thesis analyzes and explores the design of controlled networked dynamic systems - dubbed semi-autonomous networks. The work approaches the problem of effective control of semi-autonomous networks from three fronts: protocols which are run on individual agents in the network; the network interconnection topology design; and efficient modeling of these often large-scale networks. The author extended the popular consensus protocol to advection and nonlinear consensus. The network redesign algorithms are supported by a game-theoretic and an online learning regret analysis.

Introduction. Phase Transitions in the Early Universe and Defect Formation; T.W.B. Kibble. The Topological Classification of Defects; M. Kleman. Introduction to Growth Kinetics Problems; G.F. Mazenko. Dynamics of Cosmological Phase Transitions: What Can We Learn from Condensed Matter Physics? N. Goldenfeld. Topological Defects and Phase Ordering Dynamics; A.J. Bray. The Production of Strings and Monopoles at Phase Transitions; R.J Rivers, T.S. Evans. Geometry of Defect Scattering; N.S. Manton. Theory of Fluctuating Nonholonomic Fields and Applications: Statistical Mechanics of Vortices and Defects and New Physical Laws in Spaces with Curvature and Torsion; H. Kleinert. String Network Evolution; E.P.S. Shellard. Global Field Dynamics and Cosmological Structure Formation; R. Durrer. Electroweak Baryogenesis; N.G. Turok. Dynamics of Cosmic Strings and Other Brane Models; B. Carter. Cosmological Experiments in Superfluids and Superconductors; W. Zurek. Cosmological Experiments in Liquid 4He-Problems and Prospects; P.C. Hendry et al. Index.

Low voltage unearthed (IT) AC and DC systems are commonly applied for supply of power and control circuits in industry, transportation, medical objects etc. The main reasons for their use are high reliability and numerous advantages offered by isolating them against ground. Insulation level is a decisive factor for networks operational reliability and safety. Insufficient insulation-to-ground resistance can cause various disturbances. Though ground faults in IT systems do not make networks operation impossible, they may cause severe problems with their safe functioning.

In this book the most important issues concerning normal operation and ground fault phenomena are described in concise form. Numerous methods of insulation resistance and capacitance measurement in live circuits are presented. Important other procedures of these parameters determination based on measurement and calculation are explained and reviews of selected insulation resistance measurement devices as well as earth fault locating systems are included. This book is addressed to electrical engineers, technicians and students and may also serve as an academic handbook. The extended second edition includes several innovative methods of insulation parameters determination as well as more detailed explanations of procedures and issues. Furthermore new important problems e.g. indirect methods of insulation resistance determination and insulation resistance monitoring in networks with frequency converters are addressed as well as examples of practical applications.

In this book, the authors present the elements of a general theory for flows on three-dimensional compact boundaryless manifolds, encompassing flows with equilibria accumulated by regular orbits.

The book aims to provide a global perspective of this theory and make it easier for the reader to digest the growing literature on this subject. This is not the first book on the subject of dynamical systems, but there are distinct aspects which together make this book unique.

Firstly, this book treats mostly continuous time dynamical systems, instead of its discrete counterpart, exhaustively treated in some other texts. Secondly, this book treats all the subjects from a mathematical perspective with proofs of most of the results included. Thirdly, this book is meant to be an advanced graduate textbook and not just a reference book or monograph on the subject. This aspect is reflected in the way the cover material is presented, with careful and complete proofs, and precise references to topics in the book.

Chapter 1 The algebraic prerequisites for the book are covered here and in the appendix. This chapter should be used as reference material and should be consulted as needed. A systematic treatment of algebras, coalgebras, bialgebras, Hopf algebras, and represen tations of these objects to the extent needed for the book is given. The material here not specifically cited can be found for the most part in Sweedler, 1969] in one form or another, with a few exceptions. A great deal of emphasis is placed on the coalgebra which is the dual of n x n matrices over a field. This is the most basic example of a coalgebra for our purposes and is at the heart of most algebraic constructions described in this book. We have found pointed bialgebras useful in connection with solving the quantum Yang-Baxter equation. For this reason we develop their theory in some detail. The class of examples described in Chapter 6 in connection with the quantum double consists of pointed Hopf algebras. We note the quantized enveloping algebras described Hopf algebras. Thus for many reasons pointed bialgebras are elsewhere are pointed of fundamental interest in the study of the quantum Yang-Baxter equation and objects quantum groups."

Learn physics at your own pace without an instructor Basic Physics: A Self-Teaching Guide, 3rd Edition is the most practical and reader-friendly guide to understanding all basic physics concepts and terms. The expert authors take a flexible and interactive approach to physics based on new research-based methods about how people most effectively comprehend new material. The book takes complex concepts and breaks them down into practical, easy to digest terms. Subject matter covered includes: Newton's Laws Energy Electricity Magnetism Light Sound And more There are also sections explaining the math behind each concept for those who would like further explanation and understanding. Each chapter features a list of objectives so that students know what they should be learning from each chapter, test questions, and exercises that inspire deeper learning about physics. High school students, college students, and those re-learning physics alike will greatly enhance their physics education with the help of this one-of-a-kind guide. The third edition of this book reflects and implements new, research-based methods regarding how people best learn new material. As a result, it contains a flexible and interactive approach to learning physics.

These proceedings from the 2013 symposium on "Chaos, complexity and leadership" reflect current research results from all branches of Chaos, Complex Systems and their applications in Management. Included are the diverse results in the fields of applied nonlinear methods, modeling of data and simulations, as well as theoretical achievements of Chaos and Complex Systems. Also highlighted are Leadership and Management applications of Chaos and Complexity Theory.