The universe has many secrets. It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize. There might even be another universe adjacent to ours, invisible and unattainable . . . for now.

Warped Passages is a brilliantly readable and altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth-century physics to the razor's edge of modern scientific theory. One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Lisa Randall provides astonishing scientific possibilities that, until recently, were restricted to the realm of science fiction. Unraveling the twisted threads of the most current debates on relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity, she explores some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature&#8212taking us into the warped, hidden dimensions underpinning the universe we live in, demystifying the science of the myriad worlds that may exist just beyond our own.

This book appearance is a logical development of the research activity in a relatively new field named Plasma Assisted Combustion (PAC) and is the first attempt to collect the most valuable contributions to the field from different research groups all over the globe. The first practical applications of different plasma sources for ignition and combustion enhancement date back to the 1960s and 1970s. The first PAC conference was organized by the Editor in 1989 in the former Soviet Union. At this time, the PAC community is relatively well organized with an annual International Workshop and Exhibition on Plasma Assisted Combustion (IWEPAC), now converted into the International Conference on Plasma Assisted Technologies or ICPAT starting in 2012, and special issues in the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science on the topic of on Plasma Assisted Combustion. This two-volume work is one of the first projects of the newly established International Plasma Technology Center (IPTC) intended to provide, in Volume 1, a description of different plasma sources especially designed for PAC and, in Volume 2, to describe PAC processes that are under development or used industrially. If successful, we plan to publish new editions every two-three years depending on progress in this field. The basic mission of the IPTC is to promote scientific, educational, and charitable activities. This book is an example of organizing an international team of authors to promote education in the focus areas of the disciplines addressed. There are over 30 authors for Volume 1, who hail from five countries: Czech Republic, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. A second volume will be produced in the future. The IPTC will gratefully welcome new authors in this endeavor to aid our mission of keeping abreast of new developments in the field of plasma assisted combustion, gasification, and pollution control and to update the literature to include new information through additional or revised volu

This book is designed to serve as a textbook for courses offered to undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in Mathematics. Using elementary row operations and Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization as basic tools the text develops characterization of equivalence and similarity, and various factorizations such as rank factorization, OR-factorization, Schurtriangularization, Diagonalization of normal matrices, Jordan decomposition, singular value decomposition, and polar decomposition. Along with Gauss-Jordan elimination for linear systems, it also discusses best approximations and least-squares solutions. The book includes norms on matrices as a means to deal with iterative solutions of linear systems and exponential of a matrix. The topics in the book are dealt with in a lively manner. Each section of the book has exercises to reinforce the concepts, and problems have been added at the end of each chapter. Most of these problems are theoretical, and they do not fit into the running text linearly. The detailed coverage and pedagogical tools make this an ideal textbook for students and researchers enrolled in senior undergraduate and beginning postgraduate mathematics courses.

This book begins with an examination of the numbers of women in physics in English-speaking countries, moving on to examine factors that affect girls and their decision to continue in science, right through to education and on into the problems that women in physics careers face. Looking at all of these topics with one eye on the progress that the field has made in the past few years, and another on those things that we have yet to address, the book surveys the most current research as it tries to identify strategies and topics that have significant impact on issues that women have in the field.

This book highlights a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental statistical mechanics underneath the inner workings of neural networks. The book discusses in details important concepts and techniques including the cavity method, the mean-field theory, replica techniques, the Nishimori condition, variational methods, the dynamical mean-field theory, unsupervised learning, associative memory models, perceptron models, the chaos theory of recurrent neural networks, and eigen-spectrums of neural networks, walking new learners through the theories and must-have skillsets to understand and use neural networks. The book focuses on quantitative frameworks of neural network models where the underlying mechanisms can be precisely isolated by physics of mathematical beauty and theoretical predictions. It is a good reference for students, researchers, and practitioners in the area of neural networks.

"Perovskite-Based Solar Cells: From Fundamentals to Tandem Devices" gives fundamental understanding of perovskite solar cells from the chemical composition of each thin layer composing the different stacks to the whole device. Special attention has been given to the development of the materials forming the perovskite solar cell and their effect on the device performance, in addition to the recent progress of this emerging technology. Moreover, light has been shed on the perovskite elaboration techniques, in addition to the several techniques proposed to improve both the efficiency and the stability of perovskite solar cells. Furthermore, special emphasis was given to the three types of tandem solar cells and their recent advances starting from Perovskite/perovskite tandem solar cells to Perovskite/ CIGS tandem cells to perovskite/ heterojunction silicon tandem solar cells. The latter constitute a promising solution to improve photovoltaic solar cells performance.

This book examines the true core of philosophy and metaphysics, taking account of quantum and relativity theory as it applies to physical Reality, and develops a line of reasoning that ultimately leads us to Reality as it is currently understood at the most fundamental level - the Standard Model of Elementary Particles. This book develops new formalisms for Logic that are of interest in themselves and also provide a Platonic bridge to Reality. The bridge to Reality will be explored in detail in a subsequent book, Relativistic Quantum Metaphysics: A First Principles Basis for the Standard Model of Elementary Particles. We anticipate that the current "fundamental" level of physical Reality may be based on a still lower level and/or may have additional aspects remaining to be found. However the effects of certain core features such as quantum theory and relativity theory will persist even if a lower level of Reality is found, and these core features suggest the form of a new Metaphysics of physical Reality. We have coined the phrase "Operator Metaphysics" for this new metaphysics of physical Reality. The book starts by describing aspects of Philosophy and Metaphysics relevant to the study of current physical Reality. Part of this development are new Logics, Operator Logic and Quantum Operator Logic, developed in earlier books by this author (and revised and expanded in this book). Using them we are led to develop a connection to the beginnings of The Standard Model of Elementary Particles. While mathematics is essential in the latter stages of the book we have tried to present it with sufficient text discussion to make what it is doing understandable to the non-mathematical reader. Generally we will avoid using the jargon of Philosophy, Logic and Physics as much as possible.

This book will provide a comprehensive overview on the green approach to the research and industrialization of plastic materials. An effort will be made to offer to the reader a critical perspective concerning both oil-based plastics and novel bio-based and waste-derived polymer formulations. A special focus on bio-innovation in the area of organic materials will also be delivered.