POLY(LACTIC ACID) The second edition of a key reference, fully updated to reflect new research and applications Poly(lactic acid)s - PLAs, biodegradable polymers derived from lactic acid, have become vital components of a sustainable society. Eco-friendly PLA polymers are used in numerous industrial applications ranging from packaging to medical implants and to wastewater treatment. The global PLA market is predicted to expand significantly over the next decade due to increasing demand for compostable and recyclable materials produced from renewable resources. Poly(lactic acid) Synthesis, Structures, Properties, Processing, Applications, and End of Life provides comprehensive coverage of the basic chemistry, production, and industrial use of PLA. Contributions from an international panel of experts review specific processing methods, characterization techniques, and various applications in medicine, textiles, packaging, and environmental engineering. Now in its second edition, this fully up-to-date volume features new and revised chapters on 3D printing, the mechanical and chemical recycling of PLA, PLA stereocomplex crystals, PLA composites, the environmental footprint of PLA, and more. Highlights the biodegradability, recycling, and sustainability benefits of PLA Describes processing and conversion technologies for PLA, such as injection molding, extrusion, blending, and thermoforming Covers various aspects of lactic acid/lactide monomers, including physicochemical properties and production Examines different condensation reactions and modification strategies for enhanced polymerization of PLA Discusses the thermal, rheological, and mechanical properties of PLA Addresses degradation and environmental issues of PLA, including photodegradation, radiolysis, hydrolytic degradation, biodegradation, and life cycle assessment Poly(lactic acid) Synthesis, Structures, Properties, Processing, Applications, and End of Life, Second Edition remains essential reading for polymer engineers, materials scientists, polymer chemists, chemical engineers, industry professionals using PLA, and scientists and advanced student engineers interested in biodegradable plastics.

This book presents theoretical and experimental investigations of mechanical behavior of solids under shock loading and highlights a multi-scale exchange process of energy and momentum between meso and macroscopic hierarchy. It also widely covers experimental approaches for the multi-scale response of solids to impacts including uniaxial strain conditions and high-velocity penetration processes. The content comprises two parts. The first part overviews modeling and theory of dynamically deformed solids from the multi-scale point of view. The second part describes experimental characterization of shock-induced solids and experimental probing of mesostructured and mesoscale dynamic processes in solids. The theory presented in the first part is then verified as it is compared with i) experiments of shock loading into different kinds of solids and ii) probed microstructure of post-shocked specimens by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and optical microscopy. The text is written on the basis of author's lectures at universities and thus is concisely described for postgraduate students. It is also useful for researchers who work on the theory of multi-scale mechanics of solids and engineers who work on testing materials under dynamic loading.

This book presents recent research works related to salt attack and corrosion in concrete structures, durability and service life in concrete, non-destructive techniques applied to reinforced concrete structures and acoustic performance of buildings. It identifies anomalies that affect the acoustic performance and the concrete structures, namely anomalies associated to salt attack and corrosion that affects the durability and service life of the buildings, in order to be eliminated in future projects. Offering a systematic review of the current state of knowledge, the book serves as a valuable resource for scientists, students, practitioners, and lecturers in various scientific and engineering disciplines, including civil and materials engineering, as well as and other interested parties.

- Practical overview of live audio entertainment, including real-world examples, interviews and tips. - Includes insights from professionals in multiple parts of the live audio sector, as well as individuals at different stages in their careers - Opportunity to update our aging live audio books, as well as to offer a business perspective which our current books lack

Consistent explanation of all basic principles of cavitation. Scientific background for engineering applications. Modern theory and experimental results. Contains objective discussions of controversial issues. Can be used by students.

This book addresses the analysis of musical sounds from the viewpoint of someone at the intersection between physicists, engineers, piano technicians, and musicians. The study is structured into three parts. The reader is introduced to a variety of waves and a variety of ways of presenting, visualizing, and analyzing them in the first part. A tutorial on the tools used throughout the book accompanies this introduction. The mathematics behind the tools is left to the appendices. Part Two provides a graphical survey of the classical areas of acoustics that pertain to musical instruments: vibrating strings, bars, membranes, and plates. Part Three is devoted almost exclusively to the piano. Several two- and three-dimensional graphical tools are introduced to study various characteristics of pianos: individual notes and interactions among them, the missing fundamental, inharmonicity, tuning visualization, the different distribution of harmonic power for the various zones of the piano keyboard, and potential uses for quality control. These techniques are also briefly applied to other musical instruments studied in earlier parts of the book. For physicists and engineers there are appendices to cover the mathematics lurking beneath the numerous graphs and a brief introduction to Matlab (R) which was used to generate these graphs. A website accompanying the book (https://sites.google.com/site/analysisofsoundsandvibrations/) contains: - Matlab (R) scripts - mp3 files of sounds - references to YouTube videos - and up-to-date results of recent studies

The classic guide to modern acoustics-fully updated for the latest advances Written by renowned experts in the field, this revised classic resource presents the fundamentals of acoustical properties as well as time-tested and cost-effective solutions to acoustical problems. New room designs added to this edition include a video teleconference room, and voice studio. The book also contains new design details on sound studio construction. Master Handbook of Acoustics, Seventh Edition explains the art and science of room acoustics and architecture by combining theoretical instruction with matter-of-fact engineering advice. Readers will receive clear explanations of theory, and thorough descriptions of hands-on techniques. Numerous room designs, including floor plans and an analysis of their performance, can be built as presented, or adapted to meet particular needs. Presents a complete theoretical overview and practical examples for classroom or professional study Shows, with construction details, how to design and construct audiophile-quality sonic environments of all types Revised and updated from the classic text written by acoustics pioneer F. Alton Everest

The book investigates the role of artificial input delay in approximating unknown system dynamics, referred to as time-delayed control (TDC), and provides novel solutions to current design issues in TDC. Its central focus is on designing adaptive-switching gain-based robust control (ARC) for a class of Euler-Lagrange (EL) systems with minimal or no knowledge of the system dynamics parameters. The newly proposed TDC-based ARC tackles the commonly observed over- and under-estimation issues in switching gain. The consideration of EL systems lends a practical perspective on the proposed methods, and each chapter is supplemented by relevant experimental data. The book offers a unique resource for researchers in the areas of ARC and TDC alike, and covers the state of the art, new algorithms, and future directions.

This guide to estimating uncertainties in the measurement, prediction and assessment of noise and vibration applies across environmental noise and vibration, occupational noise and vibration exposure, and building and architectural acoustics. The book collates information from the various Standards and from research, with explanation, examples and case studies. It enables estimation of uncertainty in the measurement and prediction of acoustic quantities, suitable for use in environmental impact and occupational exposure assessments. It is for acoustic consultants, mechanical and building service engineers, architect and building professionals and environmental health officers. Bob Peters worked for more than forty years in acoustics and noise control - teaching, research, consultancy. He was a principal acoustic consultant with Applied Acoustic Design, a senior research fellow at London South Bank University, and a tutor on Institute of Acoustics distance learning courses.

This book presents methods and algorithms to improve noise immunity of the navigation systems of civil aviation aircraft, operating on the basis of satellite radio navigation systems, as well as improving the quality of the transmission of navigation information by selecting a rational communication resource. The book provides for its productive perception both by specialists involved in the development and operation of radio electronic equipment, responsible for navigation and communication support of civil aviation aircraft, as well as by graduate students or senior students, since this book examines in detail the promising fields of development of these tools taking into account the need to comply with all requirements for noise immunity.

This textbook provides graduate and advanced undergraduate students with a comprehensive introduction to the application of basic principles and concepts for physical and engineering acoustics. Many of the chapters are independent, and all build from introductory to more sophisticated material. Written by a well-known textbook author with 39 years of experience performing research, teaching, and mentoring in the field, it is specially designed to provide maximum support for learning. Derivations are rigorous and logical, with thorough explanations of operations that are not obvious. Many of the derivations and examples have not previously appeared in print. Important concepts are discussed for their physical implications and implementation. Many of the 56 examples are mini case studies that address systems students will find to be interesting and motivating for continued study. The example solutions address both the significance of the example and the reasoning underlying the formulation. Tasks that require computational work are fully explained. This volume contains 168 homework exercises, accompanied by a detailed solutions manual for instructors. Building on the foundation provided in Volume I: Fundamentals, this text offers a knowledge base that will enable the reader to begin undertaking research and to work in the core areas of acoustics.

The work presented in this book focuses on modeling audiovisual quality as perceived by the users of IP-based solutions for video communication like videotelephony. It also extends the current framework for the parametric prediction of audiovisual call quality. The book addresses several aspects related to the quality perception of entire video calls, namely, the quality estimation of the single audio and video modalities in an interactive context, the audiovisual quality integration of these modalities and the temporal pooling of short sample-based quality scores to account for the perceptual quality impact of time-varying degradations.

Considerable amount of effort has been devoted, over the recent years, towards the development of electronic skin (e-skin) for many application domains such as prosthetics, robotics, and industrial automation. Electronic Skin: Sensors and Systems focuses on the main components constituting the e-skin system. The e-skin system is based on: i) sensing materials composing the tactile sensor array, ii) the front end electronics for data acquisition and signal conditioning, iii) the embedded processing unit performing tactile data decoding, and iv) the communication interface in charge of transmitting the sensors data for further computing. Technical topics discussed in the book include: * Tactile sensing material; * Electronic Skin systems; * Embedded computing and tactile data decoding; * Communication systems for tactile data transmission; * Relevant applications of e-skin system; The book takes into account not only sensing materials but it also provides a thorough assessment of the current state of the art at system level. The book addresses embedded electronics and tactile data processing and decoding, techniques for low power embedded computing, and the communication interface. Electronic Skin: Sensors and Systems is ideal for researchers, Ph.D. students, academic staff and Masters/research students in sensors/sensing systems, embedded systems, data processing and decoding, and communication systems.

Shallow water acoustics (SWA), the study of how low and medium frequency sound propagates and scatters on the continental shelves of the worlds oceans, has both technical interest and a large number of practical applications. Technically, shallow water poses an interesting medium for the study of acoustic scattering, inverse theory, and propagation physics in a complicated oceanic waveguide. Practically, shallow water acoustics has interest for geophysical exploration, marine mammal studies, and naval applications. Additionally, one notes the very interdisciplinary nature of shallow water acoustics, including acoustical physics, physical oceanography, marine geology, and marine biology. In this specialized volume the authors, all of whom have extensive at-sea experience in US and Russian research efforts, have tried to summarize the main experimental, theoretical, and computational results in shallow water acoustics, with an emphasis on providing physical insight into the topics presented.

- Constitutes the first textbook the field, written specifically in relation to sound design - Contributors are world-leading researchers in their fields and come from a variety of countries and institutions. - Marries the theoretical with the practical, by offering concrete examples and case studies throughout

- Constitutes the first textbook the field, written specifically in relation to sound design - Contributors are world-leading researchers in their fields and come from a variety of countries and institutions. - Marries the theoretical with the practical, by offering concrete examples and case studies throughout

This book presents computational methods for extracting the useful information from audio signals, collecting the state of the art in the field of sound event and scene analysis. The authors cover the entire procedure for developing such methods, ranging from data acquisition and labeling, through the design of taxonomies used in the systems, to signal processing methods for feature extraction and machine learning methods for sound recognition. The book also covers advanced techniques for dealing with environmental variation and multiple overlapping sound sources, and taking advantage of multiple microphones or other modalities. The book gives examples of usage scenarios in large media databases, acoustic monitoring, bioacoustics, and context-aware devices. Graphical illustrations of sound signals and their spectrographic representations are presented, as well as block diagrams and pseudocode of algorithms.

'Real science can be far stranger than science fiction, and much more satisfying' Will artificial intelligence outsmart us? Is there other intelligent life in the universe? Throughout his extraordinary career, Stephen Hawking expanded our understanding of the universe and unravelled some of its greatest mysteries. Will Artificial Intelligence Outsmart Us? considers the threat of artificial super-intelligence - as well as the likelihood of intelligent life beyond our planet. 'Modest, profound and sometimes very funny' Sunday Times Brief Answers, Big Questions: this stunning paperback series offers electrifying essays from one of the greatest minds of our age, taken from the original text of the No. 1 bestselling Brief Answers to the Big Questions.

"...a comprehensive and well written book, which...will be useful reading for both researchers entering the field and experienced specialists looking for new ideas....a valuable and long-lasting contribution to experimental mechanics." - Stepan Lomov, KU Leuven This expert volume, an enhanced Habilitation thesis by the head of the Materials Testing Research Group at the University of Augsburg, provides detailed coverage of a range of inspection methods for insitu characterization of fiber-reinforced composites. The failure behavior of fiber reinforced composites is a complex evolution of microscopic damage phenomena. Beyond the use of classical testing methods, the ability to monitor the progression of damage insitu offers new ways to interpret the materials failure modes. Methods covered include digital image correlation, acoustic emission, electromagnetic emission, computed tomography, thermography, shearography, and promising method combinations. For each method, the discussion includes operational principles and practical applications for quality control as well as thoughtful assessment of the method's strengths and weakness so that the reader is equipped to decide which method or methods are most appropriate in a given situation. The book includes extensive appendices covering common experimental parameters influencing comparability of acoustic emission measurements; materials properties for modeling; and an overview of terms and abbreviations.

Soils and Foundations for Architects and Engineers provides in-depth, yet simplified, information on the more commonly encountered aspects of soils mechanics and foundations. It also redefines and clarifies many frequently misunderstood aspects of soil mechanics and foundations such as the actual failure mode of footing due to excessive vertical or lateral pressure theory and the effect of groundwater.

For readers with no background in acoustics Takes a unique problem based learning approach, reinforcing basic material with progressively complex example problems with solutions. Carefully up-dates and extended from the first edition Solutions to these additional problems available to instructors on request. Suits practising engineers with no acoustics background addressing noise problems in the workplace.

For readers with no background in acoustics Takes a unique problem based learning approach, reinforcing basic material with progressively complex example problems with solutions. Carefully up-dates and extended from the first edition Solutions to these additional problems available to instructors on request. Suits practising engineers with no acoustics background addressing noise problems in the workplace.

The Microphone Book is the only guide you will ever need to the latest in microphone technology, application and technique. This new edition features, more on microphone arrays and wireless microphones; a new chapter on classic old models; the latest developments in surround; expanded advice on studio set up, recording and mic selection; improved layout for ease of reference; even more illustrations. John Eargle provides detailed analysis of the different types of microphones available. He then addresses their application through practical examples of actual recording sessions and studio operations. Surround sound is covered from both a creative and a technical viewpoint. This classic reference takes the reader into the studio or concert hall to see how performers are positioned and how the best microphone array is determined. Problem areas such as reflections, studio leakage and isolation are analyzed from practical viewpoints. Creative solutions to such matters as stereo sound staging, perspective, and balance are also covered in detail. Recording and sound reinforcement engineers at all levels of expertise will find The Microphone Book an invaluable resource for learning the 'why' as well as the how' of choosing a microphone for any situation.

The author gives a comprehensive overview of materials and components for noise control and acoustical comfort. Sound absorbers must meet acoustical and architectural requirements, which fibrous or porous material alone can meet. Basics and applications are demonstrated, with representative examples for spatial acoustics, free-field test facilities and canal linings. Acoustic engineers and construction professionals will find some new basic concepts and tools for developments in order to improve acoustical comfort. Interference absorbers, active resonators and micro-perforated absorbers of different materials and designs complete the list of applications.

Bioresource Technology Discover the latest developments in the field of bioresource technology with this practical handbook The management and cultivation of bioresources are critical components of the economic survival of nations. Significantly underexplored, recent advances in bioresource technologies have breathed new life into the research and development of new bioresource techniques and capabilities. In Bioresource Technology: Concept, Tools, and Experiences, a team of distinguished researchers delivers a comprehensive work intended to bridge the gap between field-oriented taxonomists and ecologists and lab-oriented functional and molecular biologists. The book is divided into three sections: food, environment, and energy. In the first part, the authors explore the functional food sector, from green and smart food packaging to nanosensors as diagnostic tools in the food industry. The second part is concerned with the achievement of future energy security through the use of bioresources as energy sources. Finally, the third section discusses sustainable environmental management policies via bioresource use. Readers will also benefit from the inclusion of: A thorough introduction on the recent advances in the technology pertaining to functional food industry to overcome the future food challenges Comprehensive explorations of the art and science of growing microgreens, including their historical background, cultivation practices, quality, and shelf life In-depth examinations of the bioprospecting of bioresources, including bioprospecting in agriculture, chemical industries, and diagnostic applications Provides state-of-the art technologies in the green energy sector to cater for the energy demand of the people, reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) and the reliance on fossil fuels In-depth understanding on the recent advances in the bioresource management policies and sustainable environment Perfect for postgraduate students, research scholars, faculty, and scientists involved in agriculture, plant sciences, environmental sciences, bioenergy, biofuels, molecular biology, and microbiology, Bioresource Technology: Concept, Tools, and Experiences is also an indispensable resource for those working in biochemistry, biotechnology, and food technology.