There have been considerable advances in recent times in understanding many common material processes that are of practical importance, such as nonlinear response, fracture, breakdown, earthquakes, packing, and granular flow, that are of immense practical importance. This has been mainly due to new applications of statistical physics, including percolation theory, fractal concepts and self-organized criticality. This collection of articles brings together research in those closely allied fields. It deals with problems in material science involving random geometries and nonlinearity at a mesoscopic scale, where local disorder and nonlinearity influence the global behaviour of cracks, for example, and problems where randomness in time evolution is as crucial as the geometry itself.

The book reviews the knowledge obtained from ground-based and space-borne solar flare research thus at the same time preparing for the forthcoming mission of the satellite Solar A which will be launched in 1991. Accordinglyone section is devoted to experiments on Solar A. The rest review both theory and observational facts to give a physically realistic picture of flares, including problems of magnetic flux emergence, high energy particles in flares, heating and flows in flares, and further problems of solar activity.

These workshop proceedings aim to provide a broad overview of recent developments in the study of hot stars, both from the observational and the theoretical point of view. Included are first results from the Hubble Space Telescope and ROSAT, the effects of non-radial pulsations, mass loss, magnetic fields, and diffusion, as well as modern theoretical methods to treat radiative transfer and compute model atmospheres. Many new results are described, including the discovery of a B star in the halo of M31. Together the reviews provide a general overview of hot-star spectroscopy suitable for preparing advanced lecture courses and as an introductory text for graduate students.

Gravity interpretation involves inversion of data into models, but it is more. Gravity interpretation is used in a "holistic" sense going beyond "inversion". Inversion is like optimization within certain a priori assumptions, i.e., all anticipated models lie in a limited domain of the a priori errors. No source should exist outside the anticipated model volume, but that is never literally true. Interpretation goes beyond by taking "outside" possibilities into account in the widest sense. Any neglected possibility carries the danger of seriously affecting the interpretation. Gravity interpretation pertains to wider questions such as the shape of the Earth, the nature of the continental and oceanic crust, isostasy, forces and stresses, geol- ical structure, nding useful resources, climate change, etc. Interpretation is often used synonymously with modelling and inversion of observations toward models. Interpretation places the inversion results into the wider geological or economic context and into the framework of science and humanity. Models play a central role in science. They are images of phenomena of the physical world, for example, scale images or metaphors, enabling the human mind to describe observations and re- tionships by abstract mathematical means. Models served orientation and survival in a complex, partly invisible physical and social environment.

This two-part book is devoted to classic fundamentals and current practices and perspectives of modern plasma astrophysics. This second part discusses the physics of magnetic reconnection and flares of electromagnetic origin in space plasmas in the solar system, single and double stars, relativistic objects, accretion disks and their coronae. More than 25% of the text is updated from the first edition, included the additions of new figures, equations and entire sections on topics such as topological triggers for solar flares and the magnetospheric physics problem. This book is aimed at professional researchers in astrophysics, but it will also be useful to graduate students in space sciences, geophysics, applied physics and mathematics, especially those seeking a unified view of plasma physics and fluid mechanics.

This abundantly illustrated book provides a concise overview of our understanding of the entire mantle, its evolution since early differentiation and the consequences of superplumes for earth surface processes. The book's balanced authorship has produced a state-of-the-science report on the emerging concept of superplumes. This presents a new concept to explain catastrophic events on Earth through geologic time.

The subject of this book is the methodology and results of integrated geophysical investigations in the Caucasian region, mainly interpretation of magnetic and gravity anomalies with utilization of a huge petrophysical database for the evaluation of geological structure and mineral resources. Relative voluminous geophysical data are useful for the Earth Sciences researchers interested in the Caucasian region (and adjacent and similar regions) characterized by complicated geological structure, inclined magnetization (polarization), uneven topography and mountain/sea transition. Examination of geophysical fields verified by super-deep wells drilling indicates that magmatic rocks of the Lesser Caucasus are extended northward under thick sedimentary cover of the Kura Depression up to the Greater Caucasus. These rocks form hidden petroleum-bearing traps of a newly identified type. On the basis of geophysical studies (mainly inexpensive magnetic and electric methods), a new copper-polymetallic province in the Greater Caucasus has been revealed. a newly developed integrated approach and special information-statistical techniques for processing and interpretation of geophysical data facilitate detection of important geological features, e.g. hidden intersections of linear structures that control location of large commercial ore and oil-and-gas deposits, as well as focuses of dangerous geodynamic events at a depth. Numerous illustrations (including colour) elucidate different problems and solutions on various scales and in diverse geological-geophysical environments. Many aspects of this book have been presented at the teaching courses for bachelors, masters and doctors at the Tel-Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israel) and Ben-Gurion University (Be'er-Sheva, Israel). Benefits to readers are predetermined by the combination of the authors many-years personal experience in the geophysical studies of Azerbaijan and other regions of the Caucasus with the authors' knowledge of the modern level of geophysics in the world.

17 readable articles give a thorough and self-contained overview of recent developments in relativistic gravity research. The subjects covered are: gravitational lensing, the general relativistic n-body problem, observable effects in the solar system, gravitational waves and their interferometric detection, very-long-baseline interferometry, international atomic time, lunar laser- ranging measurements, measurement ofthe gravitomagnetic field of the Earth, fermion and boson stars and black holes with hair, rapidly rotating neutron stars, matter wave interferometry, and the laboratory test of Newton's law of gravity.Any scientist interested in experimentally or observatio- nally oriented relativistic gravity will read the book with profit. In addition, it is perfectly suited as a complementary text for courses on general relativity and relativistic astrophysics.

Here is unique and comprehensive coverage of modern seismic instrumentation, based on the authors' practical experience of a quarter-century in seismology and geophysics. Their goal is to provide not only detailed information on the basics of seismic instruments but also to survey equipment on the market, blending this with only the amount of theory needed to understand the basic principles. Seismologists and technicians working with seismological instruments will find here the answers to their practical problems. Instrumentation in Earthquake Seismology is written to be understandable to the broad range of professionals working with seismological instruments and seismic data, whether students, engineers or seismologists. Whether installing seismic stations, networks and arrays, working and calibrating stationary or portable instruments, dealing with response information, or teaching about seismic instruments, professionals and academics now have a practical and authoritative sourcebook. Includes: SEISAN and SEISLOG software systems that are available from http://extras.springer.com and http://www.geo.uib.no/seismo/software/software.html

In 1991, my newly formed researchgroupat Berkeley was working intensely in the area of continuum-level constitutive relationships that could be obtained in a deductive mannerfrom microstructuralinformationthroughthemethods of homogenization theory. Of particular interest was the application of such methods to structural problems in the blossoming field of micromechanical devices. In this context it was becoming evident that we needed to learn to navigate through the continuum/discrete interface. Such were the circumstances when Vladimir Granik came to visit us at Berkeley for the first time. It is probably not surprising that we received with great enthusiasm his offer to join forces and develop a mechanics .of solid structures that would be based on a discrete representation of matter. Vladimir had established the foundations for such an endeavor with his work at Moscow University in the late 1970s. Since that first meeting, and with ever-increasing enthusiasm, it has been a great privilege for me to collaborate with Vladimir. We first applied the formalism of what has become known as "doublet mechanics" to the microstructure-based theory of failure of solids and worked on the paral- lels and differences between the doublet approach and homogenization, to- gether with Kevin Mon and Derek Hansford. Plane elastodynamics followed after Francesco Maddalena had proposed doublet viscoelesticity. The consti- tutive relationships in doublet mechanics were laid on a firm thermodynami- cal foundation through the work of Kevin Mon, while Miqin Zhang analyzed free boundary effects on multi-scale plane elastic waves in discrete domains.

This book describes the state of the art in the field of modeling and solving numerically inverse problems of wave propagation and diffraction. It addresses mathematicians, physicists and engineers as well. Applications in such fields as acoustics, optics, and geophysics are emphasized. Of special interest are the contributions to two and three dimensional problems without reducing symmetries. Topics treated are the obstacle problem, scattering by classical media, and scattering by distributed media.

This book contains the contributed papers and reviews from IAU Colloquium Number 114 on White Dwarfs held at Dartmouth College in August 1988. All the current fields of research in this area are covered including the evolution of white dwarfs, links to progenitors, luminosity functions of white dwarfs, evolution of white dwarfs in binaries, spectroscopy and atmospheric abundances, diffusion, accretion and convective mixing, the mass-radius relation, gravitational redshifts, masses of white dwarfs, and magnetic white dwarfs. Special emphasis has been placed on the intrinsic properties of single white dwarfs. All the articles are by internationally known authorities and contain the most up-to-date information available at the time of writing.

This collection of papers presents a rather complete review of current knowledge of hot spots in some strong extragalactic radio sources. An overview of known results along with new data on radio observations and optical observations is given in the first and second parts of the book. Recent computational techniques which allow modelling and simulations of hot spots and jet behaviour are presented in the third part. The fourth part discusses particle acceleration and shock front phenomena. The articles will help the reader to appreciate the role hot spots play as laboratories for studying the interaction of jets with the surrounding medium and for testing our understanding of the overall source dynamics. The book is a valuable complement to the existing literature and an excellent introduction to this fairly new field of research.

Extinction and standardization corrections to infrared measurements are of the utmost importance in astronomy. Various views on these concepts and problems of implementation in infrared photometry are discussed thoroughly and recommendations are presented. Among these are: the adoption of narrower broad-band "Johnson" filters that are better centered in the atmospheric water windows than is currently the case; the measurements of atmospheric water vapor content concurrent with the astronomical measurements; the use of appropriate atmospheric models to treat the extinction adequately; and the publication of complete details of the systemic passbands and their transformability to other systems. To conclude the volume, R. Bell summarizes and comments on the contributions to the symposium, and the editor adds a concluding postscript on post-meeting developments and perspectives.

From June 7-9, 1995, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the Max Plank Institut fiir Astrophysik (MPA) jointly held the Workshop on Spiral Galaxies in the Near-IR. This meeting took place at the ESO headquarters in Garching bei Miinchen, Germany. The weather waschanging, with the biergarten closed, but that did not stop 85 people from allover the world from attending the meeting. The three days were intensive, with talks and coffee and posters from 9 am to 6 pm, and very productive indeed for everyone. The topics covered the stellar populations of the Milky Way and other more distant spirals, the role of dust, the dynamics of spiral galaxies, and the nuclear activity seen at near-IR wavelengths. This volume presents the original contributions from the participants, including several papers that review the state-of-the-art knowledge in these various subjects. The editors would like to thank first and foremost Christina Stoffer, for she took care of everything. The meeting would not have been so successful without her expertise and efficiency. We are deeply indebted to the directors of MPA and ESO Science, Simon White and Jacqueline Bergeron, for their support and encouragement. We would also like to thank the other members of the scientific organizing committee: R. Genzel, K. Freeman, A. Moorwood, S. White, M. Rieke and E. Athannasoula, for their advice with the organization of the program. We also thank G. Rieke, R. Genzel, L. Athannasoula, A. Renzini and R.

This volume summarizes recent developments in our understanding of active galactic nuclei, including quasars, seyfert galaxies and radio galaxies. The predominant emphasis is put on observational results with information from essentially all wave bands, but important theoretical results are also presented. Among the contributions are discussions of the different types of active galaxies, the nature of the central engine, the wiggly structure of radio jets, the dynamics of the gas in jets, the study of millimeter and extreme ultraviolet regions, and a discussion of the observed continuum of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The intended readers are professional astronomers and astrophysicists as well as graduate students in this field of research.

This volume gives a comprehensible survey of BL Lac objects: contributors summarize observations on these interesting astrophysical objects and present theoretical models to explain them. Understanding these objects should help to give a better insight into the physics of black holes and relativistic plasmas. Topics addressed cover radio jets expanding at superluminal velocities, possible effects of relativistic jets on interstellar matter, the continuum emission over the whole electromagnetic system and its variability, and the impact of these observations on gravitational lensing and cosmological evolution. The book should be immensely useful for graduate students.

In this volume the full range of astrophysical maser research is covered, with contributions from many of the foremost researchers in the field. The topics include masers in star-forming, circumstellar and extragalactic environments, solar system masers, newly discovered masing transitions, variability, proper-motion studies, and theory. Since this was the first ever conference devoted exclusively to astrophysical masers, these proceedings provide a reference for this field which has not previously been available. "Astrophysical Masers" will be useful both to those who wish to study the physics of masers, and to those who wish to better understand the astrophysically important regions with which they are associated.

This book gives a comprehensive overview of our present understanding of the Earth's cryosphere, its changes and their consequences for mean sea level changes. Since the middle of the 19th century there has been an increase of sea level height by 20-25 cm. Some 8-10 cm of this is due to net losses from glaciers, the remainder being due to mass losses from land ice and thermal expansion of the oceans. The mean sea level rise is slowly accelerating; at present it is some 3 mm/year. Recent space observations made by the GRACE satellite combined with ocean temperature and volume measurements have enabled the separate contributions to sea level rise from melting ice and from thermal expansion to be better estimated. The estimation of mean sea level change is complicated by changes in land level due to tectonic effects and to ongoing changes following the latest major glaciation. The book gives an up-to-date survey of our present knowledge of this crucial subject.

This series of reference books describes the sciences of different fields in and around geodesy. Each chapter, is written by experts in the respective fields and covers an individual field and describes the history, theory, the objective, the technology, and the development, the highlight of the research, the applications, the problems, as well as future directions. Contents of Volume II include: Geodetic LEO Satellite Missions, Satellite Altimetry, Airborne Lidar, GNSS Software Receiver, Geodetic Boundary Problem, GPS and INS, VLBI, Geodetic Reference Systems, Spectral Analysis, Earth Tide and Ocean Loading Tide, Remote Sensing, Photogrammetry, Occultation, Geopotential Determination, Geoid Determination, Local Gravity Field, Geopotential Determination, Magnet Field, Mobile Mapping, General Relativity, Wide-area Precise Positioning etc.

"Proceedings of the 3rd China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC2012)" presents selected research papers from CSNC2012, held on 15-19 May in Guanzhou, China. These papers discuss the technologies and applications of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and the latest progress made in the China BeiDou system especially. They are divided into 9 topics to match the corresponding sessions in CSNC2012, which broadly covered key topics in GNSS. Readers can learn about the BeiDou system and keep abreast of the latest advances in GNSS techniques and applications.

SUN Jiadong is the Chief Designer of the Compass/BeiDou system, and the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences; LIU Jingnan is a professor at Wuhan University, and the Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering; YANG Yuanxi is a professor at China National Administration of GNSS and Applications, and the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences; FAN Shiwei is a researcher on satellite navigation.

Terrestrial mass movements (i.e. cliff collapses, soil creeps, mudflows, landslides etc.) are severe forms of natural disasters mostly occurring in mountainous terrain, which is subjected to specific geological, geomorphological and climatological conditions, as well as to human activities. It is a challenging task to accurately define the position, type and activity of mass movements for the purpose of creating inventory records and potential vulnerability maps. Remote sensing techniques, in combination with Geographic Information System tools, allow state-of-the-art investigation of the degree of potential mass movements and modeling surface processes for hazard and risk mapping. Similarly, through statistical prediction models, future mass-movement-prone areas can be identified and damages can to a certain extent be minimized. Issues of scale and selection of morphological attributes for the scientific analysis of mass movements call for new developments in data modeling and spatio-temporal GIS analysis.
The book is a product of a cooperation between the editors and several contributing authors, addressing current issues and recent developments in GI technology and mass movements research. Its fundamental treatment of this technology includes data modeling, topography, geology, geomorphology, remote sensing, artificial neural networks, binomial regression, fuzzy logic, spatial statistics and analysis, and scientific visualization. Both theoretical and practical issues are addressed.

"Proceedings of the 3rd China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC2012)" presents selected research papers from CSNC2012, held on 15-19 May in Guanzhou, China. These papers discuss the technologies and applications of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and the latest progress made in the China BeiDou system especially. They are divided into 9 topics to match the corresponding sessions in CSNC2012, which broadly covered key topics in GNSS. Readers can learn about the BeiDou system and keep abreast of the latest advances in GNSS techniques and applications. SUN Jiadong is the Chief Designer of the Compass/BeiDou system, and the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences; LIU Jingnan is a professor at Wuhan University, and the Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering; YANG Yuanxi is a professor at China National Administration of GNSS and Applications, and the Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences; FAN Shiwei is a researcher on satellite navigation.