The book could be a good companion for any graduate student in partial differential equations or in applied mathematics. Each chapter brings indeed new ideas and new techniques which can be used in these fields. The differents chapters can be read independently and are of great pedagogical value. The advanced researcher will find along the book the most recent achievements in various fields.
.Independent chapters
.Most recent advances in each fields
.Hight didactic quality
.Self contained
.Excellence of the contributors
.Wide range of topics

This is the unique book on cross-fertilisations between stream ciphers and number theory. It systematically and comprehensively covers known connections between the two areas that are available only in research papers. Some parts of this book consist of new research results that are not available elsewhere. In addition to exercises, over thirty research problems are presented in this book. In this revised edition almost every chapter was updated, and some chapters were completely rewritten. It is useful as a textbook for a graduate course on the subject, as well as a reference book for researchers in related fields.
.Unique book on interactions of stream ciphers and number theory.
.Research monograph with many results not available elsewhere.
.A revised edition with the most recent advances in this subject.
.Over thirty research problems for stimulating interactions between the two areas.
.Written by leading researchers in stream ciphers and number theory.

The present work is a continuation of the authors' acclaimed multi-volume A
Practical Logic of Cognitive Systems. After having investigated the notion of
relevance in their previous volume, Gabbay and Woods now turn to abduction. In
this highly original approach, abduction is construed as ignorance-preserving
inference, in which conjecture plays a pivotal role. Abduction is a response to a
cognitive target that cannot be hit on the basis of what the agent currently knows.
The abducer selects a hypothesis which were it true would enable the reasoner to attain his target. He concludes from this fact that the hypothesis may be conjectured. In allowing conjecture to stand in for the knowledge he fails to have, the abducer reveals himself to be a satisficer, since an abductive solution is not a solution from knowledge. Key to the authors' analysis is the requirement that a conjectured proposition is not just what a reasoner might allow himself to assume, but a proposition he must defeasibly release as a premiss for further inferences in the domain of enquiry in which the original abduction problem has arisen.

The coverage of the book is extensive, from the philosophy of science to
computer science and AI, from diagnostics to the law, from historical explanation to linguistic interpretation. One of the volume's strongest contributions is its exploration of the abductive character of criminal trials, with special attention given to the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Underlying their analysis of abductive reasoning is the authors' conception of
practical agency. In this approach, practical agency is dominantly a matter of the
comparativemodesty of an agent's cognitive agendas, together with comparatively scant resources available for their advancement. Seen in these ways, abduction has a significantly practical character, precisely because it is a form of inference that satisfices rather than maximizes its response to the agent's cognitive target.

The Reach of Abduction will be necessary reading for researchers, graduate
students and senior undergraduates in logic, computer science, AI, belief dynamics, argumentation theory, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, linguistics, forensic science, legal reasoning and related areas.

Key features:

- Reach of Abduction is fully integrated with a background logic of cognitive systems.

- The most extensive coverage compared to competitive works.

- Demonstrates not only that abduction is a form of ignorance preserving
inference but that it is a mode of inference that is wholly rational.

- Demonstrates the satisficing rather than maximizing character of
abduction.

- The development of formal models of abduction is considerably more extensive than one finds in existing literature. It is an especially impressive amalgam of sophisticated
conceptual analysis and extensive logical modelling.
- Reach of Abduction is fully integrated with a background logic of cognitive systems.
- The most extensive coverage compared to competitive works
- Demonstrates not only that abduction is a form of ignorance preserving
inference but that it is a mode of inference that is wholly rational.
- Demonstrates the satisficing rather than maximizing character of
abduction.
- The development of formal models of abduction isconsiderably more extensive than one finds in existing literature. It is an especially impressive amalgam of sophisticated
conceptual analysis and extensive logical modelling.

One of the most frequently occurring types of optimization problems involves decision variables which have to take integer values. From a practical point of view, such problems occur in countless areas of management, engineering, administration, etc., and include such problems as location of plants or warehouses, scheduling of aircraft, cutting raw materials to prescribed dimensions, design of computer chips, increasing reliability or capacity of networks, etc. This is the class of problems known in the professional literature as "discrete optimization" problems. While these problems are of enormous applicability, they present many challenges from a computational point of view. This volume is an update on the impressive progress achieved by mathematicians, operations researchers, and computer scientists in solving discrete optimization problems of very large sizes. The surveys in this volume present a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in discrete optimization and are written by the most prominent researchers from all over the world.

This volume describes the tremendous progress in discrete optimization achieved in the last 20 years since the publication of Discrete Optimization '77, Annals of Discrete Mathematics, volumes 4 and 5, 1979 (Elsevier). It contains surveys of the state of the art written by the most prominent researchers in the field from all over the world, and covers topics like neighborhood search techniques, lift and project for mixed 0-1 programming, pseudo-Boolean optimization, scheduling and assignment problems, production planning, location, bin packing, cutting planes, vehicle routing, and applications to graph theory, mechanics, chip design, etc.

Key features:
state of the art surveys
comprehensiveness
prominent authors
theoretical, computational and applied aspects.

This book is a reprint of "Discrete Applied Mathematics" Volume 23, Numbers 1-3
"

One aspect of common sense reasoning is reasoning about normal cases, e.g. a physician will first try to interpret symptoms by a common disease, and will take more exotic possibilities only later into account. Such "normality" can be encoded, e.g. by
a relation, where case A is considered more normal than case B. This gives a standard semantics or interpretation to nonmonotonic reasoning (a branch of common sense reasoning), or, more formally, to nonmonotonic logics. We consider in this book the repercussions such normality relations and similar
constructions have on the resulting nonmonotonic logics, i.e. which types of logic are adequate for which kind of relation, etc.
We show in this book that some semantics correspond nicely to some logics, but also that other semantics do not correspond to any logics of the usual form.
Key features:
- provides a coherent picture of several formalisms of nonmonotonic logics.
- gives completeness and incompleteness results for many variants of preferential, distance based, and other semantics.
- gives probably the first systematic investigation of definability preservation and its consequences.
- gives new proof techniques for completeness results.
- is centered on semantics

The book provides the reader with the different types of functional equations that s/he can find in practice, showing, step by step, how they can be solved.
A general methodology for solving functional equations is provided in Chapter 2. The different types of functional equations are described and solved in Chapters 3 to 8. Many examples, coming from different fields, as geometry, science, engineering, economics, probability, statistics, etc, help the reader to change his/her mind in order to state problems as functional equations as an alternative to differential equations, and to state new problems in terms of functional equations or systems.
An interesting feature of the book is that it deals with functional networks, a powerful generalization of neural networks that allows solving many practical problems. The second part of the book, Chapters 9 to 13, is devoted to the applications of this important paradigm.
The book contains many examples and end of chapter exercises, that facilitates the understanding of the concepts and applications.
- A general methodology for solving functional equations is provided in Chapter 2.
- It deals with functional networks, a powerful generalization of neural networks.
- Many examples, coming from different fields, as geometry, science, engineering, economics, probability, statistics, etc, illustrate the concept of functional equation.
- Functional equations are presented as a powerful alternative to differential equations.
- The book contains end of chapter exercises.

This is the first book that can be considered a textbook on thin film science, complete with exercises at the end of each chapter. Ohring has contributed many highly regarded reference books to the AP list, including Reliability and Failure of Electronic Materials and the Engineering Science of Thin Films. The knowledge base is intended for science and engineering students in advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate level courses on thin films and scientists and engineers who are entering or require an overview of the field.
Since 1992, when the book was first published, the field of thin films has expanded tremendously, especially with regard to technological applications. The second edition will bring the book up-to-date with regard to these advances. Most chapters have been greatly updated, and several new chapters have been added.

The Haifa 2000 Workshop on "Inherently Parallel Algorithms for Feasibility and Optimization and their Applications" brought together top scientists in this area. The objective of the Workshop was to discuss, analyze and compare the latest developments in this fast growing field of applied mathematics and to identify topics of research which are of special interest for industrial applications and for further theoretical study.

Inherently parallel algorithms, that is, computational methods which are, by their mathematical nature, parallel, have been studied in various contexts for more than fifty years. However, it was only during the last decade that they have mostly proved their practical usefulness because new generations of computers made their implementation possible in order to solve complex feasibility and optimization problems involving huge amounts of data via parallel processing. These led to an accumulation of computational experience and theoretical information and opened new and challenging questions concerning the behavior of inherently parallel algorithms for feasibility and optimization, their convergence in new environments and in circumstances in which they were not considered before their stability and reliability. Several research groups all over the world focused on these questions and it was the general feeling among scientists involved in this effort that the time has come to survey the latest progress and convey a perspective for further development and concerted scientific investigations. Thus, the editors of this volume, with the support of the Israeli Academy for Sciences and Humanities, took the initiative of organizing a Workshop intended to bring together the leading scientists in the field. The current volume is the Proceedings of the Workshop representing the discussions, debates and communications that took place. Having all that information collected in a single book will provide mathematicians and engineers interested in the theoretical and practical aspects of the inherently parallel algorithms for feasibility and optimization with a tool for determining when, where and which algorithms in this class are fit for solving specific problems, how reliable they are, how they behave and how efficient they were in previous applications. Such a tool will allow software creators to choose ways of better implementing these methods by learning from existing experience.

The geometry of power exponents includes the Newton polyhedron, normal cones of its faces, power and logarithmic transformations. On the basis of the geometry universal algorithms for simplifications of systems of nonlinear equations (algebraic, ordinary differential and partial differential) were developed.
The algorithms form a new calculus which allows to make local and asymptotical analysis of solutions to those systems.
The efficiency of the calculus is demonstrated with regard to several complicated problems from Robotics, Celestial Mechanics, Hydrodynamics and Thermodynamics. The calculus also gives classical results obtained earlier intuitively and is an alternative to Algebraic Geometry, Differential Algebra, Lie group Analysis and Nonstandard Analysis.

This book is an attempt to give a systematic presentation of both logic and type theory from a categorical perspective, using the unifying concept of fibred category. Its intended audience consists of logicians, type theorists, category theorists and (theoretical) computer scientists.

The book is devoted to universality problems.
A new approach to these problems is given using some specific spaces. Since the construction of these specific spaces is set-theoretical, the given theory can be applied to different topics of Topology such as:
universal mappings, dimension theory, action of groups, inverse spectra, isometrical embeddings, and so on.
.Universal spaces
.Universal mappings
.Dimension theory
.Actions of groups
.Isometric Universal Spaces

This book provides a comprehensive exposition of the use of set-theoretic methods in abelian group theory, module theory, and homological algebra, including applications to Whitehead's Problem, the structure of Ext and the existence of almost-free modules over non-perfect rings. This second edition is completely revised and udated to include major developments in the decade since the first edition. Among these are applications to cotorsion theories and covers, including a proof of the Flat Cover Conjecture, as well as the use of Shelah's pcf theory to constuct almost free groups. As with the first edition, the book is largely self-contained, and designed to be accessible to both graduate students and researchers in both algebra and logic. They will find there an introduction to powerful techniques which they may find useful in their own work.

"Difference Equations, Second Edition," presents a practical introduction to this important field of solutions for engineering and the physical sciences. Topic coverage includes numerical analysis, numerical methods, differential equations, combinatorics and discrete modeling. A hallmark of this revision is the diverse application to many subfields of mathematics.

* Phase plane analysis for systems of two linear equations
* Use of equations of variation to approximate solutions
* Fundamental matrices and Floquet theory for periodic systems
* LaSalle invariance theorem
* Additional applications: secant line method, Bison problem, juvenile-adult population model, probability theory
* Appendix on the use of "Mathematica" for analyzing difference equaitons
* Exponential generating functions
* Many new examples and exercises

The book contains a unitary and systematic presentation of both classical and very recent parts of a fundamental branch of functional analysis: linear semigroup theory with main emphasis on examples and applications. There are several specialized, but quite interesting, topics which didn't find their place into a monograph till now, mainly because they are very new. So, the book, although containing the main parts of the classical theory of Co-semigroups, as the Hille-Yosida theory, includes also several very new results, as for instance those referring to various classes of semigroups such as equicontinuous, compact, differentiable, or analytic, as well as to some nonstandard types of partial differential equations, i.e. elliptic and parabolic systems with dynamic boundary conditions, and linear or semilinear differential equations with distributed (time, spatial) measures. Moreover, some finite-dimensional-like methods for certain semilinear pseudo-parabolic, or hyperbolic equations are also disscussed. Among the most interesting applications covered are not only the standard ones concerning the Laplace equation subject to either Dirichlet, or Neumann boundary conditions, or the Wave, or Klein-Gordon equations, but also those referring to the Maxwell equations, the equations of Linear Thermoelasticity, the equations of Linear Viscoelasticity, to list only a few. Moreover, each chapter contains a set of various problems, all of them completely solved and explained in a special section at the end of the book.

The book is primarily addressed to graduate students and researchers in the field, but it would be of interest for both physicists and engineers. It should be emphasised that it is almost self-contained, requiring only a basic course in Functional Analysis and Partial Differential Equations.

Agenda Relevance is the first volume in the authors' omnibus investigation of
the logic of practical reasoning, under the collective title, A Practical Logic
of Cognitive Systems. In this highly original approach, practical reasoning is
identified as reasoning performed with comparatively few cognitive assets,
including resources such as information, time and computational capacity. Unlike
what is proposed in optimization models of human cognition, a practical reasoner
lacks perfect information, boundless time and unconstrained access to
computational complexity. The practical reasoner is therefore obliged to be a
cognitive economizer and to achieve his cognitive ends with considerable
efficiency. Accordingly, the practical reasoner avails himself of various
scarce-resource compensation strategies. He also possesses neurocognitive
traits that abet him in his reasoning tasks. Prominent among these is the
practical agent's striking (though not perfect) adeptness at evading irrelevant
information and staying on task. On the approach taken here, irrelevancies are
impediments to the attainment of cognitive ends. Thus, in its most basic sense,
relevant information is cognitively helpful information. Information can then be
said to be relevant for a practical reasoner to the extent that it advances or
closes some cognitive agenda of his. The book explores this idea with a
conceptual detail and nuance not seen the standard semantic, probabilistic and
pragmatic approaches to relevance; but wherever possible, the authors seek to
integrate alternative conceptions rather than reject them outright. A further
attraction of the agenda-relevance approach is the extent to which its principal
conceptual findings lend themselves to technically sophisticated re-expression
in formal models that marshal the resources of time and action logics and
label led deductive systems.

Agenda Relevance is necessary reading for researchers in logic, belief
dynamics, computer science, AI, psychology and neuroscience, linguistics,
argumentation theory, and legal reasoning and forensic science, and will repay
study by graduate students and senior undergraduates in these same fields.

Key features:

relevance
action and agendas
practical reasoning
belief dynamics
non-classical logics
labelled deductive systems

"

In this revolutionary work, the author sets the stage for the science of
the 21st Century, pursuing an unprecedented synthesis of fields previously
considered unrelated. Beginning with simple classical concepts, he ends
with a complex multidisciplinary theory requiring a high level of
abstraction. The work progresses across the sciences in several
multidisciplinary directions: Mathematical logic, fundamental physics,
computer science and the theory of intelligence. Extraordinarily enough,
the author breaks new ground in all these fields.

In the field of
fundamental physics the author reaches the revolutionary conclusion that
physics can be viewed and studied as logic in a fundamental sense, as
compared with Einstein's view of physics as space-time geometry. This opens
new, exciting prospects for the study of fundamental interactions. A
formulation of logic in terms of matrix operators and logic vector spaces
allows the author to tackle for the first time the intractable problem of
cognition in a scientific manner. In the same way as the findings of
Heisenberg and Dirac in the 1930s provided a conceptual and mathematical
foundation for quantum physics, matrix operator logic supports an important
breakthrough in the study of the physics of the mind, which is interpreted
as a fractal of quantum mechanics. Introducing a concept of logic quantum
numbers, the author concludes that the problem of logic and the
intelligence code in general can be effectively formulated as eigenvalue
problems similar to those of theoretical physics. With this important leap
forward in the study of the mechanism of mind, the author concludes that
the latter cannot be fully understood either within classical or quantum
notions. A higher-order covariant theory is required to accommodate the
fundamental effect of high-level intelligence. The landmark results
obtained by the author will have implications and repercussions for the
very foundations of science as a whole. Moreover, Stern's Matrix Logic is
suitable for a broad spectrum of practical applications in contemporary
technologies.

Handbook of Convex Geometry, Volume B offers a survey of convex geometry and its many ramifications and connections with other fields of mathematics, including convexity, lattices, crystallography, and convex functions. The selection first offers information on the geometry of numbers, lattice points, and packing and covering with convex sets. Discussions focus on packing in non-Euclidean spaces, problems in the Euclidean plane, general convex bodies, computational complexity of lattice point problem, centrally symmetric convex bodies, reduction theory, and lattices and the space of lattices. The text then examines finite packing and covering and tilings, including plane tilings, monohedral tilings, bin packing, and sausage problems. The manuscript takes a look at valuations and dissections, geometric crystallography, convexity and differential geometry, and convex functions. Topics include differentiability, inequalities, uniqueness theorems for convex hypersurfaces, mixed discriminants and mixed volumes, differential geometric characterization of convexity, reduction of quadratic forms, and finite groups of symmetry operations. The selection is a dependable source of data for mathematicians and researchers interested in convex geometry.

Handbook of Convex Geometry, Volume A offers a survey of convex geometry and its many ramifications and relations with other areas of mathematics, including convexity, geometric inequalities, and convex sets. The selection first offers information on the history of convexity, characterizations of convex sets, and mixed volumes. Topics include elementary convexity, equality in the Aleksandrov-Fenchel inequality, mixed surface area measures, characteristic properties of convex sets in analysis and differential geometry, and extensions of the notion of a convex set. The text then reviews the standard isoperimetric theorem and stability of geometric inequalities. The manuscript takes a look at selected affine isoperimetric inequalities, extremum problems for convex discs and polyhedra, and rigidity. Discussions focus on include infinitesimal and static rigidity related to surfaces, isoperimetric problem for convex polyhedral, bounds for the volume of a convex polyhedron, curvature image inequality, Busemann intersection inequality and its relatives, and Petty projection inequality. The book then tackles geometric algorithms, convexity and discrete optimization, mathematical programming and convex geometry, and the combinatorial aspects of convex polytopes. The selection is a valuable source of data for mathematicians and researchers interested in convex geometry.

Since its inception in the famous 1936 paper by Birkhoff and von Neumann entitled "The logic of quantum mechanics" quantum logic, i.e. the logical investigation of quantum mechanics, has undergone an enormous development. Various schools of thought and approaches have emerged and there are a variety of technical results.
Quantum logic is a heterogeneous field of research ranging from investigations which may be termed logical in the traditional sense to studies focusing on structures which are on the border between algebra and logic. For the latter structures the term quantum structures is appropriate.
The chapters of this Handbook, which are authored by the most eminent scholars in the field, constitute a comprehensive presentation of the main schools, approaches and results in the field of quantum logic and quantum structures. Much of the material presented is of recent origin representing the frontier of the subject.
The present volume focuses on quantum structures. Among the structures studied extensively in this volume are, just to name a few, Hilbert lattices, D-posets, effect algebras MV algebras, partially ordered Abelian groups and those structures underlying quantum probability.
- Written by eminent scholars in the field of logic
- A comprehensive presentation of the theory, approaches and results in the field of quantum logic
- Volume focuses on quantum structures

The book presents surveys describing recent developments in most of the primary subfields of
General Topology and its applications to Algebra and Analysis during the last decade. It follows freely
the previous edition (North Holland, 1992), Open Problems in Topology (North Holland, 1990) and
Handbook of Set-Theoretic Topology (North Holland, 1984). The book was prepared in
connection with the Prague Topological Symposium, held in 2001. During the last 10 years the focus
in General Topology changed and therefore the selection of topics differs slightly from those
chosen in 1992. The following areas experienced significant developments: Topological Groups, Function Spaces, Dimension Theory, Hyperspaces, Selections, Geometric Topology (including
Infinite-Dimensional Topology and the Geometry of Banach Spaces). Of course, not every important topic
could be included in this book.

Except surveys, the book contains several historical essays written by such eminent topologists as:
R.D. Anderson, W.W. Comfort, M. Henriksen, S. Mardeŝić, J. Nagata, M.E. Rudin, J.M. Smirnov (several reminiscences of L. Vietoris are added). In addition to extensive author and subject indexes, a list of all problems and questions posed in this book are added.

List of all authors of surveys:
A. Arhangel'skii, J. Baker and K. Kunen, H. Bennett and D. Lutzer, J. Dijkstra and J. van Mill, A. Dow, E. Glasner, G. Godefroy, G. Gruenhage, N. Hindman and D. Strauss, L. Hola and J. Pelant, K. Kawamura, H.-P. Kuenzi, W. Marciszewski, K. Martin and M. Mislove and M. Reed, R. Pol and H. Torunczyk, D. Repovs and P. Semenov, D. Shakhmatov, S. Solecki, M. Tkachenko.

Recent decades have seen a very rapid success in developing numerical methods based on explicit control over approximation errors. It may be said that nowadays a new direction is forming in numerical analysis, the main goal of which is to develop methods ofreliable computations. In general, a reliable numerical method must solve two basic problems: (a) generate a sequence of approximations that converges to a solution and (b) verify the accuracy of these approximations. A computer code for such a method must consist of two respective blocks: solver and checker.
In this book, we are chiefly concerned with the problem (b) and try to present the main approaches developed for a posteriori error estimation in various problems.
The authors try to retain a rigorous mathematical style, however, proofs are constructive whenever possible and additional mathematical knowledge is presented when necessary. The book contains a number of new mathematical results and lists a posteriori error estimation methods that have been developed in the very recent time.
- computable bounds of approximation errors
- checking algorithms
- iteration processes
- finite element methods
- elliptic type problems
- nonlinear variational problems
- variational inequalities

In 1974 the editors of the present volume published a well-received book entitled Latin Squares and their Applications''. It included a list of 73 unsolved problems of which about 20 have been completely solved in the intervening period and about 10 more have been partially solved.
The present work comprises six contributed chapters and also six further chapters written by the editors themselves. As well as discussing the advances which have been made in the subject matter of most of the chapters of the earlier book, this new book contains one chapter which deals with a subject (r-orthogonal latin squares) which did not exist when the earlier book was written.
The success of the former book is shown by the two or three hundred published papers which deal with questions raised by it.

This volume is a thorough introduction to contemporary research in elasticity, and may be used as a working textbook at the graduate level for courses in pure or applied mathematics or in continuum mechanics. It provides a thorough description (with emphasis on the nonlinear aspects) of the two competing mathematical models of three-dimensional elasticity, together with a mathematical analysis of these models. The book is as self-contained as possible.

The collected works of Turing, including a substantial amount of unpublished material, will comprise four volumes: Mechanical Intelligence, Pure Mathematics, Morphogenesis and Mathematical Logic. Alan Mathison Turing (1912-1954) was a brilliant man who made major contributions in several areas of science. Today his name is mentioned frequently in philosophical discussions about the nature of Artificial Intelligence. Actually, he was a pioneer researcher in computer architecture and software engineering; his work in pure mathematics and mathematical logic extended considerably further and his last work, on morphogenesis in plants, is also acknowledged as being of the greatest originality and of permanent importance. He was one of the leading figures in Twentieth-century science, a fact which would have been known to the general public sooner but for the British Official Secrets Act, which prevented discussion of his wartime work. What is maybe surprising about these papers is that although they were written decades ago, they address major issues which concern researchers today.

The conference took place in Lviv, Ukraine and was dedicated to a famous Polish mathematician Stefan Banach { the most outstanding representative of the Lviv mathematical school. Banach spaces, introduced by Stefan Banach at the beginning of twentieth century, are familiar now to every mathematician. The book contains a short historical article and scientific contributions of the conference participants, mostly in the areas of functional analysis, general topology, operator theory and related topics.