This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order. The authors devise axiomatizations of GBT and its competitors which, against the backdrop of a shared quantified tense logic, significantly improves the prospects of their comparative assessment. Importantly, neither of these axiomatizations involves commitment to properties of presentness, pastness or futurity. The authors proceed to address, and defuse, a number of objections that have been marshaled against GBT, including the so-called epistemic objection according to which the theory invites skepticism about our temporal location. The challenge posed by relativistic physics is met head-on, by replacing claims about temporal variation by claims about variation across spacetime. The book aims to achieve the greatest possible rigor. The background logic is set out in detail, as are the principles governing the notions of precedence and temporal location. The authors likewise devise a novel spacetime logic suited for the articulation, and comparative assessment, of relativistic theories of time. The book comes with three technical appendices which include soundness and completeness proofs for the systems corresponding to GBT and its competitors, in both their pre-relativistic and relativistic forms. The book is primarily directed at researchers and graduate students working on the philosophy of time or temporal logic, but is of interest to metaphysicians and philosophical logicians more generally.

This book presents the proceedings of the Symposium on Fluid-Structure-Sound Interactions and Control (FSSIC), (held in Tokyo on Aug. 21-24, 2017), which largely focused on advances in the theory, experiments on, and numerical simulation of turbulence in the contexts of flow-induced vibration, noise and their control. This includes several practical areas of application, such as the aerodynamics of road and space vehicles, marine and civil engineering, nuclear reactors and biomedical science, etc. Uniquely, these proceedings integrate acoustics with the study of flow-induced vibration, which is not a common practice but can be extremely beneficial to understanding, simulating and controlling vibration. The symposium provides a vital forum where academics, scientists and engineers working in all related branches can exchange and share their latest findings, ideas and innovations - bringing together researchers from both east and west to chart the frontiers of FSSIC.

This book explores the relations between physical parameters of extrasolar planets and their respective parent stars. Planetary parameters are often directly dependent upon their stellar counterparts. In addition, the star is almost always the only visible component of the system and contains most of the system mass. Consequently, the parent star heavily influences every aspect of planetary physics and astrophysics. Drs. Kaspar von Braun and Tabetha Boyajian use direct methods to characterize exoplanet host starts that minimize the number of assumptions needed to be made in the process. The book provides a background on interferometric techniques for stellar diameter measurements, illustrates the authors' approach on using additional data to fully characterize the stars, provides a comprehensive update on the current state of the field, and examines in detail a number of historically significant and well-studied exoplanetary systems.

New technological innovations offer significant opportunities to promote and protect human rights. At the same time, they also pose undeniable risks. In some areas, they may even be changing what we mean by human rights. The fact that new technologies are often privately controlled raises further questions about accountability and transparency and the role of human rights in regulating these actors. This volume - edited by Molly K. Land and Jay D. Aronson - provides an essential roadmap for understanding the relationship between technology and human rights law and practice. It offers cutting-edge analysis and practical strategies in contexts as diverse as autonomous lethal weapons, climate change technology, the Internet and social media, and water meters. This title is also available as Open Access.

This book addresses the hazard of gas explosions in sealed underground coal mines, and how the risk of explosion can be assessed, modeled, and mitigated. With this text, coal mine operators and managers will be able to identify the risks that lead to underground mine gas explosions, and implement practical strategies to optimize mining safety for workers. In six chapters, the book offers a framework for understanding the sealed coal mine atmosphere, the safety characteristics that are currently in place, and the guidelines to be followed by engineers to improve upon these characteristics. The first part of the book describes the importance and characteristics of underground gas mine explosions in a historical context with data showing the high number of fatalities from explosion incidents, and how risk has been mitigated in the past. Chapters also detail mathematical models and explosibility diagrams for determining and understanding the risk factors involved in mine explosions. Readers will also learn about safety operations, and assessments for the sealed mine atmosphere. With descriptions of chapter case studies, mining engineers and researchers will learn how to apply safety measures in underground coal mines to improve mining atmospheres and save lives.

Bricks were introduced to Britain by the Romans and reintroduced by Flemish craftsmen in the middle ages. Until the early nineteenth century they were made in numerous small brickyards supplying local needs, but eventually increasing demand led to the invention of improved brickmaking machines and kilns. This book gives an insight into the surprising variety of bricks, as well as a brief history of brickmaking, descriptions of hand and machine moulding, drying, the use of kilns and firing. Despite competition from newer materials, brick still holds its own as a facing material and traditional methods still survive in the smaller yards.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the fascinating topic of audio source separation based on non-negative matrix factorization, deep neural networks, and sparse component analysis. The first section of the book covers single channel source separation based on non-negative matrix factorization (NMF). After an introduction to the technique, two further chapters describe separation of known sources using non-negative spectrogram factorization, and temporal NMF models. In section two, NMF methods are extended to multi-channel source separation. Section three introduces deep neural network (DNN) techniques, with chapters on multichannel and single channel separation, and a further chapter on DNN based mask estimation for monaural speech separation. In section four, sparse component analysis (SCA) is discussed, with chapters on source separation using audio directional statistics modelling, multi-microphone MMSE-based techniques and diffusion map methods. The book brings together leading researchers to provide tutorial-like and in-depth treatments on major audio source separation topics, with the objective of becoming the definitive source for a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible treatment. This book is written for graduate students and researchers who are interested in audio source separation techniques based on NMF, DNN and SCA.

Franz Georg Hey summarises the development and testing of a micro-Newton thrust balance, as well as the downscaling of a High Efficiency Multistage Plasma Thruster to micro-Newton thrust levels. The balance is tailored to fully characterise thruster candidates for the space based gravitational wave detector LISA. Thus, thrust noise measurements in sub-micro-Newton regime can be performed in the overall LISA bandwidth. The downscaled thruster can be operated down to serval tens of micro-Newton with a comparably high specific impulse. About the Author Franz Georg Hey works as mechanical, thermal, propulsion architect and technical lead of the micro-Newton propulsion laboratory of Europe's leading air and spacecraft manufacturer. The author is participating on major programmes for future satellite and electric propulsion development. The author's research is performed in close collaboration with the Dresden University of Technology, the University of Bremen and the DLR Bremen.

This book presents articles from the International Conference on Improved Oil Recovery, CIOR 2017, held in Bandung, Indonesia. Highlighting novel technologies in the area of Improved Oil Recovery, it discusses a range of topics, including enhanced oil recovery, hydraulic fracturing, production optimization, petrophysics and formation evaluation.

This thesis develops and establishes several methods to determine the detailed geometric architecture of transiting exoplanetary systems (planets orbiting around, and periodically passing in front of, stars other than the sun) using high-precision photometric data collected by the Kepler space telescope. It highlights the measurement of stellar obliquity - the tilt of the stellar equator with respect to the planetary orbital plane(s) - and presents methods for more precise obliquity measurements in individual systems of particular interest, as well as for measurements in systems that have been out of reach of previous methods. Such information is useful for investigating the dynamical evolution of the planetary orbit, which is the key to understanding the diverse architecture of exoplanetary systems. The thesis also demonstrates a wide range of unique applications of high-precision photometric data, which expand the capability of future space-based photometry.

This unique book presents innovative and state-of-the-art computational models for determining the optimal truck-loader selection and allocation strategy for use in large and complex mining operations. The authors provide comprehensive information on the methodology that has been developed over the past 50 years, from the early ad hoc spreadsheet approaches to today's highly sophisticated and accurate mathematical-based computational models. The authors' approach is motivated and illustrated by real case studies provided by our industry collaborators. The book is intended for a broad audience, ranging from mathematicians with an interest in industrial applications to mining engineers who wish to utilize the most accurate, efficient, versatile and robust computational models in order to refine their equipment selection and allocation strategy. As materials handling costs represent a significant component of total costs for mining operations, applying the optimization methodology developed here can substantially improve their competitiveness

This book reports on findings at the intersection between two related fields, namely coastal hydrography and marine robotics. On one side, it shows how the exploration of the ocean can be performed by autonomous underwater vehicles; on the other side, it shows how some methods from hydrography can be implemented in the localization and navigation of such vehicles, e.g. for target identification or path finding. Partially based on contributions presented at the conference Quantitative Monitoring of Underwater Environment, MOQESM, held on October 11-12, 2016, Brest, France, this book includes carefully revised and extended chapters presented at the conference, together with original papers not related to the event. All in all, it provides readers with a snapshot of current methods for sonar track registration, multi-vehicles control, collective exploration of underwater environments, optimization of propulsion systems, among others. More than that, the book is aimed as source of inspiration and tool to promote further discussions and collaboration between hydrographers, robotic specialists and other related communities.

Opening a successful new mine is a vastly complex undertaking, entailing several years and millions to billions of dollars. In today's world, when environmental and labor policies, regulatory compliance, and the impact of the community must be factored in, you cannot afford to make a mistake. The Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration has created this road map for you. Written by two hands-on, in-the-trenches mining project managers with decades of experience bringing some of the world's most successful, profitable mines into operation on time, within budget, and ethically, Project Management for Mining gives you step-by-step instructions in every process you are likely to encounter. It is in use as course material in universities in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Ghana, Iran, Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, as well as the United States. In addition, more than 100 different mining companies have sent employees to attend seminars conducted by authors Robin Hickson and Terry Owen, sessions all based around the material within this book. In the years following the first edition, the authors gratefully received a bevy of excellent suggestions from some 2,000 readers in over 50 countries. This helpful reader feedback, coupled with written evaluations from the more than 400 seminar attendees, has been an unparalleled source of improvement for this new book. This second edition is a significant accomplishment that includes 5 new chapters, substantial updates to the original 34 chapters, and 56 new or updated figures, flowcharts, and checklists that every project manager can use.

70 per cent of the planet is covered by water, and 90 per cent of global economic trade is transported by sea. The world's seas and oceans are big business. Based on gross marine product, the ocean can be considered the world's seventh-largest economy, with the total global value of the Blue Economy predicted to rise to $3 trillion by 2030. Grounded in detailed market research, and brought to life through over 250 meticulously researched case studies, Technology and the Blue Economy presents a compelling overview of an inspiring and innovative sector that includes offshore renewable energy, ports and harbours, shipping, maritime surveillance, cyber security, aquaculture and ocean conservation. It tackles questions like these: * With Earth observation satellites providing unprecedented levels of data about the ocean, can machine learning capabilities develop at pace to make sense of all this new information? * How can ships protect themselves when one shipping firm alone records 50,000 daily attempts to breach its cyber security systems? * With floating wind farms now pushing further out to sea to convert natural energy, what role do robots have in managing essential maintenance in these more remote environments? * When passenger ferries are already sailing themselves and self-docking in port without human intervention, are we entering an age where human error is eradicated? * With fish farming predicted to account for 62 per cent of all the seafood consumed globally by 2030, how can 3D imaging cameras and net-cleaning robots help to stop mass deaths of fish that can run into millions in a single incident? * In the age of smartphone ubiquity, how important a role might social media and citizen science play in ocean conservation? * With luxury cruise ships now marketing themselves as 'smart, connected cities', crunching passenger data in real-time, do they now provide the gold standard of customer experience within the tourist industry? * Is optical scanning technology the solution to countering slavery at sea, a real concern in the south-east Asian fishing industry? * Can satellite-enabled tracking and autonomous clean-up systems help to counter one of the greatest conservation issues of the day - the fight against ocean plastic pollution? Technology and the Blue Economy explores how innovators can develop the right business models to capitalize on growth opportunities, and analyses the critical success factors for emerging technologies.

The Sun, which is our own star at the center of the Solar System, gives rise to all life on Earth and is the driver of photosynthesis in plants and the source of all food and energy for living things. As seen with the naked eye, the Sun appears as a static and quiet yellow disk in the sky. However, it is a stormy and ever-changing star that contributes much more than light and heat. For example, it is the source of the beautiful northern lights and can affect our technology-based society in many ways. Our Explosive Sun: A Visual Feast of our Source of Light and Life is a great introduction to the Sun for general readers as well as scientists who are not solar physicists. The book presents the basic properties of the Sun, describes how it has fascinated humans throughout history, and shows how it influences our current technologies. The book includes a large number of illustrations and video materials for SpringerExtras, along with a PowerPoint presentation that provides a useful resource for teachers and lectures.

“We live in the age of data. In the last few years, the methodology of extracting insights from data or "data science" has emerged as a discipline in its own right. The R programming language has become one-stop solution for all types of data analysis. The growing popularity of R is due its statistical roots and a vast open source package library. The goal of “Beginning Data Science with R” is to introduce the readers to some of the useful data science techniques and their implementation with the R programming language. The book attempts to strike a balance between the how: specific processes and methodologies, and understanding the why: going over the intuition behind how a particular technique works, so that the reader can apply it to the problem at hand. This book will be useful for readers who are not familiar with statistics and the R programming language.

This volume documents the contributions presented at the Seventh Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Española de Astronomía, SEA). The event bought together 301 participants who presented 161 contributed talks and 120 posters, the greatest number of contributions in the history of the meeting. The fact that most exciting items of the current astronomical research were addressed in the meeting is proof of the good health of the SEA, a consolidated organization founded fifteen years ago in Barcelona.

On the assessment of geoacoustic parameters in shallow water environments / Jean-Claude Le Gac, Yann Stéphan, Thierry Garlan, N. Weber.- Bayesian inversion of seabed reflection data / Stan E. Dosso, Charles W. Holland- Backpropagation techniques in ocean acoustic inversion: time reversal, retrogation and adjoint modelling - a review / Matthias Meyer, Jean-Pierre Hermand.- Acoustic inversion at low kHz frequencies using an active, vertical line array / Paul C. Hines, Matt Coffin.- Dispersion of broadband acoustic normal modes in the context of long range sediment tomography / Gopu Potty, James Miller- Characterization of local seabed properties using synthetized horizontal array data / Peter L. Nielsen, Mark Fallat, Christopher Harrison.- Characterization of a range-dependent environment from towed array data / Mark Fallat, Peter Nielsen, Stan E. Dosso, Martin Siderius.- Accounting for bias in horizontal wavenumber estimates due to source motion / Kyle M. Becker.- Acoustic clutter from buried submarine mud volcanoes / Charles W. Holland, Anthony L. Gerig, Piero Boni.- Nonlinear acoustical methods in the detection of gassy sediments / Jaroslaw Tegowski, Zygmunt Klusek, Jaromir Jakacki.- Acoustic scattering from submerged and buried objects / Ilkka Karasalo, Patrik Skogqvist.- High-frequency bistatic scattering experiments using proud and buried targets / Philippe Blondel, Peter F. Dobbins, Nic Jayasundere, Mario Cosci.- A sediment probe for the rapid assessment of seabed characteristics / John Osler, Arnold Furlong, Harold Christian.- Continuous acoustic monitoring of physiological and environmental processes in seagrass prairies with focus on photosynthesis / Jean-Pierre Hermand.- Shallow water tomography in a highly variable scenario / Cristiano Soares, Sergio M. Jesus, Emanuel Coelho.- Inversions of reflection loss measumements of a smooth water/sand interface / Marcia J. Isakson, Tracianne Neilsen, AndrewWorley.-Estimation of transmission loss and its uncertainty / Peter Gerstoft, Chen-Fen Huang, William Hodgkiss.- A forward model for geoacoustic inversion based on ray tracing and plane-wave refection coefficients / Jens M. Hovem, Hefeng Dong, Xiukun Li.- Inversion of the propeller harmonics from a light aircraft for the geoacoustic properties of marine sediments / Michael J. Buckingham, Eric M. Giddens, Fernardo Simonet.- Inversion of shallow water ambient noise data by means of differential evolution as a global search method / Dick G. Simons, Camiel van Moll, Chris H. Harrison.- Reflection Loss and Sub-bottom Profiling with Ambient Noise / Chris Harrison.- Inversion of geoacoustic model parameters using ship radiated noise / Ross N. Chapman, Reza M. Dizaji, R. Lyn Kirlin.- Matched-field processing of humpback whale song off eastern Australia / Aaron Thode, Peter Gerstoft, Melanie Guerra, M. Dale Stokes, Michael Noad, Douglas Cato.- Inversions of horizontal and vertical line array data for the estimation of geoacoustic model parameters / Dag Tollefsen, Michael J. Wilmut, Ross N. Chapman.- Issues of enrironment variability in inverse problems in ocean acoustics / David P. Knobles, M. Gray, Robert A. Koch, Adam Cook

This book provides results of analysis of typical solar events, statistical analysis, the diagnostics of energetic electrons and magnetic field, as well as the global behavior of solar flaring loops such as their contraction and expansion. It pays particular attention to analyzing solar flare loops with microwave, hard X-ray, optical and EUV emissions, as well as the theories of their radiation, and electron acceleration/transport. The results concerning influence of the pitch-angle anisotropy of non-thermal electrons on their microwave and hard X-ray emissions, new spectral behaviors in X-ray and microwave bands, and results related to the contraction of flaring loops, are widely discussed in the literature of solar physics. The book is useful for graduate students and researchers in solar and space physics.

This book presents a collection of papers on topics in the field of strategic mine planning, including orebody modeling, mine-planning optimization and the optimization of mining complexes. Elaborating on the state of the art in the field, it describes the latest technologies and related research as well as the applications of a range of related technologies in diverse industrial contexts.

This book addresses and reviews many of the still little understood questions related to the processes underlying planetary magnetic fields and their interaction with the solar wind. With focus on research carried out within the German Priority Program "PlanetMag", it also provides an overview of the most recent research in the field. Magnetic fields play an important role in making a planet habitable by protecting the environment from the solar wind. Without the geomagnetic field, for example, life on Earth as we know it would not be possible. And results from recent space missions to Mars and Venus strongly indicate that planetary magnetic fields play a vital role in preventing atmospheric erosion by the solar wind. However, very little is known about the underlying interaction between the solar wind and a planet's magnetic field. The book takes a synergistic interdisciplinary approach that combines newly developed tools for data acquisition and analysis, computer simulations of planetary interiors and dynamos, models of solar wind interaction, measurement of ancient terrestrial rocks and meteorites, and laboratory investigations.

This book is a collection of papers presented at Acoustics and Vibration of Mechanical Structures 2017 - AVMS 2017 - highlighting the current trends and state-of-the-art developments in the field. It covers a broad range of topics, such as noise and vibration control, noise and vibration generation and propagation, the effects of noise and vibration, condition monitoring and vibration testing, modeling, prediction and simulation of noise and vibration, environmental and occupational noise and vibration, noise and vibration attenuators, as well as biomechanics and bioacoustics. The book also presents analytical, numerical and experimental techniques for evaluating linear and non-linear noise and vibration problems (including strong nonlinearity). It is primarily intended for academics, researchers and professionals, as well as PhD students in various fields of the acoustics and vibration of mechanical structures.

A comprehensive guide that addresses the theory and practice of spatial audio This book provides readers with the principles and best practices in spatial audio signal processing. It describes how sound fields and their perceptual attributes are captured and analyzed within the time-frequency domain, how essential representation parameters are coded, and how such signals are efficiently reproduced for practical applications. The book is split into four parts starting with an overview of the fundamentals. It then goes on to explain the reproduction of spatial sound before offering an examination of signal-dependent spatial filtering. The book finishes with coverage of both current and future applications and the direction that spatial audio research is heading in. Parametric Time-frequency Domain Spatial Audio focuses on applications in entertainment audio, including music, home cinema, and gaming covering the capturing and reproduction of spatial sound as well as its generation, transduction, representation, transmission, and perception. This book will teach readers the tools needed for such processing, and provides an overview to existing research. It also shows recent up-to-date projects and commercial applications built on top of the systems. * Provides an in-depth presentation of the principles, past developments, state-of-the-art methods, and future research directions of spatial audio technologies * Includes contributions from leading researchers in the field * Offers MATLAB codes with selected chapters An advanced book aimed at readers who are capable of digesting mathematical expressions about digital signal processing and sound field analysis, Parametric Time-frequency Domain Spatial Audio is best suited for researchers in academia and in the audio industry.

This book is a reprint of the topical issue “UV Astronomy 2011” published by the journal Astrophysics and Space Science. Papers included in that topical issue cover four main topics of UV astronomy: stellar physics and evolution, planets, Milky Way and other galaxies and finally, UV instrumentation with an update on the current status of the main missions and technologies. This builds on the remarkable progress made in the field since the earlier topical issue: “Space Astronomy: the UV window to the Universe” which appeared in 2008.