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.

Special Relativity, Electrodynamics, and General Relativity: From Newton to Einstein is intended to teach students of physics, astrophysics, astronomy, and cosmology how to think about special and general relativity in a fundamental but accessible way. Designed to render any reader a "master of relativity," all material on the subject is comprehensible and derivable from first principles. The book emphasizes problem solving, contains abundant problem sets, and is conveniently organized to meet the needs of both student and instructor.

The Audio Expert is a comprehensive reference book covering all aspects of audio, with both practical and theoretical explanations. It is written for people who want to understand audio at the deepest, most technical level, but without needing an engineering degree. The Audio Expert explains how audio really works in much more depth than usual, using common sense plain-English explanations and mechanical analogies, with minimal math. It uses an easy to read conversational tone, and includes more than 400 figures and photos to augment the printed text. However, this book goes beyond merely explaining how audio works. It brings together the concepts of audio, aural perception, musical instrument physics, acoustics, and basic electronics, showing how they're intimately related. It also describes in great detail many practices and techniques used by recording and mixing engineers, including video production and computers. This book is meant for intermediate to advanced recording engineers and audiophiles who want to become experts. There's plenty for beginners too. One unique feature is explaining how audio devices such as equalizers, compressors, and A/D converters work internally, and how they're spec'd and tested, rather than merely describing how to use them. There's plenty of myth-busting and consumerism too. The book doesn't tell readers what brand power amplifier to buy, but it explains in great detail what defines a good amplifier so people can choose a first-rate model wisely without over-paying. Most explanations throughout the book are platform-agnostic, applying equally to Windows and Mac computers, and to most software and hardware. Many audio and video examples are included to enhance the written text. The new edition offers many updates and improvements throughout. New sections on coding an equalizer, comparing microphone preamps, testing results of loudspeaker isolation devices, new online video content on music theory, plus incorporated chapters on MIDI basics, computers, video production, plus new myth-busters, and much more!

Bio-Geotechnologies for Mine Site Rehabilitation deals with the biological, physical, chemical, and engineering approaches necessary for the reclamation of mine waste. As mining has negative effects on natural resources and deteriorates the quality of the surrounding environment, this book provides coverage across different types of mining industries, which are currently creating industrial deserts overloaded with technogenic waste. The book offers cost-effective strategies and approaches for contaminated sites, along with remediation and rehabilitation methods for contaminated soils and waste dumps. It is an essential resource for students and academics, but is also ideal for applied professionals in environmental geology, mineral geologists, biotechnologists and policymakers.

This open access book offers a timely guide to challenges and current practices to permanently plug and abandon hydrocarbon wells. With a focus on offshore North Sea, it analyzes the process of plug and abandonment of hydrocarbon wells through the establishment of permanent well barriers. It provides the reader with extensive knowledge on the type of barriers, their functioning and verification. It then discusses plug and abandonment methodologies, analyzing different types of permanent plugging materials. Last, it describes some tests for verifying the integrity and functionality of installed permanent barriers. The book offers a comprehensive reference guide to well plugging and abandonment (P&A) and well integrity testing. The book also presents new technologies that have been proposed to be used in plugging and abandoning of wells, which might be game-changing technologies, but they are still in laboratory or testing level. Given its scope, it addresses students and researchers in both academia and industry. It also provides information for engineers who work in petroleum industry and should be familiarized with P&A of hydrocarbon wells to reduce the time of P&A by considering it during well planning and construction.

This book consists of selected and peer-reviewed papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Vibration Problems (ICOVP 2017). The topics covered in this book include different structural vibration problems such as dynamics and stability under normal and seismic loading, and wave propagation. The book also discusses different materials such as composite, piezoelectric, and functionally graded materials for improving the stiffness and damping properties of structures. The contents of this book can be useful for beginners, researchers and professionals interested in structural vibration and other allied fields.

Africa faces numerous challenges relating to good governance due to its vast and diverse landscape, as well as its history. This book explores the role of space-based applications in supporting African good governance by strengthening civil society, bolstering democratic processes and advancing socio-economic development. The increased use of such applications can accelerate Africa's progress towards the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the African Union's Agenda 2063 aspirations This book examines key challenges facing governance within African to provide an accurate account of the current African context. It discusses specific examples of e-governance and digital solutions that leverage space-based technologies and have been successfully implemented in both the developed and developing world. In the context of the numerous satellite constellations being deployed to provide affordable Internet connectivity globally, it examines the major actors in this sector and presents additional governance solutions based on remote sensing and Earth observation data. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to professionals and students in the fields of development, governance and space studies.

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 is an introduction to basic music technology, including acoustics for sound production and analysis, Fourier, frequency modulation, wavelets, and physical modeling and a classification of musical instruments and sound spaces for tuning and counterpoint. The acoustical theory is applied to its implementation in analogue and digital technology, including a detailed discussion of Fast Fourier Transform and MP3 compression. Beyond acoustics, the book discusses important symbolic sound event representation and software as typically realized by MIDI and denotator formalisms. The concluding chapters deal with globalization of music on the Internet, referring to iTunes, Spotify and similar environments. The book will be valuable for students of music, music informatics, and sound engineering.

Robotic marine vessels can be used for a wide range of purposes, including defence, marine science, offshore energy and hydrographic surveys, and environmental surveys and protection. Such vessels need to meet a variety of criteria: they must be able to operate in salt water, and to communicate and be controlled over large distances, even when submerged or in inclement weather. Further challenges include 3D navigation of individual vehicles, groups or squadrons. This book covers the current state of research in navigation, modelling and control of marine autonomous vehicles, and deals with various related topics, including collision avoidance, communication, and a range of applications. It provides valuable insights for an audience of researchers, academics and postgraduate students interested in autonomous marine vessels, robotics, and electrical and automobile engineering.

This book presents the proceedings of CIDIN and COPINAVAL. The papers present the development of the navy, maritime and riverine industry, contributing to the scientific and technological progress and development in the sector. In 2019 the congresses occurred in Cartagena, Colombia, a reference for science and technology innovation for Latin-American naval industry.

This book addresses the nature of sound, focusing on the characteristics of sound waves in the context of time structures. This time domain approach provides an informative and intuitively understandable description of various acoustic topics such as sound waves travelling in an acoustic tube or in other media where spectral or modal analysis can be intensively performed. Starting from the introductory topic of sinusoidal waves, it discusses the formal relationship between the time and frequency domains, summarizing the fundamental notions of Fourier or z-transformations and linear systems theory, along with interesting examples from acoustical research. The books novel approach is of interest to research engineers and scientists In particular, the expressions concerning waveforms including the impulse responses are important for audio engineers who are familiar with digital signal analysis. Every chapter includes simple exercises designed to be solved without the need for a computer. Thus they help reconfirm the fundamental ideas and notions present in every chapter. The book is self-contained and concise, and requires only basic knowledge of acoustics and signal processing, making it valuable as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate university courses.

Advances in Coal Mine Ground Control is a comprehensive text covering all recent advances in coal mine ground control, the most advanced subsystem of the rapidly advancing coal mining systems. This complete resource is written by Professor Syd Peng who, alongside leading experts from the world's major coal producing countries, has contributed extensively to the understanding of subsidence from underground coal mining, longwall operations and ground control in underground mines. Syd and the team of contributors bring together key advances from the past decade into one comprehensive resource that is accessible to all those studying, researching and working in the mining industry. This book is an essential text for undergraduate and graduate students of mining engineering and related programs, and a must-have reference for mining, civil and geotechnical engineers.