Prior to the 1920s it was generally thought, with a few exceptions, that our galaxy, the Milky Way, was the entire universe. Based on the work of Henrietta Leavitt with Cepheid variables, astronomer Edwin Hubble was able to determine that others had to lie outside our own. This books looks at 60 of those that possess some unusual qualities that make them of particular interest, from supermassive black holes and colliding galaxies to powerful radio sources.

This volume explores how ionic liquids are used in different areas of biotechnology. It also provides insights on the interaction of ionic liquids with biomolecules and biomaterials. Ionic liquids have become essential players in the fields of synthesis, catalysis, extraction and electrochemistry, and their unique properties have opened a wide range of applications in biotechnology. Readers will discover diverse examples of the application of ionic liquids as solvents for biomaterials extraction and pretreatment, in enzymatic and whole cell catalysed reaction, and as activation agents for biocatalysis. Particular attention is given to the biologically functionalized ionic liquids employed in medical and pharmaceutical applications. Although ionic liquids are considered "green solvents", the contributing authors will also explore their environmental impact when applied to biotechnology. Chemical, biological and medical scientists interested in ionic liquids and biotechnology will find this work instructive and informative.

This book presents an introduction to viscoelasticity, in particular, to the theories of dilute polymer solutions and dilute suspensions of rigid particles in viscous and incompressible fluids. These theories are important, not just because they apply to practical problems of industrial interest, but because they form a solid theoretical base upon which mathematical techniques can be built, from which more complex theories can be constructed, to better mimic material behaviour. The emphasis of this book is not on the voluminous current topical research, but on the necessary tools to understand viscoelasticity. This is a compact book for a first year graduate course in viscoelasticity and modelling of viscoelastic multiphase fluids. The Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) is introduced as a particle-based method, relevant in modelling of complex-structured fluids. All the basic ideas in DPD are reviewed. The third edition has been updated and expanded with new results in the meso-scale modelling, links between the fluid modelling to its physical parameters and new matlab programs illustrating the modelling. Particle-based modelling techniques for complex-structure fluids are added together with some sample programs. A solution manual to the problems is included.

Ruth Glasner presents an illuminating reappraisal of Averroes' physics. Glasner is the first scholar to base her interpretation on the full range of Averroes' writings, including texts that are extant only in Hebrew manuscripts and have not been hitherto studied. She reveals that Averroes changed his interpretation of the basic notions of physics - the structure of corporeal reality and the definition of motion - more than once. After many hesitations he offers a bold new interpretation of physics which Glasner calls 'Aristotelian atomism'. Ideas that are usually ascribed to scholastic scholars, and others that were traced back to Averroes but only in a very general form, are shown not only to have originated with him, but to have been fully developed by him into a comprehensive and systematic physical system. Unlike earlier Greek or Muslim atomistic systems, Averroes' Aristotelian atomism endeavours to be fully scientific, by Aristotelian standards, and still to provide a basis for an indeterministic natural philosophy. Commonly known as 'the commentator' and usually considered to be a faithful follower of Aristotle, Averroes is revealed in his commentaries on the Physics to be an original and sophisticated philosopher.

How can one determine the physical properties of the medium or the geometrical properties of the domain by observing electromagnetic waves? To answer this fundamental problem in mathematics and physics, this book leads the reader to the frontier of inverse scattering theory for electromagnetism.The first three chapters, written comprehensively, can be used as a textbook for undergraduate students. Beginning with elementary vector calculus, this book provides fundamental results for wave equations and Helmholtz equations, and summarizes the potential theory. It also explains the cohomology theory in an easy and straightforward way, which is an essential part of electromagnetism related to geometry. It then describes the scattering theory for the Maxwell equation by the time-dependent method and also by the stationary method in a concise, but almost self-contained manner. Based on these preliminary results, the book proceeds to the inverse problem for the Maxwell equation.The chapters for the potential theory and elementary cohomology theory are good introduction to graduate students. The results in the last chapter on the inverse scattering for the medium and the determination of Betti numbers are new, and will give a current scope for the inverse spectral problem on non-compact manifolds. It will be useful for young researchers who are interested in this field and trying to find new problems.

Today, air-to-surface vessel (ASV) radars, or more generally airborne maritime surveillance radars, are installed on maritime reconnaissance aircraft for long-range detection, tracking and classification of surface ships (ASuW-anti-surface warfare) and for hunting submarines (ASW-anti-submarine warfare). Such radars were first developed in the UK during WWII as part of the response to the threat to shipping from German U-boats. This book describes the ASV radars developed in the UK and used by RAF Coastal Command during WWII for long-range maritime surveillance.

In the field of particle and astrophysics one of the major unresolved problems is to understand the nature and properties of dark matter, which constitutes almost 80% of the matter content of the universe. This book gives a pedagogical introduction to the field of dark matter in general, and in particular to the model building perspective. This book focuses on teaching the basic tools for model building of dark matter, and it aims to motivate the reader to propose a new dark matter model.

Containing an extensive illustration of the use of finite difference method in solving boundary value problem numerically, a wide class of differential equations have been numerically solved in this book.

In recent decades, computing has undergone rapid evolutions and ground breaking developments that affect almost every sector across the world. The developments of quantum computing and quantum cryptography are similarly revolutionizing computing and security with lasting impacts and implications. Quantum computing and quantum cryptography will pave the path for new opportunities for the future of computing. Quantum Computing and Quantum Cryptography in Future Computers discusses quantum computing and quantum cryptography principles and their impact on future computers. It includes coverage of the role of quantum computing to overcome the issues of current security methods. It also discusses the application of quantum computing in various areas like security, blockchain and more. Covering topics such as attack detection, machine learning, and quantum key distribution, this premier reference source is an ideal resource for developers, engineers, practitioners, security experts, students and educators of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

This book provides a comprehensive review of complex networks from three different domains, presents novel methods for analyzing them, and highlights applications with accompanying case studies. Special emphasis is placed on three specific kinds of complex networks of high technological and scientific importance: software networks extracted from the source code of computer programs, ontology networks describing semantic web ontologies, and co-authorship networks reflecting collaboration in science. The book is primarily intended for researchers, teachers and students interested in complex networks and network data analysis. However, it will also be valuable for researchers dealing with software engineering, ontology engineering and scientometrics, as it demonstrates how complex network analysis can be used to address important research issues in these three disciplines.

This book features a selection of articles based on the XXXV Bialowieza Workshop on Geometric Methods in Physics, 2016. The series of Bialowieza workshops, attended by a community of experts at the crossroads of mathematics and physics, is a major annual event in the field. The works in this book, based on presentations given at the workshop, are previously unpublished, at the cutting edge of current research, typically grounded in geometry and analysis, and with applications to classical and quantum physics. In 2016 the special session "Integrability and Geometry" in particular attracted pioneers and leading specialists in the field. Traditionally, the Bialowieza Workshop is followed by a School on Geometry and Physics, for advanced graduate students and early-career researchers, and the book also includes extended abstracts of the lecture series.

Interesting to anybody who wants to unearth the real sense and nature of solitary waves, and the relevant mathematical tools to use for effective investigation and analysis of these phenomena, the text focuses on numerical analysis of solitons. The integrability and multidimensionality of solitons is inextricably bound up with the approach of investigation and, as the more physical systems are not fully integrable, even in one dimension, numerical analysis is the main tool to investigate and understand the pertinent physical mechanisms.

Quantum mechanics is arguably one of the most successful scientific theories ever and its applications to chemistry, optics, and information theory are innumerable. This book provides the reader with a rigorous treatment of the main mathematical tools from harmonic analysis which play an essential role in the modern formulation of quantum mechanics. This allows us at the same time to suggest some new ideas and methods, with a special focus on topics such as the Wigner phase space formalism and its applications to the theory of the density operator and its entanglement properties. This book can be used with profit by advanced undergraduate students in mathematics and physics, as well as by confirmed researchers.

Electric glow discharges (glows) can be found almost everywhere, from atmospheric electricity to modern plasma technologies, and have long been the object of research. The main purpose of this book is to provide simple illustrations of the basic physical mechanisms and principles that determine the properties of electric glow discharges. It should enable readers to successfully participate in scientific and technical progress.

This book presents simple interdisciplinary stochastic models meant as a gentle introduction to the field of non-equilibrium statistical physics. It focuses on the analysis of two-state models with cooperative effects and explores a variety of mathematical techniques to solve the master equations that govern these models. The models discussed are at the confluence of nanophysics, biology, mathematics and the social science, and they provide a pedagogical path toward understanding the complex dynamics of particle self-assembly with the tools of statistical physics.

Physics and Literature is a unique collaboration between physicists, literary scholars, and philosophers, the first collection of essays to examine together how science and literature, beneath their practical differences, share core dimensions - forms of questioning, thinking, discovering and communicating insights.This book advances an in-depth exploration of relations between physics and literature from both perspectives. It turns around the tendency to discuss relations between literature and science in one-sided and polarizing ways. The collection is the result of the inaugural conference of ELINAS, the Erlangen Center for Literature and Natural Science, an initiative dedicated to building bridges between literary and scientific research. ELINAS revitalizes discussion of science-literature interconnections with new topics, ideas and angles, by organizing genuine dialogue among participants across disciplinary lines. The essays explore how scientific thought and practices are conditioned by narrative and genre, fiction, models and metaphors, and how science in turn feeds into the meaning-making of literary and philosophical texts. These interdisciplinary encounters enrich reflections on epistemology, cognition and aesthetics.

Volume 10 of the Handbook is composed of topical review articles written by leading authorities. In each of these articles an extensive description is given in graphical as well as in tabular form, much emphasis being placed on the discussion of the experimental material in the framework of physics, chemistry and materials science.

Of all the new superconducting materials investigated having a more than three times highter transition temperature, the cuprates are the most prominent. Although originally intended as novel superconducting compounds, these materials have opened a new field of magnetism that permits detailed studies of the propagation of magnetic order as a function of separation and crystallographic orientation as well as studies of the interplay of strain and magnetic properties. Chapter one presents a detailed account of acheivements in this field.

Further chapters report on the progress being made in research areas that have been dealt with in previous volumes of the Handbook. These include the group of soft magnetic materials in which supplementary results dealing with nanocrystalline alloys are highlighted; the magnetic properties of intermetallic compounds in which rare earth elements are combined with nonmagnetic elements; progress in the development in hard magnetic materials, with the emphasis on novel developments in the manufacturing routes and the physical principles on which these new developments are based.

This thesis provides new insights into the seemingly anomalous ubiquity of lithium-rich red giant stars. The theory of stellar evolution, one of the most successful models of modern astrophysics, predicts that red giant stars should display negligible levels of lithium (Li) on their surfaces. However, Li-rich giants, defined as those showing more than three times the Li content of the Sun, are found everywhere astronomers look in apparent defiance of established theory. The author addresses this problem, analyzing the different possible explanations for such an anomaly, which include interaction with a binary companion, the production of Li in the interior of the star with its subsequent transport to stellar exteriors, and the stellar interaction with planets. The author focuses on this last possibility, where the Li enrichment may be due to the ingestion of planets or brown dwarfs as the stars in question grew in size while becoming giants. She shows that this process is indeed able to explain an important fraction of giants with Li levels above the three times solar threshold, but that some other mechanism is needed to explain the remaining fraction. While this is an important discovery in its own right, the result that makes this thesis groundbreaking is its demonstration that the threshold between Li-normal and Li-rich is mass dependent rather than a fixed proportion of the Sun's content. This corrects a fundamental misapprehension of the phenomenon and opens up a new framework in which to understand and solve the problem. Finally, the author presents interesting observational applications and samples with which to test this new approach to the problem of Li enrichment in giants.

"A rich tightly woven tapestry of synchronicities; a true larger than life panoramic epic; an anthology of North Beach San Francisco writers created in "Super Vision" by Jack Sarfatti, the visionary physicist, who made "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" possible."

Progress in Optics, Volume 63 is the latest release in a series that presents an overview of the state-of-the-art in optics research. In this update, readers will find timely chapters on measuring polarization states, quantum measurement, optical trapping, spatial/spectral correspondence for mono/poly chromatic light diffraction, and photonic fractional signal processing, amongst other timely topics.