It is widely acknowledged that a central aim of science is to achieve understanding of the world around us, and that possessing such understanding is highly important in our present-day society. But what does it mean to achieve this understanding? What precisely is scientific understanding? These are philosophical questions that have not yet received satisfactory answers. While there has been an ongoing debate about the nature of scientific explanation since Carl Hempel advanced his covering-law model in 1948, the related notion of understanding has been largely neglected, because most philosophers regarded understanding as merely a subjective by-product of objective explanations. By contrast, this book puts scientific understanding center stage. It is primarily a philosophical study, but also contains detailed historical case studies of scientific practice. In contrast to most existing studies in this area, it takes into account scientists' views and analyzes their role in scientific debate and development. The aim of Understanding Scientific Understanding is to develop and defend a philosophical theory of scientific understanding that can describe and explain the historical variation of criteria for understanding actually employed by scientists. The theory does justice to the insights of such famous physicists as Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, while bringing much-needed conceptual rigor to their intuitions. The scope of the proposed account of understanding is the natural sciences: while the detailed case studies derive from physics, examples from other sciences are presented to illustrate its wider validity.

This is a popular science book on physics, astronomy and related sciences, designed for a wider audience.It is written as a guide for a tour along the ladder of scales from the Universe as a whole to the microcosm. The main scales are the Universe, Solar System, the Earth, normal human size, atoms, and elementary particles. Exotic objects such as black holes and neutron stars are also considered, as well as the foundations of the scientific method, its connection with philosophy, and a story about how modern science arose. This book contains many useful illustrations.The basic concepts of physics are discussed: forces, fields, quantum phenomena, structure of matter, phase transitions, atoms, molecules, dark matter, and dark energy. And also galaxies, supernova explosions, the Sun, planets, exoplanets, black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, the possibility of space expansion of mankind. The book also discusses phenomena like rainbow, mirages, lightning, climate on Earth, as well as practical applications like nuclear and thermonuclear reactors, superconductivity and helium-3 mining on the Moon. This book has included the latest results.

This book is the first volume in a two-volume compilation on controlled/living radical polymerization. It combines all important aspects of controlled radical polymerization: from synthetic procedures, to rational selection of reaction components, to understanding of the reaction mechanisms, to materials and applications.
This book is focused on recent progress in the rapidly developing field of controlled/living radical polymerization. It is a sequel to ACS Symposium Series 685, 768, 854, 944, 1023, and 1024. Volume 1100 deals with the mechanistic aspects of controlled radical polymerization and describes the recent advances in the most important techniques, whereas Volume 1101 contains chapters on new materials prepared by controlled radical polymerization as well as applications of these materials.

Today, law enforcement requires actionable and real-time intelligence; 24 hours a day, seven days a week to help respond to cases efficiently. When evidence is lacking in a case, law enforcement officers are often times left to rely on eyewitness descriptions. In order to quickly disseminate facial composites to news outlets and social media, law enforcement needs to rely on every tool available; including traditional forensic artists and advanced facial composite software. Creating Digital Faces for Law Enforcement provides the proper foundation for obtaining key information needed to create effective facial composites. There are two main methods to create a facial composite, first through traditional forensic art techniques and second by using commercially developed facial composite software. Traditional forensic art has advanced from pen and paper to more enhanced digital tools. This text reviews the development of digital tools used by the forensic artist describing each tool in detail. Creating Digital Faces for Law Enforcement is the first text of its kind to address the creation of digital sketches for forensic artists and software-driven sketches for non-artist/technicians.

Schools and universities educate (mostly young) people, to equip them to deal with the future as it unfolds from the present. The question - whether these schools and universities are fit for that purpose - has always been relevant, even in slow-paced times of relative stability, where the future seems predictable as a simple extension of the past.Now that the future is not predictable anymore. Slow-paced times have gone. The relative stability in which universities developed and educated successive generations is gone. The question whether universities are fit for purpose is now more relevant than ever.In this book, ten leading thinkers and eighteen students from different continents, countries and cultures present their views on futures of universities and whether present-day universities are fit for purpose. It is an exploration, meant to inform, inspire and crystallize discussions.

This is a set of lecture notes that developed out of courses on the lambda calculus that the author taught at the University of Ottawa in 2001 and at Dalhousie University in 2007 and 2013. Topics covered in these notes include the untyped lambda calculus, the Church-Rosser theorem, combinatory algebras, the simply-typed lambda calculus, the Curry-Howard isomorphism, weak and strong normalization, polymorphism, type inference, denotational semantics, complete partial orders, and the language PCF.

Evolution of Knowledge Science: Myth to Medicine: Intelligent Internet-Based Humanist Machines explains how to design and build the next generation of intelligent machines that solve social and environmental problems in a systematic, coherent, and optimal fashion. The book brings together principles from computer and communication sciences, electrical engineering, mathematics, physics, social sciences, and more to describe computer systems that deal with knowledge, its representation, and how to deal with knowledge centric objects. Readers will learn new tools and techniques to measure, enhance, and optimize artificial intelligence strategies for efficiently searching through vast knowledge bases, as well as how to ensure the security of information in open, easily accessible, and fast digital networks. Author Syed Ahamed joins the basic concepts from various disciplines to describe a robust and coherent knowledge sciences discipline that provides readers with tools, units, and measures to evaluate the flow of knowledge during course work or their research. He offers a unique academic and industrial perspective of the concurrent dynamic changes in computer and communication industries based upon his research. The author has experience both in industry and in teaching graduate level telecommunications and network architecture courses, particularly those dealing with applications of networks in education.

Essentials of Medicolegal Death Investigation uses a unique approach by combining medical issues, injury patterns, and investigative procedures to provide the reader with the basic fundamentals for a death investigation. The text introduces the reader to death investigation, common causes of death, and very specific types of death, including blunt-force injuries, gunshot wounds, and toxicology deaths. Each section includes case studies with written and visual descriptions. Written by a well-known and experienced medicolegal death investigator, the book fills a void in medicolegal literature for both students and professionals alike.