The model investigated in this work, a particular cellular automaton with stochastic evolution, was introduced as the simplest case of self-organized-criticality, that is, a dynamical system which shows algebraic long-range correlations without any tuning of parameters. The author derives exact results which are potentially also interesting outside the area of critical phenomena. Exact means also site-by-site and not only ensemble average or coarse graining. Very complex and amazingly beautiful periodic patterns are often generated by the dynamics involved, especially in deterministic protocols in which the sand is added at chosen sites. For example, the author studies the appearance of allometric structures, that is, patterns which grow in the same way in their whole body, and not only near their boundaries, as commonly occurs. The local conservation laws which govern the evolution of these patterns are also presented. This work has already attracted interest, not only in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, but also in mathematics, both in probability and in combinatorics. There are also interesting connections with number theory. Lastly, it also poses new questions about an old subject. As such, it will be of interest to computer practitioners, demonstrating the simplicity with which charming patterns can be obtained, as well as to researchers working in many other areas.

First published in 1901, and originally delivered as lectures in the Philosophical Hall in Leeds earlier that year, this book discusses the practical and historical problems faced by those wishing to measure heat energy. Griffiths, who dealt with the problem extensively during his career, gives a brief historical survey of this problem and details various experiments performed by scientists such as Joule, Rowland and Regnault, as well as the application of such findings in both a scientific and industrial setting. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of science and scientific education.

This book is an introduction to contemporary plasma physics that discusses the most relevant recent advances in the field and covers a careful choice of applications to various branches of astrophysics and space science. The purpose of the book is to allow the student to master the basic concepts of plasma physics and to bring him or her up to date in a number of relevant areas of current research. Topics covered include orbit theory, kinetic theory, fluid models, magnetohydrodynamics, MHD turbulence, instabilities, discontinuities, and magnetic reconnection. Some prior knowledge of classical physics is required, in particular fluid mechanics, statistical physics, and electrodynamics. The mathematical developments are self-contained and explicitly detailed in the text. A number of exercises are provided at the end of each chapter, together with suggestions and solutions.

This book extends the development of the thermodynamic theory of specific intermolecular interactions to element-organic and specific organometallic compounds. The fundamentals of an unconventional approach to the theory of H-bonding and specific interactions are formulated, based on a concept of pentacoordinate carbon atoms. Prof. Baev has introduced the theory already in his successful books "Specific Intermolecular Interactions of Organic Compounds" and "Specific Intermolecular Interactions of Nitrogenated and Bioorganic Compounds". In this book he also demonstrates it for element organic and specific organometallic compounds, a class of substances which is of great importance in synthetic chemistry and catalysis. Furthermore, organic compound classes, that have not been treated in the previous books, are included. New types of hydrogen bonds and specific interactions are substantiated and their energies are determined on the basis of the developed methodology. In this way, the influence of the molecular structure on the energy and on intermolecular interactions can be discussed for these particular compound classes.

In this book basic and some more advanced thermodynamics and phase as well as stability diagrams relevant for diffusion studies are introduced. Following, Fick's laws of diffusion, atomic mechanisms, interdiffusion, intrinsic diffusion, tracer diffusion and the Kirkendall effect are discussed. Short circuit diffusion is explained in detail with an emphasis on grain boundary diffusion. Recent advances in the area of interdiffusion will be introduced. Interdiffusion in multi-component systems is also explained. Many practical examples will be given, such that researches working in this area can learn the practical evaluation of various diffusion parameters from experimental results. Large number of illustrations and experimental results are used to explain the subject. This book will be appealing for students, academicians, engineers and researchers in academic institutions, industry research and development laboratories.

This book presents the theory of gas discharge plasmas in a didactical way. It explains the processes in gas discharge plasmas. A gas discharge plasma is an ionized gas which is supported by an external electric field. Therefore its parameters are determined by processes in it. The properties of a gas discharge plasma depend on its gas component, types of external fields, their geometry and regimes of gas discharge. Fundamentals of a gas discharge plasma include elementary, radiative and transport processes which are included in its kinetics influence. They are represented in this book together with the analysis of simple gas discharges. These general principles are applied to stationary gas discharge plasmas of helium and argon. The analysis of such plasmas under certain conditions is theoretically determined by numerical plasma parameters for given regimes and conditions.

This textbook offers an advanced undergraduate or initial graduate level introduction to topics such as kinetic theory, equilibrium statistical mechanics and the theory of fluctuations from a modern perspective. The aim is to provide the reader with the necessary tools of probability theory and thermodynamics (especially the thermodynamic potentials) to enable subsequent study at advanced graduate level. At the same time, the book offers a bird's eye view on arguments that are often disregarded in the main curriculum courses. Further features include a focus on the interdisciplinary nature of the subject and in-depth discussion of alternative interpretations of the concept of entropy. While some familiarity with basic concepts of thermodynamics and probability theory is assumed, this does not extend beyond what is commonly obtained in basic undergraduate curriculum courses.

In recent years the interaction between dynamical systems theory and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics has been enormous. The discovery of fluctuation theorems as a fundamental structure common to almost all non-equilibrium systems, and the connections with the free energy calculation methods of Jarzynski and Crooks, have excited both theorists and experimentalists. This graduate-level book charts the development and theoretical analysis of molecular dynamics as applied to equilibrium and non-equilibrium systems. Designed for both researchers in the field and graduate students of physics, it connects molecular dynamics simulation with the mathematical theory to understand non-equilibrium steady states. It also provides a link between the atomic, nano, and macro worlds. The book ends with an introduction to the use of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to justify a thermodynamic treatment of non-equilibrium steady states, and gives a direction to further avenues of exploration.

This book introduces the detonation phenomenon in explosives. It is ideal for engineers and graduate students with a background in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. The material is mostly qualitative, aiming to illustrate the physical aspects of the phenomenon. Classical idealized theories of detonation waves are presented first. These permit detonation speed, gas properties ahead of and behind the detonation wave, and the distribution of fluid properties within the detonation wave itself to be determined. Subsequent chapters describe in detail the real unstable structure of a detonation wave. One-, two-, and three-dimensional computer simulations are presented along with experimental results using various experimental techniques. The important effects of confinement and boundary conditions and their influence on the propagation of a detonation are also discussed. The final chapters cover the various ways detonation waves can be formed and provide a review of the outstanding problems and future directions in detonation research.

Temperature and Humidity Independent Control (THIC) of Air-conditioning System focuses on temperature and humidity independent control (THIC) systems, which represents a new concept and new approach for indoor environmental control. This book presents the main components of the THIC systems, including dehumidification devices, high-temperature cooling devices and indoor terminal devices. Other relevant issues, such as operation and control strategy and case studies, are also included. This book is intended for air-conditioning system designers and engineers as well as researchers working with indoor environments. Xiaohua Liu is an associate professor at the Building Energy Research Center, Tsinghua University, China. Yi Jiang is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the director of the Building Energy Research Center, Tsinghua University, China and the director of the China-USA Joint Research Center on Clean Energy. Tao Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate at the Building Energy Research Center, Tsinghua University, China.

This textbook offers original and new approaches to the teaching of electrochemical concepts, principles and applications. Throughout the text the authors provide a balanced coverage of the thermodynamic and kinetic processes at the heart of electrochemical systems. The first half of the book outlines fundamental concepts appropriate to undergraduate students and the second half gives an in-depth account of electrochemical systems suitable for experienced scientists and course lecturers. Concepts are clearly explained and mathematical treatments are kept to a minimum or reported in appendices. This book features: - Questions and answers for self-assessment - Basic and advanced level numerical descriptions - Illustrated electrochemistry applications This book is accessible to both novice and experienced electrochemists and supports a deep understanding of the fundamental principles and laws of electrochemistry.

The study of thermodynamics is often limited to classical thermodynamics where minimal laws and concepts lead to a wealth of equations and applications. The resultant equations best describe systems at equilibrium with no temporal or s- tial parameters. The equations do, however, often provide accurate descriptions for systems close to equilibrium. . Statistical thermodynamics produces the same equilibrium information starting with the microscopic properties of the atoms or molecules in the system that correlates with the results from macroscopic classical thermodynamics. Because both these disciplines develop a wealth of information from a few starting postulates, e. g. , the laws of thermodyamics, they are often introduced as independent disciplines. However, the concepts and techniques dev- oped for these disciplines are extremely useful in many other disciplines. This book is intended to provide an introduction to these disciplines while revealing the connections between them. Chemical kinetics uses the statistics and probabilities developed for statistical thermodynamics to explain the evolution of a system to equilibrium. Irreversible thermodynamics, which is developed from the equations of classical thermodyn- ics, centers on distance-dependent forces, and time-dependent ?uxes. The force ?ux equations of irreversible thermodynamics lead are generated from the intensive and extensive variables of classical thermodynamics. These force ?ux equations lead, in turn, to transport equations such as Fick's ?rst law of diffusion and the Nernst Planck equation for electrochemical transport. The book illustrates the concepts using some simple examples.

Time asymmetric phenomena are successfully predicted by statistical mechanics. Yet the foundations of this theory are surprisingly shaky. Its explanation for the ease of mixing milk with coffee is incomplete, and even implies that un-mixing them should be just as easy. In this book the authors develop a new conceptual foundation for statistical mechanics that addresses this difficulty. Explaining the notions of macrostates, probability, measurement, memory, and the arrow of time in statistical mechanics, they reach the startling conclusion that Maxwell's Demon, the famous perpetuum mobile, is consistent with the fundamental physical laws. Mathematical treatments are avoided where possible, and instead the authors use novel diagrams to illustrate the text. This is a fascinating book for graduate students and researchers interested in the foundations and philosophy of physics.

This dissertation focuses on the calculation of transport coefficients in the matter created in a relativistic heavy-ion collision after chemical freeze-out. This matter can be well approximated using a pion gas out of equilibrium. We describe the theoretical framework needed to obtain the shear and bulk viscosities, the thermal and electrical conductivities and the flavor diffusion coefficients of a meson gas at low temperatures. To describe the interactions of the degrees of freedom, we use effective field theories with chiral and heavy quark symmetries. We subsequently introduce the unitarization methods in order to obtain a scattering amplitude that satisfies the unitarity condition exactly, then go on to calculate the transport properties of the low-temperature phase of quantum chromodynamics - the hadronic medium - which can be used in hydrodynamic simulations of a relativistic heavy-ion collision and its subsequent evolution. We show that the shear viscosity over entropy density exhibits a minimum in a phase transition by studying this coefficient in atomic Argon (around the liquid-gas phase transition) and in the linear sigma model in the limit of a large number of scalar fields (which presents a chiral phase transition). Finally, we provide an experimental method for estimating the bulk viscosity in relativistic heavy-ion collisions by performing correlations of the fluctuating components of the stress-energy tensor.

One of the most notable features of nanometer scale CMOS technology is the increasing magnitude of variability of the key device parameters affecting performance of integrated circuits. The growth of variability can be attributed to multiple factors, including the difficulty of manufacturing control, the emergence of new systematic variation-generating mechanisms, and most importantly, the increase in atomic-scale randomness, where device operation must be described as a stochastic process. In addition to wide-sense stationary stochastic device variability and temperature variation, existence of non-stationary stochastic electrical noise associated with fundamental processes in integrated-circuit devices represents an elementary limit on the performance of electronic circuits. In an attempt to address these issues, Stochastic Process Variation in Deep-Submicron CMOS: Circuits and Algorithms offers unique combination of mathematical treatment of random process variation, electrical noise and temperature and necessary circuit realizations for on-chip monitoring and performance calibration. The associated problems are addressed at various abstraction levels, i.e. circuit level, architecture level and system level. It therefore provides a broad view on the various solutions that have to be used and their possible combination in very effective complementary techniques for both analog/mixed-signal and digital circuits. The feasibility of the described algorithms and built-in circuitry has been verified by measurements from the silicon prototypes fabricated in standard 90 nm and 65 nm CMOS technology.

The study of nonlinear localized excitations is a long-standing challenge for research in basic and applied science, as well as engineering, due to their importance in understanding and predicting phenomena arising in nonlinear and complex systems, but also due to their potential for the development and design of novel applications. This volume is a compilation of chapters representing the current state-of-the-art on the field of localized excitations and their role in the dynamics of complex physical systems.

This book presents recent advances, new ideas and novel techniques related to the field of nonlinear dynamics, including localized pattern formation, self-organization and chaos. Various natural systems ranging from nonlinear optics to mechanics, fluids and magnetic are considered. The aim of this book is to gather specialists from these various fields of research to promote cross-fertilization and transfer of knowledge between these active research areas. In particular, nonlinear optics and laser physics constitute an important part in this issue due to the potential applications for all-optical control of light, optical storage, and information processing. Other possible applications include the generation of ultra-short pulses using all-fiber cavities.

Complex Nonlinearity: Chaos, Phase Transitions, Topology Change and Path Integrals is a book about prediction & control of general nonlinear and chaotic dynamics of high-dimensional complex systems of various physical and non-physical nature and their underpinning geometro-topological change. The book starts with a textbook-like expose on nonlinear dynamics, attractors and chaos, both temporal and spatio-temporal, including modern techniques of chaos-control. Chapter 2 turns to the edge of chaos, in the form of phase transitions (equilibrium and non-equilibrium, oscillatory, fractal and noise-induced), as well as the related field of synergetics. While the natural stage for linear dynamics comprises of flat, Euclidean geometry (with the corresponding calculation tools from linear algebra and analysis), the natural stage for nonlinear dynamics is curved, Riemannian geometry (with the corresponding tools from nonlinear, tensor algebra and analysis). The extreme nonlinearity - chaos - corresponds to the topology change of this curved geometrical stage, usually called configuration manifold. Chapter 3 elaborates on geometry and topology change in relation with complex nonlinearity and chaos. Chapter 4 develops general nonlinear dynamics, continuous and discrete, deterministic and stochastic, in the unique form of path integrals and their action-amplitude formalism. This most natural framework for representing both phase transitions and topology change starts with Feynman's sum over histories, to be quickly generalized into the sum over geometries and topologies. The last Chapter puts all the previously developed techniques together and presents the unified form of complex nonlinearity. Here we have chaos, phase transitions, geometrical dynamics and topology change, all working together in the form of path integrals. The objective of this book is to provide a serious reader with a serious scientific tool that will enable them to actually perform a competitive research in modern complex nonlinearity. It includes a comprehensive bibliography on the subject and a detailed index. Target readership includes all researchers and students of complex nonlinear systems (in physics, mathematics, engineering, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, economics, medicine, etc.), working both in industry/clinics and academia.

This book presents a first generation of artificial brains, using vision as sample application. An object recognition system is built, using neurons and synapses as exclusive building elements. The system contains a feature pyramid with 8 orientations and 5 resolution levels for 1000 objects and networks for binding of features into objects. This vision system can recognize objects robustly in the presence of changes in illumination, deformation, distance and pose (as long as object components remain visible). The neuro-synaptic network owes its functional power to the introduction of rapidly modifiable dynamic synapses. These give a network greater pattern recognition capabilities than are achievable with fixed connections. The spatio-temporal correlation structure of patterns is captured by a single synaptic differential equation in a universal way. The correlation can appear as synchronous neural firing, which signals the presence of a feature in a robust way, or binds features into objects. Although in this book we can present only a first generation artificial brain and believe many more generations will have to follow to reach the full power of the human brain, we nevertheless see a new era of computation on the horizon. There were times when computers, with their precision, reliability and blinding speed, were considered to be as superior to the wet matter of our brain as a jet plane is to a sparrow. These times seem to be over, given the fact that digital systems inspired by formal logic and controlled algorithmically - today's computers - are hitting a complexity crisis. A paradigm change is in the air: from the externally organised to the self-organised computer, of which the results described in this book may give an inkling.

This book presents an Assessment of Physical Sciences and Engineering Advances in Life Sciences and Oncology (APHELION) by a panel of experts. It covers the status and trends of applying physical sciences and engineering principles to oncology research in leading laboratories and organizations in Europe and Asia. The book elaborates on the six topics identified by the panel that have the greatest potential to advance understanding and treatment of cancer, each covered by a chapter in the book. The study was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institute of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the NIH in the US under a cooperative agreement with the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC).

This book continues the biannual series of conference proceedings, which has become a classical reference resource in traffic and granular research alike, and addresses the latest developments at the intersection of physics, engineering and computational science. These involve complex systems, in which multiple simple agents, be they vehicles or particles, give rise to surprising and fascinating phenomena. The contributions collected in these proceedings cover several research fields, all of which deal with transport. Topics include highway, pedestrian and internet traffic; granular matter; biological transport; transport networks; data acquisition; data analysis and technological applications. Different perspectives, i.e., modeling, simulations, experiments, and phenomenological observations are considered.

This ground-breaking book brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to discuss the control and coordination of processes involved in perceptually guided actions. The research area of motor control has become an increasingly multidisciplinary undertaking. Understanding the acquisition and performance of voluntary movements in biological and artificial systems requires the integration of knowledge from a variety of disciplines from neurophysiology to biomechanics.

Following the introduction of Myspace, Linkedin and Facebook, social networks have become part of people's everyday life. New online social networks appear almost daily developed to attract the attention of Internet users. However, design and implementation standards and guidelines are often sacrificed for innovation resulting in unusable social networking platforms destined to be doomed. Within this context, the present book recommends a design and implementation methodology which will allow future social networking platform designers and developers to work in a scientifically systematic and sound manner to reach their goal. The journey begins with the identification of the pursued objective of the social network and the potential participants. The presentation of various methods and techniques to collect the requirements of the intended user group of the social networking platform follows. Best practices, guidelines and standards that will facilitate the conceptual and physical design of the platform are portrayed. An analysis of advantages and limitations for existing implementation platforms and potential implementation techniques is subsequently offered to facilitate the selection of the most appropriate tool for the implementation of the online social networking website. Various representative visualization techniques are examined in order to enhance the visual representation of the social network participants. Various usability evaluation techniques are then presented to aid in the assessment of usability and improvement of the actual user experience. Finally, future trends in the design and use of social networks are presented.

This book focuses on the assembly, organization and resultant collective dynamics of soft matter systems maintained away from equilibrium by an energy flux. Living matter is the ultimate example of such systems, which are comprised of different constituents on very different scales (ions, nucleic acids, proteins, cells). The result of their diverse interactions, maintained using the energy from physiological processes, is a fantastically well-organized and dynamic whole. This work describes results from minimal, biomimetic systems and primarily investigates membranes and active emulsions, as well as key aspects of both soft matter and non-equilibrium phenomena. It is shown that these minimal reconstitutions are already capable of a range of complex behaviour such as nonlinear electric responses, chemical communication and locomotion. These studies will bring us closer to a fundamental understanding of complex systems by reconstituting key aspects of their form and function in simple model systems. Further, they may also serve as the first technological steps towards artificial soft functional matter.

This textbook explains completely the general and statistical thermodynamics. It begins with an introductory statistical mechanics course, deriving all the important formulae meticulously and explicitly, without mathematical short cuts. The main part of the book deals with the careful discussion of the concepts and laws of thermodynamics, van der Waals, Kelvin and Claudius theories, ideal and real gases, thermodynamic potentials, phonons and all the related aspects. To elucidate the concepts introduced and to provide practical problem solving support, numerous carefully worked examples are of great value for students. The text is clearly written and punctuated with many interesting anecdotes. This book is written as main textbook for upper undergraduate students attending a course on thermodynamics.