This dissertation contributes to the understanding of fundamental issues in the highly interdisciplinary field of colloidal science. Beyond colloid science, the system also serves as a model for studying interactions in biological matter.
This work quantitatively investigated the scaling laws of the characteristic lengths of the structuring of colloidal dispersions and tested the generality of these laws, thereby explaining and resolving some long-standing contradictions in literature.
It revealed the effect of confinement on the structuring, independently of specific properties of the confining interfaces. In addition, it resolved the influence of roughness and charge of the confining interfaces on the structuring and as well providing a method to measure the effect of surface deformability on colloidal structuring.

The book provides personal memories along with description of scientific works written by ex-graduate students and research associates of the late Professor Glass. The described research work covers a wide range of shock wave phenomena, resulting from seeds planted by Professor Glass. Professor Glass was born in Poland in 1918. He immigrated together with his parents to Canada at the age of 12 and received all his professional education at the University of Toronto, Canada. He became a world recognized expert in shock wave phenomena, and during his 45 years of active research he supervised more than 125 master and doctoral students, post-doctoral fellows and visiting research associates. In this book seven of his past students/research-associates describe their personal memories of Professor Glass and present some of their investigations in shock wave phenomena which sprung from their past work with Professor Glass. Specifically, these investigations include underwater shock waves, shock/bubble interaction, medical applications of shock wave, various types of shock tubes and shock tube techniques, shock wave attenuation and different types of shock wave reflections.

This text presents the two complementary aspects of thermal physics as an integrated theory of the properties of matter. Conceptual understanding is promoted by thorough development of basic concepts. In contrast to many texts, statistical mechanics, including discussion of the required probability theory, is presented first. This provides a statistical foundation for the concept of entropy, which is central to thermal physics. A unique feature of the book is the development of entropy based on Boltzmann's 1877 definition; this avoids contradictions or ad hoc corrections found in other texts. Detailed fundamentals provide a natural grounding for advanced topics, such as black-body radiation and quantum gases. An extensive set of problems (solutions are available for lecturers through the OUP website), many including explicit computations, advance the core content by probing essential concepts. The text is designed for a two-semester undergraduate course but can be adapted for one-semester courses emphasizing either aspect of thermal physics. It is also suitable for graduate study.

In this book the theory of social production is systematically formulated in terms and concepts of classical political economy and neo-classical economics. In this way the subject becomes accessible not only to professional researchers in areas of the theory of production and economic growth, but also to the educated reader who is curious about the principles behind the functioning of a national economy. The book can be considered as an introduction for students with a background in physics, chemistry and engineering, who wish to specialize in economics. It is explained how the growth of production is connected with achievements in technological consumption of labour and energy. The theory allows one to analyse the past and the present of the social production system and to build scripts of the future progress. The book could be interesting for energy specialists who are engaged in planning and analysing production and consumption of energy carriers and determining energy policy, and for economists who want to know how energy and technology are affecting economic growth.

After an insightful introductory part on recent developments in the thermodynamics of small systems, the author presents his contribution to a long-standing problem, namely the connection between irreversibility and dissipation. He develops a method based on recent results on fluctuation theorems that is able to estimate dissipation using only information acquired in a single, sufficiently long, trajectory of a stationary nonequilibrium process. This part ends with a remarkable application of the method to the analysis of biological data, in this case, the fluctuations of a hair bundle.

The third part studies the energetics of systems that undergo symmetry breaking transitions. These theoretical ideas lead to, among other things, an experimental realization of a Szilard engine using manipulated colloids.

This work has the potential for important applications ranging from the analysis of biological media to the design of novel artificial nano-machines.

This volume contains a contemporary, integrated description of the processes of language. These range from fast scales (fractions of a second) to slow ones (over a million years). The contributors, all experts in their fields, address language in the brain, production of sentences and dialogues, language learning, transmission and evolutionary processes that happen over centuries or millenia, the relation between language and genes, the origins of language, self-organization, and language competition and death. The book as a whole will help to show how processes at different scales affect each other, thus presenting language as a dynamic, complex and profoundly human phenomenon.

Large-scale winds and currents tend to balance Coriolis and pressure gradient forces. The time evolution of these winds and currents is the subject of the quasi-geostrophic theory.
Chapter 1 presents concepts and equations of classical inertial fluid mechanics.
Chapter 2 deals with the equations of thermodynamics that close the governing equations of the fluids. Then, the motion is reformulated in a uniformly rotating reference frame.
Chapter 3 deals with the shallow-water model and the homogeneous model of wind-driven circulation. The chapter also describes a classical application of the Ekman layer to the atmosphere.
Chapter 4 considers the two-layer model, as an introduction to baroclinic flows, together with the concept of available potential energy.
Chapter 5 takes into account continuously stratified flows in the ocean and in the atmosphere.

This is the second edition of the book "Thermodynamics of Fluids under Flow," which was published in 2000 and has now been corrected, expanded and updated. This is a companion book to our other title Extended irreversible thermodynamics (D. Jou, J. Casas-Vazquez and G. Lebon, Springer, 4th edition 2010), and of the textbook Understanding non-equilibrium thermodynamics (G. Lebon, D. Jou and J. Casas-Vazquez, Springer, 2008. The present book is more specialized than its counterpart, as it focuses its attention on the non-equilibrium thermodynamics of flowing fluids, incorporating non-trivial thermodynamic contributions of the flow, going beyond local equilibrium theories, i.e., including the effects of internal variables and of external forcing due to the flow. Whereas the book's first edition was much more focused on polymer solutions, with brief glimpses into ideal and real gases, the present edition covers a much wider variety of systems, such as: diluted and concentrated polymer solutions, polymer blends, laminar and turbulent superfluids, phonon hydrodynamics and heat transport in nanosystems, nuclear collisions, far-from-equilibrium ideal gases, and molecular solutions. It also deals with a variety of situations, emphasizing the non-equilibrium flow contribution: temperature and entropy in flowing ideal gases, shear-induced effects on phase transitions in real gases and on polymer solutions, stress-induced migration and its application to flow chromatography, Taylor dispersion, anomalous diffusion in flowing systems, the influence of the flow on chemical reactions, and polymer degradation. The new edition is not only broader in scope, but more educational in character, and with more emphasis on applications, in keeping with our times. It provides many examples of how a deeper theoretical understanding may bring new and more efficient applications, forging links between theoretical progress and practical aims. This updated version expands on the trusted content of its predecessor, making it more interesting and useful for a larger audience."

This book introduces the novel concept of a fuzzy network whose nodes are rule bases and the connections between the nodes are the interactions between the rule bases in the form of outputs fed as inputs. The concept is presented as a systematic study for improving the feasibility and transparency of fuzzy models by means of modular rule bases whereby the model accuracy and efficiency can be optimised in a flexible way. The study uses an effective approach for fuzzy rule based modelling of complex systems that are characterised by attributes such as nonlinearity, uncertainty, dimensionality and structure.The approach is illustrated by formal models for fuzzy networks, basic and advanced operations on network nodes, properties of operations, feedforward and feedback fuzzy networks as well as evaluation of fuzzy networks. The results are demonstrated by numerous examples, two case studies and software programmes within the Matlab environment that implement some of the theoretical methods from the book. The book shows the novel concept of a fuzzy network with networked rule bases as a bridge between the existing concepts of a standard fuzzy system with a single rule base and a hierarchical fuzzy system with multiple rule bases.

This work presents a study of methods useful for modeling and understanding dynamical systems in the Galaxy. A natural coordinate system for the study of dynamical systems is the angle-action coordinate system. New methods for the approximation of the action-angle variables in general potentials are presented and discussed. These new tools are applied to the construction of dynamical models for two of the Galaxy's components: tidal streams and the Galactic disc. Tidal streams are remnants of tidally stripped satellites in the Milky Way that experience the effects of the large scale structure of the Galactic gravitational potential, while the Galactic disc provides insights into the nature of the Galaxy near the Sun. Appropriate action-based models are presented and discussed for these components, and extended to include further information such as the metallicity of stars.

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.

This book presents recent developments in our systematic studies of hydrodynamics and heat and mass transfer in laminar free convection, accelerating film boiling and condensation of Newtonian fluids, as well as accelerating film flow of non-Newtonian power-law fluids (FFNF). These new developments provided in this book are (i) novel system of analysis models based on the developed New Similarity Analysis Method; (ii) a system of advanced methods for treatment of gas temperature- dependent physical properties, and liquid temperature- dependent physical properties; (iii) the organically combined models of the governing mathematical models with those on treatment model of variable physical properties; (iv) rigorous approach of overcoming a challenge on accurate solution of three-point boundary value problem related to two-phase film boiling and condensation; and (v) A pseudo-similarity method of dealing with thermal boundary layer of FFNF for greatly simplifies the heat-transfer analysis and numerical calculation. A system of practical application equations on heat and mass transfer are provided in each chapter, which are formulated based on the rigorous numerical solutions with consideration of variable physical properties. In addition, in the second edition, other new research developments are further included on resolving an even big challenge associated with investigations of laminar free film condensation of vapour-gas mixture. They involve the novel methods for treatment of concentration- and temperature- dependent physical properties of vapour-gas mixture, and for rigorous solution of interfacial vapour saturation temperature, which have lead to rigorous analysis and calculation results on two-phase film flow velocity, temperature, and concentration fields, as well as condensate heat and mass transfer.

This book describes a promising approach to problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics, including the measurement problem. The dynamics of ensembles on configuration space is shown here to be a valuable tool for unifying the formalisms of classical and quantum mechanics, for deriving and extending the latter in various ways, and for addressing the quantum measurement problem. A description of physical systems by means of ensembles on configuration space can be introduced at a very fundamental level: the basic building blocks are a configuration space, probabilities, and Hamiltonian equations of motion for the probabilities. The formalism can describe both classical and quantum systems, and their thermodynamics, with the main difference being the choice of ensemble Hamiltonian. Furthermore, there is a natural way of introducing ensemble Hamiltonians that describe the evolution of hybrid systems; i.e., interacting systems that have distinct classical and quantum sectors, allowing for consistent descriptions of quantum systems interacting with classical measurement devices and quantum matter fields interacting gravitationally with a classical spacetime.

This book surveys significant modern contributions to the mathematical theories of generalized heat wave equations. The first three chapters form a comprehensive survey of most modern contributions also describing in detail the mathematical properties of each model. Acceleration waves and shock waves are the focus in the next two chapters. Numerical techniques, continuous data dependence, and spatial stability of the solution in a cylinder, feature prominently among other topics treated in the following two chapters. The final two chapters are devoted to a description of selected applications and the corresponding formation of mathematical models. Illustrations are taken from a broad range that includes nanofluids, porous media, thin films, nuclear reactors, traffic flow, biology, and medicine, all of contemporary active technological importance and interest. This book will be of value to applied mathematicians, theoretical engineers and other practitioners who wish to know both the theory and its relevance to diverse applications.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of essential topics related to conventional and advanced drying and energy technologies, especially motivated by increased industry and academic interest. The main topics discussed are: theory and applications of drying, emerging topics in drying technology, innovations and trends in drying, thermo-hydro-chemical-mechanical behaviors of porous materials in drying, and drying equipment and energy. Since the topics covered are inter-and multi-disciplinary, the book offers an excellent source of information for engineers, energy specialists, scientists, researchers, graduate students, and leaders of industrial companies. This book is divided into several chapters focusing on the engineering, science and technology applied in essential industrial processes used for raw materials and products.

The paradigm of complexity is pervading both science and engineering, le- ing to the emergence of novel approaches oriented at the development of a systemic view of the phenomena under study; the de?nition of powerful tools for modelling, estimation, and control; and the cross-fertilization of di?erent disciplines and approaches. One of the most promising paradigms to cope with complexity is that of networked systems. Complex, dynamical networks are powerful tools to model, estimate, and control many interesting phenomena, like agent coordination, synch- nization, social and economics events, networks of critical infrastructures, resourcesallocation, informationprocessing, controlovercommunicationn- works, etc. Advances in this ?eld are highlighting approaches that are more and more oftenbasedondynamicalandtime-varyingnetworks, i.e.networksconsisting of dynamical nodes with links that can change over time. Moreover, recent technological advances in wireless communication and decreasing cost and size of electronic devices are promoting the appearance of large inexpensive interconnected systems, each with computational, sensing and mobile ca- bilities. This is fostering the development of many engineering applications, which exploit the availability of these systems of systems to monitor and control very large-scale phenomena with ?ne resoluti

Learning the basics of physical chemistry with a unique, innovative approach. Georg Job and Regina Rueffler introduce readers to an almost intuitive understanding of the two fundamental concepts, chemical potential and entropy. Avoiding complex mathematics, these concepts are illustrated with the help of numerous demonstration experiments. Using these concepts, the subjects of chemical equilibria, kinetics and electrochemistry are presented at an undergraduate level. The basic quantities and equations necessary for the qualitative and quantitative description of chemical transformations are introduced by using everyday experiences and particularly more than one hundred illustrative experiments, many presented online as videos. These are in turn supplemented by nearly 400 figures, and by learning objectives for each chapter. From a review of the German edition: "This book is the most revolutionary textbook on physical chemistry that has been published in the last few decades."

This book presents a new economic theory developed from physical and biological principles. It explains how technology, social systems and economic values are intimately related to resources. Many people have recognized that mainstream (neoclassical) economic theories are not consistent with physical laws and often not consistent with empirical patterns, but most feel that economic activities are too complex to be described by a simple and coherent mathematical theory. While social systems are indeed complex, all life systems, including social systems, satisfy two principles. First, all systems need to extract resources from the external environment to compensate for their consumption. Second, for a system to be viable, the amount of resource extraction has to be no less than the level of consumption. From these two principles, we derive a quantitative theory of major factors in economic activities, such as fixed cost, variable cost, discount rate, uncertainty and duration. The mathematical theory enables us to systematically measure the effectiveness of different policies and institutional structures at varying levels of resource abundance and cost.The theory presented in this book shows that there do not exist universally optimal policies or institutional structures. Instead, the impacts of different policies or social structures have to be measured within the context of existing levels of resource abundance. As the physical costs of extracting resources rise steadily, many policy assumptions adopted in mainstream economic theories, and workable in times of cheap and abundant energy supplies and other resources, need to be reconsidered. In this rapidly changing world, the theory presented here provides a solid foundation for examining the long-term impacts of today's policy decisions.

In this book the author presents a general formalism of nonequilibrium thermodynamics with complex information flows induced by interactions among multiple fluctuating systems. The author has generalized stochastic thermodynamics with information by using a graphical theory. Characterizing nonequilibrium dynamics by causal networks, he has obtained a novel generalization of the second law of thermodynamics with information that is applicable to quite a broad class of stochastic dynamics such as information transfer between multiple Brownian particles, an autonomous biochemical reaction, and complex dynamics with a time-delayed feedback control. This study can produce further progress in the study of Maxwell's demon for special cases. As an application to these results, information transmission and thermodynamic dissipation in biochemical signal transduction are discussed. The findings presented here can open up a novel biophysical approach to understanding information processing in living systems.

"Introductory Statistical Thermodynamics" is a text for an introductory one-semester course in statistical thermodynamics for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in physics and engineering. The book offers a high level of detail in derivations of all equations and results. This information is necessary for students to grasp difficult concepts in physics that are needed to move on to higher level courses. The text is elementary, self contained, and mathematically well-founded, containing a number of problems with detailed solutions to help students to grasp the more difficult theoretical concepts.

Beginning chapters place an emphasis on quantum mechanics
Includes problems with detailed solutions and a number of detailed theoretical derivations at the end of each chapter
Provides a high level of detail in derivations of all equations and results

This book mainly focuses on the theoretical and experimental study of non-Fourier heat conduction behavior. A novel thermomass theory is used as the theoretical basis, which provides a general heat conduction equation for the accurate prediction of non-Fourier heat conduction. In order to prove the validity of this thermomass theory, a large current was used to heat the metallic nanofilm at the minimum temperature of 3 K. The measured average temperature of the nanofilm was notably higher than the prediction of Fourier's heat diffusion equation, while matching well with the general heat conduction equation. This is the first time that steady non-Fourier heat conduction has been observed. Moreover, this book concerns the role of electron-phonon interaction in metallic nanofilms, which involves the breakdown of the Wiedemann-Franz law at low temperatures and interfacial thermal resistance at femtosecond timescales. Readers will find useful information on non-Fourier heat conduction and the latest advances in the study of charge and heat transport in metallic nanofilms.

This book addresses the application of methods used in statistical physics to complex systems-from simple phenomenological analogies to more complex aspects, such as correlations, fluctuation-dissipation theorem, the concept of free energy, renormalization group approach and scaling. Statistical physics contains a well-developed formalism that describes phase transitions. It is useful to apply this formalism for damage phenomena as well. Fractals, the Ising model, percolation, damage mechanics, fluctuations, free energy formalism, renormalization group, and scaling, are some of the topics covered in Statistical Physics of Phase Transitions.

This book introduces a variety of statistical tools for characterising and designing the dynamical features of complex quantum systems. These tools are applied in the contexts of energy transfer in photosynthesis, and boson sampling. In dynamical quantum systems, complexity typically manifests itself via the interference of a rapidly growing number of paths that connect the initial and final states. The book presents the language of graphs and networks, providing a useful framework to discuss such scenarios and explore the rich phenomenology of transport phenomena. As the complexity increases, deterministic approaches rapidly become intractable, which leaves statistics as a viable alternative.

Current companies and communities of practice are involved in intensive networking and collaborative systems by a great variety of electronic relations and collaborative interactions. This has resulted in entangled systems that need to be managed efficiently and in an autonomous way, thus facing many issues and challenges. The extensive research produced in this book will help virtual organizations to exploit latest and powerful technologies based on Grid and Wireless infrastructures as well as Cloud computing in order to alleviate complex issues and challenges arisen in networking and collaborative systems, in terms of collaborative applications, resource management, mobility, and security and system resilience. The ultimate aim of the book is to stimulate research that leads to the creation of responsive environments for networking and, at longer-term, the development of adaptive, secure, mobile, and intuitive intelligent systems for collaborative work and learning. Academic researchers, professionals and practitioners in the field will be inspired and put in practice the ideas and experiences proposed in the book in order to evaluate them for their specific research and work.

This book is the first to present the application of the hybrid system theory to systems with EPCA (equations with piecewise continuous arguments). The hybrid system paradigm is a valuable modeling tool for describing a wide range of real-world applications. Moreover, although new technology has produced, and continues to produce highly hierarchical sophisticated machinery that cannot be analyzed as a whole system, hybrid system representation can be used to reduce the structural complexity of these systems. That is to say, hybrid systems have become a modeling priority, which in turn has led to the creation of a promising research field with several application areas. As such, the book explores recent developments in the area of deterministic and stochastic hybrid systems using the Lyapunov and Razumikhin-Lyapunov methods to investigate the systems' properties. It also describes properties such as stability, stabilization, reliable control, H-infinity optimal control, input-to-state stability (ISS)/stabilization, state estimation, and large-scale singularly perturbed systems.