Photonics, a volume in the Interface Transmission Tutorial Book series, describes the science of photonic transmission properties of the interfaces of composite materials systems and devices. The book's authors review the general analysis methods of interface transmission, give many examples, and apply these methods to photonic applications. Applications discussed include photonic crystals, materials, devices and circuits.

This major reference summarizes the theory, analysis methods, and computational results from supercomputers of various earthquake simulations using supercomputers. It covers simulations in the fields of physical geology, earthquake engineering — specifically the seismic response of structures — and the socioeconomic impact of post-earthquake recovery on cities and societies. These simulations provide an effective bird's-eye view of earthquake occurrence, earthquake damage, and recovery from the damage.

This book presents a comprehensive and innovative understanding of the role of shallow coastal ecosystems in carbon cycling, particularly marine carbon sequestration. Incorporating a series of forward-looking chapters, the book combines thorough reviews of the global literature and regional assessments-mainly around the Indo-Pacific region and Japan-with global perspectives to provide a thorough assessment of carbon cycling in shallow coastal systems. It advocates the expansion of blue-carbon ecosystems (mangroves, seagrass meadows, and salt marshes) into macroalgal beds, tidal flats, coral reefs, and urbanized shallow waters, demonstrating the potential of these ecosystems as new carbon sinks. Moreover, it discusses not only topics that are currently the focus of blue-carbon studies, i.e., sedimentary carbon stock and accumulation rate, but also CO2 gas exchange between the atmosphere and shallow coastal ecosystems, carbon storage in the water column as refractory organic carbon, and off-site carbon storage. Including highly original contributions, this comprehensive work inspires research beyond the specific regions covered by the chapters. The suite of new concepts and approaches is refreshing and demonstrates that blue-carbon research is indeed a vibrant new field of research, providing deep insights into neglected aspects of carbon cycling in the marine environment. At the same time the book provides guidance for policy makers to deliver benefits to society, for example the inclusion of blue carbon as a carbon offset scheme or the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in the Paris Agreement, and also for building resilience in coastal socio-ecosystems through better management. This book is intended for all those interested in the science and management of coastal ecosystems.

This monograph is devoted to the analysis of the dynamics of business cycles and stabilization policies. The analysis is conducted in models of the AS-AD type, focusing on involuntary unemployment and capital accumulation. Major conclusions are the following. (1) Sectoral imbalances, once emphasized by such business-cycle theorists as K. Marx, A. Spiethoff, and F.A. Hayek, are rectified in finite time by competitive investment allocation, leaving aggregate variables as the main variables of business cycle dynamics. (2) The chronology of events during a cycle is established, which resolves the so-called real wage puzzle. (3) Owing to the crowding-out effect on investment, fiscal stabilization policies can destabilize the business cycle dynamics if implemented too intensively. (4) If coordinated properly, monetary stabilization policies can remove the destabilizing tendency of fiscal stabilization policies.

New Edition: Introduction to Computational Earthquake Engineering (3rd Edition)Introduction to Computational Earthquake Engineering covers solid continuum mechanics, finite element method and stochastic modeling comprehensively, with the second and third chapters explaining the numerical simulation of strong ground motion and faulting, respectively. Stochastic modeling is used for uncertain underground structures, and advanced analytical methods for linear and non-linear stochastic models are presented. The verification of these methods by comparing the simulation results with observed data is then presented, and examples of numerical simulations which apply these methods to practical problems are generously provided. Furthermore three advanced topics of computational earthquake engineering are covered, detailing examples of applying computational science technology to earthquake engineering problems.

Hydrodynamic lubrication plays an important role in mechanical engineering, although not very many books have been published on the subject. This book was written with graduate students, researchers and designers in view.

The first four chapters are preparations for the following five chapters, where several most important subjects in hydrodynamic lubrication are discussed in detail, based on the author's own researches. Examples are oil whip (stability of rotating shafts), foil bearings in connection with magnetic tape storages, squeeze film between rigid surfaces and visco-elastic surfaces, theoretical and experimental analyses of temperature rise in bearings, those of turbulent lubricating film using the k-epsilon model.

The shock waves produced by meteorite impacts give rise not only to the obvious craters seen on planets and their satellites but also to subtle effects seen only with chemical and petrographic examination of the shocked material. Shock waves in the interplanetary and interstellar medium play an important role in the formation of stars and planets, including the solar system. They also produce important chemical effects in interstellar clouds of dust and gas, --- including the production of rather complex organic molecules. This volume is concerned primarily with the chemical and physical effects of shock waves on typical Earth and planetary solid materials. The emphasis is on comparing naturally occurring materials with similar materials produced by shock compression in the laboratory. Such comparisons can provide clues about the environment and events that produced the natural materials. The chapters in the book deal with three main topics: * methods used to investigate the effects of shock on recovered minerals and rocks * effects of shock on carbon and hydrocarbons * subtle effects of shocks on geochemistry, such as shock induced redistribution of lead isotopes, the effect of the great impact at the end of the Cretaceous on atmospheric SO2 and CO2, and effect of shocks on ices.

Huge earthquakes and tsunamis have caused serious damage to important structures such as civil infrastructure elements, buildings and power plants around the globe. To quantitatively evaluate such damage processes and to design effective prevention and mitigation measures, the latest high-performance computational mechanics technologies, which include telascale to petascale computers, can offer powerful tools. The phenomena covered in this book include seismic wave propagation in the crust and soil, seismic response of infrastructure elements such as tunnels considering soil-structure interactions, seismic response of high-rise buildings, seismic response of nuclear power plants, tsunami run-up over coastal towns and tsunami inundation considering fluid-structure interactions. The book provides all necessary information for addressing these phenomena, ranging from the fundamentals of high-performance computing for finite element methods, key algorithms of accurate dynamic structural analysis, fluid flows with free surfaces, and fluid-structure interactions, to practical applications with detailed simulation results. The book will offer essential insights for researchers and engineers working in the field of computational seismic/tsunami engineering.

This book is the first of several volumes on solids in the Shock Wave Science and Technology Reference Library. This is a unique collection, and the library as a whole sets out to comprehensively and authoritatively cover and review at research level the subject matter with all its ramifications. All the chapters are self-contained and can be read independently of each other, though they are of course thematically interrelated.

Cardiac performance is regulated not only by cardiac muscle properties but also by several other factors, including those associated with the neurohumoral system and the mechanical characteristics of the peripheral circulation. New information con cerning these regulatory factors has furthered our understanding of the pathophysi ology of cardiac dysfunction. However, controversy remains, along with a need to integrate these multidisciplinary findings. It was with this in mind, together with my continuing interest in the response of the normal and diseased heart to variations in loading conditions, that the satellite symposium entitled "Interactions Between Car diac Function and Vascular Dynamics" was organized and dedicated to my mentor, Dr. T. Takishima. The symposium was held in Fukushima, Japan, in 1992 following the Tenth Inter national Conference of the Cardiovascular Systems Dynamics Society in Kobe, Japan, which was organized by the then president of the society, Dr. Masatsugu Hori. The Fukushima symposium and the Kobe conference were stimulating and informative. To commemorate these events, Dr. Hori, Dr. Janicki, and I decided to publish this book. It covers topics that were presented then as well as pertinent new material. As a result, the book includes not only updated reviews but also up-to-date findings that were not considered at the two scientific sessions. The high level attained in this book is due to the outstanding contributions from internationally renowned scientists. This final product of their efforts should prove to be a valuable source of information to the reader.

Research in the field of shock physics and ballistic impact has always been intimately tied to progress in development of facilities for accelerating projectiles to high velocity and instrumentation for recording impact phenomena. The chapters of this book, written by leading US and European experts, cover a broad range of topics and address researchers concerned with questions of material behaviour under impulsive loading and the equations of state of matter, as well as the design of suitable instrumentation such as gas guns and high-speed diagnostics. Applications include high-speed impact dynamics, the inner composition of planets, syntheses of new materials and materials processing. Among the more technologically oriented applications treated is the testing of the flight characteristics of aeroballistic models and the assessment of impacts in the aerospace industry.

"Disasters cause economic as well as human losses. Indeed, economic losses associated directly with disasters have continued at increasing proportions worldwide since the 1970s, as the 2011 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction conducted by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) illustrates. Disaster losses due to single geological events sometimes appear much greater in magnitude than those attributed to climate-related disasters. Nonetheless, the overall trend for increasing loss can largely be attributed to the increase in climate-related disasters, which in turn is triggered in part by global climate change. Furthermore, as such disasters increase in frequency, it intensifies vulnerability in the poorest regions of developing countries. In this book, the authors discuss effective approaches to enhancing the local disaster risk management (DRM) capacity of developing countries to combat increasing climate-related disaster impacts. Also provided are ideas and lessons on local disaster risk management, in terms of planning and practice in developing countries, with particular focus on a case study in Costa Rica."

Organization, Performance and Equity: Perspectives on the Japanese Economy provides an analysis of key components of the Japanese economy and business structures, edited by two leading American-based Japan scholars. The contributions to this book are grouped into four major categories: organizations; income distributions; technological progress; and macro performance. The first section examines the retail sector, the role of information in evaluating distribution systems, and ownership structures and their effect on welfare, all in the context of the Japanese economy. The second section concerns issues of Japanese tax structures, growth, and income transfers, while the third section focuses on technology and productivity. The concluding section addresses major macro issues like trade and the value of the yen.

This new, corpus-driven approach to the study of language and style of literary texts makes use of the Dickens' 4.6 million-word corpus for a detailed examination of patterns of lexical collocations. It offers new insights into Dickens' linguistic innovation, together with a nuanced understanding of his use of language to achieve stylistic ends. At the center of the study is a close analysis of the two narratives in "Bleak House," read as a focal point for consideration of Dickens' stylistic development through his whole writing life.

Molecular chaperones are a fundamental group of proteins that have been identified only relatively recently. They are key components of a protein quality machinery in the cell which insures that the folding process of any newly-synthesized polypeptide chain results in the formation of a properly folded protein and that the folded protein is maintained in an active conformation throughout its functional lifetime. Molecular chaperones have been shown to play essential roles in cell viability under both normal and stress conditions. Chaperones can also assist in the unfolding and degradation of misfolded proteins and in disaggregating preformed protein aggregates. Chaperones are also involved in other cellular functions including protein translocation across membranes, vesicle fusion events, and protein secretion.

In recent years, tremendous advances have been made in our understanding of the biology, biochemistry, and biophysics of function of molecular chaperones. In addition, recent technical developments in the fields of proteomics and genomics allowed us to obtain a global view of chaperone interaction networks. Finally, there is now a growing interest in the role of molecular chaperones in diseases.

This bookwill providea comprehensive analysis of the structure and function of the diverse systems of molecular chaperones and their role in cell stress responses and in diseases from a global network perspective. "

It has been almost 15 years since the fIrst reports appeared indicating that adenosine exerted a .protective effect in ischemic and reperfused myocardium. Numerous experimental studies have shown that adenosine (both exogenous and endogenous adenosine) delays the onset of ischemic contracture, modulates myocardial metabolism during ischemia, attenuates reversible postischemic ventricular dysfunction (myocardial stunning), and reduces myocardial infarct size. Initial studies on adenosine's cardioprotective effect were based on its ability to stimulate postischemic ATP resynthesis, increase coronary blood flow, and reduce heart rate. Although these actions of adenosine are undoubtedly benefIcial to the ischemic/reperfused heart, it now appears that adenosine's cardioprotective effect may be exclusive of these properties. The immense growth in the number of articles on adenosine cardioprotection in the last several years has been related in large part to the hypothesis that adenosine plays a role in ischemic preconditioning. Ischemic preconditioning is the phenomenon in which a brief period of ischemia (and reperfusion) prior to a more prolonged occlusion reduces myocardial infarct size. This form of myocardial protection has received much interest because ischemic preconditioning has been shown to be the most potent means of reducing infarct size in all animal models thus far tested. In fact prior to studies implicating adenosine's role in ischemic preconditioning, adenosine's infarct reducing effect was not well recognized.

Advances in cellular physiology and molecular biology have now disclosed the metabolic changes and adaptational responses of the heart to various kinds of stresses. Topics covered in this volume include the regulation of myocardial proteins in mechanical overload, the alteration of adrenoceptors in the stressed heart, metabolic adaptation in cardiac hypertrophy, intracellular calcium metabolism in the ischemia-reperfused myocardium, calcium overload as a cause of myocardial stunning, acquisition of ischemic tolerance by ischemic preconditioning, factors that accelerate myocardial injury, and ventricular remodeling in the ischemic heart. As an update of the latest findings in basic cardiology, this book will benefit both researchers and clinical practitioners.

Representing the first text to cover this exciting new area of research, this book will describe synthesis techniques of CNWs, their characterization and various expected applications using CNWs. Carbon-nanowalls (CNWs) can be described as two-dimensional graphite nanostructures with edges comprised of stacks of plane graphene sheets standing almost vertically on the substrate. These sheets form a wall structure with a high aspect ratio. The thickness of CNWs ranges from a few nm to a few tens of nm. The large surface area and sharp edges of CNWs may prove useful for a number of applications such as electrochemical devices, field electron emitters, storage materials for hydrogen gas, catalyst support. In particular, vertically standing CNWs with a high surface-to-volume ratio, serve as an ideal material for catalyst support for fuel cells and in gas storage materials.

The major objective of this book is to introduce social business models to face the challenge of social issues in emerging countries. Each chapter clarifies business strategies based on diligent field surveys in developing nations, focusing on Bangladesh and the Philippines, where social issues in the age of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are concentrated. The field surveys enable the effective construction of a sophisticated hybrid value chain by connecting a sustainable business ecosystem of local value chains with global value chains. Joint social business entities formed between local NGOs and foreign companies, multinational corporations with global value chains, among others, appear to be the keystones. In Part I, the case of Grameen Euglena in Bangladesh and that of Sari-Sari stores leveraging micro-financing in the Philippines, along with other interesting cases, are analyzed as effective social business models. Analysis also shows that the IT service industry in emerging countries helps to enlarge formal sectors so as to absorb younger generations into informal sectors. The e-health service business in Bangladesh and the business process outsourcing (BPO) IT service industry in the Philippines are examined in each part of the book. Part II, particularly, shows that IT and the digital technology-based service industry can lead to a new industrial development path in these countries instead of the conventional one based on manufacturing. In other words, digital technology-based service industries, as formal sectors, can absorb working people from informal sectors. As a result, poverty issues which form a key issue in SDGS will be alleviated. This book is highly recommended not only to academicians but also to businesspeople who seek an in-depth and up-to-date overview of new sustainable and inclusive businesses in the age of SDGs.

Samuel Beckett and Catastrophe is a groundbreaking collection of original essays that explore the relation between Samuel Beckett and catastrophe in terms of war, the Holocaust, nuclear disasters and ecological crisis. Responding to the post-catastrophic situations in the twentieth century, Beckett created characters who often seem to have been through an unknown catastrophe. Although the importance of catastrophe in Beckett has been noted sporadically, there has been no substantial attempt to discuss his aesthetics and work in relation to it. This collection will therefore serve as the first sustained study to explore the theme of catastrophe in Beckett and will be a highly significant contribution to Beckett studies.

Discover a one-of-a-kind blueprint to equity analyst success from an industry leader In Survival Kit for an Equity Analyst: The Essentials You Must Know, veteran analyst Shin Horie delivers a must-read, practical guide on the analysis of companies and industries. The book offers a guide to conducting industry-level analysis from a global perspective, with a particular emphasis on adjustments necessary for covering companies in emerging markets. Readers will also get: A robust background on the basic process flow of company analysis and valuation Guidelines for examining earnings drivers in major industries Tips on the qualitative profiling of companies and how to dig deeper to find nuance that financial statements don't express Perfect for early-career equity analysts themselves, as well as corporate managers who seek to understand how their organisations will be scrutinized and examined by finance professionals, Survival Kit for an Equity Analyst offers readers an insightful narrative on the necessary ingredients for success in this demanding field.

Unifies the simulation of all earthquake processes For researchers and specialist practitioners A unique presentation of a powerful emerging set of techniques

Interest in this unique plant has grown dramatically over the last ten years. This book provides an overview of the plant and recent finding s concerning its cell biology, biochemistry, development, morphology, phylogeny, paleobotany, as well as possible applications in chemistry and medicine. It also covers environmental aspects and the relationshi p between Ginko Biloba and humans. It will be of wide interest to bota nists, horticulturists and scientists working on this aractive and use ful plant, and aims to both stimulate further study and contribute to the development of new fields in Ginkgo research.