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Atmospheric Boundary Layers : Nature, Theory, and Application to Environmental Modelling and Security
This collection of peer reviewed papers represents a concise, up-to-date summary of our current knowledge of planetary boundary layer (PBL) physics and parameterization. As such, it makes a major contribution to the interchange of knowledge and ideas between physicists, meteorologists and environmental modellers and sets out the course to be followed in subsequent research to improve PBL parameterizations in climate, numerical weather prediction, air quality, and emergency preparedness models. Major themes covered are: Nature and theory of turbulent boundary layers, Boundary layer flows - modelling and applications to environmental security, Nature, theory and modelling of boundary-layer flows, and Air flows within and above urban and other complex canopies - air-sea-ice interactions.
Atmosphere and Climate : Studies by Occultation Methods
In this book we focus on sensors on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, which exploit solar, lunar, stellar, GNSS (Global Navi- tion Satellite Systems), and LEO-crosslink signals for observing the Earth's - mosphere and climate. The methods all share the key properties of self-calibration, high accuracy and vertical resolution, global coverage, and (if using radio signals) all-weather ca- bility. The atmospheric parameters obtained extend from the fundamental va- ables temperature, density, pressure and water vapor via trace gases, aerosols and cloud liquid water to ionospheric electron density. Occultation data are therefore of high value in a wide range of fields including climate monitoring and research, atmospheric physics and chemistry, operational meteorology, and ionospheric physics.
Artificial neural networks in Vehicular Pollution Modelling
Artificial neural networks (ANNs), which are parallel computational models, comprising of interconnected adaptive processing units (neurons) have the capability to predict accurately the dispersive behavior of vehicular pollutants under complex environmental conditions. This book aims at describing step-by-step procedure for formulation and development of ANN based VP models considering meteorological and traffic parameters. The model predictions are compared with existing line source deterministic/statistical based models to establish the efficacy of the ANN technique in explaining frequent dispersion complexities in urban areas. The book is very useful for hardcore professionals and researchers working in problems associated with urban air pollution management and control.
Arctic Alpine ecosystems and people in a changing environment
This book addresses the significant environmental changes experienced by high latitude and high altitude ecosystems at the beginning of the 21st c- tury. Increased temperatures and precipitation, reduction in sea ice and glacier ice, the increased levels of UV-radiation and the long-range tra- ported contaminants in arctic and alpine regions are stress factors that challenge terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The large natural variation in the physical parameters of these extreme environments is a key factor in structuring the biodiversity and biotic productivity, and the effect of the new stress factors can be critical for the population structures and the - teraction between species. These changes may also have socio-economic effects if the changes affect the bio-production, which form the basis for the marine and terrestrial food chains. The book is uniquely multidisciplinary and provides examples of va- ous aspects of contemporary environmental change in arctic and alpine - gions. The 21 chapters of the book are organised under the fields of •Climate change and ecosystem response, •Long range transport of poll- ants and ecological impacts, and •UV radiation and biological effects, each also including aspects of the •Socio-economic effects of environmental change. The introductory chapter presents and explains the internal c- nection and integration of all chapters.
Applied Proof Theory : Proof Interpretations and Their Use in Mathematics
Ulrich Kohlenbach presents an applied form of proof theory that has led in recent years to new results in number theory, approximation theory, nonlinear analysis, geodesic geometry and ergodic theory (among others). This applied approach is based on logical transformations (so-called proof interpretations) and concerns the extraction of effective data (such as bounds) from prima facie ineffective proofs as well as new qualitative results such as independence of solutions from certain parameters, generalizations of proofs by elimination of premises. The book first develops the necessary logical machinery emphasizing novel forms of Gödel's famous functional ('Dialectica') interpretation. It then establishes general logical metatheorems that connect these techniques with concrete mathematics. Finally, two extended case studies (one in approximation theory and one in fixed point theory) show in detail how this machinery can be applied to concrete proofs in different areas of mathematics.
Analyzing uncertainty in civil engineering
This volume addresses the issue of uncertainty in civil engineering from design to construction. Failures do occur in practice. Attributing them to a residual system risk or a faulty execution of the project does not properly cover the range of causes. A closer scrutiny of the adopted design, the engineering model, the data, the soil-construction-interaction and the model assumptions is required. Usually, the uncertainties in initial and boundary conditions are abundant. Current engineering practice often leaves these issues aside, despite the fact that new scientific tools have been developed in the past decades that allow a rational description of uncertainties of all kinds, from model uncertainty to data uncertainty. It is the aim of this volume to have a critical look at current engineering risk concepts in order to raise awareness of uncertainty in numerical computations, shortcomings of a strictly probabilistic safety concept, geotechnical models of failure mechanisms and their implications for construction management, execution, and the juristic question of responsibility. In addition, a number of the new procedures for modelling uncertainty are explained.
Analytical Ultracentrifugation of Polymers and Nanoparticles
Analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) is a powerful method for the characterization of polymers, biopolymers, polyelectrolytes, nanoparticles, dispersions, and other colloidal systems. The method is able to determine the molar mass, the particle size, the particle density and interaction parameters like virial coefficients and association constants. Because AUC is also a fractionation method, the determination of the molar mass distribution, the particle size distribution, and the particle density distribution is possible. A special technique, the density gradient method, allows fractionating heterogeneous samples according to their chemical nature that means being able to detect chemical heterogeneity.
Advances in Variable Structure and Sliding Mode Control
Sliding Mode Control is recognized as an efficient tool to design controllers which are robust with respect to uncertainty. The resulting controllers have low sensitivity to plant parameters and perturbations and allow the possibility of decoupling the original plant system into two components of lower dimension. In addition many controllers ensure finite time convergence to the switching surface and can be straightforwardly implemented. However, in addition to this traditional area of exploitation, sliding mode concepts are being increasingly deployed for the design of observers for estimation and identification.
Advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles : State of the Art and the Road to Autonomy
There has been tremendous emphasis in unmanned aerial vehicles, both of fixed (airplanes) and rotary wing (vertical take off and landing, helicopters) types over the past ten years. Applications span both civilian and military domains, the latter being the most important at this stage. This edited book provides a solid and diversified reference source related to basic, applied research and development on small and miniature unmanned aerial vehicles, both fixed and rotary wing. As such, the book offers background information on the evolution of such vehicles over the years, followed by modeling and control fundamentals that are of paramount importance due to unmanned aerial vehicle model complexity, nonlinearity, coupling, inhirent instability and parameter values uncertainty. Aspects of navigation, including visual-based navigation and target tracking are discussed, followed by applications to attitude estimation on micro unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous solar unmanned aerial vehicle, biomimetic sensing for autonomous flights in near-earth environments, localization of air-ground wireless sensor networks, decentralized formation tracking, design of an unmanned aerial vehicle for volcanic gas sampling and design of an on-board processing controller for miniature helicopters.
Advances in Probabilistic Graphical Models
This carefully edited book brings together in one volume some of the most important topics of current research in probabilistic graphical modelling, learning from data and probabilistic inference. This includes topics such as the characterisation of conditional independence, the sensitivity of the underlying probability distribution of a Bayesian network to variation in its parameters, the learning of graphical models with latent variables and extensions to the influence diagram formalism. In addition, attention is given to important application fields of probabilistic graphical models, such as the control of vehicles, bioinformatics and medicine.
Advances in Multiresolution for Geometric Modelling
Multiresolution methods in geometric modelling are concerned with the generation, representation, and manipulation of geometric objects at several levels of detail. Applications include fast visualization and rendering as well as coding, compression, and digital transmission of 3D geometric objects.The book contains seven survey papers, providing a detailed overview of recent advances in the various fields within multiresolution modelling, and sixteen additional research papers. Each of the seven parts of the book starts with a survey paper, followed by the associated research papers in that area.
Advances in Cardiac Signal Processing
Deals with the acquisition and extraction of the various morphological features of the electrocardiogram signals.In the first chapters the book first presents data fusion and different data mining techniques that have been used for the cardiac state diagnosis. The second part deals with heart rate variability (HRV), a non-invasive measurement of cardiovascular autonomic regulation. Next, visualization of ECG data is discussed, an important part of the display in life threatening state. Here, the handling of data is discussed which were acquired during several hours. In the following chapters the book discusses aortic pressure measurement which is of significant clinical importance. It presents non-invasive methods for analysis of the aortic pressure waveform, indicating how it can be employed to determine cardiac contractility, arterial compliance, and peripheral resistance. In addition, the book demonstrates methods to extract diagnostic parameters for assessing cardiac function. Further the measurement strategies for contractile effort of the left ventricle are presented. Finally, the book concludes about the future of cardiac signal processing leading to next generation research topics which directly impacts the cardiac health care.
Advanced Experimental Methods For Noise Research in Nanoscale Electronic Devices
The approach described is to create methods for experimental observations of noise sources, their localization and their frequency spectrum, voltage-current and thermal dependences. Our current knowledge of measurement methods for mesoscopic devices is summarized to identify directions for future research, related to downscaling effects. The directions for future research into fluctuation phenomena in quantum dot and quantum wire devices are specified. Nanoscale electronic devices will be the basic components for electronics of the 21st century. From this point of view the signal-to-noise ratio is a very important parameter for the device application. Since the noise is also a quality and reliability indicator, experimental methods will have a wide application in the future.
Adaptive Voltage Control in Power Systems : Modeling, Design and Applications
Adaptive Voltage Control in Power Systems, a self-contained blend of theory and novel application, is an in-depth treatment of such adaptive control schemes. The reader moves from power-system-modelling problems through illustrations of the main adaptive control systems (self-tuning, model-reference and nonlinearities compensation) to a detailed description of design methods: Kalman filtering, parameter-identification algorithms and discrete-time controller design are all represented. Case studies address applications issues in the implementation of adaptive voltage control.
Adaptive Techniques for Mixed Signal System on Chip
Adaptive Techniques for Mixed Signal Sytem on Chip discusses the concept of adaptation in the context of analog and mixed signal design along with different adaptive architectures used to control any system parameter. The first part of the book gives an overview of the different elements that are normally used in adaptive designs including tunable elements as well as voltage, current, and time references with an emphasis on the circuit design of specific blocks such as voltage-controlled transconductors, offset comparators, and a novel technique for accurate implementation of on chip resistors. While the first part of the book addresses adaptive techniques at the circuit and block levels, the second part discusses adaptive equalization architectures employed to minimize the impact of ISI (Intersymbol Interference) on the quality of received data in high-speed wire line transceivers. It presents the implementation of a 125Mbps transceiver operating over a variable length of Category 5 (CAT-5) Ethernet cable as an example of adaptive equalizers.
Accelerator-Driven System at Kyoto University Critical Assembly
This book is a unique compilation of experimental benchmark analyses of the accelerator-driven system (ADS) at the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA) on the most recent advances in the development of computational methods.
A Course in Credibility Theory and its Applications
It covers the subject of Credibility Theory extensively and includes most aspects of this topic from the simplest case to the most general dynamic model. The first four chapters contain plenty of material The book therefore treats explicitly the tasks which the actuary encounters in his daily work such as estimation of loss ratios, claim frequencies and claim sizes. The models are worked out in detail (including the estimation of structural parameters) so that they can immediately be applied in practice. Most exercises are based on real insurance data and real situations from practice and many of them have the characteristics of a case study. The extension to practical problems arising from the general area of finance is often quite straightforward. This book deserves a place on the bookshelf of every actuary and mathematician who works, teaches or does research in the area of insurance and finance.for a first course on Credibility.
