From microphysics to macrophysics : Methods and applications of statistical physics; Vol.1
Volume 1 discusses in detail the probabilistic description of quantum or classical systems, the Boltzmann-Gibbs distributions, the conservation laws, and the interpretation of entropy as missing information. Thermodynamics and electromagnetism in matter are dealt with, as well as applications to gases, both dilute and condensed, and to phase transitions.
From microphysics to macrophysics : Methods and applications of statistical physics ; Vol.2
Volume 2 applies statistical methods to systems governed by quantum effects, in particular to solid state physics, explaining properties due to the crystal structure or to the lattice excitations or to the electrons. Liquid helium is discussed and radiative equilibrium and transport are studied. The last chapters are devoted to non-equilibrium processes and to kinetic equations, with many applications included.
From Melancholia to Depression : Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry
This book maps a crucial but neglected chapter in the history of psychiatry: how was melancholia transformed in the nineteenth century from traditional melancholy madness into a modern biomedical mood disorder
Free Energy and Self-Interacting Particles
This book examines a system of parabolic-elliptic partial differential eq- tions proposed in mathematical biology, statistical mechanics, and chemical kinetics. In the context of biology, this system of equations describes the chemotactic feature of cellular slime molds and also the capillary formation of blood vessels in angiogenesis. There are several methods to derive this system. One is the biased random walk of the individual, and another is the reinforced random walk of one particle modelled on the cellular automaton. In the context of statistical mechanics or chemical kinetics, this system of equations describes the motion of a mean field of many particles, interacting under the gravitational inner force or the chemical reaction
Fragmentation of Rings and Shells : The Legacy of N.F. Mott
The present book surveys the theoretical analysis put forth by Mott with particular focus on his efforts to characterize the size and distribution of fragments resulting from a dynamic fragmentation event. Copies of the original internal reports of Mott and his co-workers are included. The book also pursues additional theoretical analysis with the intent of delving further into the physical ideas and unfinished analysis implicit in Mott`s original studies. This book will be of interest to all scientists and engineers concerned with the dynamic fracture and fragmentation of solid bodies subject to intense transient loads imparted by explosive detonation and high-velocity impact from both the historical and modern perspective.
Foundations and novel approaches in data mining
Data-mining has become a popular research topic in recent years for the treatment of the "data rich and information poor” syndrome. Currently, application oriented engineers are only concerned with their immediate problems, which results in an ad hoc method of problem solving. Researchers, on the other hand, lack an understanding of the practical issues of data-mining for realworld problems and often concentrate on issues that are of no significance to the practitioners. In this volume, we hope to remedy problems by (1) presenting a theoretical foundation of data-mining, and (2) providing important new directions for data-mining research. A set of well respected data mining theoreticians were invited to present their views on the fundamental science of data mining.
Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems ; 6th International Conference, FORMATS 2008, Saint Malo, France, September 15-17, 2008. Proceedings
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems, FORMATS 2008, held in Saint Malo, France, September 2008.The 17 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on extensions of timed automata and semantics; timed games and logic; case studies; model-checking of probabilistic systems; verification and test; timed petri nets.
Forest Mensuration
Van Laar and Akça’s popular text book, Forest Mensuration, was first published in 1997. Like that first edition, this modern update is based on extensive research, teaching and practical experience in both Europe, and the tropics and subtropics. However, it has also been extensively revised, and now includes chapters on remote sensing and the application of aerial photographs and satellite imagery. As with its predecessor, this book assumes no advanced knowledge of statistical methods, and combines practical techniques with important historical and disciplinary context. The result is a strong balance between a handbook on traditional mensuration methods, and a valuable reference on the many recent research and inventory-related innovations which have emerged in recent years.
Forecasting and Assessing Risk of Individual Electricity Peaks
The overarching aim of this open access book is to present self-contained theory and algorithms for investigation and prediction of electric demand peaks. A cross-section of popular demand forecasting algorithms from statistics, machine learning and mathematics is presented, followed by extreme value theory techniques with examples.
Fluctuations, Information, Gravity and the Quantum Potential
A main theme of the book outlines the role of the quantum potential in quantum mechanics and general relativity and one of its origins via fluctuations formulated in terms of Fisher information. Another theme is the description of various approaches to Bohmian mechanics and their role in quantum mechanics and general relativity. Along the way various approaches to, for instance, the Dirac equation, the Einstein equations, the Klein-Gordon equation, the Maxwell equations and the Schr?dinger equations are described. Statistics and geometry are intertwined in various ways and, among other matters, the aether, cosmology, entropy, fractals, quantum Kaehler geometry, the vacuum and the zero point field are discussed. There is also some speculative material and some original work along with material extracted from over 1000 references and the work is current up to April 2005.
Finite Mixture and Markov Switching Models
The prominence of finite mixture modelling is greater than ever. Many important statistical topics like clustering data, outlier treatment, or dealing with unobserved heterogeneity involve finite mixture models in some way or other. The area of potential applications goes beyond simple data analysis and extends to regression analysis and to non-linear time series analysis using Markov switching models.It is the first time that the Bayesian perspective of finite mixture modelling is systematically presented in book form. It is argued that the Bayesian approach provides much insight in this context and is easily implemented in practice. Although the main focus is on Bayesian inference, the author reviews several frequentist techniques, especially selecting the number of components of a finite mixture model, and discusses some of their shortcomings compared to the Bayesian approach. The aim of this book is to impart the finite mixture and Markov switching approach to statistical modelling to a wide-ranging community. This includes not only statisticians, but also biologists, economists, engineers, financial agents, market researcher, medical researchers or any other frequent user of statistical models. This book should help newcomers to the field to understand how finite mixture and Markov switching models are formulated, what structures they imply on the data, what they could be used for, and how they are estimated.
Filtering Theory : With Applications to Fault Detection, Isolation, and Estimation
The focus of this book is on filtering for linear processes, and its primary goal is to design filters from a class of linear stable unbiased filters that yield an estimation error with the lowest root-mean-square (RMS) norm. Various hierarchical classes of filtering problems are defined based on the availability of statistical knowledge regarding noise, disturbances, and other uncertainties. An important characteristic of the approach employed in this work for several aspects of filter analysis and design is structural in nature, revealing an inherent freedom to incorporate other classical secondary engineering constraints—such as placement of filter poles at desired locations—in filter design. Such a structural approach requires an understanding of powerful tools that then may be used in several engineering applications besides filtering.
Feature Extraction : Foundations and Applications
This book is both a reference for engineers and scientists and a teaching resource, featuring tutorial chapters and research papers on feature extraction. "This book compiles some very promising techniques, coming from an extremely smart collection of researchers, delivering their best ideas in a competitive environment."
Fading Foundations : Probability and the Regress Problem
This book addresses the age-old problem of infinite regresses in epistemology. How can we ever come to know something if knowing requires having good reasons, and reasons can only be good if they are backed by good reasons in turn? The problem has puzzled philosophers ever since antiquity, giving rise to what is often called Agrippa's Trilemma. The current volume approaches the old problem in a provocative and thoroughly contemporary way. Taking seriously the idea that good reasons are typically probabilistic in character, it develops and defends a new solution that challenges venerable philosophical intuitions and explains why they were mistakenly held. Key to the new solution is the phenomenon of fading foundations, according to which distant reasons are less important than those that are nearby.
Extreme Value Theory : An Introduction
Extreme Value Theory offers a careful, coherent exposition of the subject starting from the probabilistic and mathematical foundations and proceeding to the statistical theory. The book covers both the classical one-dimensional case as well as finite- and infinite-dimensional settings. All the main topics at the heart of the subject are introduced in a systematic fashion so that in the final chapter even the most recent developments in the theory can be understood. The treatment is geared toward applications. The presentation concentrates on the probabilistic and statistical aspects of extreme values such as limiting results, domains of attraction and development of estimators without emphasizing related topics such as point processes, empirical distribution functions and Brownian motion.
Extreme Ocean Waves
The book details the vast progress that has been achieved in the understanding of the physical mechanisms of rogue wave phenomenon in recent years. The selected articles address such issues as the formation of freak waves due to modulation instability of nonlinear wave field, physical and statistical properties of rogue wave generation in deep water and in shallow water, various models of nonlinear water waves, special analysis of nonlinear resonances between water waves and the relation between observations and freak wave theories.
Extreme Man-Made and Natural Hazards in Dynamics of Structures
The present threat of the terrorist attacks or accidental explosions, the climate change which brings strong stormy winds or yet the destructive earthquake motion that occurs in previously inactive regions or brings about tsunamis, are a few examples of the kind of applications we seek to address in this work.
Experimental Research in Evolutionary Computation : The New Experimentalism
This book introduces the new experimentalism in evolutionary computation, providing tools to understand algorithms and programs and their interaction with optimization problems. The book develops and applies statistical techniques to analyze and compare modern search heuristics such as evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization. Treating optimization runs as experiments, the author offers methods for solving complex real-world problems that involve optimization via simulation, and he describes successful applications in engineering and industrial control projects.
Existence and Regularity Properties of the Integrated Density of States of Random Schrödinger Operators
The theory of random Schrödinger operators is devoted to the mathematical analysis of quantum mechanical Hamiltonians modeling disordered solids. Apart from its importance in physics, it is a multifaceted subject in its own right, drawing on ideas and methods from various mathematical disciplines like functional analysis, selfadjoint operators, PDE, stochastic processes and multiscale methods. The present text describes in detail a quantity encoding spectral features of random operators: the integrated density of states or spectral distribution function. Various approaches to the construction of the integrated density of states and the proof of its regularity properties are presented.
Evolutionary Genomics : Statistical and Computational Methods
This book addresses the challenge of analyzing and understanding the evolutionary dynamics of complex biological systems at the genomic level, and elaborates on some promising strategies that would bring us closer to uncovering of the vital relationships between genotype and phenotype. After a few educational primers, the book continues with sections on sequence homology and alignment, phylogenetic methods to study genome evolution, methodologies for evaluating selective pressures on genomic sequences as well as genomic evolution in light of protein domain architecture and transposable elements, population genomics and other omics, and discussions of current bottlenecks in handling and analyzing genomic data. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include the kind of detail and expert implementation advice that lead to the best results.



















