springer netherlands okt 2010 (Over 1,000 results)

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The emergence of topological quantum eld theory has been one of the most important breakthroughs which have occurred in the context of ma- ematical physics in the last century, a century characterizedbyindependent developments of the main ideas in both disciplines, physics and mathematics, which has concluded with two decades of strong interaction between them, where physics, as in previous centuries, has acted as a source of new mat- matics. Topological quantum eld theories constitute the core of these p- nomena, although the main drivingforce behind it has been the enormous e ort made in theoretical particle physics to understand string theory as a theory able to unify the four fundamental interactions observed in nature. These theories set up a new realm where both disciplines pro t from each other. Although the most striking results have appeared on the mathema- calside,theoreticalphysicshasclearlyalsobene tted,sincethecorresponding developments have helped better to understand aspects of the fundamentals of eld and string theory. 236 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book argues that a New Deal for research in Europe is needed. This New Deal would involve the mobilisation of policy actors across all levels--regional, national and European--and their commitment to develop a more effective research system based on actions where they have the greatest impact.The book presents, from a viewpoint inside the European Commission, the nuts and bolts of how EU research policy is actually designed. It also provides a comprehensive analysis, on the basis of factual evidence, not only of the positive impacts of European research, but of the various criticisms that have been made of the Framework Programme. 316 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Members of the 'animal welfare science community', which includes both scientists and philosophers, have illegitimately appropriated the concept of animal welfare by claiming to have given a scientific account of it that is more objectively valid than the more 'sentimental' account given by animal liberationists. This strategy has been used to argue for merely limited reform in the use of animals. This strategy was initially employed as a way of 'sympathetically' responding to the abolitionist claims of anti-vivisectionists, who objected to the use of animals in research. It was subsequently used by farm animal scientists.The primarily reformist (as opposed to abolitionist) goals of this community make the false assumption that there are conditions under which animals may be raised and slaughtered for food or used as models in scientific research that are ethically acceptable. The tendency of the animal welfare science community is to accept this assumption as their framework of inquiry, and thus to discount certain practices as harmful to the interests of the animals that they affect. For example, animal welfare is conceptualized is such a way that death does not count as harmful to the interests of animal, nor prolonged life a benefit. 188 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -As K. Nomizu has justly noted [K. Nomizu, 56], Differential Geometry ever will be initiating newer and newer aspects of the theory of Lie groups. This monograph is devoted to just some such aspects of Lie groups and Lie algebras. New differential geometric problems came into being in connection with so called subsymmetric spaces, subsymmetries, and mirrors introduced in our works dating back to 1957 [L.V. Sabinin, 58a,59a,59b]. In addition, the exploration of mirrors and systems of mirrors is of interest in the case of symmetric spaces. Geometrically, the most rich in content there appeared to be the homogeneous Riemannian spaces with systems of mirrors generated by commuting subsymmetries, in particular, so called tri-symmetric spaces introduced in [L.V. Sabinin, 61b]. As to the concrete geometric problem which needs be solved and which is solved in this monograph, we indicate, for example, the problem of the classification of all tri-symmetric spaces with simple compact groups of motions. Passing from groups and subgroups connected with mirrors and subsymmetries to the corresponding Lie algebras and subalgebras leads to an important new concept of the involutive sum of Lie algebras [L.V. Sabinin, 65]. This concept is directly concerned with unitary symmetry of elementary par- cles (see [L.V. Sabinin, 95,85] and Appendix 1). The first examples of involutive (even iso-involutive) sums appeared in the - ploration of homogeneous Riemannian spaces with and axial symmetry. The consideration of spaces with mirrors [L.V. Sabinin, 59b] again led to iso-involutive sums. 336 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Decomposable sets since T. R. Rockafellar in 1968 are one of basic notions in nonlinear analysis, especially in the theory of multifunctions. A subset K of measurable functions is called decomposable if (Q) for all and measurable A. This book attempts to show the present stage of 'decomposable analysis' from the point of view of fixed point theory. The book is split into three parts, beginning with the background of functional analysis, proceeding to the theory of multifunctions and lastly, the decomposability property. Mathematicians and students working in functional, convex and nonlinear analysis, differential inclusions and optimal control should find this book of interest. A good background in fixed point theory is assumed as is a background in topology. 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book synthesizes new information about the environmental advantages of plant resistance, transgenic resistance, the molecular bases of resistance, and the use of molecular markers to map resistance genes. Readers are presented in-depth descriptions of techniques to quantify resistance, factors affecting resistance expression, and the deployment of resistance genes. New information about gene-for-gene interactions between resistant plants and arthropod biotypes is discussed along with the recent examples of using arthropod resistant plants in integrated pest management systems. 436 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In the lifetimes of the authors, the world and especially the United States have received three significant wake-up calls on energy production and consumption. The first of these occurred on October 15, 1973 when the Yom Kippur War began with an attack by Syria and Egypt on Israel. The United States and many western countries supported Israel. Because of the western support of Israel, several Arab oil exporting nations imposed an oil embargo on the west. These nations withheld five million barrels of oil per day. Other countries made up about one million barrels of oil per day but the net loss of four million barrels of oil production per day extended through March of 1974. This represented 7% of the free world s (i. e. , excluding the USSR) oil production. In 1972 the price of crude oil was about $3. 00 per barrel and by the end of 1974 the price of oil had risen by a factor of 4 to over $12. 00. This resulted in one of the worst recessions in the post World War II era. As a result, there was a movement in the United States to become energy independent. At that time the United States imported about one third of its oil (about five million barrels per day). After the embargo was lifted, the world chose to ignore the wake-up call and went on with business as usual. 800 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book deals with combinatorial aspects of epistasis, a notion that existed for years in genetics and appeared in the eld of evolutionary algorithms in the early 1990s. Even thoughthe rst chapterputsepistasisintheperspective ofevolutionary algorithms and arti cial intelligence, and applications occasionally pop up in other chapters, thisbookisessentiallyaboutmathematics, aboutcombinatorialtechniques to compute in an e cient and mathematically elegant way what will be de ned as normalized epistasis. Some of the material in this book nds its origin in the PhD theses of Hugo Van Hove [97] and Dominique Suys [95]. The sixth chapter also contains material that appeared in the dissertation of Luk Schoofs [84]. Together with that of M. Teresa Iglesias [36], these dissertations form the backbone of a decade of mathematical ventures in the world of epistasis. The authors wish to acknowledge support from the Flemish Fund of Scienti c - search (FWO-Vlaanderen) and of the Xunta de Galicia. They also wish to explicitly mentiontheintellectualandmoralsupporttheyreceivedthroughoutthepreparation of this work from their family and their colleagues Emilio Villanueva, Jose Mar a Barja and Arnold Beckelheimer, as well as our local T T Xpert Jan Adriaenssens. 312 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Stratospheric processes play a signi cant role in regulating the weather and c- mate of the Earth system. Solar radiation, which is the primary source of energy for the tropospheric weather systems, is absorbed by ozone when it passes through the stratosphere, thereby modulating the solar-forcing energy reaching into the t- posphere. The concentrations of the radiatively sensitive greenhouse gases present in the lower atmosphere, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ozone, control the radiation balance of the atmosphere by the two-way interaction between the stratosphere and troposphere. The stratosphere is the transition region which interacts with the weather s- tems in the lower atmosphere and the richly ionized upper atmosphere. Therefore, this part of the atmosphere provides a long list of challenging scienti c problems of basic nature involving its thermal structure, energetics, composition, dynamics, chemistry, and modeling. The lower stratosphere is very much linked dynamically, radiatively,and chemically with the upper troposphere,even though the temperature characteristics of these regions are different. The stratosphere is a region of high stability, rich in ozone and poor in water - por and temperature increases with altitude. The lower stratospheric ozone absorbs the harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun and protects life on the Earth. On the other hand, the troposphere has high concentrations of water vapor, is low in ozone, and temperature decreases with altitude. The convective activity is more in the troposphere than in the stratosphere. 436 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The first volume of this work is organized in three levels, so that the portion and importance of thermodynamics and mathematics increase from level to level. The ground level shows that basics of phase equilibria can be understood without thermodynamics provided the concept of chemical potential is introduced early. The intermediate level introduces thermodynamics, culminating in the Gibbs energy as the arbiter for equilibrium. At the third level the accent is on binary systems, where one or more phases are solutions of the components. Priority is given throughout to the thermodynamic assessment of experimental data. 200 exercises are included with solutions. 416 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Presenting original results from both theoretical and numerical viewpoints, this text offers a detailed discussion of the variational approach to brittle fracture. This approach views crack growth as the result of a competition between bulk and surface energy, treating crack evolution from its initiation all the way to the failure of a sample. The authors model crack initiation, crack path, and crack extension for arbitrary geometries and loads. 176 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The present textbook contains the recordsof a two-semester course on que- ing theory, including an introduction to matrix-analytic methods. This course comprises four hours oflectures and two hours of exercises per week andhas been taughtattheUniversity of Trier, Germany, for about ten years in - quence. The course is directed to last year undergraduate and rst year gr- uate students of applied probability and computer science, who have already completed an introduction to probability theory. Its purpose is to present - terial that is close enough to concrete queueing models and their applications, while providing a sound mathematical foundation for the analysis of these. Thus the goal of the present book is two-fold. On the one hand, students who are mainly interested in applications easily feel bored by elaborate mathematical questions in the theory of stochastic processes. The presentation of the mathematical foundations in our courses is chosen to cover only the necessary results, which are needed for a solid foundation of the methods of queueing analysis. Further, students oriented - wards applications expect to have a justi cation for their mathematical efforts in terms of immediate use in queueing analysis. This is the main reason why we have decided to introduce new mathematical concepts only when they will be used in the immediate sequel. On the other hand, students of applied probability do not want any heur- tic derivations just for the sake of yielding fast results for the model at hand. 288 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The last half century has seen the development of many biological or physical t- ories that have explicitly or implicitly involved medial descriptions of objects and other spatial entities in our world. Simultaneously mathematicians have studied the properties of these skeletal descriptions of shape, and, stimulated by the many areas where medial models are useful, computer scientists and engineers have developed numerous algorithms for computing and using these models. We bring this kno- edge and experience together into this book in order to make medial technology more widely understood and used. The book consists of an introductory chapter, two chapters on the major mat- matical results on medial representations, ve chapters on algorithms for extracting medial models from boundary or binary image descriptions of objects, and three chapters on applications in image analysis and other areas of study and design. We hope that this book will serve the science and engineering communities using medial models and will provide learning material for students entering this eld. We are fortunate to have recruited many of the world leaders in medial theory, algorithms, and applications to write chapters in this book. We thank them for their signi cant effort in preparing their contributions. We have edited these chapters and have combined them with the ve chapters that we have written to produce an integrated whole. 460 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Stroh formalism is a powerful mathematical method developed for the analysis of equations of anisotropic elasticity. This exposition introduces the essence of this formalism and demonstrates its effectiveness in both static and dynamic elasticity. The book gives a succinct introduction to Stroh formalism, discusses several important topics in static elasticity, and examines Rayleigh waves, a key topic in nondestructive evaluation, seismology, and materials science. 164 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Our previous book, About Life, concerned modern biology. We used our present-day understanding of cells to 'define' the living state, providing a basis for exploring several general-interest topics: the origin of life, extraterrestrial life, intelligence, and the possibility that humans are unique. The ideas we proposed in About Life were intended as starting-points for debate - we did not claim them as 'truth' - but the information on which they were based is currently accepted as 'scientific fact'. What does that mean What is 'scientific fact' and why is it accepted What is science - and is biology like other sciences such as physics (except in subject m- ter) The book you are now reading investigates these questions - and some related ones. Like About Life, it may particularly interest a reader who wishes to change career to biology and its related subdisciplines. In line with a recommendation by the British Association for the Advancement of Science - that the public should be given fuller information about the nature of science - we present the concepts underpinning biology and a survey of its historical and philosophical basis. 284 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The creation of intelligent robots is surely one of the most exciting and ch- lenginggoals of Arti cial Intelligence. A robot is, rst of all, nothing but an inanimate machine with motors and sensors. In order to bring life to it, the machine needs to be programmed so as to make active use of its hardware c- ponents. This turns a machine into an autonomous robot. Since about the mid nineties of the past century, robot programming has made impressive progress. State-of-the-art robots are able to orient themselves and move around freely in indoor environments or negotiate di cult outdoor terrains, they can use stereo vision to recognize objects, and they are capable of simple object manipulation with the help of arti cial extremities. At a time where robots perform these tasks more and more reliably,weare ready to pursue the next big step, which is to turn autonomous machines into reasoning robots.Areasoning robot exhibits higher cognitive capabilities like following complex and long-term strategies, making rational decisions on a high level, drawing logical conclusions from sensor information acquired over time, devising suitable plans, and reacting sensibly in unexpected situations. All of these capabilities are characteristics of human-like intelligence and ultimately distinguish truly intelligent robots from mere autonomous machines. 344 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This is a translation of Edmund HusserI's lecture course from the Summer semester 1907 at the University of Gottingen. The German original was pub lished posthumously in 1973 as Volume XVI of Husserliana, Husserl's opera omnia. The translation is complete, including both the main text and the supplementary texts (as Husserliana volumes are usually organized), except for the critical apparatus which provides variant readings. The announced title of the lecture course was 'Main parts of the phenome nology and critique of reason.' The course began with five, relatively inde pendent, introductory lectures. These were published on their own in 1947, bearing the title The idea ojphenomenology.l The 'Five Lectures' comprise a general orientation by proposing the method to be employed in the subsequent working out of the actual problems (viz., the method of 'phenomenological reduction') and by clarifying, at least provisionally, some technical terms that will be used in the labor the subsequent lectures will carry out. The present volume, then, presents that labor, i.e., the method in action and the results attained. As such, this text dispels the abstract impression which could not help but cling to the first five lectures taken in isolation. Accord ingly, we are here given genuine 'introductory lectures,' i.e., an introduction to phenomenology in the genuine phenomenological sense of engaging in the work of phenomenology, going to the 'matters at issue themselves,' rather than remaining aloof from them in abstract considerations of standpoint and approach. 384 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In this volume the authors examine some of the medical social and psychological conditions which affect the way we die. Important topics covered include attitudes toward death; suicide, assisted suicide and euthanasia; hospice and pain management. This volume will be of interest to all who work with terminally ill patients. 200 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Published annually since 1985, the Handbook series provides a compendium of thorough and integrative literature reviews on a diverse array of topics of interest to the higher education scholarly and policy communities. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of research findings on a selected topic, critiques the research literature in terms of its conceptual and methodological rigor, and sets forth an agenda for future research intended to advance knowledge on the chosen topic. The Handbook focuses on twelve general areas that encompass the salient dimensions of scholarly and policy inquiries undertaken in the international higher education community. The series is fortunate to have attracted annual contributions from distinguished scholars throughout the world. 504 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -There is a close connection in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's mind between the notions of self and substance. R. W. Meyer, in his classic 1948 text, Leibnitz and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, writes that 'the monad . is nothing but a 1 représentation (in both senses of the French word) of Leibniz's personality in metaphysical symbols; and there was, under contemporary circumstances, no need 2 to 'introduce' this concept apart from 'propounding' it. ' It is not clear what Meyer means here except that from the consideration of his own self, in some way Leibniz comes to his concept of simple substance, or monad. Herbert Carr, in an even earlier work, notes that Leibniz held that 'the only real unities in nature are formal, not material. . [and] [f]or a long time Leibniz was content to call the formal unities or substantial forms he was speaking about, souls. This had the advantage that it referred at once to the fact of experience which supplies the very 3 type of a substantial form, the self or ego. ' Finally, Nicholas Rescher, in his usual forthright manner, states that '[i]n all of Leibniz's expositions of his philosophy, 4 the human person is the paradigm of a substance. 152 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book provides a comprehensive understanding of coherence, the controversy surrounding it, and its implications across the discipline of philosophy. Coverage first takes up the challenging and controversial task of measuring the coherence of an information set and then criticizes this endeavor. The book also relates this foundational research to a wide array of epistemological and metaphysical challenges. 136 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -When it comes to reproduction, gymnosperms are deeply weird. Cycads and co- fers have drawn out reproduction: at least 13 genera take over a year from polli- tion to fertilization. Since they don't apparently have any selection mechanism by which to discriminate among pollen tubes prior to fertilization, it is natural to w- der why such a delay in reproduction is necessary. Claire Williams' book celebrates such oddities of conifer reproduction. She has written a book that turns the context of many of these reproductive quirks into deeper questions concerning evolution. The origins of some of these questions can be traced back Wilhelm Hofmeister's 1851 book, which detailed the revolutionary idea of alternation of generations. This alternation between diploid and haploid generations was eventually to become one of the key unifying ideas in plant evolution. Dr. Williams points out that alter- tion of generations in conifers shows strong divergence in the evolution of male and female gametes, as well as in the synchronicity of male and female gamete development. How are these coordinated to achieve fertilization Books on conifer reproduction are all too rare. The only major work in the last generation was Hardev Singh's 1978 Embryology of Gymnosperms, a book that summarized the previous century's work. Being a book primarily about embry- ogy, it stopped short of putting conifer reproduction in a genetic or evolutionary context. 188 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book has grown out of lectures and courses given at Linköping University, Sweden, over a period of 15 years. It gives an introductory treatment of problems and methods of structural optimization. The three basic classes of geometrical - timization problems of mechanical structures, i. e. , size, shape and topology op- mization, are treated. The focus is on concrete numerical solution methods for d- crete and ( nite element) discretized linear elastic structures. The style is explicit and practical: mathematical proofs are provided when arguments can be kept e- mentary but are otherwise only cited, while implementation details are frequently provided. Moreover, since the text has an emphasis on geometrical design problems, where the design is represented by continuously varying-frequently very many- variables, so-called rst order methods are central to the treatment. These methods are based on sensitivity analysis, i. e. , on establishing rst order derivatives for - jectives and constraints. The classical rst order methods that we emphasize are CONLIN and MMA, which are based on explicit, convex and separable appro- mations. It should be remarked that the classical and frequently used so-called op- mality criteria method is also of this kind. It may also be noted in this context that zero order methods such as response surface methods, surrogate models, neural n- works, genetic algorithms, etc. , essentially apply to different types of problems than the ones treated here and should be presented elsewhere. 224 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -In the eyes of many, one of the most challenging problems of the information society is that we are faced with an ever expanding mass of information. Based on the work done within the European Network of Excellence (NoE) on the Future of Identity in Information Society (FIDIS), a set of authors from different disciplinary backgrounds and jurisdictions share their understanding of profiling as a technology that may be preconditional for the future of our information society. 404 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -'Chemistry from First Principles' examines the appearance of matter in its most primitive form. It features the empirical rules of chemical affinity that regulate the synthesis and properties of molecular matter, analyzes the compatibility of the theories of chemistry with the quantum and relativity theories of physics, formulates a consistent theory based on clear physical pictures and manageable mathematics to account for chemical concepts such as the structure and stability of atoms and molecules. This text also explains the self-similarity between space-time, nuclear structure, covalent assembly, biological growth, planetary systems, and galactic conformation. 340 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The first edition of this book demystified the process of well log analysis for students, researchers and practitioners. In the two decades since, the industry has changed enormously: technical staffs are smaller, and hydrocarbons are harder to locate, quantify, and produce. New drilling techniques have engendered new measurement devices incorporated into the drilling string. Corporate restructuring and the 'graying' of the workforce have caused a scarcity in technical competence involved in the search and exploitation of petroleum. The updated 2nd Edition reviews logging measurement technology developed in the last twenty years, and expands the petrophysical applications of the measurements. 728 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Mathematical modelling is an essential tool in present-day ecological research. Yet for many ecologists it is still problematic to apply modelling in their research. In our experience, the major problem is at the conceptual level: proper understanding of what a model is, how ecological relations can be translated consistently into mathematical equations, how models are solved, steady states calculated and interpreted. Many textbooks jump over these conceptual hurdles to dive into detailed formulations or the mathematics of solution. This book attempts to fill that gap. It introduces essential concepts for mathematical modelling, explains the mathematics behind the methods, and helps readers to implement models and obtain hands-on experience. Throughout the book, emphasis is laid on how to translate ecological questions into interpretable models in a practical way.The book aims to be an introductory textbook at the undergraduate-graduate level, but will also be useful to seduce experienced ecologists into the world of modelling. The range of ecological models treated is wide, from Lotka-Volterra type of principle-seeking models to environmental or ecosystem models, and including matrix models, lattice models and sequential decision models. All chapters contain a concise introduction into the theory, worked-out examples and exercises. All examples are implemented in the open-source package R, thus taking away problems of software availability for use of the book. All code used in the book is available on a dedicated website. 388 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This valuable edition brings together 25 peer reviewed articles on technical, socio-economic, environmental and policy aspects of flood risk management. Some emerging technologies are presented and several future challenges are identified. Thus the book forms an excellent reference for the engineers, scientists, planners, policy-makers, researchers, insurance industry and all the practitioners involved in flood risk management. 556 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -curvilinear coordinates. This treatment includes in particular a direct proof of the three-dimensional Korn inequality in curvilinear coordinates. The fourth and last chapter, which heavily relies on Chapter 2, begins by a detailed description of the nonlinear and linear equations proposed by W.T. Koiter for modeling thin elastic shells. These equations are 'two-dimensional', in the sense that they are expressed in terms of two curvilinear coordinates used for de ning the middle surface of the shell. The existence, uniqueness, and regularity of solutions to the linear Koiter equations is then established, thanks this time to a fundamental 'Korn inequality on a surface' and to an 'in nit- imal rigid displacement lemma on a surface'. This chapter also includes a brief introduction to other two-dimensional shell equations. Interestingly, notions that pertain to di erential geometry per se,suchas covariant derivatives of tensor elds, are also introduced in Chapters 3 and 4, where they appear most naturally in the derivation of the basic boundary value problems of three-dimensional elasticity and shell theory. Occasionally, portions of the material covered here are adapted from - cerpts from my book 'Mathematical Elasticity, Volume III: Theory of Shells', published in 2000by North-Holland, Amsterdam; in this respect, I am indebted to Arjen Sevenster for his kind permission to rely on such excerpts. Oth- wise, the bulk of this work was substantially supported by two grants from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Project No. 9040869, CityU 100803 and Project No. 9040966, CityU 100604]. 216 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The world's oceans cover 70% of the earth's surface and are home to a myriad of amazing and beautiful creatures. However, the biodiversity of the oceans is incre- ingly coming under serious threat from many human activities including overfi- ing, use of destructive fishing methods, pollution and commercial aquaculture. In addition, climate change is already having an impact on some marine ecosystems. This book discusses some of the major threats facing marine ecosystems by cons- ering a range of topics, under chapters discussing biodiversity (Chapter 1), fisheries (Chapter 2), aquaculture (Chapter 3), pollution (Chapter 4) and the impacts of increasing greenhouse gas emissions (Chapter 5). It goes on to explore solutions to the problems by discussing equitable and sustainable management of the oceans (Chapter 6) and protecting marine ecosystems using marine reserves (Chapter 7). Presently, 76% of the oceans are fully or over-exploited with respect to fishing, and many species have been severely depleted. It is abundantly clear that, in general, current fisheries management regimes are to blame for much of the widespread degradation of the oceans. Many policy-makers and scientists now agree that we must adopt a radical new approach to managing the seas - one that is precautionary in nature and has protection of the whole marine ecosystem as its primary objective. This 'ecosystem-based approach' is vital if we are to ensure the health of our oceans for future generations. 272 pp. Englisch.