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Elsevier

Elsevier Science

  • Dynamic Soil-Structure Interaction

    Current Research in China and Switzerland
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 83
    • C. Zhang + 1 more
    • English
    Dynamic Soil-structure interaction is one of the major topics in earthquake engineering and soil dynamics since it is closely related to the safety evaluation of many important engineering projects, such as nuclear power plants, to resist earthquakes. In dealing with the analysis of dynamic soil-structure interactions, one of the most difficult tasks is the modeling of unbounded media. To solve this problem, many numerical methods and techniques have been developed. This book summarizes the most recent developments and applications in the field of dynamic soil-structure interaction, both in China and Switzerland.An excellent book for scientists and engineers in civil engineering, structural engineering, geotechnical engineering and earthquake engineering.

  • Heart Metabolism in Failure

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 4
    • R.A. Altschuld + 1 more
    • English
    Heart failure continues to be a major public health problem in the United States with close to half a million new cases diagnosed each year. Moreover, deaths from heart failure are on the increase, in part because of advances in the treatment of other fatal diseases, and in part from the prevalence of lifestyles indifferent to the risk factors for heart disease. This is not to say that no progress has been made in the treatment of heart failure. While for many years treatment was confined to the management of the symptoms, in recent years with the advent of ACE inhibitor and ß blacker therapies, real improvements in cardiac function and life expectancy have been achieved (Volume 4B, Leier). On a more basic level, enormous advances have been made in describing many of the changes in structure and function of the heart and the parallel neurohumoral and circulatory adaptations that occur during the onset of failure. These advances have been made not only by using various animal models of heart failure, but also using fresh failing human heart tissue, which has become readily available for experimental investigation since the advent of cardiac transplantation.Unde... the significance of many of these changes that occur during the transition to failure and the role they play in the etiology of failure is, however, a much more difficult task. These are exciting times in heart failure research. It is as though many of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are available but the puzzle has yet to be assembled. The objective of these volumes is to bring together some advances that have been made in recent years in defining one aspect of the failing heart, that is, the role of altered metabolism, in order to facilitate assembly of the puzzle.

  • Vibrational Spectra: Principles and Applications with Emphasis on Optical Activity

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 85
    • P.L. Polavarapu
    • English
    This book originated out of a desire to combine topics on vibrational absorption, Raman scattering, vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) and Raman optical activity (VROA) into one source. The theoretical details of these processes are presented in ten different chapters. Using dispersive and Fourier transform techniques, the instrumentation involved in these spectral measurements are given in three chapters. Major emphasis is placed on the newer techniques, i.e. VCD and VROA, with the conventional vibrational absorption and vibrational Raman scattering methods incorporated as natural parts of the newer methods.Features of this book:• Comprehensive coverage of vibrational circular dichroism and vibrational Raman optical activity.• Coverage of theoretical and instrumental details.• A comprehensive survey of VCD and VROA applications is included, so that the reader can get an overview of theory, instrumentation and applications in one source.The topics covered are of an advanced level, which makes this book invaluable for graduate students and practising scientists in vibrational spectroscopy.

  • Natural Gas Conversion V

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 119
    • A. Parmaliana + 4 more
    • English
    On January 1988, the ascertained and economically accessible reserves of Natural Gas (NG) amounted to over 144,000 billion cubic meters worldwide, corresponding to 124 billion tons of oil equivalents (comparable with the liquid oil reserves, which are estimated to be 138 billion TOE). It is hypothesized that the volume of NG reserve will continue to grow at the same rate of the last decade. Forecasts on production indicate a potential increase from about 2,000 billion cubic meters in 1990 to not more than 3,300 billion cubic meters in 2010, even in a high economic development scenario. NG consumption represents only one half of oil: 1.9 billion TOE/y as compared to 3.5 of oil. Consequently, in the future gas will exceed oil as a carbon atom source. In the future the potential for getting energetic vectors or petrochemicals from NG will continue to grow.The topics covered in Natural Gas Conversion V reflect the large global R&D effort to look for new and economic ways of NG exploitation. These range from the direct conversion of methane and light paraffins to the indirect conversion through synthesis gas to fuels and chemicals. Particularly underlined and visible are the technologies already commercially viable.These proceedings prove that mature and technologically feasible processes for natural gas conversion are already available and that new and improved catalytic approaches are currently developing, the validity and feasibility of which will soon be documented. This is an exciting area of modern catalysis, which will certainly open novel and rewarding perspectives for the chemical, energy and petrochemical industries.

  • The Primate Nervous System, Part II

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 14
    • T. Hokfelt + 2 more
    • English
    This volume is the second in the planned coverage of the neurochemical circuitry of the primate central nervous system. While this volume contains only two chapters, their topics and the extraordinarily comprehensive coverage with which the authors have dealt with their topics, will nevertheless contribute equal amounts of knowledge, wisdom, and opportunities for future research extensions as have every volume in this unique series. As such, these chapters extend the goals of this primate series to develop a broad coverage of human and non-human primate chemical neuroanatomic details in a volume which makes clear the known and desirable appreciation for differences between and among subsets of primate brains.The first chapter covers the primate thalamus with equal emphases on new world, old world, pro-simian and human anatomic details and their differences. The second undertakes a comparably comprehensive examination of one of the most intensively studied regions of the primate brain, namely the primate visual cortex. While much has been studied, both chapters also reveal how much remains for future efforts in these enormously important regions which are the archetypes of primate sub-cortical and cortical function.

  • Intelligent Components for Vehicles

    • 1st Edition
    • A. Ollero
    • English
    The IFAC Workshop on Intelligent Components for Vehicles (ICV'98) was held in Seville (Spain), on March 23-24 1998. The event follows the Workshop on Intelligent Components for Autonomous and Semiautonomous Vehicles (ICASAV'95) held in Toulouse (France, October 1995). The main objective of ICV'98 was to bring together specialists on components and instruments for automotive systems, mobile robots and vehicles in general to enhance the value of their experience in both hardware and software intelligent components. Future vehicles will deal more and more with autonomous functions to improve safety and traffic management and to reduce consumption and pollution. Numerous on-board decision systems will replace the driver in critical running phases. The problems and solutions experienced, by adopting this new technology, will bring out many common points with other transportation systems and mobile robots. Research and Developments on Mobile Robotics have produced many components for perception, control and planning that can be used in vehicles for collision detection and avoidance, position estimation, guidance and manoeuvering aids for drivers, advanced teleoperation, and other applications. The topics of the Workshop are in an emerging field in which the research is quickly being converted into industrial products. Several applications in the automotive domain, marine vehicles, agricultural and others were included in the program. In addition to the presentation of the papers, ICV also included a plenary talk and a round table about intelligent components for future vehicles with the participation of several industrial companies.

  • Handbook of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry

    Principles and Practice
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 1
    • Michael E. Brown
    • English
    Handbook of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry, Volume 1: Principles and Practice describes the basic background information common to thermal analysis and calorimetry in general. Thermodynamic and kinetic principles are discussed along with the instrumentation and methodology associated with thermoanalytical and calorimetric techniques. The purpose is to collect the discussion of these general principles and minimize redundancies in the subsequent volumes that are concerned with the applications of these principles and methods. More unique methods, which pertain to specific processes or materials, are covered in later volumes.

  • Photokinetics

    Theoretical Fundamentals and Applications
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 36
    • H. Mauser + 1 more
    • English
    Many books cover the determination of rate constants under different experimental conditions and different chemical composition of the reaction mixture in their formal treatment of thermal kinetics. However, most textbooks are limited to simple mechanisms. In contrast, analogous treatment of photochemical reactions is limited to the publication of special reactions and investigations. Therefore, this book is aimed at providing an overall description of formal photokinetics covering a wider scope than the usual books on kinetics.This volume attempts to provide a concise treatment of both thermo- and photochemical reactions by means of generalised differential equations, their set-up in matrix notation, and their solution by a formalism using numerical integration. At a first glance this approach might be surprising. However, apart from the argument that the didactics of thermal reactions are easier to handle than those of kinetics, the book provides additional reasons in support of this approach. Therefore, the formalism derived allows the evaluation of photochemical reactions, which are superimposed thermal reactions taking into account that the amount of light absorbed varies during the reaction. Because of this, any approximation, either by using total absorbance or negligible absorbance, will cause considerable errors even for simple reactions. The approach chosen to transform the axis of the radiation time into a new variable that includes the photokinetic factor proves that formal kinetics can be applied to thermal and photochemical reactions as well, and even allows the handling of solutions that cannot be homogenised or solid samples in which the concentration varies locally. By using this approach to introduce partial photochemical quantum yields even complex mechanisms can be determined quantitatively.A large number of examples for different mechanisms and an introduction to many spectroscopic and chromatographic methods suitable for photokinetic analyses are provided to enable the reader to carry out a step-by-step evaluation of his own measurements. To reduce the number of formula in some chapters an appendix has been included which contains a detailed description of the calculus of some essential examples. For the convenience of the reader the following has been included:• A large number of examples describing the use of formula• A detailed description of the procedure for applying photokinetics to complex consecutive photoreactions• An Internet address where the reader can find a tutorial for this procedure:http://www... A simple macro to help in programming his own evaluation procedure.

  • Global Ergonomics

    • 1st Edition
    • P.A. Scott + 2 more
    • English
    Jointly hosted by the Ergonomics Society of South Africa (ESSA) and the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), this conference was attended by over 300 delegates and represented the largest and most prestigious gathering of eminent international ergonomists in the history of Africa. It also marked the beginning of a revival in concern for the well-being and productivity of people at work in South Africa.The conference aimed to juxtapose two great ergonomic themes – the under-developed ethos of the affluent societies and the technologically advanced ethos of the most affluent societies. The structure of the proceedings reflects this with the first section addressing the priorities of countries in transition and the last section addressing the priorities of the most industrially-develop... countries, who have, by and large, long since solved the sorts of ergonomics problems currently of concern in the under-developed world. In between these, in a roughly hierarchical arrangement from micro- to macro- levels of analysis, are sections which collectively help span the whole field of ergonomics. Section overviews are provided to outline the topics included in each section.

  • Applications of Markov Chains in Chemical Engineering

    • 1st Edition
    • A. Tamir
    • English
    Markov chains make it possible to predict the future state of a system from its present state ignoring its past history. Surprisingly, despite the widespread use of Markov chains in many areas of science and technology, their applications in chemical engineering have been relatively meager. A possible reason for this phenomenon might be that books containing material on this subject have been written in such a way that the simplicity of Markov chains has been shadowed by the tedious mathematical derivations. Thus, the major objective of writing this book has been to try to change this situation.There are many advantages, detailed in Chapter 1, of using the discrete Markov-chain model in chemical engineering. Probably, the most important advantage is that physical models can be presented in a unified description via state vector and a one-step transition probability matrix. Consequently, a process is demonstrated solely by the probability of a system to occupy or not occupy a state.The book has been written in an easy and understandable form, where complex mathematical derivations are abandoned. The fundamentals of Markov chains are presented in Chapter 2 with examples from the bible, art and real life problems. An extremely wide collection is given of examples viz., reactions, reactors, reactions and reactors as well as combined processes, including their solution and a graphical presentation of it, all of which demonstrates the usefulness of applying Markov chains in chemical engineering.

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