Skip to main content

North Holland

Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics '99
Towards Teraflops, Optimization and Novel Formulations
1st Edition
D. Keyes + 4 more
English
Contributed presentations were given by over 50 researchers representing the state of parallel CFD art and architecture from Asia, Europe, and North America. Major developments at the 1999 meeting were: (1) the effective use of as many as 2048 processors in implicit computations in CFD, (2) the acceptance that parallelism is now the 'easy part' of large-scale CFD compared to the difficulty of getting good per-node performance on the latest fast-clocked commodity processors with cache-based memory systems, (3) favorable prospects for Lattice-Boltzmann computations in CFD (especially for problems that Eulerian and even Lagrangian techniques do not handle well, such as two-phase flows and flows with exceedingly multiple-connected demains with a lot of holes in them, but even for conventional flows already handled well with the continuum-based approaches of PDEs), and (4) the nascent integration of optimization and very large-scale CFD. Further details of Parallel CFD'99, as well as other conferences in this series, are available at http://www.parcfd.or...
Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths
The Role of Rare Earths in Catalysis
1st Edition
Volume 29
K.A. Gschneidner + 2 more
English
Among the numerous applications of the rare-earth elements, the field of catalysis accounts for a large number. Catalysis represents approximately 20% of the total market sales of rare earths worldwide. As a matter of fact two main applications have been prominent in the last decades: zeolite stabilization for fluid cracking catalysts, and automotive post-combustion catalytic treatment.The oldest use of rare earths in catalysis deals with the structural and chemical stabilization of the zeolites for petroleum cracking applications. For a long time this has been an area of application for non-separated rare earths. The addition of several percent of rare earths in the pores of the zeolite results in a strong surface acidity, which is essential for an efficient conversion of high-weight molecules into lighter species, like low-octane fuel, even in the very aggressive conditions of the petroleum industry.The popular demand for high-quality air in spite of the traffic congestion in large cities resulted in larger and larger constraints in the emission exhaust from cars. Thus highly efficient catalysts have had to be designed, and due to the combination of its redox properties and very good thermal stability, cerium oxide has been since the beginning, early in the 1980s, a major component of the three-way catalysts (TWC) now used in all modern gasoline cars.The future of rare earths in catalysis is probably bright. The fact that approximately 400 patents are applied for yearly in the area since 1992 is an illustration of a very active area. Usage of rare earths in catalysis is expected to grow due to their highly specific properties. Instead of the physical properties used in electronic applications, one deals now with redox properties, water and thermal stability, coordination numbers and so forth. The rare earths are so specific in these properties that their use can hardly be avoided, not only for the beauty of academic studies but also for the development of industrial applications with immediate influence on everyday life. Careful control of the synthesis conditions and the definition of optimum composition in each case are the keys to the preparation of highly performing compounds for catalytic applications. They must actually be considered as high performance products with functional properties, and not just chemical species.Chapters devoted primarily to catalysis have been published in earlier volumes of the Handbook. In this volume several more are added. The first is an extension of the earlier chapter 43, on interactions at surfaces of metals and alloys, to reactions such as hydrogenation, methanation, ammonia synthesis, saturated hydrocarbon reactions, dehydrogenation of hydrogenated materials, hydrodesulfurization... and carbon monoxide oxidation. The second chapter reports on the wide variety of catalyzed reactions involving metals and alloys in the innovated form of metal overlayers or bimetallic compounds with some transition metals produced from ammonia solutions. This is followed by a chapter on catalysis with mixed oxides usually having perovskite or perovskite-related structures. Then follows a comprehensive discussion on the background and current role of cerium oxide and associated materials for post-treatment of exhaust gases for pollution control. These three-way catalysts (TWC) are designed to render harmless the CO, NOx, and unburned hydrocarbons from internal combustion engines. The next chapter considers the wide field of zeolite catalysts containing rare earths from their historic use in petroleum refining in the 1960s to other petrochemical and fine chemical applications today. The final chapter documents the use of the triflates (the trifluoro-methane-su... group which is a hard Lewis acid in both aqueous and organic solutions) as versatile catalysts in carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions. Their stability in the presence of water, in spite of their being hard Lewis acids, enhances their growing usefulness.
De-interlacing
A Key Technology for Scan Rate Conversion
1st Edition
Volume 9
E.B. Bellers + 1 more
English
'To interlace or not to interlace' is a hot issue currently. Traditionally interlace has been part of the video standard as it reduces the transmission and display demands, while hardly affecting the perceived quality of the pictures.With the current explosion of new video formats due to emerging technologies as multimedia PC's, videotelephony and flat matrix display the question whether or not interlace is a relict from the past is more relevant than ever.This book provides a broad overview of advanced motion estimation and de-interlacing techniques to enable a profound scientific basis for answering the above question. An extensive evaluation of the algorithms, including many screen photographs is an imt part of the book. But also system questions, such as whether interlace is a good choice in combination with modern video compression methods (MPEG), and which currently would be the optional choice for a display format are extensively treated.The combination of scientific profoundness and completions, with the focus on practical hot issues, makes the book unique in its kind.
Motivational Psychology of Human Development
Developing Motivation and Motivating Development
1st Edition
Volume 131
J. Heckhausen
English
The idea for this book grew out of the conference "Motivational Psychology of Ontogenesis" held at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, in May 1998. This conference focused on the interface of development and motivation and therefore brought together scholars from three major areas in psychology - developmental, motivational and lifespan.This combination of fields represents the potential influence of development on motivation and the potential role motivation plays in development and its major contexts of family, work and school. Thus, contributors were chosen to apply motivational models to diverse settings of human everyday life and in various age groups across the life span, ranging from early childhood to old age.
Reading as a Perceptual Process
1st Edition
A. Kennedy + 3 more
English
This book is divided into five sections dealing with various fundamental issues in current research: attention, information processing and eye movement control; the role of phonology in reading; syntax and discourse processing and computational models and simulations. Control and measurement of eye movements form a prominent theme in the book. A full understanding of the where and when of eye movement control is a prerequisite of any complete theory of reading, since it is precisely at this point that perceptual and cognitive processes interact. Amongst the 'hot topics' included are the relation between parafoveal and foveal visual processing of linguistic information, the role of phonology in fluent reading and the emergence of statistical 'tuning' approaches to sentence parsing.Also discussed in the book are three attempts to develop quantitative models of reading which represent a significant departure in theory-building and a quantum step in the maturation of reading research. Much of the work reported in the book was first presented at the 5th European Workshop on Language Comprehension organised in April 1998 which was held at the CNRS Luminy Campus, near Marseilles. All contributions summarise the state-of-the-art in the relevant areas of reading research.
Ode to a Quantum Physicist
A Festschrift in honor of Marlan O. Scully
1st Edition
H. Walther + 2 more
English
Ode to a Quantum Physicist celebrates the scientific achievements of Marlan O. Scully on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. It combines personal reminiscences from other renowned physicists who have known and worked with him over the years and 60+ scientific articles from the frontiers of Quantum Optics inspired by the work of M. O. Scully. The topics of these articles, published in the special volume 179 of Optics Communications, range from classical optics via atomic physics and quantum mechanics to non-linear optics.The book opens with special greetings from Tony Siegman, the former president of the Optical Society of America and Benjamin Bederson, the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Physical Review. A long time friend, Ali Javan, dating back to Marlan's MIT days, highlights some of Marlan's scientific contributions.Heidi Fearn's poems humanize physical phenomena and set the stage for the more personal reminiscences to come.Friends and colleagues of Marlan from the various stages of his scientific life shed some light on his human side. These stories reflect the admiration and respect the quantum physics community holds for Marlan and bring out many humorous anecdotes of their interactions with him. Judy Scully, his wife, takes us through Marlan's youth and college years in Wyoming. Leon Cohen illuminates the Yale days and Marlan's interactions with Willis E. Lamb. Pierre Meystre describes his arrival in Tucson fromSwitzerland for his first postdoctoral position with Marlan. The move from Tucson to Albuquerque is one of Suhail Zubairy's memories. Herbert Walther shines light on the impact of the multi-national Marlan and in particular, on the Max-Planck-Institut fü Quantenoptik. Wolfgang Schleich looks at his mentorMarlan from a graduate student's point of view and opens the arena for Reesor Woodling's description of Marlan's cattle business. We conclude the trail by the article of Thomas Walther, Ed Fry and George Welsch, who bring us up to date with Marlan's activities in Texas A & M. The actual birthday party and scientific celebration took place as a special two-day colloquium on Modern Trends in Quantum Optics at the Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptic in Garching, Germany on June 29-30, 1999. Included in this book is the program of this meeting, as wel as some excerpts from the celebration, such as, the after dinner speech by Roy J. Glauber followed by a photo album of Marlan's life. The poems by Olga Kocharovskaya poetically describe Marlan's scientific achievements. The concluding talk by Bruce Shore, given at this meeting, begins the connection to the papers by Don Kobe, Danny Greenberger and Mark Hillary, and Shi-Yao Zhu et al. covering topics from gauge invariance via unbreakable codes to photonic band gaps. The articles from the special issue of Optics Communications conclude this Festschrift.
Handbook of Health Economics
1st Edition
Volume 1AB
A J. Culyer + 1 more
English
Handbook of Health Economics
1st Edition
Volume 1A
A J. Culyer + 1 more
English
The Handbook of Health Economics provide an up-to-date survey of the burgeoning literature in health economics. As a relatively recent subdiscipline of economics, health economics has been remarkably successful. It has made or stimulated numerous contributions to various areas of the main discipline: the theory of human capital; the economics of insurance; principal-agent theory; asymmetric information; econometrics; the theory of incomplete markets; and the foundations of welfare economics, among others. Perhaps it has had an even greater effect outside the field of economics, introducing terms such as opportunity cost, elasticity, the margin, and the production function into medical parlance. Indeed, health economists are likely to be as heavily cited in the clinical as in the economics literature. Partly because of the large share of public resources that health care commands in almost every developed country, health policy is often a contentious and visible issue; elections have sometimes turned on issues of health policy. Showing the versatility of economic theory, health economics and health economists have usually been part of policy debates, despite the vast differences in medical care institutions across countries. The publication of the first Handbook of Health Economics marks another step in the evolution of health economics.
Electronic Structure
1st Edition
Volume 2
English
This book is the second volume in the Handbook of Surface Science series and deals with aspects of the electronic structure of surfaces as investigated by means of the experimental and theoretical methods of physics. The importance of understanding surface phenomena stems from the fact that for many physical and chemical phenomena, the surface plays a key role: in electronic, magnetic, and optical devices, in heterogenous catalysis, in epitaxial growth, and the application of protective coatings, for example. Therefore a better understanding and, ultimately, a predictive description of surface and interface properties is vital for the progress of modern technology. An investigation of surface electronic structure is also central to our understanding of all aspects of surfaces from a fundamental point of view. The chapters presented here review the goals achieved in the field and map out the challenges ahead, both in experiment and theory.
Handbook of Health Economics
1st Edition
Volume 1B
A J. Culyer + 1 more
English
As a relatively new subdiscipline of economics, health economics has made many contributions to areas of the main discipline, such as insurance economics. This volume provides a survey of the burgeoning literature on the subject of health economics.

Browse by Publisher