The book contains review articles on recent advances in first-passage phenomena and applications contributed by leading international experts. It is intended for graduate students and researchers who are interested in learning about this intriguing and important topic.

Aimed at graduate students, this book explores some of the core phenomena in non-equilibrium statistical physics. It focuses on the development and application of theoretical methods to help students develop their problem-solving skills. The book begins with microscopic transport processes: diffusion, collision-driven phenomena, and exclusion. It then presents the kinetics of aggregation, fragmentation and adsorption, where the basic phenomenology and solution techniques are emphasized. Th...

Although most people would scarcely be able to make it through the day without using some type of electronic device—computers, televisions, and MP3 players, to name a few—the inner workings of such devices remain a mystery to many. This insightful volume examines various components, such as electron tubes and semiconductors, that have been essential to electronics over the years, as well as the history of the field in general and its applications in everyday life.

An extraordinary and challenging synthesis of ideas uniting Quantum Theory, and the theories of Computation, Knowledge and Evolution, Deutsch's extraordinary book explores the deep connections between these strands which reveal the fabric of realityin which human actions and ideas play essential roles.

Hardy's Z-function, related to the Riemann zeta-function ζ(s), was originally utilised by G. H. Hardy to show that ζ(s) has infinitely many zeros of the form ½+it. It is now amongst the most important functions of analytic number theory, and the Riemann hypothesis, that all complex zeros lie on the line ½+it, is perhaps one of the best known and most important open problems in mathematics. Today Hardy's function has many applications; among others it is used for extensive calculations rega...

This book presents numerical and other approximation techniques for solving various types of mathematical problems that cannot be solved analytically. In addition to well known methods, it contains some non-standard approximation techniques that are now formally collected as well as original methods developed by the author that do not appear in the literature.This book contains an extensive treatment of approximate solutions to various types of integral equations, a topic that is n...

This contributed volume collects research papers, presented at the CIRP Sponsored Conference Robust Manufacturing Control: Innovative and Interdisciplinary Approaches for Global Networks (RoMaC 2012, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany, June 18th-20th 2012). These research papers present the latest developments and new ideas focusing on robust manufacturing control for global networks.Today, Global Production Networks (i.e. the nexus of interconnected material and i...

What is the role and meaning of probability in physical theory, in particular in two of the most successful theories of our age, quantum physics and statistical mechanics? Laws once conceived as universal and deterministic, such as Newton‘s laws of motion, or the second law of thermodynamics, are replaced in these theories by inherently probabilistic laws. This collection of essays by some of the world‘s foremost experts presents an in-depth analysis of the meaning of probability in contem...

The inverse scattering problem is central to many areas of science and technology such as radar and sonar, medical imaging, geophysical exploration and nondestructive testing. This book is devoted to the mathematical and numerical analysis of the inverse scattering problem for acoustic and electromagnetic waves. In this third edition, new sections have been added on the linear sampling and factorization methods for solving the inverse scattering problem as well as expanded treatments of it...

Kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) simulations still represent a quite new area of research, with a rapidly growing number of publications. Broadly speaking, kMC can be applied to any system describable as a set of minima of a potential-energy surface, the evolution of which will then be regarded as hops from one minimum to a neighboring one. The hops in kMC are modeled as stochastic processes and the algorithms use random numbers to determine at which times the hops occur and to which neighboring ...

This book is intended as a text for a one-semester course on Mathematical and Computational Neuroscience for upper-level undergraduate and beginning graduate students of mathematics, the natural sciences, engineering, or computer science. An undergraduate introduction to differential equations is more than enough mathematical background. Only a slim, high school-level background in physics is assumed, and none in biology.Topics include models of individual nerve cells and their dyn...