This book serves as a self-contained reference source for engineers, materials scientists, and physicists with an interest in relaxation phenomena. It is made accessible to students and those new to the field by the inclusion of both elementary and advanced math techniques, as well as chapter opening summaries that cover relevant background information and enhance the book's pedagogical value. These summaries cover a wide gamut from elementary to advanced topics. The book is divided into three parts. The opening part, on mathematics, presents the core techniques and approaches. Parts II and III then apply the mathematics to electrical relaxation and structural relaxation, respectively. Part II discusses relaxation of polarization at both constant electric field (dielectric relaxation) and constant displacement (conductivity relaxation), topics that are not often discussed together. Part III primarily discusses enthalpy relaxation of amorphous materials within and below the glass transition temperature range. It takes a practical approach inspired by applied mathematics in which detailed rigorous proofs are eschewed in favor of describing practical tools that are useful to scientists and engineers. Derivations are however given when these provide physical insight and/or connections to other material. A self-contained reference on relaxation phenomena Details both the mathematical basis and applications For engineers, materials scientists, and physicists
This is a book of stories about small boys. It is about how they thought and what they did in a small West Indian town in the period round about the early 1950s. The boys are affected by the creatures among which they live: their parents, other adults, the neighbourhood dogs, and a girl or two. Mainly, it is an insight into how small boys interpreted and understood what the little world around them meant and how to adjust to the new words that they seemed to hear or read each day. The reader will understand and be sympathetic to some of the boys definitions of thingsdefinitions with which a good dictionary might not concur. Various interesting adults revolve around the group of boys and educate them from time to time, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by accident. Sometimes the education is of the mainstream type, and at other times it is particularly home grown. But in every case it is properly cultural and pragmatic. Some of the characters of note are Pop, an uncle of the narrator and an adult who totally understood the minds of small boys, never having entirely grown up himself; Ridsdale, the organizer; Larry, the wise; James, the unfortunate; Guava, the grouch; and Calvin the little know-it-all whose mother had sent him to a private school. And we are not likely ever to forget Alice-Maud. There is no grief or tragedy or vile corruption within these pages. The reader should relax and bear in mind that the boys will not die from the mistakes and misunderstandings that they collide with. They are going to grow up and be wiser, and some will possibly become quite important men. But for the moment they are just boys.
Originally published in 1981, the main thesis of this book is that rural labour markets are at the core of the problem of rural depopulation in development countries. Therefore, the success or failure of policies seeking to moderate the process of population decline is linked to the policy maker’s ability to influence labour markets constructively. Migration in search of work has been a major cause of rural decline, and its reversal to bring about economically viable communities must be related to the availability of employment in rural areas. The authors argue that the emergence of socially viable communities is the highest aim in rural economic policy making. Economic viability is usually a necessary but not a sufficient condition for social survival. This examination of the problems of choosing appropriate policies for rural areas, though written by two applied economists, will also be of interest to geographers, planner and politicians interested or involved in local and central government in the UK, the USA and Australia.
For about three decades, from the mid-1930s until the mid-1960s, the economic ideas of one man ruled the Western world : John Maynard Keynes. Even today, his aging disciples have only recently begun to retire from university teaching in sufficient numbers so as to allow a serious debate in economics to reappear after half a century in the better universities. Who is Douglas Vickers? He is an obscure economics professor who wrote two books defending Keynesian economics in the name of the Bible. These books never sold well, but they became briefly popular in the economics departments of several equally obscure Christian colleges. Baptized Inflation is a refutation of the writings of Douglas Vickers. But it is more than this. It is a Bible-based critique of the monstrous lies of Keynesian economics and written in clear language, unlike the books of Keynes and Vickers. It also sets forth the biblical case for the free market economy. - Back cover.
An innovative text which adopts the tools of cultural studies to provide a fresh approach to the study of Chinese language, culture and society. The book tackles areas such as grammar, language, gender, popular culture, film and the Chinese diaspora and employs the concepts of social semiotics to extend the ideas of language and reading. Covering a range of cultural texts, it will help to break down the boundaries around the ideas and identities of East and West and provide a more relevant analysis of the Chinese and China.
A textbook in communication and cultural studies. It offers a comprehensive approach to the study of the ways in which meaning is constituted in social life.
It is one of the wonders of mathematics that, for every problem mathematicians solve, another awaits to perplex and galvanize them. Some of these problems are new, while others have puzzled and bewitched thinkers across the ages. Such challenges offer a tantalizing glimpse of the field's unlimited potential, and keep mathematicians looking toward the horizons of intellectual possibility. In Visions of Infinity, celebrated mathematician Ian Stewart provides a fascinating overview of the most formidable problems mathematicians have vanquished, and those that vex them still. He explains why these problems exist, what drives mathematicians to solve them, and why their efforts matter in the context of science as a whole. The three-century effort to prove Fermat's last theorem -- first posited in 1630, and finally solved by Andrew Wiles in 1995 -- led to the creation of algebraic number theory and complex analysis. The Poincare conjecture, which was cracked in 2002 by the eccentric genius Grigori Perelman, has become fundamental to mathematicians' understanding of three-dimensional shapes. But while mathematicians have made enormous advances in recent years, some problems continue to baffle us. Indeed, the Riemann hypothesis, which Stewart refers to as the "Holy Grail of pure mathematics," and the P/NP problem, which straddles mathematics and computer science, could easily remain unproved for another hundred years. An approachable and illuminating history of mathematics as told through fourteen of its greatest problems, Visions of Infinity reveals how mathematicians the world over are rising to the challenges set by their predecessors -- and how the enigmas of the past inevitably surrender to the powerful techniques of the present.
There are insights of interest and value to all in these pages. This book develops a fresh and insightful approach to the questions of children and television. Drawing on recent work in linguistics and semiotics, Hodge and Tripp analyse the rich and ambiguous messages of television and cartoons and examine the ways in which these messages are interpreted by children. The authors convincingly show that children are sophisticated viewers: they have a shrewd sense of fact and fantasy and are active interpreters of plot.
How to Draw teaches aspiring artists an essential skill that represents the first step into all other visual arts. Even absolute beginners will be amazed at what they can achieve by working through this book and learning from the tips, tricks and know-how of experienced artists.
This book provides an introduction to the role of economics in debates on the environment. The authors examine the contribution of economics to an understanding of the emergence and persistence of environmental problems and focus on the basic concepts that can be applied to the evaluation of damage and assessment of policy options. Throughout the text, both the usefulness and the limits of economic techniques are explored. These are elaborated in the second part of the book through a number of case studies on environmental issues, both local and global.
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