Autonomy. The Quest to Build the Driverless Car and How It Will Reshape Our World

Издание на английском языке. В этой книге собраны статьи, в которых методом матриц плотности были изложены новые квантовые теории сверхтекучести и сверхпроводимости. В первой статье развита теория сверхтекучести, в которой была получена зависимость теплоемкости от температуры. Остальные статьи посвящены явлению сверхпроводимости. В этих работах было показано, как вариацианный принцип приводит к уравнению для функции распределения электронов по волновым векторам. Электроны есть частицы, которые называются фермионами. Это утверждение дает возможность найти зависимость энергии взаимодействия двух электронов от их волновых векторов. Потенциальная энергия взаимодействия электронов в координатном пространстве есть положительная величина, что свидетельствует об отталкивании двух электронов один от другого. Это кулоновское отталкивание электронов приводит к зависимости энергии взаимодействия электронов от волновых векторов, которое для кристаллических металлов имеет два слагаемых. Первое слагаемое есть положительная величина. Она зависит от волновых векторов, которые равны по величине и противоположны по направлениям. Это слагаемое говорит об отталкивании электронов и приводит к наличию анизотропии электронов, которое означает, что вероятности двух некоторых электронов не равны друг другу. В этом проявляется сверхпроводимость. Второе слагаемое есть отрицательная величина, которая зависит от равных друг другу волновых векторов. Это слагаемое приводит к энергетической щели. Все эти явления возникают при низких температурах. Было исследовано влияние магнитного поля на сверхпроводник. Показано, что при увеличении внешнего магнитного поля происходит смещение функции распределения электронов в сторону больших энергий. Такое смещение дает возможность объяснить эффект Мейснера - Оксенфельда. Кроме внешнего магнитного поля существует внутреннее магнитное поле, обусловленное сверхпроводящим электрическим током. Найдены плотность этого тока и напряженности внутреннего и внешнего магнитных полей. Показано, что выталкивание внешнего магнитного поля из сверхпроводника обусловлено большей по модулю напряженностью внутреннего магнитного поля, которое возникает внутри сверхпроводника. Дано объяснение явления квантовой левитации сверхпроводника. Книга может представлять интерес для студентов старших курсов высших учебных заведений, аспирантов, преподавателей и научных работников.

Mathematical Walks is a science education project initiated by the Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Kharkevich Institute) and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech). The project was implemented during 2016 with the support of a number of Russia's leading media companies. Magazines, newspapers and Internet portals published interviews with leading Russian mathematicians and scientists working in fields related to mathematics. Over 20 researchers were invited to be interviewed while strolling along the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, discussing maths, politics, music, poetry, the current status of academic research in Russia and abroad, and many other things. A few of the interviews, marked as "special issues," use a more traditional format. This book is an English translation of the interviews. A lot of what they contain is specifically Russian, but that is part of their interest. We hope that the book will help a foreign reader to get a feeling for what Russian mathematicians talk about, what concerns them and what they aspire to. The careers of many of the interviewees overlap the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, so their memories take us on a "walk through time". Start from the beginning or start in the middle. We guarantee that you will be drawn in. Join us for a walk! Compiled by Inessa Grigaliunene.

For centuries hummingbirds have captured our imaginations: revered by Native Americans, coveted by European collectors and admired worldwide for their jewel-like plumage, acrobatic flight and immense character. Though their renown extends throughout the world, hummingbirds are found exclusively in the Americas. Small in stature yet fiercely tenacious, they have conquered every habitat imaginable: from boreal woodlands to deserts, mangrove swamps to volcanic slopes, and on islands both tropical and sub-polar. The Glitter in the Green takes us on an unforgettable journey in search of the most remarkable examples of this wildly variable family. There's the Bee Hummingbird in Cuba, the smallest species of bird to have ever lived; the diminutive Rufous Hummingbird, whose annual migration exceeds 3,000 miles; and the critically endangered Juan Fernandez Firecrown, marooned on the remote Pacific island that inspired Robinson Crusoe. Jon Dunn brings us closer than ever before to these magnificent creatures, exploring a heady mix of rare birds, a history redolent with mythology, and the colourful stories of the people obsessed with hummingbirds through the ages. With great passion for his subject and a taste for adventure, Dunn transports us to wondrous landscapes from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and invites us into the kaleidoscopic world of the hummingbird - the bird that has won the hearts and minds of mankind for millennia.

How dogs defied science and changed the way we think about animals What do dogs really think of us? What do dogs know and understand of the world? Do their emotions feel like our own? Do they love like we do? Driven by his own love of dogs, Charles Darwin was nagged by questions like these. To root out answers, his contemporaries toyed with dog sign language. To reveal clues, they made special puzzle boxes and elaborate sniff tests using old socks. Later, the same perennial questions about the minds of dogs drove Pavlov and Pasteur to unspeakable cruelty in their search for truth. These big names in science influenced leagues of psychologists and animal behaviourists, each building upon the ideas and received wisdom of previous generations but failing to see what was staring them in the face - that the very methods humans used to study dogs' minds were influencing the insights reflected back. To discover the impressive cognitive feats that dogs are capable of, a new approach was needed. Treated with love and compassion, dogs would open up their unique perspective on the world, and a new breed of scientists would be provided answers to life's biggest questions. Wonderdog is the story of those dogs - a historical account of how we came to know what dogs are capable of. It's a celebration of animal minds and the secrets they hold. And it's a love letter to science, through the good times and the bad.

Astronomers have successfully observed a great deal of the Universe's history, from recording the afterglow of the Big Bang to imaging thousands of galaxies, and even to visualising an actual black hole. There's a lot for astronomers to be smug about. But when it comes to understanding how the Universe began and grew up we are literally in the dark ages. In effect, we are missing the first one billion years from the timeline of the Universe. This brief but far-reaching period in the Universe's history, known to astrophysicists as the 'Epoch of Reionisation', represents the start of the cosmos as we experience it today. The time when the very first stars burst into life, when darkness gave way to light. After hundreds of millions of years of dark, uneventful expansion, one by the one these stars suddenly came into being. This was the point at which the chaos of the Big Bang first began to yield to the order of galaxies, black holes and stars, kick-starting the pathway to planets, to comets, to moons, and to life itself. Incorporating the very latest research into this branch of astrophysics, this book sheds light on this time of darkness, telling the story of these first stars, hundreds of times the size of the Sun and a million times brighter, lonely giants that lived fast and died young in powerful explosions that seeded the Universe with the heavy elements that we are made of. Emma Chapman tells us how these stars formed, why they were so unusual, and what they can teach us about the Universe today. She also offers a first-hand look at the immense telescopes about to come on line to peer into the past, searching for the echoes and footprints of these stars, to take this period in the Universe's history from the realm of theoretical physics towards the wonder of observational astronomy.