Understanding Fossils

There are many different types of explosions, each with its own complex mechanism. Understanding explosions is important in preventing them. This reference provides valuable information on explosions for everyone involved in the operation, design, maintenance, and management of chemical processes, helping enhance understanding of the nature of explosions and the practical methods required to prevent them from occurring. The text includes: Fundamental basis for explosions Explosive and flammable behavior and characteristics of materials Different types of explosions Fire and explosion hazard recognition Practical methods for preventing explosions or minimizing the potential consequences Additional references Understanding Explosions provides a practical understanding of explosion fundamentals, including the different types of explosions, the explosive and flammable behavior of materials, and the hazards related to fires and explosions. It also discusses practical methods to prevent and minimize the probability and consequence of an explosion during routine use of flammable, combustible and/or reactive materials.

THE PERCEPTION, UNDERSTANDING, AND USES OF COLOR—EXPANDED AND REFRESHED Understanding Color is an essential resource for those needing to become proficient in color for business applications. The peerless treatment of this critical subject is beautifully illustrated with real-world examples. Designers have turned to this guide for nearly a generation for its authoritative and accessible instruction. The knowledge contained in this book sets you apart from other designers by enabling you to: Contribute more effectively to discussions on color harmony, complete with a vocabulary that enables in-depth understanding of hue, value, and saturation Apply the most-up-to-date information on digital color to your projects Address issues involved when colors must be translated from one medium to another Troubleshoot and overcome today's most common challenges of working with color Full-color images showcase real design examples and a companion website features a digital workbook for reinforcing color concepts. From theory and practical implementation to the business and marketing aspects, Understanding Color helps you gain a deep and discriminating awareness of color.

Praise for the First Edition «…a reference for everyone who is interested in knowing and handling uncertainty.» —Journal of Applied Statistics The critically acclaimed First Edition of Understanding Uncertainty provided a study of uncertainty addressed to scholars in all fields, showing that uncertainty could be measured by probability, and that probability obeyed three basic rules that enabled uncertainty to be handled sensibly in everyday life. These ideas were extended to embrace the scientific method and to show how decisions, containing an uncertain element, could be rationally made. Featuring new material, the Revised Edition remains the go-to guide for uncertainty and decision making, providing further applications at an accessible level including: A critical study of transitivity, a basic concept in probability A discussion of how the failure of the financial sector to use the proper approach to uncertainty may have contributed to the recent recession A consideration of betting, showing that a bookmaker's odds are not expressions of probability Applications of the book’s thesis to statistics A demonstration that some techniques currently popular in statistics, like significance tests, may be unsound, even seriously misleading, because they violate the rules of probability Understanding Uncertainty, Revised Edition is ideal for students studying probability or statistics and for anyone interested in one of the most fascinating and vibrant fields of study in contemporary science and mathematics.

The continued advancement of MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) complexity, performance, commercial exploitation and market size requires an ever-expanding graduate population with state-of-the-art expertise. Understanding MEMS: Principles and Applications provides a comprehensive introduction to this complex and multidisciplinary technology that is accessible to senior undergraduate and graduate students from a range of engineering and physical sciences backgrounds. Fully self-contained, this textbook is designed to help students grasp the key principles and operation of MEMS devices and to inspire advanced study or a career in this field. Moreover, with the increasing application areas, product categories and functionality of MEMS, industry professionals will also benefit from this consolidated overview, source of relevant equations and extensive solutions to problems. Key features: Details the fundamentals of MEMS, enabling readers to understand the basic governing equations and know how they apply at the micron scale. Strong pedagogical emphasis enabling students to understand the fundamentals of MEMS devices. Self-contained study aid featuring problems and solutions. Book companion website hosts Matlab and PSpice codes and viewgraphs.

Understanding Biostatistics looks at the fundamentals of biostatistics, using elementary statistics to explore the nature of statistical tests. This book is intended to complement first-year statistics and biostatistics textbooks. The main focus here is on ideas, rather than on methodological details. Basic concepts are illustrated with representations from history, followed by technical discussions on what different statistical methods really mean. Graphics are used extensively throughout the book in order to introduce mathematical formulae in an accessible way. Key features: Discusses confidence intervals and p-values in terms of confidence functions. Explains basic statistical methodology represented in terms of graphics rather than mathematical formulae, whilst highlighting the mathematical basis of biostatistics. Looks at problems of estimating parameters in statistical models and looks at the similarities between different models. Provides an extensive discussion on the position of statistics within the medical scientific process. Discusses distribution functions, including the Guassian distribution and its importance in biostatistics. This book will be useful for biostatisticians with little mathematical background as well as those who want to understand the connections in biostatistics and mathematical issues.

Biplots are a graphical method for simultaneously displaying two kinds of information; typically, the variables and sample units described by a multivariate data matrix or the items labelling the rows and columns of a two-way table. This book aims to popularize what is now seen to be a useful and reliable method for the visualization of multidimensional data associated with, for example, principal component analysis, canonical variate analysis, multidimensional scaling, multiplicative interaction and various types of correspondence analysis. Understanding Biplots: • Introduces theory and techniques which can be applied to problems from a variety of areas, including ecology, biostatistics, finance, demography and other social sciences. • Provides novel techniques for the visualization of multidimensional data and includes data mining techniques. • Uses applications from many fields including finance, biostatistics, ecology, demography. • Looks at dealing with large data sets as well as smaller ones. • Includes colour images, illustrating the graphical capabilities of the methods. • Is supported by a Website featuring R code and datasets. Researchers, practitioners and postgraduate students of statistics and the applied sciences will find this book a useful introduction to the possibilities of presenting data in informative ways.

The celebrated lower Cambrian Chengjiang biota of Yunnan Province, China, represents one of the most significant ever paleontological discoveries. Deposits of ancient mudstone, about 520 million years old, have yielded a spectacular variety of exquisitely preserved fossils that record the early diversification of animal life. Since the discovery of the first specimens in 1984, many thousands of fossils have been collected, exceptionally preserving not just the shells and carapaces of the animals, but also their soft tissues in fine detail. This special preservation has produced fossils of rare beauty; they are also of outstanding scientific importance as sources of evidence about the origins of animal groups that have sustained global biodiversity to the present day. Much of the scientific documentation of the Chengjiang biota is in Chinese, and the first edition of this book was the first in English to provide fossil enthusiasts with a comprehensive overview of the fauna. The second edition has been fully updated and includes a new chapter on other exceptionally preserved fossils of Cambrian age, exciting new fossil finds from Chengjiang, and a phylogenetic framework for the biota. Displaying some 250 figures of marvelous specimens, this book presents to professional and amateur paleontologists, and all those fascinated by evolutionary biology, the aesthetic and scientific quality of the Chengjiang fossils.

Understanding Mammalian Locomotion will formally introduce the emerging perspective of collision dynamics in mammalian terrestrial locomotion and explain how it influences the interpretation of form and functional capabilities. The objective is to bring the reader interested in the function and mechanics of mammalian terrestrial locomotion to a sophisticated conceptual understanding of the relevant mechanics and the current debate ongoing in the field.

Wine chemistry inspires and challenges with its complexity, and while this is intriguing, it can also be a barrier to further understanding. The topic is demystified in Understanding Wine Chemistry, which explains the important chemistry of wine at the level of university education, and provides an accessible reference text for scientists and scientifically trained winemakers alike. Understanding Wine Chemistry: Summarizes the compounds found in wine, their basic chemical properties and their contribution to wine stability and sensory properties Focuses on chemical and biochemical reaction mechanisms that are critical to wine production processes such as fermentation, aging, physiochemical separations and additions Includes case studies showing how chemistry can be harnessed to enhance wine color, aroma, flavor, balance, stability and quality. This descriptive text provides an overview of wine components and explains the key chemical reactions they undergo, such as those controlling the transformation of grape components, those that arise during fermentation, and the evolution of wine flavor and color. The book aims to guide the reader, who perhaps only has a basic knowledge of chemistry, to rationally explain or predict the outcomes of chemical reactions that contribute to the diversity observed among wines. This will help students, winemakers and other interested individuals to anticipate the effects of wine treatments and processes, or interpret experimental results based on an understanding of the major chemical reactions that can occur in wine.

A long-awaited book from developmental disorders expert John Morton, Understanding Developmental Disorders: A Causal Modelling Approach makes sense of the many competing theories about what can go wrong with early brain development, causing a child to develop outside the normal range. Based on the idea that understanding developmental disorders requires us to talk about biological, cognitive, behavioral and environmental factors, and to talk about causal relationships among these elements. Explains what causal modelling is and how to do it. Compares different theories about particular developmental disorders using causal modelling. Will have a profound impact on research in the fields of psychology, neuroscience and medicine.