The 5th Experimental Chaos Conference was a gathering of scientists and engineers who work on real-world systems that behave in a nonlinear and, often, chaotic fashion. The proceedings present discoveries of chaotic behavior, explanation of nonlinear phenomena in the laboratory, and applications of nonlinear and chaotic effects to devices and techniques for improving performance and surmounting technical obstacles. Experimental work is presented on chaos in semiconductor superlattices, spatiotemporal chaos in magnetic materials, instabilities in magnetic fluids, bifurcations of hexagonal patterns in lasers, and discrete rotating waves. New phenomena are exhibited on amplitude death in coupled oscillators, vortex crystals, wakes in soap films, chaotic dynamics of ocean waves, and microscopic chaos. Applications of chaotic dynamics are offered in the areas of chaotic pulse trains in digital communications, detection of changes in EEGs, detection of unstable periodic orbits in noisy data, cellular automata and warfare, detection of n:m phase synchronization, methods in acoustic chaos, chaos in the machine tool-cutting process, and a nonlinear airfoil. The broad range of topics and fields touches on a wide variety of systems whose behavior is now better understood and applied through the use of chaotic dynamics.

The 5th Experimental Chaos Conference was a gathering of scientists and engineers who work on real-world systems that behave in a nonlinear and, often, chaotic fashion. The proceedings present discoveries of chaotic behavior, explanation of nonlinear phenomena in the laboratory, and applications of nonlinear and chaotic effects to devices and techniques for improving performance and surmounting technical obstacles. Experimental work is presented on chaos in semiconductor superlattices, spatiotemporal chaos in magnetic materials, instabilities in magnetic fluids, bifurcations of hexagonal patterns in lasers, and discrete rotating waves. New phenomena are exhibited on amplitude death in coupled oscillators, vortex crystals, wakes in soap films, chaotic dynamics of ocean waves, and microscopic chaos. Applications of chaotic dynamics are offered in the areas of chaotic pulse trains in digital communications, detection of changes in EEGs, detection of unstable periodic orbits in noisy data, cellular automata and warfare, detection of n: m phase synchronization, methods in acoustic chaos, chaos in the machine tool-cutting process, and a nonlinear airfoil. The broad range of topics and fields touches on a wide variety of systems whose behavior is now better understood and applied through the use of chaotic dynamics. Contents: Condensed Matter: Self-Organized Quasiparticles and Other Patterns in Planar Gas-Discharge Systems (H-G Purwins et al.); Controllable Bifurcation Processes in Undoped, Photoexcited GaAs/A1As Superlattices (K J Luo et al.); Control: Analyzing Time-Delay Feedback Systems (R Hegger et al.); Chaos Control in Fast Systems Using Occasional Feedback (N J Corron et al.); Electronics: Characteristic Relations of Type-III Intermittency in an Electronic Circuit (C-M Kim et al.); Chaotic Pulse Trains in Digital Communications (M Sushchik et al.); Spatiotemporal: Continuum Coupled Maps: A Model for Patterns in Vibrated Sand (E Ott & S C Venkataramani); Pattern Control with Spatial Perturbations in a Wide Aperture Laser (R Meucci et al.); Biology: Robust Detection of Dynamical Change in Scalp Egg (P C Gailey et al.); Detection of Unstable Periodic Orbits in Noisy Data, and Choosing the Right Surrogates (K Dolan et al.); Synchronization: Experimental Manifestations of Phase and Lag Synchronizations in Coupled Chaotic Systems (Y-C Lai et al.); Amplitude Death in Coupled Opto-Thermal Oscillators (R Herrero et al.); Banquet Talk: Case Study in OC Experimental ComplexityOCO OCo An Artificial-Life Approach to Modeling Warfare (A Ilachinski); Optics: Adaptive Control of Strong Chaos (F T Arecchi); Optical Implementation of Chaotic Maps with Mach-Zehnder Interferometers (K Umeno et al.); Quantum Chaos: Methods in Acoustic Chaos (C Ellegaard & K Schaadt); Mechanics: Stability Transitions in a Nonlinear Airfoil (L Virgin et al.); Ray Chaos in Quadratic Index Media: A Non-Mechanical Application of Mechanics (R Tagg & M Asadi-Zeydabadi); Hydrodynamics: Dynamics, Statistics and Vortex Crystals in the Relaxation of 2D Turbulence (C F Driscoll et al.); Growth of Disordered Features in a Two-Dimensional Cylinder Wake (P Vorobieff & R E Ecke); General: Experimental Evidence for Microscopic Chaos (M E Briggs et al.); Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Structure and Coarsening in Three-Dimensional Foams (B A Prause & J A Glazier); and other papers. Readership: Nonlinear and computer scientists, physicists, biomedical/chemical/mechanical engineers, as well as researchers and graduate students in the field of chaos."

The 4th Experimental Chaos Conference was a forum for members of the scientific and engineering communities to discuss recent developments in, and techniques of, experimental nonlinear dynamics. The focus of this important conference was on actual realizations of nonlinear and chaotic systems. The latest developments in applications of nonlinear dynamics and chaos were presented, the requirement being that all presentations were actually implemented in experiments or devices. The areas covered were spatio-temporal patterns, optical chaos, biological dynamics, communication and synchronization, control of chaotic systems, mechanical dynamics, fluid dynamics, quantum chaos, and chaotic condensed matter systems.

This book presents the state-of-the-art in modeling and simulation on supercomputers. Leading German research groups present their results achieved on high-end systems of the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS) for the year 2002. Reports cover all fields of supercomputing simulation ranging from computational fluid dynamics to computer science. Special emphasis is given to industrially relevant applications. Moreover, by presenting results for both vector sytems and micro-processor based systems the book allows to compare performance levels and usability of a variety of supercomputer architectures. It therefore becomes an indispensable guidebook to assess the impact of the Japanese Earth Simulator project on supercomputing in the years to come.

Why writing a book about a specialized task of the large topic of complex systems? And who will read it? The answer is simple: The fascination for a didactically valuable point of view, the elegance of a closed concept and the lack of a comprehensive disquisition. The fascinating part is that field equations can have localized solutions exhibiting the typical characteristics of particles. Regarding the field equations this book focuses on, the field phenomenon of localized solutions can be described in the context of a particle formalism, which leads to a set of ordinary differential equations covering the time evolution of the position and the velocity of each particle. Moreover, starting from these particle dynamics and making the transition to many body systems, one considers typical phenomena of many body systems as shock waves and phase transitions, which themselves can be described as field phenomena. Such transitions between different level of modelling are well known from conservative systems, where localized solutions of quantum field theory lead to the mechanisms of elementary particle interaction and from this to field equations describing the properties of matter. However, in dissipative systems such transitions have not been considered yet, which is adjusted by the presented book. The elegance of a closed concept starts with the observation of self-organized current filaments in a semiconductor gas discharge system. These filaments move on random paths and exhibit certain particle features like scattering or the formation of bound states. Neither the reasons for the propagation of the filaments nor the laws of the interaction between the filaments can be registered by direct observations. Therefore a model is established, which is phenomenological in the first instance due to the complexity of the experimental system. This model allows to understand the existence of localized structures, their mechanisms of movement, and their interaction, at least, on a qualitative level. But this model is also the starting point for developing a data analysis method that enables the detection of movement and interaction mechanisms of the investigated localized solutions. The topic is rounded of by applying the data analysis to real experimental data and comparing the experimental observations to the predictions of the model. A comprehensive publication covering the interesting topic of localized solutions in reaction diffusion systems in its width and its relation to the well known phenomena of spirals and patterns does not yet exist, and this is the third reason for writing this book. Although the book focuses on a specific experimental system the model equations are as simple as possible so that the discussed methods should be adaptable to a large class of systems showing particle-like structures. Therefore, this book should attract not only the experienced scientist, who is interested in self-organization phenomena, but also the student, who would like to understand the investigation of a complex system on the basis of a continuous description.

This timely book investigates fiction that speculates about wars likely to break out in the near or distant future. Ranging widely across periods and conflicts real and imagined, Future Wars explores the interplay between politics, literature, science fiction, and war in a range of classic texts. Individual essays look at Reagan's infamous “Star Wars” project, nuclear fiction, Martian invasion, and the Pax Americana. The use of future war scenarios in military planning dates back to the nineteenth century, and Future Wars concludes with a US Army officer's assessment of the continuing usefulness of future wars fiction.

"Granular Gases" are diluted many-particle systems in which the mean free path of the particles is much larger than the typical particle size, and where particle collisions occur dissipatively. The dissipation of kinetic energy can lead to effects such as the formation of clusters, anomalous diffusion and characteristic shock waves to name but a few. The book is organized as follows: Part I comprises the rigorous theoretical results for the dilute limit. The detailed properties of binary collisions are described in Part II. Part III contains experimental investigations of granular gases. Large-scale behaviour as found in astrophysical systems is discussed in Part IV. Part V, finally, deals with possible generalizations for dense granular systems.

Most genetics textbooks deal adequately with plant and animal genetics, but tend to neglect fungi except for two areas. Firstly, the ascus segregations which, in the 1960s, contributed so much to developing an understanding of the mechanism of recombination and secondly, the contribution that work on yeast (as a model eukaryote) is currently making to understanding cell cycle control and its genetic regulation. Consequently, most introductory genetics texts will leave the reader/student with the impression that fungi are of use when peculiarities of their structure or life style suit them to particular experimental approaches, but are not worth mentioning otherwise. The authors have produced a book that will compensate for this imbalance. This book discusses the genetics of fungi, or mycology, in a way that is attractive and challenging, succinct yet comprehensive, sensitive to commercial and applied aspects, yet also theoretical, dealing with their genetics from molecules to individuals to population. This short text will be an ideal supplement to the established basic textbooks in genetics or can be used as the sole text for an advanced course devoted to fungal genetics.

An overview of recent developments in high performance computing and simulation, with special emphasis on the industrial relevance of the presented results and methods. The book showcases an innovative combination of the state-of-the-art modeling, novel numerical algorithms and the use of leading-edge high-performance computing systems.