This book is based upon lectures presented in June 2007 at the INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati School on Attractor Mechanism, directed by Stefano Bellucci. The symposium included such prestigious lecturers as S. Ferrara, M. Günaydin, P. Levay, and T. Mohaupt. All lectures were given at a pedagogical, introductory level, which is reflected in the specific "flavor" of this volume. The book also benefits from extensive discussions about, and related reworking of, the various contributions. In addition, this volume contains contributions originating from short presentations of recent original results and an essay on the relation between complexity science and high-energy physics by A. Zichichi. It is the fourth volume in a series of books on the general topics of supersymmetry, supergravity, black holes and the attractor mechanism.

This is the third volume in a series of books on general topics in supersymmetric mechanics. This collection presents material from the well established international and annual INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati Winter School on the Attractor Mechanism.

This unique volume presents the scientific achievements of Nobel laureate Philip Anderson, spanning the many years of his career. In this new edition, the author has omitted some review papers as well as added over 15 of his research papers. As in the first edition, he provides an introduction to each paper by explaining the genesis of the papers or adding some personal history.The book provides a comprehensive overview of the author's work which include significant discoveries and pioneering contributions, such as his work on the Anderson model of magnetic impurities and the concept of localization; the study of spin glasses, the fluctuating valence problem and superexchange; his prediction of the existence of superfluidity in He3; his involvement in the discovery of the Josephson effect; his discovery of the “Higgs” mechanism in elementary particle physics; and so on.The new papers added to this edition include ”Pressure Broadening in the Microwave and Infrared Regions” — a condensation of most of the author's thesis; ”Ordering and Antiferromagnetism in Ferrites” — the best-known of the papers written by the author involving what are known as “frustrated” lattices; and ”Localized Magnetic States in Metals” — a paper mentioned in his Nobel Prize citation along with localization and superexchange; to name a few.A Career in Theoretical Physics is an essential source of reference for physicists, chemists, materials scientists and historians of science. It is also suitable reading for graduate students.

Noncommutative differential geometry has many actual and potential applications to several domains in physics ranging from solid state to quantization of gravity. The strategy is to formulate usual differential geometry in a somewhat unusual manner, using in particular operator algebras and related concepts, so as to be able to plug in noncommutativity in a natural way. Algebraic tools such as K-theory and cyclic cohomology and homology play an important role in this field.

This book develops a new approach to naturalizing phenomenology. The author proposes to integrate phenomenology with the mechanistic framework that offers new methodological perspectives for studying complex mental phenomena such as consciousness. While mechanistic explanatory models are widely applied in cognitive science, their approach to describing subjective phenomena is limited. The author argues that phenomenology can fill this gap. He proposes two novel ways of integrating phenomenology and mechanism. First, he presents a new reading of phenomenological analyses as functional analyses. Such functional phenomenology delivers a functional sketch of a target system and provides constraints on the space of possible mechanisms. Second, he develops the neurophenomenological approach in the direction of dynamic modeling of experience. He shows that neurophenomenology can deliver dynamical constraints on mechanistic models and thus inform the search for an underlying mechanism. Mechanisms and Consciousness will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and the cognitive sciences.

This book provides an extensive survey of all the physics necessary to understand the current developments in the field of fundamental cosmology, as well as an overview of the observational data and methods. It will help students to get into research by providing definitions and main techniques and ideas discussed today. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 summarises the fundamentals in theoretical physics needed in cosmology (general relativity, field theory, particle physics). Part 2 describes the standard model of cosmology and includes cosmological solutions of Einstein equations, the hot big bang model, cosmological perturbation theory, cosmic microwave background anisotropies, lensing and evidence for dark matter, and inflation. Part 3 describes extensions of this model and opens up current research in the field: scalar-tensor theories, supersymmetry, the cosmological constant problem and acceleration of the universe, topology of the universe, grand unification and baryogenesis, topological defects and phase transitions, string inspired cosmology including branes and the latest developments. The book provides details of all derivations and leads the student up to the level of research articles.

In this book, Matej Kohar demonstrates how the new mechanistic account of explanation can be used to support a non-representationalist view of explanations in cognitive neuroscience, and therefore can bring new conceptual tools to the non-representationalist arsenal. Kohar focuses on the explanatory relevance of representational content in constitutive mechanistic explanations typical in cognitive neuroscience. The work significantly contributes to two areas of literature: 1) the debate between representationalism and non-representationalism, and 2) the literature on mechanistic explanation. Kohar begins with an introduction to the mechanistic theory of explanation, focusing on the analysis of mechanistic constitution as the basis of explanatory relevance in constitutive mechanistic explanation. He argues that any viable analysis of representational contents implies that content is not constitutively relevant to cognitive phenomena. The author also addresses objections against his argument and concludes with an examination of the consequences of his account for both traditional cognitive neuroscience and non-representationalist alternatives. This book is of interest to readers in philosophy of mind, cognitive science and neuroscience.

A highly valued resource for those who wish to move from the introductory and preliminary understandings and the measurement of chaotic behavior to a more sophisticated and precise understanding of chaotic systems. The authors provide a deep understanding of the structure of strange attractors, how they are classified, and how the information required to identify and classify a strange attractor can be extracted from experimental data. In its first edition, the Topology of Chaos has been a valuable resource for physicist and mathematicians interested in the topological analysis of dynamical systems. Since its publication in 2002, important theoretical and experimental advances have put the topological analysis program on a firmer basis. This second edition includes relevant results and connects the material to other recent developments. Following significant improvements will be included: * A gentler introduction to the topological analysis of chaotic systems for the non expert which introduces the problems and questions that one commonly encounters when observing a chaotic dynamics and which are well addressed by a topological approach: existence of unstable periodic orbits, bifurcation sequences, multistability etc. * A new chapter is devoted to bounding tori which are essential for achieving generality as well as for understanding the influence of boundary conditions. * The new edition also reflects the progress which had been made towards extending topological analysis to higher-dimensional systems by proposing a new formalism where evolving triangulations replace braids. * There has also been much progress in the understanding of what is a good representation of a chaotic system, and therefore a new chapter is devoted to embeddings. * The chapter on topological analysis program will be expanded to cover traditional measures of chaos. This will help to connect those readers who are familiar with those measures and tests to the more sophisticated methodologies discussed in detail in this book. * The addition of the Appendix with both frequently asked and open questions with answers gathers the most essential points readers should keep in mind and guides to corresponding sections in the book. This will be of great help to those who want to selectively dive into the book and its treatments rather than reading it cover to cover. What makes this book special is its attempt to classify real physical systems (e.g. lasers) using topological techniques applied to real date (e.g. time series). Hence it has become the experimenter?s guidebook to reliable and sophisticated studies of experimental data for comparison with candidate relevant theoretical models, inevitable to physicists, mathematicians, and engineers studying low-dimensional chaotic systems.

The first book-length exploration of behavioral mechanisms in evolutionary ecology, this ambitious volume illuminates long-standing questions about cause-and-effect relations between an animal's behavior and its environment. By focusing on biological mechanisms—the sum of an animal's cognitive, neural, developmental, and hormonal processes—leading researchers demonstrate how the integrated study of animal physiology, cognitive processes, and social interaction can yield an enriched understanding of behavior. With studies of species ranging from insects to primates, the contributors examine how various animals identify and use environmental resources and deal with ecological constraints, as well as the roles of learning, communication, and cognitive aspects of social interaction in behavioral evolution. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate how the study of internal mechanistic foundations of behavior in relation to their ecological and evolutionary contexts and outcomes provides valuable insight into such behaviors as predation, mating, and dispersal. Behavioral Mechanisms in Evolutionary Ecology shows how a mechanistic approach unites various levels of biological organization to provide a broader understanding of the biological bases of behavioral evolution.

There are myriad questions that emerge when one considers emotions and decision-making: What produces emotions? Why do we have emotions? How do we have emotions? Why do emotional states feel like something? What is the relationship between emotion, reward value, and subjective feelings of pleasure? How is the value of 'good' represented in the brain? Will neuroeconomics replace classical microeconomics? How does the brain implement decision-making? Are gene-defined rewards and emotions in the interests of the genes? Does rational multistep planning enable us to go beyond selfish genes to plans in the interests of the individual? The Brain, Emotion, and Depression addresses these issues, providing a unified approach to emotion, reward value, economic value, decision-making, and their brain mechanisms. The evolutionary, adaptive value of the processes involved in emotion, the neural networks involved in emotion and decision making, and the issue of conscious emotional feelings are all considered. The book will be valuable for those in the fields of neuroscience, neurology, psychology, psychiatry, biology, animal behaviour, economics, and philosophy from the advanced undergraduate level upwards, and for all interested in emotion and decision-making.