Masonry skills

Sample

Robert Verpoorte, A. W. Alfermann

Plant secondary metabolism is an economically important source of fine chemicals, such as drugs, insecticides, dyes, flavours, and fragrances. Moreover, important traits of plants such as taste, flavour, smell, colour, or resistance against pests and diseases are also related to secondary metabolites. The genetic modification of plants is feasible nowadays. What does the possibility of engineering plant secondary metabolite pathways mean? In this book, firstly a general introduction is given on plant secondary metabolism, followed by an overview of the possible approaches that could be used to alter secondary metabolite pathways. In a series of chapters from various authorities in the field, an overview is given of the state of the art for important groups of secondary metabolites. No books have been published on this topic so far. This book will thus be a unique source of information for all those involved with plants as chemical factories of fine chemicals and those involved with the quality of food and ornamental plants. It will be useful in teaching graduate courses in the field of metabolic engineering in plants.

Sample

Xiang Sean Zhou, Yong Rui, Thomas S. Huang

Exploration of Visual Data presents latest research efforts in the area of content-based exploration of image and video data. The main objective is to bridge the semantic gap between high-level concepts in the human mind and low-level features extractable by the machines. The two key issues emphasized are "content-awareness" and "user-in-the-loop". The authors provide a comprehensive review on algorithms for visual feature extraction based on color, texture, shape, and structure, and techniques for incorporating such information to aid browsing, exploration, search, and streaming of image and video data. They also discuss issues related to the mixed use of textual and low-level visual features to facilitate more effective access of multimedia data. Exploration of Visual Data provides state-of-the-art materials on the topics of content-based description of visual data, content-based low-bitrate video streaming, and latest asymmetric and nonlinear relevance feedback algorithms, which to date are unpublished.

Sample

Samuel A. Safran

Understanding the structural and thermodynamic properties of surfaces, interfaces, and membranes is important for both fundamental and practical reasons. Complex fluids and solids, important in the development of new materials, cannot be designed using trial and error methods due to the multiplicity of components and parameters. While these materials can sometimes be analyzed in terms of microscopic mixtures, it is often conceptually simpler to regard them as dispersions and to focus on the properties of the internal interfaces found in these systems. The basic physics centers on the properties of quasi-two-dimensional systems embedded in the three-dimensional world, thus exhibiting phenomena which do not exist in bulk materials. . This approach is the basis behind the theoretical presentation of Statistical Thermodynamics of Surfaces, Interfaces, and Membranes. Focusing on the large-scale properties of these systems, these notes are meant to supplement the usual treatments in books on colloid and interface science. The approach adapted here first presents the traditional approach and then investigates how thermal fluctuations affect the simple description of the system. This philosophy is used throughout to treat the rich diversity of phenomena investigated in the field of colloid and interface science such as interfacial tension, the roughening transition, wetting, interactions between surfaces, membrane elasticity, and self-assembly. The presentation is that of a set of lecture notes (used in graduate courses taught by the author) including worked examples and further problems. This book is aimed at physicists, physical chemists, chemical engineers, and materials scientists who are interested in the statistical mechanics that underlie the macroscopic, thermodynamic properties of surfaces, interfaces, and membranes. While the primary focus of the book is on the systems important in colloid and interface science, a more general goal is to introduce the reader to several theoretical methods that are useful in applications of statistical mechanics to materials. It is thus the hope that the depth and breadth of coverage will introduce the condensed matter physicist to colloid science and present to the physical chemist or materials scientist, who may already be familiar with the underlying phenomena, a modern theoretical perspective.

Sample

Michael Z. Williamson

A collection of stories about soldiers and civilians doing their duty, some in a futuristic context, is accompanied by essays proclaiming the author's political and social views.