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The book proposes a contemporary framework for critiquing Advaita and formulating its basic thesis in a more logical and convincing way. Any proper theory in philosophy and science has to follow from accepted assumptions. Hence the book begins by identifying basic presuppositions required for Advaita and determining the different cognitive possibilities arising out of them. After thus determining what is logically and conceptually possible and impossible in Advaita, the new framework is used to assess whether or not the traditionally held Advaitic concepts and theories are satisfactory and acceptable. This is done in many chapters covering discussions of the notions of not-Self (anātman), cosmic ignorance (māyā), individual ignorance (avidyā), illusoriness (mithyātva), sublation (bādha), entities that are different from the real and the unreal (sadasadvilaksana) and so on. The book argues that all these concepts, as specifically formulated and defended in traditional Advaita for centuries after Śankara, are simply faulty and untenable both individually and as related clusters of concepts. Traditional Advaita has also defended an elaborate ontology of experiences like mistaking a rope-for a snake. It has also heavily defended the metaphysical thesis of the empirical world of our experience being a total illusion. The logical faults and conceptual inadequacies of this ontology and metaphysics are also discussed in great detail, offering absolutely new criticisms of them. Despite this almost totally negative portrayal of traditional Advaita, the book is also quite positive in showing that any belief in non-duality is still very much philosophically possible and also necessary.

Advance Care Planning is an essential part of the new NHS National Programme on End-of-Life Care, aiming to improve the chances of ‘a good death’ by discussing and planning how this might be managed. This book helps readers explore a wide range of issues and practicalities in providing Advance Care Planning (ACP) for their patients nearing the end of life. This book takes a comprehensive look at the subject of ACP; frames the purpose, process, and outcomes; and includes contributions from experts from around the world.

The field of ferroelectricity has greatly expanded and changed recently. In addition to classical organic and inorganic ferroelectrics as well as composite ferroelectrics new fields and materials have appeared, important for both basic science and application and showing technological promise for novel multifunctional devices. Most of these fields were unknown or inactive 20 to 40 years ago. Such new fields are multiferroic magnetoelectric systems, where the spontaneous polarization and the spontaneous magnetization are allowed to coexist, incommensurate ferroelectrics, where the periodicity of the order parameter is incommensurate to the periodicity of the underlying basic crystal lattice, ferroelectric liquid crystals, dipolar glasses, relaxor ferroelectrics, ferroelectric thin films and nanoferroelectrics. These new fields are in addition to basic physical interest also of great technological importance and allow for new memory devices, spintronic applications and electro‐optic devices. They are also important for applications in acoustics, robotics, telecommunications and medicine. New developments in relaxors allow for giant electromechanical and electrocaloric effects. The book is primarily intended for material scientists working in research or industry. It is also intended for graduate and doctoral students and can be used as a textbook in graduate courses. Finally, it should be useful for everybody following the development of modern solid‐state physics.

This book begins where elementary books and courses leave off and covers the advances made in statistical mechanics in the past fifty years. The book is divided into three parts. The first part is on general theory which includes a summary of the basic principles of statistical mechanics; a presentation of the physical phenomena covered and the models used to discuss them; theorems on the existence and uniqueness of partition functions; theorems on order; and critical phenomena and scaling theory. The second part is on series and numerical methods which includes derivations of the Mayer and Ree–Hoover expansions of the low density virial equation of state; Groeneveld's theorems; the application to hard spheres and discs; a summary of numerical studies of systems at high density; and the use of high temperature series expansions to estimate critical exponents for magnets. The third part covers exactly solvable models which includes a detailed presentation of the Pfaffian methods of computing the Ising partition function, magnetization, correlation functions, and susceptibility; the star-triangle (Yang–Baxter equation); functional equations and the free energy for the eight-vertex model; and the hard hexagon and chiral Potts models. All needed mathematics is developed in detail and many open questions are discussed. The goal is to guide the reader to the current forefront of research.

This text is an updated English version of a class-tested textbook originally published in Chinese in 2006. Its contents are based on the lecture notes of several courses taught by the authors at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Peking University. These courses include Chemical Bonding, Structure and Properties of Matter, Advanced Inorganic Chemistry, Quantum Chemistry, Group Theory, and Chemical Crystallography. This book consists of three parts. Part I reviews the basic theories of chemical bonding, with chapters on elementary quantum theory, atomic structure, bonding in molecules, bonding in solids, and computational chemistry. Part II introduces point groups and space groups, and their applications to the study of discrete molecules and crystals. A large number of worked examples are provided in order to illustrate the usefulness and elegance of the symmetry concept. Part III constitutes about half of the book and it gives a succinct description of the structural chemistry of the elements in the Periodic Table. The main-group elements are covered in seven chapters and three other chapters deal with the rare-earth elements, transition-metal clusters and supramolecular systems. The selected systems, many of them from recent literature, are used to elucidate various aspects of structure and bonding presented in Parts I and II, and to expound the current research trends in structural inorganic chemistry

Tomography provides three-dimensional images of heterogeneous materials or engineering components, and offers an unprecedented insight into their internal structure. By using X-rays generated by synchrotrons, neutrons from nuclear reactors, or electrons provided by transmission electron microscopes, hitherto invisible structures can be revealed which are not accessible to conventional tomography based on X-ray tubes. This book provides detailed descriptions of the recent developments in this field, especially the extension of tomography to materials research and engineering. The book is grouped into four parts: a general introduction into the principles of tomography, image analysis and the interactions between radiation and matter, and one part each for synchrotron X-ray tomography, neutron tomography, and electron tomography. Within these parts, individual chapters written by different authors describe important versions of tomography, and also provide examples of applications to demonstrate the capacity of the methods.

Volume I of the Advances in Culture and Psychology series showcases a number of cutting edge research programs in culture and psychology. The volume includes chapters on human culture in evolutionary perspective (Michael Tomasello), culture, emotion, and expression (David Matsumoto and Hyi-Sung Hwang), infectious disease and the creation of culture (Mark Schaller and Damian Murray), culture and attachment, learning and coping (Fred Rothbaum, Gilda Morelli, and Natalie Rusk), culturally situated linguistic ecologies and language use (Gün Semin), micro-macro dynamics of the cultural construction of reality (Toshio Yamagishi), and implications of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism for psychological processes (Sharon Shavitt, Carlos Torelli, and Hila Riemer).

The subject of this book is the Casimir effect, i.e., a manifestation of zero-point oscillations of the quantum vacuum in the form of forces acting between closely spaced bodies. It is a purely quantum effect. There is no force acting between neutral bodies in classical electrodynamics. The Casimir effect has become an interdisciplinary subject. It plays an important role in various fields of physics such as condensed matter physics, quantum field theory, atomic and molecular physics, gravitation and cosmology, and mathematical physics. Most recently, the Casimir effect has been applied to nanotechnology and for obtaining constraints on the predictions of unification theories beyond the Standard Model. The book assembles together the field-theoretical foundations of this phenomenon, the application of the general theory to real materials, and a comprehensive description of all recently performed measurements of the Casimir force, including the comparison between experiment and theory. There is increasing interest in forces of vacuum origin. Numerous new results have been obtained during the last few years which are not reflected in the literature, but are very promising for fundamental science and nanotechnology. The book provides a source of information which presents a critical assessment of all of the main results and approaches contained in published journal papers. It also proposes new ideas which are not yet universally accepted but are finding increasing support from experiment.

Humans' first languages may have been expressed through sign. Today, sign languages have been found around the world, including communities that do not have access to education or literacy. In addition to serving as a primary medium of communication for deaf communities, they have become among the most popular choices for second language study by hearing students. The status of sign languages as complex and complete languages that are clearly the linguistic “equal” of spoken languages is no longer questioned. Research on the characteristics of visual languages has blossomed since the 1960s, and careful study of deaf children’s development of sign language skills is pursued to obtain information to promote deaf children’s development. Equally important, the study of how children learn sign language provides excellent theoretical insights into how the human brain acquires and structures sign languages. In the same sense that cross-linguistic research has led to a better understanding of how language affects development, cross-modal research allows us to study the acquisition of language in the absence of a spoken phonology. This book provides cogent summaries of what is known about early gestural development, interactive processes adapted to visual communication, and the processes of semantic, syntactic and pragmatic development in sign. It addresses theoretical as well as applied questions, often with a focus on aspects of language which are (or perhaps are not) related to the modality of the language.