The author of Jumper returns with a near-future SF novel, set in an America whose coastline has been drowned by melting Antarctic ice. In the world where hundreds of millions of people have been displaced from their homes by the Deluge--a hundred-foot-rise in sea level from melting ice caps--Partricia Beenan is lucky. She is still an American citizen with the right to live on the continent, unlike so many "wetfoots" whose homes lie deep under the waves or the refugees from nations now completely under water. But Patricia's father chose to live on a floating city of New Galveston, instead of following his congresswomen wife to Washington, and go into the underwater salvage business. Now, several years after his death, it's Patricia's business and her city. She's a wealthy woman, on the city council, well known to local INS commander and the New Galveston police. But none of that will help Patricia when she stumbles across a recently sunken freighter that has dozens of bodies chained up in its hold and clear evidence that it has been fired upon by an INS ship. Patricia's evidence of a rogue operation within the INS brings her together with Thomas Beckett, a government investigator assigned to the case. Romance blossoms while they pursue and are pursued by the killers, into the heart of the conspiracy.

Lamb waves are guided waves that propagate in thin plate or shell structures. There has been a clear increase of interest in using Lamb waves for identifying structural damage, entailing intensive research and development in this field over the past two decades. Now on the verge of maturity for diverse engineering applications, this emerging technique serves as an encouraging candidate for facilitating continuous and automated surveillance of the integrity of engineering structures in a cost-effective manner. In comparison with conventional nondestructive evaluation techniques such as ultrasonic scanning and radiography which have been well developed over half a century, damage identification using Lamb waves is in a stage of burgeoning development, presenting a number of technical challenges in application that need to be addressed and circumvented. It is these two aspects that have encouraged us to write this book, with the intention of consolidating the knowledge and know-how in the field of Lamb-wave-based damage identification, and of promoting widespread attention to mature application of this technique in the practical engineering sphere. This book provides a comprehensive description of key facets of damage identification technique using Lamb waves, based on the authors’ knowledge, comprehension and experience, ranging from fundamental theory through case studies to engineering applications.

On 14 September 2015, after 50 years of searching, gravitational waves were detected for the first time and astronomy changed for ever. Until then, investigation of the universe had depended on electromagnetic radiation: visible light, radio, X-rays and the rest. But gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space and time – are unrelenting, passing through barriers that stop light dead. At the two 4-kilometre long LIGO observatories in the US, scientists developed incredibly sensitive detectors, capable of spotting a movement 100 times smaller than the nucleus of an atom. In 2015 they spotted the ripples produced by two black holes spiralling into each other, setting spacetime quivering. This was the first time black holes had ever been directly detected – and it promises far more for the future of astronomy. Brian Clegg presents a compelling story of human technical endeavour and a new, powerful path to understand the workings of the universe.