Understanding Interaction is a book that explores the interaction between people and technology, in the broader context of the relations between the human made and the natural environments. It is not just about digital technologies – our computers, smart phones, the Internet – but all our technologies such as mechanical, electrical and electronic. Our ancestors started creating mechanical tools and shaping their environments millions of years ago, developing cultures and languages, which in turn influenced our evolution. Volume 1 of Understanding Interaction looks into this deep history – starting from the tool creating period (the longest and most influential on our physical and mental capacities), to the settlement period (agriculture, domestication, villages and cities, written language), the industrial period (science, engineering, reformation and renaissance), and finally the communication period (mass media, digital technologies, global networks). Volume 2 looks into humans in interaction – our physiology, anatomy, neurology, psychology, how we experience and influence the world, and how we (think we) think. From this transdisciplinary understanding, design approaches and frameworks are presented, to potentially guide future developments and innovations. The aim of the book is to be guide and inspiration for designers, artists, engineers, psychologists, media producers, social scientists etc., and as such be useful for both novices and more experienced practitioners.

This research monograph represents an outcome of the cross-fertilization between nonlinear functional analysis and mathematical modelling, and demonstrates its application to solid and contact mechanics. Based on authors’ original results, it introduces a general fixed point principle and its application to various nonlinear problems in analysis and mechanics. The classes of history-dependent operators and almost history-dependent operators are exposed in a large generality. A systematic and unified presentation contains a carefully-selected collection of new results on variational-hemivariational inequalities with or without unilateral constraints. A wide spectrum of static, quasistatic, dynamic contact problems for elastic, viscoelastic and viscoplastic materials illustrates the applicability of these theoretical results. Written for mathematicians, applied mathematicians, engineers and scientists, it is also a valuable tool for graduate students and researchers in nonlinear analysis, mathematical modelling, mechanics of solids, and contact mechanics.

This book describes, in a basic way, the most useful and effective iterative solvers and appropriate preconditioning techniques for some of the most important classes of large and sparse linear systems. The solution of large and sparse linear systems is the most time-consuming part for most of the scientific computing simulations. Indeed, mathematical models become more and more accurate by including a greater volume of data, but this requires the solution of larger and harder algebraic systems. In recent years, research has focused on the efficient solution of large sparse and/or structured systems generated by the discretization of numerical models by using iterative solvers.

Noncommutative Deformation Theory is aimed at mathematicians and physicists studying the local structure of moduli spaces in algebraic geometry. This book introduces a general theory of noncommutative deformations, with applications to the study of moduli spaces of representations of associative algebras and to quantum theory in physics. An essential part of this theory is the study of obstructions of liftings of representations using generalised (matric) Massey products. Suitable for researchers in algebraic geometry and mathematical physics interested in the workings of noncommutative algebraic geometry, it may also be useful for advanced graduate students in these fields.

The book is intended for students of graduate and postgraduate level, researchers in mathematical sciences as well as those who want to apply the spectral theory of second order differential operators in exterior domains to their own field. In the first half of this book, the classical results of spectral and scattering theory: the selfadjointness, essential spectrum, absolute continuity of the continuous spectrum, spectral representations, short-range and long-range scattering are summarized. In the second half, recent results: scattering of Schrodinger operators on a star graph, uniform resolvent estimates, smoothing properties and Strichartz estimates, and some applications are discussed.

Hyperidentities are important formulae of second-order logic, and research in hyperidentities paves way for the study of second-order logic and second-order model theory.This book illustrates many important current trends and perspectives for the field of hyperidentities and their applications, of interest to researchers in modern algebra and discrete mathematics. It covers a number of directions, including the characterizations of the Boolean algebra of n-ary Boolean functions and the distributive lattice of n-ary monotone Boolean functions; the classification of hyperidentities of the variety of lattices, the variety of distributive (modular) lattices, the variety of Boolean algebras, and the variety of De Morgan algebras; the characterization of algebras with aforementioned hyperidentities; the functional representations of finitely-generated free algebras of various varieties of lattices and bilattices via generalized Boolean functions (De Morgan functions, quasi-De Morgan functions, super-Boolean functions, super-De Morgan functions, etc); the structural results for De Morgan algebras, Boole-De Morgan algebras, super-Boolean algebras, bilattices, among others.While problems of Boolean functions theory are well known, the present book offers alternative, more general problems, involving the concepts of De Morgan functions, quasi-De Morgan functions, super-Boolean functions, and super-De Morgan functions, etc. In contrast to other generalized Boolean functions discovered and investigated so far, these functions have clearly normal forms. This quality is of crucial importance for their applications in pure and applied mathematics, especially in discrete mathematics, quantum computation, quantum information theory, quantum logic, and the theory of quantum computers.

Optimization and Differentiation is an introduction to the application of optimization control theory to systems described by nonlinear partial differential equations. As well as offering a useful reference work for researchers in these fields, it is also suitable for graduate students of optimal control theory.