The subject of this book is time, one of the small number of elusive essences of the world, unsubdued by human will. The three global problems of natural science, those of the origin of the Universe, life and consciousness, cannot be solved without finding out the nature of time. Without a good construction of time it is impossible to describe, to qualify, to forecast and to control various processes in the animate and inanimate nature. Special attention is paid to the ways of adequate inclusion of the properties of time in the derivation of the fundamental equations of motion for natural systems.

Time is considered as an independent entity which cannot be reduced to the concept of matter, space or field. The point of discussion is the “time flow” conception of N A Kozyrev (1908-1983), an outstanding Russian astronomer and natural scientist. In addition to a review of the experimental studies of “the active properties of time”, by both Kozyrev and modern scientists, the reader will find different interpretations of Kozyrev's views and some developments of his ideas in the fields of geophysics, astrophysics, general relativity and theoretical mechanics.

The subject of this book is time, one of the small number of elusive essences of the world, unsubdued by human will. The three global problems of natural science, those of the origin of the Universe, life and consciousness, cannot be solved without finding out the nature of time. Without a good construction of time it is impossible to describe, to qualify, to forecast and to control various processes in the animate and inanimate nature. Special attention is paid to the ways of adequate inclusion of the properties of time in the derivation of the fundamental equations of motion for natural systems.

Industrial mathematics is evolving into an important branch of mathematics. Mathematicians, in particular in Italy, are becoming increasingly aware of this new trend and are engaged in bridging the gap between highly specialized mathematical research and the emerging demand for innovation from industry. The contributions in this volume provide both R&D workers in industry with a general view of existing skills, and academics with state-of-the-art applications of mathematics to real-world problems, which may also be incorporated in advanced courses.

This book deals with analytic problems related to some developments and generalizations of the Boltzmann equation toward the modeling and qualitative analysis of large systems that are of interest in applied sciences. These generalizations are documented in the various surveys edited by Bellomo and Pulvirenti with reference to models of granular media, traffic flow, mathematical biology, communication networks, and coagulation models. The first generalization dealt with refers to the averaged Boltzmann equation, which is obtained by suitable averaging of the distribution function of the field particles into the action domain of the test particle. This model is further developed to describe equations with dissipative collisions and a class of models that are of interest in mathematical biology. In this latter case the state of the particles is defined not only by a mechanical variable but also by a biological microscopic state.

The volume contains twelve papers dealing with the approximation of first and second order problems which arise in many fields of application including optimal control, image processing, geometrical optics and front propagation. Some contributions deal with new algorithms and technical issues related to their implementation. Other contributions are more theoretical, dealing with the convergence of approximation schemes. Many test problems have been examined to evaluate the performances of the algorithms. The volume can attract readers involved in the numerical approximation of differential models in the above-mentioned fields of applications, engineers, graduate students as well as researchers in numerical analysis.

Advances in metrology depend on improvements in scientific and technical knowledge and in instrumentation quality, as well as on better use of advanced mathematical tools and development of new ones. In this volume, scientists from both the mathematical and the metrological fields exchange their experiences. Industrial sectors, such as instrumentation and software, will benefit from this exchange, since metrology has a high impact on the overall quality of industrial products, and applied mathematics is becoming more and more important in industrial processes.This book is of interest to people in universities, research centers and industries who are involved in measurements and need advanced mathematical tools to solve their problems, and also to those developing such mathematical tools.