The authors suggest that a clearer understanding of entropy and the choices it presents will assist in management of change--or, as they put it, to manage disorder one needs to control the entropy vector.

How do managers and entrepreneurs evaluate risk, encourage creativityor manage change? Might a better grasp of science help? The authorsof this book suggest that there is real value in trying to connectscience to business and that science is far too important just to beleft to the scientists

How do managers and entrepreneurs evaluate risk, encourage creativity or manage change? Might a better grasp of science help? The authors of this book suggest that there is real value in trying to connect science to business and that science is far too important just to be left to the scientists.All of science is too large a prospect, so the authors limit themselves to looking at disorder. We must all learn to manage and control change, and there is plenty of social, technical and business change going on. The authors suggest that a clearer understanding of entropy and the choices it presents will assist in that management of change — or, as they put it, to manage disorder one needs to control the entropy vector.This book is for scientists and engineers aspiring to business success and for business people interested in new approaches.

Scientific knowledge grows at a phenomenal pace--but few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a role in our modern world as The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory more than fifty years ago. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored to issue this commemorative reprinting of a classic.

This monograph offers a new foundation for information theory that is based on the notion of information-as-distinctions, being directly measured by logical entropy, and on the re-quantification as Shannon entropy, which is the fundamental concept for the theory of coding and communications. Information is based on distinctions, differences, distinguishability, and diversity. Information sets are defined that express the distinctions made by a partition, e.g., the inverse-image of a random variable so they represent the pre-probability notion of information. Then logical entropy is a probability measure on the information sets, the probability that on two independent trials, a distinction or “dit” of the partition will be obtained. The formula for logical entropy is a new derivation of an old formula that goes back to the early twentieth century and has been re-derived many times in different contexts. As a probability measure, all the compound notions of joint, conditional, and mutual logical entropy are immediate. The Shannon entropy (which is not defined as a measure in the sense of measure theory) and its compound notions are then derived from a non-linear dit-to-bit transform that re-quantifies the distinctions of a random variable in terms of bits—so the Shannon entropy is the average number of binary distinctions or bits necessary to make all the distinctions of the random variable. And, using a linearization method, all the set concepts in this logical information theory naturally extend to vector spaces in general—and to Hilbert spaces in particular—for quantum logical information theory which provides the natural measure of the distinctions made in quantum measurement. Relatively short but dense in content, this work can be a reference to researchers and graduate students doing investigations in information theory, maximum entropy methods in physics, engineering, and statistics, and to all those with a special interest in a new approach to quantum information theory.

Vector Fields with Applications to Thermodynamics and Irreversibility is part of the series "Mathematics and Physics for Science and Technology", which combines rigorous mathematics with general physical principles to model practical engineering systems with a detailed derivation and interpretation of results. Volume V presents the mathematical theory of partial differential equations and methods of solution satisfying initial and boundary conditions, and includes applications to: acoustic, elastic, water, electromagnetic and other waves; the diffusion of heat, mass and electricity; and their interactions. This is the first book of the volume. The second book of volume V continues this book on thermodynamics, focusing on the equation of state and energy transfer processes including adiabatic, isothermal, isobaric and isochoric. These are applied to thermodynamic cycles, like the Carnot, Atkinson, Stirling and Barber-Brayton cycles, that are used in thermal devices, including refrigerators, heat pumps, and piston, jet and rocket engines. In connection with jet propulsion, adiabatic flows and normal and oblique shock waves in free space and nozzles with variable cross-section are considered. The equations of fluid mechanics are derived for compressible two-phase flow in the presence of shear and bulk viscosity, thermal conduction and mass diffusion. The thermodynamic cycles are illustrated by detailed calculations modelling the operation of piston, turbojet and rocket engines in various ambient conditions, ranging from sea level, the atmosphere of the earth at altitude and vacuum of space, for the propulsion of land, sea, air and space vehicles. The book is intended for graduate students and engineers working with mathematical models and can be applied to problems in mechanical, aerospace, electrical and other branches of engineering dealing with advanced technology, and also in the physical sciences and applied mathematics. This book: Simultaneously covers rigorous mathematics, general physical principles and engineering applications with practical interest Provides interpretation of results with the help of illustrations Includes detailed proofs of all results L.M.B.C. Campos was chair professor and the Coordinator of the Scientific Area of Applied and Aerospace Mechanics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and also the director (and founder) of the Center for Aeronautical and Space Science and Technology until retirement in 2020. L.A.R.Vilela is currently completing an Integrated Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering at Institute Superior Tecnico (1ST) of Lisbon University.

Herb Caen, a popular columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently quoted a Voice of America press release as saying that it was reorganizing in order to "eliminate duplication and redundancy. " This quote both states a goal of data compression and illustrates its common need: the removal of duplication (or redundancy) can provide a more efficient representation of data and the quoted phrase is itself a candidate for such surgery. Not only can the number of words in the quote be reduced without losing informa tion, but the statement would actually be enhanced by such compression since it will no longer exemplify the wrong that the policy is supposed to correct. Here compression can streamline the phrase and minimize the em barassment while improving the English style. Compression in general is intended to provide efficient representations of data while preserving the essential information contained in the data. This book is devoted to the theory and practice of signal compression, i. e. , data compression applied to signals such as speech, audio, images, and video signals (excluding other data types such as financial data or general purpose computer data). The emphasis is on the conversion of analog waveforms into efficient digital representations and on the compression of digital information into the fewest possible bits. Both operations should yield the highest possible reconstruction fidelity subject to constraints on the bit rate and implementation complexity.