This book describes the motions resulting from heating a fluid layer from below.

The impact of Benard's discovery on 20th century physics is crucial to any modern research area such as fluid dynamics, nonlinear dynamics, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, just to name a few. This centenary review shows the broad scope and development including modern applications, edited and written by experts in the field.

Seldom does a physical system, particularly one as apparently simple as the flow of a Newtonian fluid between concentric rotating cylinders, retain the interest of scientists, applied mathematicians and engineers for very long. Yet, as this volume goes to press it has been nearly 70 years since G. I. Taylor's outstanding experimental and theoretical study of the linear stability of this flow was published, and a century since the first experiments were performed on rotating cylinder viscometers. Since then, the study of this system has progressed enormously, but new features of the flow patterns are still being uncovered. Interesting variations on the basic system abound. Connections with open flows are being made. More complex fluids are used in some experiments. The vigor of the research going on in this particular example of nonequilibrium systems was very apparent at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Ordered and Turbulent Patterns in Taylor Couette Flow," held in Columbus, Ohio, USA May 22-24, 1991. A primary goal of this ARW was to bring together those interested in pattern formation in the classic Taylor Couette problem with those looking at variations on the basic system and with those interested in related systems, in order to better define the interesting areas for the future, the open questions, and the features common (and not common) to closed and open systems. This volume contains many of the contributions presented during the workshop.

This monograph, entirely devoted to “Convection in Fluids”, presents a unified rational approach of various convective phenomena in fluids (mainly considered as a thermally perfect gas or an expansible liquid), where the main driving mechanism is the buoyancy force (Archimedean thrust) or temperature-dependent surface tension in homogeneities (Marangoni effect). Also, the general mathematical formulation (for instance, in the Bénard problem - heated from below) and the effect of free surface deformation are taken into account. In the case of atmospheric thermal convection, the Coriolis force and stratification effects are also considered. This volume gives a rational and analytical analysis of the above mentioned physical effects on the basis of the full unsteady Navier-Stokes and Fourier (NS-F) equations - for a Newtonian compressible viscous and heat-conducting fluid - coupled with the associated initials (at initial time), boundary (lower-at the solid plane) and free surface (upper-in contact with ambiant air) conditions. This, obviously, is not an easy but a necessary task if we have in mind a rational modelling process, and work within a numerically coherent simulation on a high speed computer.

As humanity continues to consume planetary resources at an unsustainable rate, we require not only new and renewable forms of energy but also new ways of understanding energy itself. Clayton Crockett offers an innovative philosophy of energy that cuts across a number of leading-edge disciplines. Drawing from contemporary philosophies of New Materialism, non-Western traditions, and the sciences, he develops a comprehensive vision of energy as a material process spanning physics, biology, politics, ecology, and religion. Crockett argues that change is foundational to material reality, which is ceaselessly self-organizing. We can observe energy’s effects in the operations of natural selection as well as those at work in human societies. Matter and energy are not an oppositional binary; rather, they are expressions of how change functions in the universe. Ultimately, Crockett argues, we can conceive of God neither as a deity nor as a being but as the principle of change. Informed by cutting-edge theoretical discourses in thermodynamics, science studies, energy humanities, systems theory, continental philosophy, and radical theology, Energy and Change draws on theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Catherine Malabou, Slavoj Žižek, Karen Barad, Bruno Latour, and Kojin Karatani as well as ideas about spirituality, society, and nature from Amerindian, Vodou, and Neo-Confucian traditions. A foundational work in New Materialist philosophy of religion, this book offers compelling new insights into the structure of the cosmos and our place in it.

Enzymes and whole cells are able to catalyze the most complex chemical processes under the most benign experimental and environmental conditions. In this way, enzymes and cells could be excellent catalysts for a much more sustainable chemical industry. However, enzymes and cells also have some limitations for nonbiological applications: fine chemistry, food chemistry, analysis, therapeutics, and so on. Enzymes and cells may be unstable, difficult to handle under nonconventional conditions, poorly selective toward synthetic substrates, and so forth. From this point of view, the transformation—from the laboratory to industry—of chemical processes catalyzed by enzymes and cells may be one of the most complex and exciting goals in biotechnology. For many industrial applications, enzymes and cells have to be immobilized, via very simple and cost-effective protocols, in order to be re-used over very long periods of time. From this point of view, immobilization, simplicity, and stabilization have to be strongly related concepts. Over the last 30 years, a number of protocols for the immobilization of cells and enzymes have been reported in scientific literature. However, only very few protocols are simple and useful enough to greatly improve the functional properties of enzymes and cells, activity, stability, selectivity, and related properties.

The authors look to the laws of thermodynamics for answers to the questions of evolution, ecology, economics, and even life's origin.