During a century, from the Van der Waals mean field description (1874) of gases to the introduction of renormalization group (RG techniques 1970), thermodynamics and statistical physics were just unable to account for the incredible universality which was observed in numerous critical phenomena. The great success of RG techniques is not only to solve perfectly this challenge of critical behaviour in thermal transitions but to introduce extremely useful tools in a wide field of daily situations where a system exhibits scale invariance. The introduction of scaling, scale invariance and universality concepts has been a significant turn in modern physics and more generally in natural sciences. Since then, a new "physics of scaling laws and critical exponents", rooted in scaling approaches, allows quantitative descriptions of numerous phenomena, ranging from phase transitions to earthquakes, polymer conformations, heartbeat rhythm, diffusion, interface growth and roughening, DNA sequence, dynamical systems, chaos and turbulence. The chapters are jointly written by an experimentalist and a theorist. This book aims at a pedagogical overview, offering to the students and researchers a thorough conceptual background and a simple account of a wide range of applications. It presents a complete tour of both the formal advances and experimental results associated with the notion of scaling, in physics, chemistry and biology.

This book is an excellent introduction to the concept of scale invariance, which is a growing field of research with wide applications. It describes where and how symmetry under scale transformation (and its various forms of partial breakdown) can be used to analyze solutions of a problem without the need to explicitly solve it. The first part gives descriptions of tools and concepts; the second is devoted to recent attempts to go beyond the invariance or symmetry breaking, to discuss causes and consequences, and to extract useful information about the system. Examples are carefully worked out in fields as diverse as condensed matter physics, population dynamics, earthquake physics, turbulence, cosmology and finance.

Bringing the concepts of dimensional analysis, self-similarity, and fractal dimensions together in a logical and self-contained manner, this book reveals the close links between modern theoretical physics and applied mathematics. The author focuses on the classic applications of self-similar solutions within astrophysical systems, with some general theory of self-similar solutions, so as to provide a framework for researchers to apply the principles across all scientific disciplines. He discusses recent advances in theoretical techniques of scaling while presenting a uniform technique that encompasses these developments, as well as applications to almost any branch of quantitative science. The result is an invaluable reference for active scientists, featuring examples of dimensions and scaling in condensed matter physics, astrophysics, fluid mechanics, and general relativity, as well as in mathematics and engineering.

The NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Scale Invariance, Interfaces and Non Equilibrium Dynamics" was held at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, UK from 20-30 June 1994. The topics discussed at the Institute were all concerned with the origin and nature of complex structures found far from equilibrium. Examples ranged from reaction diffusion systems and hydrodynamics through to surface growth due to deposition. A common theme was that of scale invariance due to the self-similarity of the underly ing structures. The topics that were covered can be broadly classified as pattern for mation (theoretical, computational and experimental aspects), the non-equilibrium dynamics of the growth of interfaces and other manifolds, coarsening phenomena, generic scale invariance in driven systems and the concept of self-organized critical ity. The main feature of the Institute was the four one-hour-Iong lectures given each day by invited speakers. In addition to thirty-seven of these lectures, two contributed lectures were also given. The many questions that were asked after the lectures attested to the excitement and interest that the lecturers succeeded in generating amongst the students. In addition to the discussions initiated by lectures, an im portant component of the meeting were the poster sessions, where participants were able to present their own work, which took place on three of the afternoons. The list of titles given at the end of these proceedings gives some idea of the range and scope of these posters.

It has been a rare privilege to assemble this volume of Wassily Hoeffding's Collected Works. Wassily was, variously, a teacher, supervisor and colleague to us, and his work has had a profound influence on our own. Yet this would not be sufficient reason to publish his collected works. The additional and overwhelmingly compelling justification comes from the fun damental nature of his contributions to Statistics and Probability. Not only were his ideas original, and far-reaching in their implications; Wassily de veloped them so completely and elegantly in his papers that they are still cited as prime references up to half a century later. However, three of his earliest papers are cited rarely, if ever. These include material from his doctoral dissertation. They were written in German, and two of them were published in relatively obscure series. Rather than reprint the original articles, we have chosen to have them translated into English. These trans lations appear in this book, making Wassily's earliest research available to a wide audience for the first time. All other articles (including those of his contributions to Mathematical Reviews which go beyond a simple reporting of contents of articles) have been reproduced as they appeared, together with annotations and corrections made by Wassily on some private copies of his papers. Preceding these articles are three review papers which dis cuss the . impact of his work in some of the areas where he made major contributions.

What is Scale Invariant Feature Transform SIFT, which stands for scale-invariant feature transform, is a method for computer vision that was developed by David Lowe in 1999. Its purpose is to identify, describe, and coincide with local features in images. Object recognition, robotic mapping and navigation, picture stitching, three-dimensional modeling, gesture recognition, video tracking, individual identification of wildlife, and match moving are some of the applications that can be used. How you will benefit (I) Insights, and validations about the following topics: Chapter 1: Scale-invariant feature transform Chapter 2: Edge detection Chapter 3: Scale space Chapter 4: Gaussian blur Chapter 5: Feature (computer vision) Chapter 6: Corner detection Chapter 7: Affine shape adaptation Chapter 8: Hessian affine region detector Chapter 9: Principal curvature-based region detector Chapter 10: Oriented FAST and rotated BRIEF (II) Answering the public top questions about scale invariant feature transform. (III) Real world examples for the usage of scale invariant feature transform in many fields. Who this book is for Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Scale Invariant Feature Transform.

Critical phenomena arise in a wide variety of physical systems. Classi cal examples are the liquid-vapour critical point or the paramagnetic ferromagnetic transition. Further examples include multicomponent fluids and alloys, superfluids, superconductors, polymers and fully developed tur bulence and may even extend to the quark-gluon plasma and the early uni verse as a whole. Early theoretical investigators tried to reduce the problem to a very small number of degrees of freedom, such as the van der Waals equation and mean field approximations, culminating in Landau's general theory of critical phenomena. Nowadays, it is understood that the common ground for all these phenomena lies in the presence of strong fluctuations of infinitely many coupled variables. This was made explicit first through the exact solution of the two-dimensional Ising model by Onsager. Systematic subsequent developments have been leading to the scaling theories of critical phenomena and the renormalization group which allow a precise description of the close neighborhood of the critical point, often in good agreement with experiments. In contrast to the general understanding a century ago, the presence of fluctuations on all length scales at a critical point is emphasized today. This can be briefly summarized by saying that at a critical point a system is scale invariant. In addition, conformal invaTiance permits also a non-uniform, local rescal ing, provided only that angles remain unchanged.