In Mallparks, Michael T. Friedman observes that as cathedrals represented power relations in medieval towns and skyscrapers epitomized those within industrial cities, sports stadiums exemplify urban American consumption at the turn of the twenty-first century. Grounded in Henri Lefebvre and George Ritzer's spatial theories in their analyses of consumption spaces, Mallparks examines how the designers of this generation of baseball stadiums follow the principles of theme park and shopping mall design to create highly effective and efficient consumption sites. In his exploration of these contemporary cathedrals of sport and consumption, Friedman discusses the history of stadium design, the amenities and aesthetics of stadium spaces, and the intentions and conceptions of architects, team officials, and civic leaders. He grounds his analysis in case studies of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore; Fenway Park in Boston; Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Nationals Park in Washington, DC; Target Field in Minneapolis; and Truist Park in Atlanta.

A panoramic view of MLB's current and most storied ballparks, from the oldest--1912's Fenway Park in Boston--to the newest, SunTrust Park, which opened a century later in 2017.

This book describes a relatively new approach for the design of electromagnetic metamaterials. Numerical optimization routines are combined with electromagnetic simulations to tailor the broadband optical properties of a metamaterial to have predetermined responses at predetermined wavelengths. After a review of both the major efforts within the field of metamaterials and the field of mathematical optimization, chapters covering both gradient-based and derivative-free design methods are considered. Selected topics including surrogate-base optimization, adaptive mesh search, and genetic algorithms are shown to be effective, gradient-free optimization strategies. Additionally, new techniques for representing dielectric distributions in two dimensions, including level sets, are demonstrated as effective methods for gradient-based optimization. Each chapter begins with a rigorous review of the optimization strategy used, and is followed by numerous examples that combine the strategy with either electromagnetic simulations or analytical solutions of the scattering problem. Throughout the text, we address the strengths and limitations of each method, as well as which numerical methods are best suited for different types of metamaterial designs. This book is intended to provide a detailed enough treatment of the mathematical methods used, along with sufficient examples and additional references, that senior level undergraduates or graduate students who are new to the fields of plasmonics, metamaterials, or optimization methods; have an understanding of which approaches are best-suited for their work and how to implement the methods themselves.

This book analyzes and highlights the development and success of major league baseball teams in the National League and the American League, focusing on each team’s performance in seasons and postseasons and to what extent each succeeded as a business enterprise despite competition for market share from other types of entertainment. The book discusses historical and financial information about the 30 major league franchises. Each chapter contains two core themes—Team Performances and Franchise Business. The former highlights which and how teams won division and league championships and World Series while the latter lists and compares financial data including their revenue, gate receipts, and operating income and describes interesting business topics. Each chapter also provides an overview of when each franchise organized and why it joined MLB, a brief profile of its current majority owner or ownership group, records of teams’ special coaches and players, attendances at home games, and how their ballparks rank as a venue for fans. Baseball Business explains why particular teams located in large, midsized, or small markets win more games and titles than others and when and how frequently that occurs. Furthermore, it provides ways to compare franchises’ financial success individually, by division, and by league. By linking and comparing the historical performances of MLB teams to financial information about them as business organizations, this book offers a unique contribution to the literature on the sports industry.

Old adults undertake multiple reduced cognitive abilities in aging, which are accompanied with specific brain reorganization in forms of regional brain activity and brain tissues, inter-region connectivity, and topology of whole brain networks in both function and structure. The plasticity changes of brain activities in old adults are explained by the mechanisms of compensation and dedifferentiation. For example, older adults have been observed to have greater, usually bilateral, prefrontal activities during memory tasks compared to the typical unilateral prefrontal activities in younger adults, which was explained as a compensation for the reduced brain activities in visual processing cortices. Dedifferentiation is another mechanism to explain that old adults are with much less selective and less distinct activity in task-relevant brain regions compared with younger adults. A larger number of studies have examined the plasticity changes of brain from the perspective of regional brain activities. However, studies on only regional brain activities cannot fully elucidate the neural mechanisms of reduced cognitive abilities in aging, as multiple regions are integrated together to achieve advanced cognitive function in human brain. In recent years, brain connectivity/network, which targets how brain regions are integrated, have drawn increasing attention in neuroscience with the development of neuroimaging techniques and graph theoretical analysis. Connectivity quantifies functional association or neural fibers between two regions that may be spatially far separated, and graph theoretical analysis of brain network examines the complex interactions among multiple regions from the perspective of topology. Studies showed that compared to younger adults, older adults had altered strength of task-relevant functional connectivity between specific brain regions in cognitive tasks, and the alternation of connectivity are correlated to behavior performance. For example, older adults had weaker functional connectivity between the premotor cortex and a region in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a working memory task. Interventions like cognitive training and neuro-modulation (e.g., transcranial magnetic stimulation) have been shown to be promising in regaining or retaining the decreasing cognitive abilities in aging. However, only few neuroimaging studies have examined the influence of interventions to old adult’s brain activity, connectivity, and cognitive performance. This Research Topic calls for contributions on brain network of subjects in normal aging or with age-related diseases like mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. The studies are expected to be based on neuroimaging techniques including but not limited to functional magnetic resonance imaging, Electroencephalography, and diffusion tensor imaging, and contributions on the influence of interventions to brain networks in aging are highly encouraged. All these studies would enrich our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying aging, and offer new insights for developing possible interventions to retain cognitive abilities in aging subjects.

Magnets are widely used in industry, medical, scientific instruments, and electrical equipment. They are the basic tools for scientific research and electromagnetic devices. Numerical methods for the magnetic field analysis combined with mathematical optimization from practical applications of the magnets have been widely studied in recent years. It is necessary for professional researchers, engineers, and students to study these numerical methods for the complex magnet structure design instead of using traditional "trial-and-error" methods. Those working in this field will find this book useful as a reference to help reduce costs and obtain good magnetic field quality. Presents a clear introduction to magnet technology, followed by basic theories, numerical analysis, and practical applications Emphasizes the latest developments in magnet design, including MRI systems Provides comprehensive numerical techniques that provide solutions to practical problems Introduces the latest computation techniques for optimizing and characterizing the magnetostatic structure design Well organized and adaptable by researchers, engineers, lecturers, and students Appendix available on the Wiley Companion Website As a comprehensive treatment of the topic, Practical Design of Magnetostatic Structure Using Numerical Simulation is ideal for researchers in the field of magnets and their applications, materials scientists, structural engineers, and graduate students in electrical engineering. The book will also better equip mechanical engineers and aerospace engineers.