ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: This updated and revised edition outlines strategies and models for how to use technology and knowledge to improve performance, create jobs and increase income. It shows what skills will be required to produce, sell and manage performance over time, and how manual jobs can contribute to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources

Description / Table of Contents: "An interdisciplinary study of democratic theory, empirical political science, psychology, and philosophy. Proposes a multidimensional process model of empathy that incorporates both affective and cognitive features to demonstrate the importance of empathy in fulfilling democracy's promise of giving equal consideration to all citizens in collective decisions"--Provided by publisher

Description / Table of Contents: This book presents the basic principles of soil dynamics, and a variety of solutions of practical interest for geotechnical engineering, geophysics and earthquake engineering. Emphasis is on analytical solutions, often including the full derivation of the solution, and giving the main parts of computer programs that can be used to calculate numerical data. Reference is also made to a website from which complete computer programs can be downloaded. Soil behaviour is usually assumed to be linear elastic, but in many cases the effect of viscous damping or hysteretic damping, due to plastic deformations, is also considered. Special features are: the analysis of wave propagation in saturated compressible porous media, approximate analysis of the generation of Rayleigh waves, the analysis of the response of soil layers to earthquakes in the deep rock, with a theoretical foundation of such problems by the propagation of Love waves, and the solution of such basic problems as the response of an elastic half space to point loads, line loads, strip loads and moving loads.

Description / Table of Contents: "The world's polar regions are attracting more interest than ever before. Once regarded as barren, inhospitable places where only explorers go, the north and south polar regions have been transformed into high profile tourism destinations, increasingly visited by cruise ships as well as becoming accessible with direct flights. Tourism is seen as one of the few economic opportunities in these regions but at the same time the polar regions are being opened up to tourism development they are being affected by a number of new factors that are interconnected to travel and tourism. Climate change, landscape and species loss, increasing interest in energy resources and minerals, social changes in indigenous societies, and a new polar geopolitics all bring into question the sustainability of polar regions and the place of tourism within them

Description / Table of Contents: An account of the results of the 2 March 1987 earthquake in the eastern Bay of Plenty and the aftermath's effects on the people and places on the Rangitaiki Plains

Description / Table of Contents: Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; List of Illustrations; Preface; PART ONE: What Has Controlled Earth's Climate?; CHAPTER ONE: Climate and Human History; PART TWO: Nature in Control; CHAPTER TWO: Slow Going for a Few Million Years; CHAPTER THREE: Linking Earth's Orbit to Its Climate; CHAPTER FOUR: Orbital Changes Control Ice-Age Cycles; CHAPTER FIVE: Orbital Changes Control Monsoon Cycles; CHAPTER SIX: Stirrings of Change; PART THREE: Humans Begin to Take Control; CHAPTER SEVEN: Early Agriculture and Civilization; CHAPTER EIGHT: Taking Control of Methane

Description / Table of Contents: CHAPTER NINE: Taking Control of CO[sub(2)]CHAPTER TEN: Have We Delayed a Glaciation?; CHAPTER ELEVEN: Challenges and Responses; PART FOUR: Disease Enters the Picture; CHAPTER TWELVE: But What about Those CO[sub(2)] "Wiggles"?; CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Which One?; CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Pandemics, CO[sub(2)], and Climate; PART FIVE: Humans in Control; CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Greenhouse Warming: Tortoise and Hare; CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Future Warming: Large or Small?; CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: From the Past into the Distant Future; EPILOGUE; CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Global-Change Science and Politics

Description / Table of Contents: CHAPTER NINETEEN: Consuming Earth's GiftsAfterword to the Princeton Science Library Edition; Bibliography; Figure Sources; Index; A; B; C; D; E; F; G; H; I; K; L; M; N; O; P; R; S; T; U; V; W; Y

Description / Table of Contents: The impact on climate from 200 years of industrial development is an everyday fact of life, but did humankind''s active involvement in climate change really begin with the industrial revolution, as commonly believed? Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum has sparked lively scientific debate since it was first published--arguing that humans have actually been changing the climate for some 8,000 years--as a result of the earlier discovery of agriculture. The ""Ruddiman Hypothesis"" will spark intense debate. We learn that the impact of farming on greenhouse-gas levels, thousands of years before the i

Description / Table of Contents: The Global Redesign Initiative was a global, multistakeholder dialogue on the future of international cooperation. Set up in the midst of the global financial crisis, its purpose was to stimulate thinking and debate about how the international community and its institutions and organizations in their widest sense can be adapted to contemporary challenges. The distillation of this process has helped the Forum's many communities to develop proposals that seek to highlight potential responses to the challenge of adapting to a new global business and social environment.

Description / Table of Contents: Glaciers & Glaciation is the classic textbook for all students of glaciation. Stimulating and accessible, it has established a reputation as a comprehensive and essential resource. In this new edition, the text, references and illustrations have been thoroughly updated to provide a state-of-the-art overview of the nature, origin and behaviour of glaciers and the geological and geomorphological evidence for their past history on earth. The first part of the book investigates the processes involved in forming glacier ice, the natureof glacier-climate relationships, the mechanisms of glacier flow and the interactions of glaciers with other natural systems such as rivers, lakes and oceans. In the second part, the emphasis moves to landforms and sediment, the interpretation of the earth's glacial legacy and the reconstruction of glacial depositional environments and palaeoglaciology.

Description / Table of Contents: Contents: Introduction ; Part I - The Fossil Sources ; 1. "King" oil ; 2. The splendor and misery of coal ; 3. All that gas ; 4. The quest to eliminate carbon dioxide ; Part II - The Alternatives ; 5. Nuclear power: renaissance or decline? ; 6. The weight of water ; 7. Biofuels: behind the smoke and mirrors ; 8. Gone with the wind? ; 9. The sun also rises ; 10. Geothermal power: the primitive energy of the earth ; 11. The hype about hydrogen, the hope about electric cars ; 12. Energy efficiency: the invisible source of energy ; Conclusions: how can we escape our energy trap?

Description / Table of Contents: This much revised and expanded edition provides a valuable and detailed summary of the many uses of diatoms in a wide range of applications in the environmental and earth sciences. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of diatoms in analyzing ecological problems related to climate change, acidification, eutrophication, and other pollution issues. The chapters are divided into sections for easy reference, with separate sections covering indicators in different aquatic environments. A final section explores diatom use in other fields of study such as forensics, oil and gas exploration, nanotechnology, and archeology. Sixteen new chapters have been added since the first edition including introductory chapters on diatom biology and the numerical approaches used by diatomists. The extensive glossary has also been expanded and now includes over 1000 detailed entries, which will help non-specialists to use the book effectively

Description / Table of Contents: The first comprehensive, state-of-the-art introduction to the fast-evolving topic of in-situ produced cosmogenic nuclides, for graduate students and practitioners.

Description / Table of Contents: This joint IEA/NEA report on electricity generating costs presents the latest data available for a wide variety of fuels and technologies, including coal and gas (with and without carbon capture), nuclear, hydro, onshore and offshore wind, biomass, solar, wave and tidal as well as combined heat and power (CHP).  It provides levelised costs of electricity (LCOE) per MWh for almost 200 plants, based on data covering 21 countries (including four major non-OECD countries), and several industrial companies and organisations.  For the first time, the report contains an extensive sensitivit

Description / Table of Contents: This chapter is the ninth to be released in U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386, Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World, a series of 11 chapters. In each of the geographic area chapters, remotely sensed images, primarily from the Landsat 1, 2, and 3 series of spacecraft, are used to analyze the specific glacierized region of our planet under consideration and to monitor glacier changes. Landsat images, acquired primarily during the middle to late 1970s and early 1980s, were used by an international team of glaciologists and other scientists to study various geographic regions and (or) to discuss related glaciological topics. In each glacierized geographic region, the present areal distribution of glaciers is compared, wherever possible, with historical information about their past extent. The atlas provides an accurate regional inventory of the areal extent of glacier ice on our planet during the 1970s as part of a growing international scientific effort to measure global environmental change on the Earth's surface.The chapter is divided into seven geographic parts and one topical part: Glaciers of the Former Soviet Union (F-1), Glaciers of China (F-2), Glaciers of Afghanistan (F-3), Glaciers of Pakistan (F-4), Glaciers of India (F-5), Glaciers of Nepal (F-6), Glaciers of Bhutan (F-7), and the Paleoenvironmental Record Preserved in Middle-Latitude, High-Mountain Glaciers (F-8). Each geographic section describes the glacier extent during the 1970s and 1980s, the benchmark time period (1972-1981) of this volume, but has been updated to include more recent information.

Description / Table of Contents: This book covers a round-up of environmental changes in Siberia with a focus on the terrestrial biosphere but also discussing climate and atmosphere and the hydrolofical cycle. It concludes with a discussion of information system approaches that are being developed to safeguard and make accessible spatial and temporal data for environmental studies.

Description / Table of Contents: Measurement Methods in Atmospheric Sciences provides a comprehensive overview of in-situ and remote sensing measurement techniques for probing the Earth's atmosphere. The methods presented in this book span the entire range from classical meteorology via atmospheric chemistry and micrometeorological flux determination to Earth observation from space. Standard instruments for meteorological and air quality monitoring methods, as well as specialized instrumentation predominantly used in scientific experiments, are covered. The presented techniques run from simple mechanical sensors to highly sophisticated electronic devices. Special emphasis is placed on the rapidly evolving field of remote sensing techniques. Here, active ground-based remote sending techniques such as SODAR and LIDAR find a detailed coverage. The book conveys the basic principles of the various observational and monitoring methods, enabling the user to identify the most appropriate method. An introductory chapter covers general principles (e.g. inversion of measured data, available platforms, statistical properties of data, data acquisition). Later chapters each treat methods for measuring a specific property (e.g. humidity, wind speed, wind direction). Long chapters provide an introductory tabular list of the methods treated. More than 100 figures and 400 references, mostly to the recent scientific literature, aid the reader in reading up on the details of the various methods at hand. Recommendations at the end of each major chapter provide additional hints on the use of some instruments in order to facilitate the selection of the proper instrument for a successful measurement. A large number of national and international standards, providing precise guidelines for measuring and acquiring reliable, reproducible and comparable data sets are listed in the appendix. A dedicated index allows easy access to this valuable information. The book is of interest to undergraduate and graduate students in meteorology, physical geography, ecology, environmental sciences and related disciplines as well as to scientists in the process of planning atmospheric measurements in field campaigns or working with data already acquired. Practitioners in environmental agencies and similar institutions will benefit from instrument descriptions and the extended lists in the appendix.

Description / Table of Contents: Demonstrating the breadth and depth of growth in the field since the publication of the popular first edition, Image Analysis, Classification and Change Detection in Remote Sensing, with Algorithms for ENVI/IDL, Second Edition has been updated and expanded to keep pace with the latest versions of the ENVI software environment. Effectively interweaving theory, algorithms, and computer codes, the text supplies an accessible introduction to the techniques used in the processing of remotely sensed imagery.

Description / Table of Contents: Contents: Preface ; I. Energy Systems and Social Evolution ; 1. Palaeolithic Hunter-gatherer Societies ; 2. The Neolithic Revolution and the Problem of Dynamics ; 3. Traditional Agriculture - A Controlled Solar Energy System ; 4. The Structure of the Agrarian Energy System ; 5. The Dynamics of Agrarian Society ; 6. Crisis and Transformation ; 7. The Industrial System and Fossil Energy ; II. Forest and Wood in Preindustrial Germany ; 1. Natural Foundations ; 2. Preindustrial Wood Consumption ; 3. Regulation Problems ; III. England: Coal in the Industrial Revolution ; 1. Substitution of Wood by Coal ; 2. Wood and Coal in Iron Smelting ; 3. Transport and Steam Power ; 4. Significance of Coal in the Industrial Revolution ; IV. Germany in the 18th Century: Wood Crisis and Strategies for Solutions ; 1. Conserving Wood ; 2. Functional Separation of Agriculture and Forestry ; 3. Substitution for Wood ; 4. Was the Wood Crisis an Energy Crisis? ; V. Perceptions of Fossil Energy ; 1. The Finiteness of Fossil Fuels ; 2. Classical Political Economy and the Stationary State ; 3. Jevons and the Contraction of the Industrial System ; 4. Nuclear or Solar Energy ; Bibliography

Description / Table of Contents: The present volume contains 21 papers presented at the Seventh International Chrysophyte Symposium 2008 spanning a broad range of topics on chrysophytes and related heterokont organisms. The contributions include ones on ecology, taxonomy, floristic works, phylogeny and evolution, molecular biology, physiology and paleolimnology. Of special interest are a group of papers that use geometric morphometric analyses to address taxonomic, biogeographic and phylogenetic questions related to chrysophytes and other microalgae. Ecological and floristic contributions include ones on lakes from the polar Ural Mountains, the Mesopotamia region of South America, the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey, and the Swiss Alps. Gene sequences are used to study hidden diversity in Synura and differences between two geographically distinct Heterosigma isolates, and production of polyunsaturated aldehydes is examined in Thalassiosira. Other contributions include ones on mixotrophy, biofilm dynamics, the recent invasion of Mallomonas pseudocoronata into lakes in Sweden, use of cysts in climate change research, paleolimnology of eastern North American lakes, an evaluation of the age of the Hueyatlaco early man site in Mexico, a comparison of the architecture of Mallomonas scale coverings between modern and 40 Ma specimens and bloom dynamics. Papers outlining the establishment of a Wiki for chrysophyte cysts, an on-line database for Eocene chrysophyte fossils, and ideas f

Description / Table of Contents: The Global Carbon Cycle is a short introduction to this essential geochemical driver of the earth's climate system, written by one of the world's leading climate-science experts. In this one-of-a-kind primer, David Archer engages readers in clear and simple terms about the many ways the global carbon cycle is woven into our climate system. He begins with a concise overview of the subject, and then looks at the carbon cycle on three different time scales, describing how the cycle interacts with climate in very distinct ways in each. On million-year time scales, feedbacks in the carbon cycle stabilize earth's climate and oxygen concentrations. Archer explains how on hundred-thousand-year glacial / interglacial time scales, the carbon cycle in the ocean amplifies climate change, and how, on the human time scale of decades, the carbon cycle has been dampening climate change by absorbing fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the oceans and land biosphere. A central question of the book is whether the carbon cycle could once again act to amplify climate change in centuries to come, for example through melting permafrost peatlands and methane hydrates. The Global Carbon Cycle features a glossary of terms, suggestions for further reading, and explanations of equations, as well as a forward-looking discussion of open questions about the global carbon cycle.

Description / Table of Contents: This report synthesizes knowledge about the effects of natural hazards on human welfare, particularly in its economic aspects. It is a remarkable combination of case studies, data on many scales, and the application of economic principles to the problems posed by earthquakes, abnormal weather, and the like. It provides a deep understanding of the relative roles of the market, government intervention, and social institutions in determining and improving both the prevention and the response to hazardous occurrences. The report looks at disasters primarily through an economic lens. Economists emphasize self-interest to explain how people choose the amount of prevention, insurance, and coping. But lenses can distort as well as sharpen images, so the report also draws from other disciplines: psychology to examine how people may misperceive risks, political science to understand voting patterns, and nutrition science to see how stunting in children after a disaster impairs cognitive abilities and productivity as adults much later. Peering into the future, the report shows that growing cities will increase exposure to hazards, but that vulnerability will not rise if cities are better managed. The intensities and frequencies of hazards in the coming decades will change with the climate, and the report examines this complicated and contentious subject, acknowledging all the limitations of data and science.

Description / Table of Contents: Natural stone is considered to be a versatile, durable and aesthetically pleasing building material. From the beginning of civilization, important structures and monuments have been built from, or based on, natural stone. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the use of local stone resources was mostly in balance with the local environment. Strict environmental legislation has resulted in the closing of many long-standing quarries in industrialized countries, which has led to a shortage of traditional stone varieties. This has caused problems for restoration practice. Cheap, imported stone from less industrialized countries has become more widely available in recent years. Some of the issues related to built stone conservation and restoration covered by this volume are: the establishment of inventories of possible replacement stones; understanding the decay mechanism and use of preventive conservation methods for slowing down decay processes; evaluation of the properties of natural stone; and assessing the risks of using replacement stones of different qualities.

Description / Table of Contents: Three-dimensional climate models with a fully interactive representation of stratospheric ozone chemistry — otherwise known as stratosphere-resolving chemistry-climate models (CCMs) — are key tools for the attribution and prediction of stratospheric ozone changes arising from the combined effects of changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) and ozone-depleting substances (ODS). These models can also be used to infer potential effects of stratospheric changes on the climate of the troposphere. In order to know how much confi dence can be placed in the results from the CCMs, both individually and collectively, it is necessary to assess their performance by comparison with observations and known physical constraints. The Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate (SPARC) core project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) initiated the CCM Validation (CCMVal) activity in 2003 to coordinate exactly such an evaluation. The CCMVal concept (see Chapter 1) takes as a starting point the premise that model performance is most accurately assessed by examining the representation of key processes, rather than just the model’s ability to reproduce long-term ozone trends, as the latter can be more easily tuned and can include compensating errors. Thus a premium is placed on high-quality observations that can be used to assess the representation of key processes in the models. This Report does not provide a detailed assessment of the quality of the observational databases; the compilation and assessment of data sets suitable for model evaluation is the focus of a future SPARC activity, which has been motivated by this Report. The fi rst round of CCMVal (CCMVal-1) evaluated only a limited set of key processes in the CCMs, focusing mainly on dynamics and transport. This Report, which describes the second round of CCMVal (CCMVal-2), represents a more complete effort by CCMVal to assess CCM performance. As with CCMVal-1, it also includes an assessment of the extent to which CCMs are able to reproduce past observations in the stratosphere, and the future evolution of stratospheric ozone and climate under one particular scenario. A key aspect of the model evaluation within this Report is the application of observationally-based performance metrics to quantify the ability of models to reproduce key processes for stratospheric ozone and its impact on climate. The Report is targeted at a variety of users, including: (1) international climate science assessments, including the WMO/ UNEP Ozone Assessments and the IPCC Assessment Reports; (2) the CCM groups themselves; (3) users of CCM simulations; (4) measurement and process scientists who wish to help improve CCM evaluation; (5) space agencies and other bodies involved in the Global Climate Observing System. The Report was prepared by dozens of scientists and underwent several revisions and extensive peer review, culminating in a Final Review Meeting in Toledo, Spain on November 9-11, 2009.

Description / Table of Contents: Although the climate of the Earth is continually changing from the very beginning, anthropogenic effects, the pollution of the air by combustion and industrial activities make it change so quickly that the adaptation is very difficult for all living organisms. Researcher's role is to make this adaptation easier, to prepare humankind to the new circumstances and challenges, to trace and predict the effects and, if possible, even decrease the harmfulness of these changes. In this book we provide an interdisciplinary collection of new studies and findings on the score of air pollution.

Description / Table of Contents: Climate change is emerging as one of the most important issues of our time, with the potential to cause profound cascading effects on ecosystems and society. However, these effects are poorly understood and our projections for climate change trends and effects have thus far proven to be inaccurate. In this collection of 24 chapters, we present a cross-section of some of the most challenging issues related to oceans, lakes, forests, and agricultural systems under a changing climate. The authors present evidence for changes and variability in climatic and atmospheric conditions, investigate some the impacts that climate change is having on the Earth's ecological and social systems, and provide novel ideas, advances and applications for mitigation and adaptation of our socio-ecological systems to climate change. Difficult questions are asked. What have been some of the impacts of climate change on our natural and managed ecosystems? How do we manage for resilient socio-ecological systems? How do we predict the future? What are relevant climatic change and management scenarios? How can we shape management regimes to increase our adaptive capacity to climate change? These themes are visited across broad spatial and temporal scales, touch on important and relevant ecological patterns and processes, and represent broad geographic regions, from the tropics, to temperate and boreal regions, to the Arctic.

Description / Table of Contents: Vibration is a phenomenon that we can perceive in many systems. Their effects are as diverse as the personal discomfort that can produce the unevenness of a road or the collapse of a building or a bridge during an earthquake. This book is a compendium of research works on vibration analysis and control. It goes through new methodologies that help us understand and mitigate this phenomenon. This book is divided into two sections. The first one is devoted to new advances on vibration analysis while the second part is a series of case studies that illustrate novel techniques on vibration control. The applications are varied and include areas such as vehicle suspension systems, wind turbines and civil engineering structures.

Description / Table of Contents: This special issue of Pure and Applied Geophysics is one of two volumes containing an augmented collection of papers originating from the Evison Symposium on Seismogenesis and Earthquake Forecasting held in Wellington, New Zealand, in February 2008. The volumes honor Frank Evison's interest in earthquake generation and forecasting. A biography of Frank Evison and a list of his publications is included, as well as review papers and new research papers in the field. The volume includes papers related to Frank's most abiding interest of precursory earthquake swarms. The research contributions cover a range of current forecasting methods such as the Epidemic-Type Aftershock model, the Every Earthquake a precursor According to Scale model, Pattern Informatics, Reverse Tracing of Precursors, stochastic models of elastic rebound, and methods for handling multiple precursors. The methods considered employ a variety of statistical approaches to using previous seismicity to forecast future earthquakes, including regional and global earthquake likelihood models and alarm-type forecasts. The forecast time-frames of interest range from the short time-frame associated with clustering of aftershocks to the long time-frame associated with recurrence of major earthquakes. A recurring theme is the assessment of forecasting performance, whether by likelihood scores, skill scores, error diagrams, or relative operating characteristic tests. The volume will be useful to students and professional researchers who are interested in the earthquake preparation process and in converting that understanding into forecasts of earthquake occurrence.

Description / Table of Contents: Climate change has been the source of immense challenges for ethical, economic or political analysts. We are aware of the scale of the action required to be taken and the areas in which that action is needed namely efficient energy use, low carbon technologies or deforestation. We have an idea of which technologies need to be developed. We understand the basic economic policy incentives in favour of reducing emissions, stopping deforestation and promoting more sensible use of our natural environment and its resources. The main challenge today is to obtain political adherence to actually accomplishing these changes.

Description / Table of Contents: Unlike many other low-carbon energy sources, nuclear energy is a mature technology that has been in use for more than 50 years. The latest designs for nuclear power plants build on this experience to offer enhanced safety and performance, and are ready for wider deployment. Nuclear power will be an important contributor to a low carbon power mix and can play a significant role in achieving both enhanced energy security and combating climate change. The IEA/NEA Nuclear Energy Technology Roadmap (2010) identified major barriers, opportunities, and policy measures for policy makers and industry and financial partners to accelerate RDD&D efforts for various nuclear technologies on both a national and international level.

Description / Table of Contents: This book explores how efficiency is measured and reported at coal-fired power plants. Armed with this information, policy makers would be in a better position to monitor and, if necessary, regulate how coal is used for power generation. The tools and techniques described will be of value to anyone with an interest in the more sustainable use of coal. Coal is the biggest single source of energy for electricity production and its share is growing. The efficiency of converting coal into electricity matters: more efficient power plants use less fuel and emit less climate-damaging carbon dioxide. This book explores how efficiency is measured and reported at coal-fired power plants. With many different methods used to express efficiency performance, it is often difficult to compare plants, even before accounting for any fixed constraints such as coal quality and cooling-water temperature. Practical guidelines are presented that allow the efficiency and emissions of any plant to be reported on a common basis and compared against best practice. A global database of plant performance is proposed that would allow under-performing plants to be identified for improvement. Armed with this information, policy makers would be in a better position to monitor and, if necessary, regulate how coal is used for power generation. The tools and techniques described will be of value to anyone with an interest in the more sustainable use of coal.

Description / Table of Contents: Oil and gas markets have been marked by an increased divergence in recent months. On the one hand, oil market developments have generated an unpleasant sense of déja vu: rapid demand growth in emerging markets eclipsed sluggish supply growth to push prices higher even before the conflict in Libya tightened supplies still further. Oil prices around $100/bbl are weighing down on an already-fragile macroeconomic and financial situation in the OECD, pressuring national budgets in the non-OECD and causing price inflation of other commodities, as well as political concerns about speculation. There is an uncanny resemblance to the first half of 2008. On the other hand, in the world of natural gas an amazing disconnect has developed as demand recovered to well above pre-financial-crisis levels in most major regions. Gas markets have tightened in Europe and Asia, where prices are about twice the level seen in the United States, as the unconventional gas revolution is in full swing. From the upstream implications of the Arab Spring to the macroeconomic consequences of the eurozone crisis, energy markets are experiencing one of the most uncertain periods in decades. Medium-Term Oil and Gas Markets 2011 provides a comprehensive outlook for oil and gas fundamentals through 2016. The oil market analysis covers demand developments on a product-by-product and key-sector basis, as well as a detailed bottom-up assessment of upstream and refinery investments, trade flows, oil products supply and OPEC spare capacity. The gas market analysis offers a region-by-region assessment of demand and production, infrastructure investment, price developments and prospects for unconventional gas. It also examines the globalising LNG trade.

Description / Table of Contents: The chapters in this volume represent an extensive review of the material presented by the invited speakers at a short course on Theoretical and Computational Methods in Mineral Physics held prior (December 10-12, 2009) to the Annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, California. The meeting was held at the Doubletree Hotel & Executive Meeting Center in Berkeley, California. Mineral physics is one of the three pillars of geophysics, the other two being geodynamics and seismology. Geophysics advances by close cooperation between these fields. As such, mineral physicists investigate properties of minerals that are needed to interpret seismic data or that are essential for geodynamic simulations. To be useful, mineral properties must be investigated in a wide range of pressures, temperatures, and chemical compositions. The materials and conditions in the interior of Earth and other terrestrial planets present several challenges. The chemical composition of their mantles is complex with at least five major oxide components and tens of solid phases. Today, these challenges are being addressed by a combination of experimental and computational methods, with experiments offering precise information at lower pressures and temperatures, and computations offering more complete and detailed information at conditions more challenging to experiments. While bulk properties of materials are fundamental to understanding a planet’s state, atomistic inspection of these complex materials are fundamental to understanding their properties. A connection is then established between atomic and planetary scale phenomena, which mineral physicists are in a unique position to appreciate. This book presents a set of review articles offering an overview of contemporary research in computational mineral physics. Fundamental methods are discussed and important applications are illustrated. The opening chapter by John Perdew and Adrienn Ruzhinszky discusses the motivation, history, and expressions of Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory (DFT) and approximations for exchange and correlation. This is the established framework for investigation of a condensed matter system’s ground state electronic density and energy. It also discusses the recent trend to design higher-level semi-local functionals, with solid state applications in mind. It presents arguments in favor of semi-local approximations for condensed matter and discusses problematic cases where fully non-local approximations are needed. The following article by Yan Zhao and Donald Truhlar, demonstrates current research in search of appropriate exchange and correlation energy functionals. It reviews the performance of families of local, semi-local, and fully non-local exchange and correlation functionals: the so-called “Minnesota” functionals. These new functionals have been designed to give broad accuracy in chemistry and perform very well in difficult cases where popular functionals fail badly. The prospects for their successful applications are encouraging. Stefano Baroni, Paolo Gianozzi, and Eyvaz Isaev, introduce Density Functional Perturbation Theory, a suitable technique to calculate vibrational properties of extended materials using a combination of density functional theory and linear response techniques. This method gives very accurate phonon frequencies which, in combination with the quasi-harmonic approximation, allow one to study thermal properties of materials. The next chapter by Renata Wentzcovitch, Yonggang Yu, and Zhongqing Wu review the applications of density functional perturbation theory to the investigation thermodynamic properties and phase relations in mantle minerals. The series of studies summarized in this review have explored the accuracy of DFT within its most popular approximations for exchange and correlation energy in combination with the quasiharmonic approximation to offer results with useful accuracy for geophysical studies. The following article by Renata Wentzcovitch, Zhongqing Wu, and Pierre Carrier, summarizes the combination of the quasiharmonic approximation with elasticity theory to investigate thermoelastic properties of minerals at conditions of the Earth interior. Some unfamiliar but essential aspects of the quasiharmonic approximation are discussed. Thermoelastic properties of minerals are essential to interpret seismic observations. Therefore, some examples of interpretation of seismic structures are reviewed. The article by David Ceperley, returns to the fundamental theme of calculations of ground state energy in condensed matter and introduces Quantum Monte Carlo methods. These methods treat exactly the quantum many-body problem presented by a system of electrons and ions. They treat electrons as particles rather than a scalar charge-density field, as done by DFT. These are computationally intensive methods but the only exact ones. The following article by Lubos Mitas and Jindrich Kolorenc, reviews applications of these methods to transition metals oxides, materials that have some aspects in common with mantle minerals. One of the examined systems, FeO, is a most important component of mineral solid solutions. Matteo Cococcioni continues exploring the same theme. He discusses a modified density functional useful for addressing cases like FeO, which are untreatable by standard DFT. The DFT + Hubbard U method (DFT+U) is a practical approximate method that enables investigations of electronically and structurally complex systems, like minerals. The application of this method to a contemporary and central problem in mineral physics, pressure and temperature induced spin-crossovers in mantle minerals, is reviewed in the next chapter by Han Shu, Koichiro Umemoto, and Renata Wentzcovitch. The geophysical implications of the spin-crossover phenomenon, an electronic transition, are still unclear but some possibilities are suggested. Michael Ammann, John Brodholt, and David Dobson discuss simulations of bulk ionic diffusion. This property plays an important role in chemical exchange between and within crystalline and melt phases. It plays an important role in the kinetics of phase transitions, compositional zoning, mineral growth, and other important geochemical processes. It can also control rheological properties, especially in the diffusion creep regime, and thus the time scale of mantle convection. This is a very difficult property to investigate at combined pressures and temperature conditions of the mantle, therefore, calculations play a very important role in this area. Phillip Carrez and Patrick Cordier discuss modeling of dislocations and plasticity in deep Earth materials. This article focuses on recent developments in dislocation modeling and applications to our understanding of how the direction of mantle flow is recorded in polycrystalline texture. Next, the article by Stephen Stackhouse and Lars Stixrude, discusses theoretical methods for calculating lattice thermal conductivity in minerals, which controls the cooling of Earth’s core. Measurements of thermal conductivity at lower mantle conditions are very challenging to experiments and calculations are a valuable alternative to learning about this property. This article describes the most common methods to calculate this property and presents a review of studies of the lattice thermal conductivity of periclase. Artem Oganov discusses the prediction of high pressure crystal structures. A genetic algorithm for structural prediction is described and numerous applications predicting new phases with novel properties and phases that can explain experimental data so far not understood is presented. This is a most recent development on the subject of structural predictions, a subject that has been pursued by simulations for several decades now. The possibility of predicting structure and composition by this method is also pointed out. Koichiro Umemoto and Renata Wentzcovitch continue on the same theme of structural prediction by a different approach: combination of phonon calculations and variable cell shape molecular dynamics. The former indicates unstable displacement modes in compressed structures; the latter searches for structures resulting from the superposition of these unstable modes to the compressed lattice. This approach is illustrated with the search of mineral structures at multi-Mbar pressures that are still challenging to static or dynamic compression experiments, but have great interest in view of the discovery of terrestrial exoplanets with several Earth masses. The following chapter by Koichiro Umemoto is on simulations of phase transitions on a different class of planet forming material: H2O-ice. Ice has a rich phase diagram but many of its phase relations are unknown: large hysteresis precludes their direct measurements in manageable time scales. Therefore, calculations acquire special significance but they are also challenging, the main reasons being the description of hydrogen bond by DFT and hydrogen disorder. Dario Alfè presents a review of first principles calculations of properties of iron at Earth’s core conditions. This chapter includes examples of applications of multiple techniques used in studies of high temperature properties, structure, and melting lines. Results from Quantum Monte Carlo are compared with those from DFT, and results from molecular dynamics simulations are contrasted with predictions of quasiharmonic theory. These comparisons are instructive and illustrate the breadth of research in computational mineral physics. The following chapter by Bijaya Karki turns to DFT based simulations of another type of melt: ionic silicates and oxides. The article discusses the methodology used in these simulations and specially developed methods to analyze the results. The properties of interest are high temperature equations of state, thermodynamics properties, atomic and electronic structure, and self-diffusion and viscosity. Visualization of atomic motion is one of the valuable approaches discussed to gain insight into changes in melt structure with pressure and temperature. These studies are illustrated for 3 melts along the MgO-SiO2 join. The following three articles are devoted primarily to the introduction of inter-atomic potentials of broad applicability and relatively high accuracy, and applications to large scale simulations. The first article by Julian Gale and Kate Wright describes the current status of the derivation of force-fields and their applications to static and lattice dynamic calculations in mineral physics. This is done in the context of the General Utility Lattice Program (GULP), which has become quite popular. A selection of applications illustrating the possibilities of this code is then presented. Victor Vinograd and Bjoern Winkler illustrate another important type of application of force-field models: an efficient cluster expansion method to investigate binary mineral solid solutions. The article focuses on a rock-salt system but the technique is general. This type of problem is central to mineral physics and ingenious combinations of first principles methods, force-field models, and purely parameterized free energy expressions, combined with molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo techniques are necessary to address this problem. The predictive treatment of properties of ionic solid solutions is a major challenge in mineral physics. Mark Ghiorso and Frank Spera discuss long duration large scale molecular dynamics simulations using empirical pair-potentials. This article illustrates the concrete requirements on the number of atoms and time scales necessary to obtain information on transport properties such as shear viscosity and lattice thermal conductivity using Green-Kubo theory. These more than 1000-atom and pico-second simulations also improve the statistics in the estimation of equilibrium properties. Finally, the article by Lars Stixrude and Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni on the thermodynamics of Earth’s mantle, gives an overview of how the elucidation of materials behavior governs planetary processes. It explains how the complexity of the Earth’s mantle demands methods that are complementary to first principles calculations and experiments. These methods must allow one to interpolate among and extrapolate from results on minerals with limited compositions to the full chemical richness of the silicate mantle. It then illustrates how the derived properties of multi-phase multi-component systems are used to address mantle heterogeneity on multiple length scales, ranging from that of the subducting slab to the possibility of mantle-wide radial variations in bulk composition.