Polymer science is now an active and thriving community of scientists, engineers and technologists, but there was a time, not so long ago, when there was no such community. The prehistory of polymer science helps to provide key insights into current issues and historical problems. The story will be divided into an ancient period ( from Greek...

This book offers a brand-new perspective on human trafficking as an illegal business. It also proposes a new form of networked action: combining the perspectives of academic researchers with those of highly skilled professionals involved in policymaking in this area, this book is a unique contribution and a first step toward a networking...

Translation is living through a period of revolutionary upheaval. The effects of digital technology and the internet on translation are continuous, widespread and profound. From automatic online translation services to the rise of crowdsourced translation and the proliferation of translation Apps for smartphones, the translation revolution is...

The second edition of this international best seller has been fully revised and updated describing the complete chocolate making process, from the growing of the beans to the sale in the shops. The Science of Chocolate takes the reader on the journey of chocolate, to discover how confectionery is made and the way in which basic science plays...

Proceedings of the 15th International Specialty Conference on Cold Regions Engineering, held in Quebec City, Canada, August 19-22, 2012. This collection contains 82 peer-reviewed papers on new developments in cold regions engineering and technologies. These papers offer a truly international view of the current state of knowledge in different...

Information propagation through peer-to-peer systems, online social systems, wireless mobile ad hoc networks and other modern structures can be modelled as an epidemic on a network of contacts. Understanding how epidemic processes interact with network topology allows us to predict ultimate course, understand phase transitions and develop...

Humans have become much taller and heavier, and experience healthier and longer lives than ever before in human history. However it is only recently that historians, economists, human biologists and demographers have linked the changing size, shape and capability of the human body to economic and demographic change. This fascinating and...

The famous Circuit Double Cover conjecture (and its numerous variants) is considered one of the major open problems in graph theory owing to its close relationship with topological graph theory, integer flow theory, graph coloring and the structure of snarks. It is easy to state: every 2-connected graph has a family of circuits covering every...

This text provides a complete introduction to the theory of variational inequalities with emphasis on contact mechanics. It covers existence, uniqueness and convergence results for variational inequalities, including the modelling and variational analysis of specific frictional contact problems with elastic, viscoelastic and viscoplastic...