Language Processing Problems

This comprehensive guide offers a new approach for developing and implementing robust computational methodologies that uncover the key geometric and topological information from signals and images. With the help of detailed real-world examples and applications, readers will learn how to solve complex signal and image processing problems in fields ranging from remote sensing to medical imaging, bioinformatics, robotics, security, and defence. With an emphasis on intuitive and application-driven arguments, this text covers not only a range of methods in use today, but also introduces promising new developments for the future, bringing the reader up-to-date with the state of the art in signal and image analysis. Covering basic principles as well as advanced concepts and applications, and with examples and homework exercises, this is an invaluable resource for graduate students, researchers, and industry practitioners in a range of fields including signal and image processing, biomedical e

The barrel cortex contains the somatosensory representation of the whiskers on the face of the rodent and forms an early stage of cortical processing for tactile information. It is an area of great importance for understanding how the cerebral cortex works because the cortical columns that form the basic building blocks of the cerebral cortex can be seen within the barrel cortex. In this advanced graduate and research level text, Kevin Fox explores three main aspects of the barrel cortex: development, sensory processing and plasticity. Initial chapters introduce the topic, describing those animals that have barrels, the functional anatomy of the system and the cellular and synaptic physiology of the cortical microcircuit. The book concludes with a chapter covering the numerous fields where the barrel cortex is used as a model system for solving problems in other areas of research, including stroke, angiogenesis and understanding active touch.

Psychonarratology is an approach to the empirical study of literary response and the processing of narrative. It draws on the empirical methodology of cognitive psychology and discourse processing as well as the theoretical insights and conceptual analysis of literary studies, particularly narratology. The present work provides a conceptual and empirical basis for this interdisciplinary approach that is accessible to researchers from either disciplinary background. An integrative review is presented of the classic problems in narratology: the status of the narrator, events and plot, characters and characterization, speech and thought, and focalization. For each area, Bortolussi and Dixon critique the state of the art in narratology and literary studies, discuss relevant work in cognitive psychology, and provide a new analytical framework based on the insight that readers treat the narrator as a conversational participant. Empirical evidence is presented on each problem, much of it prev

Psychonarratology is an approach to the empirical study of literary response and the processing of narrative. It draws on the empirical methodology of cognitive psychology and discourse processing as well as the theoretical insights and conceptual analysis of literary studies, particularly narratology. The present work provides a conceptual and empirical basis for this interdisciplinary approach that is accessible to researchers from either disciplinary background. An integrative review is presented of the classic problems in narratology: the status of the narrator, events and plot, characters and characterization, speech and thought, and focalization. For each area, Bortolussi and Dixon critique the state of the art in narratology and literary studies, discuss relevant work in cognitive psychology, and provide a new analytical framework based on the insight that readers treat the narrator as a conversational participant. Empirical evidence is presented on each problem, much of it prev

Written in 200 C.E., the Wen Fu is one of the first Chinese works about the use of language. Discussing the joys and problems that face both writer and reader, it is for those who wish to engage the a

Several developed countries are facing serious problems in medical environments owing to the aging society, and extension of healthy lifetime has become a big challenge. Biomedical engineering, in addition to life sciences and medicine, can help tackle these problems. Innovative technologies concerning minimally invasive treatment, prognosis and early diagnosis, point-of-care testing, regenerative medicine, and personalized medicine need to be developed to realize a healthy aging society. This book presents cutting-edge research in biomedical engineering from materials, devices, imaging, and information perspectives. The contributors are senior members of the Research Center for Biomedical Engineering, supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. All chapters are results of collaborative research in engineering and life sciences, and covering nanotechnology, materials, optical sensing technology, imaging technology, image processing technology

The advent of supercomputers has brought computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to the forefront as a tool to analyze increasingly complex simulation scenarios in many fields. Computational aerodynamics problems are also increasingly moving towards being coupled, multi-physics and multi-scale with complex, moving geometries. The latter presents severe geometry handling and meshing challenges. Simulations also frequently use formal design optimization processes. This book explains the evolution of CFD and provides a comprehensive overview of the plethora of tools and methods available for solving complex scenarios while exploring the future directions and possible outcomes. Using numerous examples, illustrations and computational methods the author discusses turbulence modeling, pre and post processing, coupled solutions, the importance of design optimization, multiphysics problems, reduced order models, and large scale computations and the future of CFD. Advanced Computational Fluid and Ae

Computational semantics is the art and science of computing meaning in natural language. The meaning of a sentence is derived from the meanings of the individual words in it, and this process can be made so precise that it can be implemented on a computer. Designed for students of linguistics, computer science, logic and philosophy, this comprehensive text shows how to compute meaning using the functional programming language Haskell. It deals with both denotational meaning (where meaning comes from knowing the conditions of truth in situations), and operational meaning (where meaning is an instruction for performing cognitive action). Including a discussion of recent developments in logic, it will be invaluable to linguistics students wanting to apply logic to their studies, logic students wishing to learn how their subject can be applied to linguistics, and functional programmers interested in natural language processing as a new application area.

Computational semantics is the art and science of computing meaning in natural language. The meaning of a sentence is derived from the meanings of the individual words in it, and this process can be made so precise that it can be implemented on a computer. Designed for students of linguistics, computer science, logic and philosophy, this comprehensive text shows how to compute meaning using the functional programming language Haskell. It deals with both denotational meaning (where meaning comes from knowing the conditions of truth in situations), and operational meaning (where meaning is an instruction for performing cognitive action). Including a discussion of recent developments in logic, it will be invaluable to linguistics students wanting to apply logic to their studies, logic students wishing to learn how their subject can be applied to linguistics, and functional programmers interested in natural language processing as a new application area.

The realisation that signed languages are true languages is one of the great discoveries of linguistic research. The work of many sign language researchers has revealed deep similarities between signed and spoken languages in their structure, acquisition and processing, as well as differences, arising from the differing articulatory and perceptual constraints under which signed languages are used and learned. This book provides a cross-linguistic examination of the properties of many signed languages, including detailed case studies of Hong Kong, British, Mexican and German sign languages. The contributions to this volume, by some of the most prominent researchers in the field, focus on a single question: to what extent is linguistic structure influenced by the modality of language? Their answers offer particular insights into the factors that shape the nature of language and contribute to our understanding of why languages are organised as they are.

Cognitive Linguistics argues that language is governed by general cognitive principles, rather than by a special-purpose language module. This introductory textbook surveys the field of cognitive linguistics as a distinct area of study, presenting its theoretical foundations and the arguments supporting it. Clearly organised and accessibly written, it provides a useful introduction to the relationship between language and cognitive processing in the human brain. It covers the main topics likely to be encountered in a course or seminar, and provides a synthesis of study and research in this fast-growing field of linguistics. The authors begin by explaining the conceptual structures and cognitive processes governing linguistic representation and behaviour, and go on to explore cognitive approaches to lexical semantics, as well as syntactic representation and analysis, focusing on the closely related frameworks of cognitive grammar and construction grammar. This much-needed introduction w

Starting from first principles, this book covers all of the foundational material needed to develop a clear understanding of the Mathematica language, with a practical emphasis on solving problems. Concrete examples throughout the text demonstrate how Mathematica can be used to solve problems in science, engineering, economics/finance, computational linguistics, geoscience, bioinformatics, and a range of other fields. The book will appeal to students, researchers and programmers wishing to further their understanding of Mathematica. Designed to suit users of any ability, it assumes no formal knowledge of programming so it is ideal for self-study. Over 290 exercises are provided to challenge the reader's understanding of the material covered and these provide ample opportunity to practice using the language. Mathematica notebooks containing examples, programs and solutions to exercises are available from www.cambridge.org/wellin.

This book examining diagnosis was first published in 1985. Diagnosis is at the centre of medical practice and depends on skilled information processing and decision making. Medical students, who will spend their working lives gathering information from patients, making decisions and solving problems need to be taught the necessary techniques. One aim of the book is, therefore, to give teachers an account of some of the basic ideas which have been applied to the diagnostic process and to medical problem solving in general. Another aim is to make teachers more aware of the principles underlying their clinical work, for it has been shown repeatedly that clinicians' actions do not always coincide with their teaching and there is a distinct gap between what they do and what they teach. This introduction to the fundamental concepts of information processing and decision making is written at a level which makes it appropriate reading for those who have not previously read widely in these area

Computational thinking is increasingly gaining importance in modern biology, due to the unprecedented scale at which data is nowadays produced. Bridging the cultural gap between the biological and computational sciences, this book serves as an accessible introduction to computational concepts for students in the life sciences. It focuses on teaching algorithmic and logical thinking, rather than just the use of existing bioinformatics tools or programming. Topics are presented from a biological point of view, to demonstrate how computational approaches can be used to solve problems in biology such as biological image processing, regulatory networks, and sequence analysis. The book contains a range of pedagogical features to aid understanding, including real-world examples, in-text exercises, end-of-chapter problems, colour-coded Python code, and 'code explained' boxes. User-friendly throughout, Computational Thinking for Life Scientists promotes the thinking skills and self-efficacy req

Computational thinking is increasingly gaining importance in modern biology, due to the unprecedented scale at which data is nowadays produced. Bridging the cultural gap between the biological and computational sciences, this book serves as an accessible introduction to computational concepts for students in the life sciences. It focuses on teaching algorithmic and logical thinking, rather than just the use of existing bioinformatics tools or programming. Topics are presented from a biological point of view, to demonstrate how computational approaches can be used to solve problems in biology such as biological image processing, regulatory networks, and sequence analysis. The book contains a range of pedagogical features to aid understanding, including real-world examples, in-text exercises, end-of-chapter problems, colour-coded Python code, and 'code explained' boxes. User-friendly throughout, Computational Thinking for Life Scientists promotes the thinking skills and self-efficacy req

Learn about the state-of-the-art at the interface between information theory and data science with this first unified treatment of the subject. Written by leading experts in a clear, tutorial style, and using consistent notation and definitions throughout, it shows how information-theoretic methods are being used in data acquisition, data representation, data analysis, and statistics and machine learning. Coverage is broad, with chapters on signal acquisition, data compression, compressive sensing, data communication, representation learning, emerging topics in statistics, and much more. Each chapter includes a topic overview, definition of the key problems, emerging and open problems, and an extensive reference list, allowing readers to develop in-depth knowledge and understanding. Providing a thorough survey of the current research area and cutting-edge trends, this is essential reading for graduate students and researchers working in information theory, signal processing, machine le

Throughout his philosophical development, Wittgenstein was more concerned with language than with any other topic. No other philosopher has been as influential on our understanding of the deep problems surrounding language, and yet the true significance of his writing on the subject is difficult to assess, since most of the current debates regarding language tend to overlook his work. In this book, Thomas McNally shows that philosophers of language still have much to learn from Wittgenstein's later writings. The book examines the finer details of his arguments while also clarifying their importance for debates outside the field of Wittgenstein studies. Presenting the issues thematically (as they relate to questions of reference, scepticism about meaning, and the social dimension of language, among others), the book explores how the arguments in the Philosophical Investigations remain relevant, compelling us to reflect in novel and challenging ways on the nature of language.

Written in easy to understand language, this self-explanatory guide introduces the fundamentals of finite element methods and its application to differential equations. Beginning with a brief introduction to Sobolev spaces and elliptic scalar problems, the text progresses through an explanation of finite element spaces and estimates for the interpolation error. The concepts of finite element methods for parabolic scalar parabolic problems, object-oriented finite element algorithms, efficient implementation techniques, and high dimensional parabolic problems are presented in different chapters. Recent advances in finite element methods, including non-conforming finite elements for boundary value problems of higher order and approaches for solving differential equations in high dimensional domains are explained for the benefit of the reader. Numerous solved examples and mathematical theorems are interspersed throughout the text for enhanced learning.

Sentence comprehension - the way we process and understand spoken and written language - is a central and important area of research within psycholinguistics. This book explores the contribution of computational linguistics to the field, showing how computational models of sentence processing can help scientists in their investigation of human cognitive processes. It presents the leading computational model of retrieval processes in sentence processing, the Lewis and Vasishth cue-based retrieval mode, and develops a principled methodology for parameter estimation and model comparison/evaluation using benchmark data, to enable researchers to test their own models of retrieval against the present model. It also provides readers with an overview of the last 20 years of research on the topic of retrieval processes in sentence comprehension, along with source code that allows researchers to extend the model and carry out new research. Comprehensive in its scope, this book is essential readi

Text mining is a new and exciting area of computer science research that tries to solve the crisis of information overload by combining techniques from data mining, machine learning, natural language processing, information retrieval, and knowledge management. Similarly, link detection – a rapidly evolving approach to the analysis of text that shares and builds upon many of the key elements of text mining – also provides new tools for people to better leverage their burgeoning textual data resources. The Text Mining Handbook presents a comprehensive discussion of the state-of-the-art in text mining and link detection. In addition to providing an in-depth examination of core text mining and link detection algorithms and operations, the book examines advanced pre-processing techniques, knowledge representation considerations, and visualization approaches. Finally, the book explores current real-world, mission-critical applications of text mining and link detection in such varied fields a

Ovid's Heroides, a collection of twenty-one epistles in elegiac verse, consists of two groups, the first comprising fourteen poems addressed by heroines of mythology to their absent lovers or husbands. In this edition, Professor Knox offers a commentary on seven of these epistles, addressing problems of language and style, and focusing on the relationship of the Heroides to the classic works of Greek and Roman literature on which Ovid bases his representation of these women. In addition, he has included a commentary on the Epistula Sapphus, a separate poem of doubtful authorship which was composed in the manner of Ovid and is believed by many to be by him. The Introduction provides an account of the genre, a survey of language, style and metre, and an outline of the problems concerning the authenticity of parts of the collection.

The ideal review for your logic courseMore than 40 million students have trusted Schaum’s Outlines for their expert knowledge and helpful solved problems. Written by renowned experts in their respective fields, Schaum’s Outlines cover everything from math to science, nursing to language. The main feature for all these books is the solved problems. Step-by-step, authors walk readers through coming up with solutions to exercises in their topic of choice. 500 solved problemsIncludes non-classical logicsCovers the probability calculusComplements or supplements the major Logic textbooksAppropriate for the following courses: Introduction to Formal Logic, Informal Logic, Logic Programming, AlgebraComplete course content in easy-to-follow outline formHundreds of solved problems for effective test preparation

Sociophonetics focuses on the relationship between phonetic or phonological form on the one hand, and social and regional factors on the other, working across fields as diverse as sociolinguistics, phonetics, speech sciences and psycholinguistics. Covering methodological, theoretical and computational approaches, this engaging introduction to sociophonetics brings new insights to age-old questions about language variation and change, and to the broader nature of language. It includes examples of important work on speech perception, focusing on vowels and sibilants throughout to provide detailed exemplification. The accompanying website provides a range of online resources, including audio files, data processing scripts and links. Written in an accessible style, this book will be welcomed by students and researchers in sociolinguistics, phonetics, speech sciences and psycholinguistics. See book website at http://lingtools.uoregon.edu/sociophonetics/

Sociophonetics focuses on the relationship between phonetic or phonological form on the one hand, and social and regional factors on the other, working across fields as diverse as sociolinguistics, phonetics, speech sciences and psycholinguistics. Covering methodological, theoretical and computational approaches, this engaging introduction to sociophonetics brings new insights to age-old questions about language variation and change, and to the broader nature of language. It includes examples of important work on speech perception, focusing on vowels and sibilants throughout to provide detailed exemplification. The accompanying website provides a range of online resources, including audio files, data processing scripts and links. Written in an accessible style, this book will be welcomed by students and researchers in sociolinguistics, phonetics, speech sciences and psycholinguistics. See book website at http://lingtools.uoregon.edu/sociophonetics/

Deep learning is revolutionizing how machine translation systems are built today. This book introduces the challenge of machine translation and evaluation - including historical, linguistic, and applied context -- then develops the core deep learning methods used for natural language applications. Code examples in Python give readers a hands-on blueprint for understanding and implementing their own machine translation systems. The book also provides extensive coverage of machine learning tricks, issues involved in handling various forms of data, model enhancements, and current challenges and methods for analysis and visualization. Summaries of the current research in the field make this a state-of-the-art textbook for undergraduate and graduate classes, as well as an essential reference for researchers and developers interested in other applications of neural methods in the broader field of human language processing.

Narratives enable readers to vividly experience fictional and non-fictional contexts. Writers use a variety of language features to control these experiences: they direct readers in how to construct contexts, how to draw inferences and how to identify the key parts of a story. Writers can skilfully convey physical sensations, prompt emotional states, effect moral responses and even alter the readers' attitudes. Mind, Brain and Narrative examines the psychological and neuroscientific evidence for the mechanisms which underlie narrative comprehension. The authors explore the scientific developments which demonstrate the importance of attention, counterfactuals, depth of processing, perspective and embodiment in these processes. In so doing, this timely, interdisciplinary work provides an integrated account of the research which links psychological mechanisms of language comprehension to humanities work on narrative and style.

Semantic Leaps explores how people combine knowledge from different domains in order to understand and express new ideas. Concentrating on dynamic aspects of on-line meaning construction, Coulson identifies two related sets of processes: frame-shifting and conceptual blending. Frame-shifting is semantic reanalysis in which existing elements in the contextual representation are reorganized into a new frame. Conceptual blending is a set of cognitive operations for combining partial cognitive models. By addressing linguistic phenomena often ignored in traditional meaning research, Coulson explains how processes of cross-domain mapping, frame-shifting and conceptual blending enhance the explanatory adequacy of traditional frame-based systems for natural language processing. The focus is on how the constructive processes speakers use to assemble, link and adapt simple cognitive models underlie a broad range of productive language behaviour.

Master the practical aspects of implementing deep learning solutions with PyTorch, using a hands-on approach to understanding both theory and practice. This updated edition will prepare you for applying deep learning to real world problems with a sound theoretical foundation and practical know-how with PyTorch, a platform developed by Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research Group.You'll start with a perspective on how and why deep learning with PyTorch has emerged as an path-breaking framework with a set of tools and techniques to solve real-world problems. Next, the book will ground you with the mathematical fundamentals of linear algebra, vector calculus, probability and optimization. Having established this foundation, you'll move on to key components and functionality of PyTorch including layers, loss functions and optimization algorithms. You'll also gain an understanding of Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) based computation, which is essential for training deep learning models

In the context of this book, adaptation is taken to mean a feature of a system aimed at achieving the best possible performance, when mathematical models of the environment and the system itself are not fully available. This has applications ranging from theories of visual perception and the processing of information, to the more technical problems of friction compensation and adaptive classification of signals in fixed-weight recurrent neural networks. Largely devoted to the problems of adaptive regulation, tracking and identification, this book presents a unifying system-theoretic view on the problem of adaptation in dynamical systems. Special attention is given to systems with nonlinearly parameterized models of uncertainty. Concepts, methods and algorithms given in the text can be successfully employed in wider areas of science and technology. The detailed examples and background information make this book suitable for a wide range of researchers and graduates in cybernetics, mathe

This stimulating volume on vision extends well beyond the traditional areas of vision research and places the subject in a much broader philosophical context. The emphasis throughout is to integrate and illuminate the visual process. The first three parts of the volume provide authoritative overviews on computational vision and neural networks, on the neurophysiology of visual cortex processing, and on eye-movement research. Each of these parts illustrates how different research perspectives may jointly solve fundamental problems related to the efficiency of visual perception, to the relationship between vision and eye-movements and to the neurophysiological 'codes' underlying our visual perceptions. In the fourth part, leading vision scientists introduce the reader to some major philosophical problems in vision research such as the nature of 'ultimate' codes for perceptual events, the duality of psycho-physics, the bases of visual recognition and the paradigmatic foundations of comput

Originally published in 1966, Beryl Loftman Bailey's book was one of the first on the Jamaican Creole language, its origins and its influence on the teaching of English in Jamaica. A native Jamaican herself, Bailey's personal experience of both learning and later teaching English in the Caribbean was a springboard to her interest in the problems of language interference in contact situations. She challenged a notion prevalent throughout English teachers in Caribbean at the time that Creole was a 'dialect' not a language and therefore need not be considered in teaching. The social implications of this view are also explored. Bailey's detailed analysis of Jamaican Creole phonology, morphology, kernel sentence structure and simple and double-based transformations provided valuable insights into the foundations of the language and its educational implications.

Critical Pragmatics develops three ideas: language is a way of doing things with words; meanings of phrases and contents of utterances derive ultimately from human intentions; and language combines with other factors to allow humans to achieve communicative goals. In this book, Kepa Korta and John Perry explain why critical pragmatics provides a coherent picture of how parts of language study fit together within the broader picture of human thought and action. They focus on issues about singular reference, that is, talk about particular things, places or people, which have played a central role in the philosophy of language for more than a century. They argue that attention to the 'reflexive' or 'utterance-bound' contents of utterances sheds new light on these old problems. Their important study proposes a new approach to pragmatics and should be of wide interest to philosophers of language and linguists.

Critical Pragmatics develops three ideas: language is a way of doing things with words; meanings of phrases and contents of utterances derive ultimately from human intentions; and language combines with other factors to allow humans to achieve communicative goals. In this book, Kepa Korta and John Perry explain why critical pragmatics provides a coherent picture of how parts of language study fit together within the broader picture of human thought and action. They focus on issues about singular reference, that is, talk about particular things, places or people, which have played a central role in the philosophy of language for more than a century. They argue that attention to the 'reflexive' or 'utterance-bound' contents of utterances sheds new light on these old problems. Their important study proposes a new approach to pragmatics and should be of wide interest to philosophers of language and linguists.

Understanding how the Chinese writing system illustrates universal design features of writing and literacy learning, as well as how it differs from alphabetic literacy, has become one of the cutting edge areas of research in the cognitive sciences. A major part of this book is devoted to the presentation of a series of proposals for collaborative research with investigators working in East Asia on cross-writing system comparisons and bilingual literacy—Comparing alphabetic and morpho-syllabic literacy. The part that corresponds to "International perspectives" proposes new avenues in research on problems of bilingualism shared by speakers of all languages. With a broad survey of research advances drawing from recent investigations, this book will provide non-specialist readers with examples of how the relevant concepts might be applied to practical problems-age of acquisition effects in first and second language development; analysis of language attrition and asymmetries of different k

This book will strengthen a student's grasp of the laws of physics by applying them to practical situations, and problems that yield more easily to intuitive insight than brute-force methods and complex mathematics. These intriguing problems, chosen almost exclusively from classical (non-quantum) physics, are posed in accessible non-technical language requiring the student to select the right framework in which to analyse the situation and decide which branches of physics are involved. The level of sophistication needed to tackle most of the two hundred problems is that of the exceptional school student, the good undergraduate, or competent graduate student. The book will be valuable to undergraduates preparing for 'general physics' papers. It is hoped that even some physics professors will find the more difficult questions challenging. By contrast, mathematical demands are minimal, and do not go beyond elementary calculus. This intriguing book of physics problems should prove instruct

ESL/EFL Cases: Contexts for Teacher Professional Discussions is designed to provoke conversations on language teaching from multiple perspectives. The format of the presentation of cases allows the reader to gain insights on teaching from the vantage point of the students’ proficiency, the teacher’s perspective, the writers’ questions and suggested answers and finally the critical commentary. Readers are treated as thinking professionals who are capable of analysing the acts of language teaching through the teaching excerpts and the dynamic lesson transcriptions. The questions and critical commentary encourage deeper and more critical processing rather than a superficial interpretation of the teaching act. The cases, derived from authentic teaching contexts, encourage readers to appreciate the rich tapestry of teaching with all its complexities. Designed to promote professional discussions and deeper reflective and more effective practice, this book is a must for the teacher education

The field of matter transport is central to understanding the processing of materials and their subsequent mechanical properties. While thermodynamics determines the final state of a material system, it is the kinetics of mass transport that governs how it gets there. This book, first published in 2000, gives a solid grounding in the principles of matter transport and their application to a range of engineering problems. The author develops a unified treatment of mass transport applicable to both solids and liquids. Traditionally matter transport in fluids is considered as an extension of heat transfer and can appear to have little relationship to diffusion in solids. This unified approach clearly makes the connection between these important fields. This book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students of materials science and engineering and related disciplines. It contains numerous worked examples and unsolved problems. The material can be covered in a one seme

The field of matter transport is central to understanding the processing of materials and their subsequent mechanical properties. While thermodynamics determines the final state of a material system, it is the kinetics of mass transport that governs how it gets there. This book, first published in 2000, gives a solid grounding in the principles of matter transport and their application to a range of engineering problems. The author develops a unified treatment of mass transport applicable to both solids and liquids. Traditionally matter transport in fluids is considered as an extension of heat transfer and can appear to have little relationship to diffusion in solids. This unified approach clearly makes the connection between these important fields. This book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students of materials science and engineering and related disciplines. It contains numerous worked examples and unsolved problems. The material can be covered in a one seme

A peculiar and fascinating aspect of many responses to mass atrocities is the creative and eclectic use of religious language and frameworks. Some crimes are so extreme that they 'cry out to heaven', drawing people to employ religious vocabulary to make meaning of and to judge what happened, to deal with questions of guilt and responsibility, and to re-establish hope and trust in their lives. Moreover, in recent years, religious actors have become increasingly influential in worldwide contexts of conflict-resolution and transitional justice. This collection offers a critical assessment of the possibilities and problems pertaining to attempts to bring religious - or semi-religious - allegiances and perspectives to bear in responses to the mass atrocities of our time: When and how can religious language or religious beliefs and practices be either necessary or helpful? And what are the problems and reasons for caution or critique? In this book, a group of distinguished scholars explore t

A peculiar and fascinating aspect of many responses to mass atrocities is the creative and eclectic use of religious language and frameworks. Some crimes are so extreme that they 'cry out to heaven', drawing people to employ religious vocabulary to make meaning of and to judge what happened, to deal with questions of guilt and responsibility, and to re-establish hope and trust in their lives. Moreover, in recent years, religious actors have become increasingly influential in worldwide contexts of conflict-resolution and transitional justice. This collection offers a critical assessment of the possibilities and problems pertaining to attempts to bring religious - or semi-religious - allegiances and perspectives to bear in responses to the mass atrocities of our time: When and how can religious language or religious beliefs and practices be either necessary or helpful? And what are the problems and reasons for caution or critique? In this book, a group of distinguished scholars explore t