J. W. McPherson – författare

All engineers could bene?t from at least one course in reliability physics and engineering. It is very likely that, starting with your very ?rst engineering po- tion, you will be asked — how long is your newly developed device expected to last? This text was designed to help you to answer this fundamentally important question. All materials and devices are expected to degrade with time, so it is very natural to ask — how long will the product last? The evidence for material/device degradation is apparently everywhere in nature. A fresh coating of paint on a house will eventually crack and peel. Doors in a new home can become stuck due to the shifting of the foundation. The new ?nish on an automobile will oxidize with time. The tight tolerances associated with ?nely meshed gears will deteriorate with time. Critical parameters associated with hi- precision semiconductor devices (threshold voltages, drive currents, interconnect resistances, capacitor leakages, etc.) will degrade with time. In order to und- stand the lifetime of the material/device, it is important to understand the reliability physics (kinetics) for each of the potential failure mechanisms and then be able to develop the required reliability engineering methods that can be used to prevent, or at least minimize the occurrence of, device failure.

This book is a study of moulids, the popular Egyptian religious festivals (Muslim and Christian) as they were in the first half of the 20th century. Moulids also had a secular side, where sports, games, theatres, shadowplays, beer booths, sweet stalls, eating houses, dancing, and laughter, were as much part of the festival as the religious processions and the whirling of dervishes. Nor were the festivals exclusive to one religion or the other- Muslims and Christians happily attended each other's moulids. Some of the rites and customs date from as far back as the Pharaonic period, but the moulids are gradually dying out. Many of the 126 festivals described here have since faded away, making the book of lasting interest. Published in Cairo at the height of the Second World War, Bimbashi McPherson's The Moulids of Egypt is a fascinating and highly original contribution to the study of the country's religious folklore and practice.

"Reliability Physics and Engineering" provides critically important information for designing and building reliable cost-effective products. The textbook contains numerous example problems with solutions. Included at the end of each chapter are exercise problems and answers. "Reliability Physics and Engineering" is a useful resource for students, engineers, and materials scientists.

This third edition textbook provides the basics of reliability physics and engineering that are needed by electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, civil engineers, biomedical engineers, materials scientists, and applied physicists to help them to build better devices/products. The information contained within should help all fields of engineering to develop better methodologies for: more reliable product designs, more reliable materials selections, and more reliable manufacturing processes— all of which should help to improve product reliability. A mathematics level through differential equations is needed. Also, a familiarity with the use of excel spreadsheets is assumed. Any needed statistical training and tools are contained within the text. While device failure is a statistical process (thus making statistics important), the emphasis of this book is clearly on the physics of failure and developing the reliability engineering tools required for product improvements during device-design and device-fabrication phases.