Richard A. Layton - Böcker

This is the first comprehensive study in the English language of the commentaries of Didymus the Blind, who was revered as the foremost Christian scholar of the fourth century and an influential spiritual director of ascetics.  The writings of Didymus were censored and destroyed due to his posthumous condemnation for heresy. This study recovers the uncensored voice of Didymus through the commentaries among the Tura papyri, a massive set of documents discovered in an Egyptian quarry in 1941.  This neglected corpus offers an unprecedented glimpse into the internal workings of a Christian philosophical academy in the most vibrant and tumultuous cultural center of late antiquity. By exploring the social context of Christian instruction in the competitive environment of fourth-century Alexandria, Richard A. Layton elucidates the political implications of biblical interpretation.  Through detailed analysis of the commentaries on Psalms, Job, and Genesis, the author charts a profound tectonic shift in moral imagination as classical ethical vocabulary becomes indissolubly bound to biblical narrative. Attending to the complex interactions of political competition and intellectual inquiry, this study makes a unique contribution to the cultural history of late antiquity.

Introductory MEMS: Fabrication and Applications is a practical introduction to MEMS for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Part I introduces the student to the most commonly used MEMS fabrication techniques as well as the MEMS devices produced using these techniques. Part II focuses on MEMS transducers: principles of operation, modeling from first principles, and a detailed look at commercialized MEMS devices, in addition to microfluidics. Multiple field-tested laboratory exercises are included, designed to facilitate student learning about the fundamentals of microfabrication processes. References, suggested reading, review questions, and homework problems are provided at the close of each chapter.Introductory MEMS: Fabrication and Applications is an excellent introduction to the subject, with a tested pedagogical structure and an accessible writing style suitable for students at an advanced undergraduate level across academic disciplines.

This book describes a novel approach to analytical mechanics that uses differential-algebraic equations, which, unlike the usual approach via ordinary differential equations, provides a direct connection to numerical methods and avoids the cumbersome graphical methods that are often needed in analyzing systems; it is also eminently suited for constrained nonlinear models. Using energy as a unifying concept and systems theory as a unifying theme, the book addresses the foundations of such disciplines as mechatronics, concurrent engineering, and systems integration. The systems considered include mechanical, thermal, electrical, and fluid elements; only discrete systems are considered. The reader is expected to be familiar with the fundamentals of engineering mechanics, but no detailed knowledge of analytical mechanics, system dynamics, or variational calculus is required. The treatment is thus accessible to advanced undergraduates, and the interdisciplinary approach should be of interest not only to academic engineers and physicists, but also to practicing engineers and applied mathematicians.The text begins with an overview of system dynamics: classification and representation of motion, constraints on motion, virtual work and variational concepts. It then turns to the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian equations of motion, expressed as differential-algebraic equations. A subsequent chapter treats the dual, or complementary equations of motion, and the book concludes with a chapter on modeling and simulation, including methods of numerical solution.

Why teach about religion in public schools? What educational value can such courses potentially have for students?In For the Civic Good, Walter Feinberg and Richard A. Layton offer an argument for the contribution of Bible and world religion electives. The authors argue that such courses can, if taught properly, promote an essential aim of public education: the construction of a civic public, where strangers engage with one another in building a common future. The humanities serve to awaken students to the significance of interpretive and analytic skills, and religion and Bible courses have the potential to add a reflective element to these skills. In so doing, students awaken to the fact of their own interpretive framework and how it influences their understanding of texts and practices. The argument of the book is developed by reports on the authors’ field research, a two-year period in which they observed religion courses taught in various public high schools throughout the country, from the “Bible Belt” to the suburban parkway. They document the problems in teaching religion courses in an educationally appropriate way, but also illustrate the argument for a humanities-based approach to religion by providing real classroom models of religion courses that advance the skills critical to the development of a civic public.

Mechanical engineering, an engineering discipline borne of the needs of the industrial revolution, is once again asked to do its substantial share in the call for industrial renewal. The general call is urgent as we face profound is­ sues of productivity and competitiveness that require engineering solutions, among others. The Mechanical Engineering Series features graduate texts and research monographs intended to address the need for information in contemporary areas of mechanical engineering. The series is conceived as a comprehensive one that covers a broad range of concentrations important to mechanical engineering graduate education and research. We are fortunate to have a distinguished roster of consult­ ing editors on the advisory board, each an expert in one of the areas of concentration. The names of the consulting editors are listed on the next page of this volume. The areas of concentration are applied mechanics, biomechanics, computational mechanics, dynamic systems and control, en­ ergetics, mechanics of materials, processing, thermal science, and tribology. Fred Leckie, our consulting editor for applied mechanics and I are pleased to present this volume in the Series: Principles of Analytical System Dy­ namics, by Richard A. Layton. The selection of this volume underscores again the interest of the Mechanical Engineering Series to provide our read­ ers with topical monographs as well as graduate texts in a wide variety of fields.