The history of well drilling goes back for millennia. Oilwell drilling has, even to this day, been more a craft rather than an engineering science. An engineering approach to oilwell drilling first began to take hold at the end of World War II. Perhaps one indication was seven papers related to drilling and completion topics in the 1953 Transactions of the AIME, Petroleum  Development and Technology.

Heterogeneous ductile shear zones are very common in the Earth’s lithosphere and are particularly well exposed in mountain belts (e.g. Iannace and Vitale 2004; Yonkee 2005; Vitale et al. 2007a,b; Okudaira and Beppu 2008; Alsleben et al. 2008; Sarkarinejad et al. 2010; Kuiper et al. 2011; Dasgupta et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2013; Samani 2013; Mukherjee 2013, 2014; also see Chapter 9), where they provide useful tools for a better understanding of the processes and parameters controlling strain localization, type of deformation, and rock rheology. The occurrence of strain markers such as fossils, ooids and ellipsoidal clasts in sedimentary rocks, or equant minerals, deflected veins and dykes in igneous rocks, allows one to quantify the finite strain by means of various methods (e.g. Dunnet 1969; Fry 1979; Lisle 1985; Erslev 1988; Vitale and Mazzoli 2005, 2010). <...>

Dynamic Earth presents the principles of convection in the earth's mantle in an accessible style. Mantle convection is the process underlying plate tectonics, volcanic hotspots and, hence, most geological processes. This book is one of the first to synthesise the exciting insights into the earth's basic internal mechanisms that have flowed from the plate tectonics revolution of the 1960s.

One of the most important dynamic processes in the ocean is that of tidal movement. The tides obtain their energy from the earth's rotation. Most of this energy is received in the major ocean basins, and from there transmitted into shallow waters. It is in these shallow waters that tidal energy is dissipated, in part by eroding and transporting sediments, resulting in very active sedimentary processes in the shelf and coastal areas.

Research in clastic tidal deposits has accumulated large-amount of data on tidal processes and their products. In present-day tide-swept shelves large-scale tidal sandbodies with various bedforms has been a subject of extensive research, which mainly focussed on the southern bight of the North Sea (van Veen, 1935; Jones, Kain & Stride, 1965; Houbolt, 1968; Stride, 1970; Caston & Stride, 1970,1973; McCave, 197.1; Terwindt, 1971,1973; Cas-ton, 1972; Johnson et al., 1981; Kenyon et al., 1981; Langhorne, 1982; McCave & Lan-ghorne, 1982; Nio & Nelson, 1982; Stride, 1982; de Boer, van Gelder & Nio, 1988), the English Channel and the French Atlantic shelf (Berne et al., 1986; Berne et al., 1988; Turcq et al, 1986) and the North American Atlantic shelf (Swift et al., 1972,1979,1981; Milliman etal., 1972; Sheridan etal, 1974;Knebel&Folger, 1976,Knebel, 1981; Swift & Field, 1981).

In estuaries and other inshore tidal basins, genesis, geometry, distribution pattern, dynamic behaviour and internal sedimentary structures of tidal bedforms have been studied intensively in the Netherlands (Boersma, 1969; Terwindt, 1970,1981; de Raaf & Boersma, 1971; Boersma & Terwindt, 1981; Kohsiek & Terwindt, 1981; van den Berg, 1982, 1984, 1987; Terwindt & Brouwer, 1986; de Boer, van Gelder & Nio, 1988), U.K. (Langhorne, 1973; Allen & Friend, 1976; Elliott & Gardiner, 1981), France (Tastet et al, 1986), United States (Boothroyd & Hubbard, 1975; Bokuniewicz, et al, 1977), Canada (Swift et al, 1966; d'Anglejan, 1971; Dalrymple et al, 1975,1978; Dalrymple, 1984) and other countries. Most of the studies were concentrated in intertidal areas. The subtidal deposits received less attention due to the difficulties in field observations. Preservation potential of subtidal deposits, however, is much higher. As a consequence subtidal deposits will occur more often in the geological record. It is from the detailed study of the subtidal deposits in the construction pits of the Oosterschelde, SW Netherlands that distinct diagnostic criteria for recognizing tide-dominated deposits were developed (Visser, 1980; Siegenthaler, 1982; van den Berg, 1982; Nio et al., 1983; de Mowbray & Visser, 1984; Yang & Nio, 1985). <...>