Sulphide minerals are the important resources of nonferrous metals, which are widely used in many fields such as electronics, chemical engineering, aviation, transportation, construction and metallurgy etc. Flotation technology is the most important method to beneficiate sulphide ores to obtain concentrate containing nonferrous metals since it has been used in industry at the end of the 19th century. As early as in the 1930s-1950s, considerable amount of fundamental research had been conducted on the flotation of sulphide minerals based on wettability, electrokinetics and chemical interactions.

The dissemination of digital spatial databases, coupled with the ever wider use of GISystems, is stimulating increasing interest in spatial analysis from outside the spatial sciences. The recognition of the spatial dimension in social science research sometimes yields different and more meaningful results than analysis which ignores it

Thousands of scholars, professors, teachers, and members of the public have visited the Geological Museum Valentí Masachs, associated with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) (Polytechnic University of Catalonia) in Manresa (Barcelona, Catalonia), since it opened in June 1980.

The Geological Museum Valentí Masachs is an unconventional one, very different from the traditional type. The exhibition’s main aim is to visualize the connection between human activity and planet Earth (Fig. 1).

With the increasing demand of people for improved life quality, a large number of mega projects spring up in our modern society. The successful construction and sustainable operation of these mega projects mark not only the progress in modern science and technology but also the significant development of human society and civilization.

Geostatistics, developed originally in the mining industry from the 1950s onwards, is now being applied widely in environmental science for mapping, monitoring and management. It is based on the theory of random spatial processes. There are numerous examples in soil science, meteorology, agronomy, hydrology, ecology and some aspects of marine science. By taking into account and modelling spatial correlation, geostatistics provides unbiased predictions of environmental variables with minimum and known variance in ways that no other method does. The general technique of prediction is known as kriging. It requires a mathematical model to describe the spatial covariance, usually expressed as a variogram, which in its parameterized form has become the central tool of geostatistics. Successful kriging and estimation of the variogram depend on sampling adequately without bias and with suitable spatial configurations and supports. These differ somewhat from design-based estimation with its emphasis on random sampling. <...>

In this part, Chaps. 1 to 5, the crystal is studied as an ideal entity, from a geometrical point of view through the concept of lattice. The geometry and symmetry of the lattices and the external morphology of the crystals are considered. From a macroscopic point of view, the crystal is considered a homogeneous and continuous, anisotropic and symmetrical medium. When the internal symmetry is studied, the crystal is considered a homogeneous and discrete medium, as well as anisotropic and symmetrical.

This new edition of “Petrogenesis of Metamorphic Rocks” has several completely revised chapters and all chapters have updated references and additional or redrawn figures. All chapters of the book have been rewritten. The references made to important websites relating to metamorphic petrology tutorials, software, mail base, etc. have been updated. However, it should be noted that some of the links to these sites might fail to work in the future. A large number of new figures showing assemblage stability diagrams have been computed using the Theriak/Domino software by Ch. de Capitani of the University of Basel.

This book describes a unique approach using the principles of rock fracture mechanics to investigate the behaviour of fractured rock masses for rock engineering purposes.

Rock fracture mechanics, a promising outgrowth of rock mechanics and fracture mechanics, has developed rapidly in recent years, driven by the need for in-depth understanding of rock mass failure processes in both fundamental research and rock engineering designs.

Today, as rock engineering extends into many more challenging fields (like mining at depth, radioactive waste disposal, geothermal energy, and deep and large underground spaces), it requires knowledge of rock masses, complex coupled thermal–hydraulic–chemical–mechanical processes. Rock fracture mechanics play a crucial role in these complex coupled processes simply because rock fractures are the principal carrier and common interface <...>

Popular interest in dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles began during the third decade of the 19th century,and has increased continually since that time. In 1841, the name Dinosauria (‘terrible lizards’) was proposed by Richard Owen at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Plymouth; it first appeared in print the following year. During subsequent decades, both scientific and popular interest were extended to pterosaurs, mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.Mesozoic reptiles, especially dinosaurs, likewise earned their place in science fiction, films and comic strips. It is no coincidence that both my wife and I were thrilled especially by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) whilst at school. Anne even read it by the flickering light of a coal firewhilst in the sanatoriumquarantined for chickenpox! Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, and numerous other authors wrote stories about dinosaurs during the first part of the 20th Century, whilst they appeared in many early films, notably The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933). <...>

Originated from ancient Greece, “mechanics” is a branch of science concerned with the behaviors (e.g. displacement, time, velocity, acceleration, etc.) of physical bodies subjected to actions (e.g. force, temperature, etc.). During the early modern period after the Renaissance, great scientists (e.g. Galileo, Newton, et al.) laid the laws for what is now known as “classical mechanics” that describes the motion of macro-scopic objects with velocities significantly smaller than the speed of light. By the prin-ciples of classical mechanics, if the present state of an object is detected, we are able to predict how it has moved in the past (reversibility) and how it will move in the future (determinism). <...>