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Annual review of astrophysics vol. 8,
Book Reviews
ANNUAL REVIEW O’AASTROPHYSICS Vol. 8/ edited by Leo Goldberg. 495 pages, diagrams, illustr., 6 x 9 in. Palo Alto,; California, Annual Reviews, 1970. Price, $10.60. Active researchers have provided, in this Series, review articles of exceptionally high quality. Since its inception, Annual Reviews has served the specialist in his cognition of the latest progress in his field and served the nonspecialist in providing a unified, comprehensive review containing what the authors feel are the most important and timely contributions. The relatively short time-lapse in bringing the collection of articles to publication is especially meritorious as many of them contain literature references as recent as two months prior to publication. It is desirable for the authors to indicate wherever possible both enduring problems and prospects for new directions in research, thus adding significantly to the usefulness and critical nature of the articles. The current volume contains fourteen articles with an average length of 28 pages, excluding the 92-page article “The Nuclei of Galaxies” by G. R. Burbridge. The review by Burbridge is well rounded, judicious and an outstanding contribution to many branches of extragalactic aatronomy. The present reviewer thought the articles by I. J. Danziger, “The Cosmic Abundance of Helium ; Neutron Stars” by A. G. W. Cameron; and “Pulsars” by A. Hewish were well written and uniformly excellent. Other articles which are timely and exceptional include “The Origin of Solar Magnetic Fields” by E. N. Parker: “Atmospheres of Very Late-type Stars” by M. S. Vardya; “Radiofrequency Recombination Lines” by A. K. Dupree and Leo Goldberg; and “The Theory of Stellar Winds and Related by T. E. Holzer and W. I. Flows” Axford. The volume contains at the end, a useful cumulative index of contributing authors and chapter titles for Vols. 4-8 of the
series and (cited) author and subject indexes for Vol. 8 alone. The book is highly recommended by this reviewer, and is very moderately priced. EDWARD M. SION Departmnt of Astro?w?ny Univertity of Pennaylvanicr Philadelphia, Pa. THE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD IN STRUCTURAL AND CONTINTJUM MECHANICS, by 0. C. Zienkiewicz. 267 pages, London, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1967. in collaboration with The author, W. K. Cheung, has produced a work which is an absolute must for anyone involved in the mathematical analysis of discrete or continuum systems. It is primarily directed toward the engineering profession, however, applied mathematicians in related areas will find this text extremely useful. Since the finite element method was originally developed as a concept of structural analysis, the major emphasis in the text is on structural engineering applications. However, other areas such as heat conduction, seepage flow, etc. are developed. Mathematical requirements are only an elementary knowledge of differential calculus and matrix algebra. Beyond this, it is assumed that the reader will have a basic insight into the problems of his specialization or particular area of interest. As an aid to those who have not studied matrix algebra, a brief summary of its principles are included in the appendix. Zienkiewicz has made the book completely self-contained in that he uses the first chapter to develop the direct stiffness method of structural analysis. In Chap. 2, the author develops the direct formulation of finite element characteristics. In order to answer some of the philosophical questions raised by replacing the distributed stresses on the element boundaries by equivalent static loads, the energy approach is also developed. Here the author also mentions the criteria for convergence. Chapter 3 reviews the basic
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ANNUAL REVIEW O’AASTROPHYSICS Vol. 8/ edited by Leo Goldberg. 495 pages, diagrams, illustr., 6 x 9 in. Palo Alto,; California, Annual Reviews, 1970. Price, $10.60. Active researchers have provided, in this Series, review articles of exceptionally high quality. Since its inception, Annual Reviews has served the specialist in his cognition of the latest progress in his field and served the nonspecialist in providing a unified, comprehensive review containing what the authors feel are the most important and timely contributions. The relatively short time-lapse in bringing the collection of articles to publication is especially meritorious as many of them contain literature references as recent as two months prior to publication. It is desirable for the authors to indicate wherever possible both enduring problems and prospects for new directions in research, thus adding significantly to the usefulness and critical nature of the articles. The current volume contains fourteen articles with an average length of 28 pages, excluding the 92-page article “The Nuclei of Galaxies” by G. R. Burbridge. The review by Burbridge is well rounded, judicious and an outstanding contribution to many branches of extragalactic aatronomy. The present reviewer thought the articles by I. J. Danziger, “The Cosmic Abundance of Helium ; Neutron Stars” by A. G. W. Cameron; and “Pulsars” by A. Hewish were well written and uniformly excellent. Other articles which are timely and exceptional include “The Origin of Solar Magnetic Fields” by E. N. Parker: “Atmospheres of Very Late-type Stars” by M. S. Vardya; “Radiofrequency Recombination Lines” by A. K. Dupree and Leo Goldberg; and “The Theory of Stellar Winds and Related by T. E. Holzer and W. I. Flows” Axford. The volume contains at the end, a useful cumulative index of contributing authors and chapter titles for Vols. 4-8 of the
series and (cited) author and subject indexes for Vol. 8 alone. The book is highly recommended by this reviewer, and is very moderately priced. EDWARD M. SION Departmnt of Astro?w?ny Univertity of Pennaylvanicr Philadelphia, Pa. THE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD IN STRUCTURAL AND CONTINTJUM MECHANICS, by 0. C. Zienkiewicz. 267 pages, London, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1967. in collaboration with The author, W. K. Cheung, has produced a work which is an absolute must for anyone involved in the mathematical analysis of discrete or continuum systems. It is primarily directed toward the engineering profession, however, applied mathematicians in related areas will find this text extremely useful. Since the finite element method was originally developed as a concept of structural analysis, the major emphasis in the text is on structural engineering applications. However, other areas such as heat conduction, seepage flow, etc. are developed. Mathematical requirements are only an elementary knowledge of differential calculus and matrix algebra. Beyond this, it is assumed that the reader will have a basic insight into the problems of his specialization or particular area of interest. As an aid to those who have not studied matrix algebra, a brief summary of its principles are included in the appendix. Zienkiewicz has made the book completely self-contained in that he uses the first chapter to develop the direct stiffness method of structural analysis. In Chap. 2, the author develops the direct formulation of finite element characteristics. In order to answer some of the philosophical questions raised by replacing the distributed stresses on the element boundaries by equivalent static loads, the energy approach is also developed. Here the author also mentions the criteria for convergence. Chapter 3 reviews the basic
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