Stone is one of the oldest building materials, and its conservation ranks as one of the most challenging in the field. The use of alkoxysilanes in the conservation of stone can be traced as far back as 1861, when A. W. von Hoffman suggested their use for the deteriorating limestone on the Houses of Parliament in London. Alkoxysilane-based formulations have since become the material of choice for the consolidation of stone outdoors.^l This volume, the first to cover comprehensively alkoxysilanes in stone consolidation, synthesizes the subject's vast and extensive literature, which ranges from production of alkoxysilanes in the nineteenth century to the extensive contributions from sol-gel science in the 1980s and 90s. Included are a historical overview, an annotated bibliography, and discussions of the following topics: the chemistry and physics of alkoxysilanes and their gels; the influence of stone type; commercial and noncommercial formulations; practice; lab and field evaluation of service life; and recent developments. This book is designed for conservators, scientists, and preservation architects in the field of stone conservation and will also serve as an indispensable introduction to the subject for students of art conservation and historic preservation.
This proceedings volume collects review articles that summarize research conducted at the Munich Centre of Advanced Computing (MAC) from 2008 to 2012. The articles address the increasing gap between what should be possible in Computational Science and Engineering due to recent advances in algorithms, hardware, and networks, and what can actually be achieved in practice; they also examine novel computing architectures, where computation itself is a multifaceted process, with hardware awareness or ubiquitous parallelism due to many-core systems being just two of the challenges faced. Topics cover both the methodological aspects of advanced computing (algorithms, parallel computing, data exploration, software engineering) and cutting-edge applications from the fields of chemistry, the geosciences, civil and mechanical engineering, etc., reflecting the highly interdisciplinary nature of the Munich Centre of Advanced Computing.
The main motivation for the organization of the Advanced Research Workshop in Belgirate was the promotion of discussions on the most recent issues and the future perspectives in the field of Solid State lonics. The location was chosen on purpose since Belgirate was the place were twenty years ago, also then under the sponsorship of NATO, the very first international meeting on this important and interdisciplinary field took place. That meeting was named "Fast Ion Transport in Solids" and gathered virtually everybody at that time having been active in any aspect of motion of ions in solids. The original Belgirate Meeting made for the first time visible the technological potential related to the phenomenon of the fast ionic transport in solids and, accordingly, the field was given the name "Solid State lonics". This field is now expanded to cover a wide range of technologies which includes chemical sensors for environmental and process control, electrochromic windows, mirrors and displays, fuel cells, high performance rechargeable batteries for stationary applications and electrotraction, chemotronics, semiconductor ionics, water electrolysis cells for hydrogen economy and other applications. The main idea for holding an anniversary meeting was that of discussing the most recent issues and the future perspectives of Solid State lonics just twenty years after it has started at the same location on the lake Maggiore in North Italy.