Georg Glaeser

This book will take you on an exciting journey made up of texts and images. Spectacular, large-scale photographs printed on double pages and accompanied by explanatory texts will arouse the reader’s curiosity about evolution’s accomplishments in the world of flying: from the botanical air fleet (pollen grains, flying seeds…), over flying snakes and fish, to penguins flying underwater and humans rising into the air. Mathematician and passionate animal photographer Georg Glaser has joined forces with the experienced evolutionary biologist Hannes Paulus and the exercise physiologist and flight biophysicist Werner Nachtigall in order to approach this topic with words and pictures in a way that is both generally comprehensible and scientifically sound. Double-page by double-page, the book can be read in any order. Cross-references allow to jump easily from one double-page to another. Aside from the detailed introduction to each chapter,the text passages are usually independent from one another, and they discuss crucial moments in the evolutionary process. The double-pages provide additional information on bibliographical references and references to informative websites.

Dieser Band nimmt sie mit auf eine spannende Reise in Bildern und Texten. Spektakuläre, großformatige Fotos auf Doppelseiten mit einem Erklärungstext machen die Leser neugierig auf das, was die Evolution im Bereich des Fliegens hervorgebracht hat: von der pflanzlichen Luftflotte (Pollenkörner, Flugsamen,…) über fliegende Schlangen und Fische, unter Wasser fliegende Pinguine bis zum Menschen, der sich in die Lüfte erhebt. Das Buch kann in beliebiger Reihenfolge, Doppelseite für Doppelseite, gelesen werden. Querverweise sorgen für bequemes Umspringen auf andere Doppelseiten. Die Textpassagen sind zumeist - abgesehen von der fundierten Einleitung - unabhängig von einander und besprechen besondere Highlights im evolutionären Prozess. Ergänzt wird die Doppelseite mit Literaturhinweisen und Verweisen auf instruktive Internet-Seiten.

With fascinating, spectacularly beautiful images, the book piques readers’ curiosity about the diversity of visual organs. This book is the result of a dual approach – scientific as well as aesthetic. The compelling images are accompanied by an easy-to-read, understandable text, aimed at both scientists and the educated public, and generally anyone interested in the beauty of nature. Thanks to this combination, the book presents the staggering diversity of eyes in the animal kingdom and provides countless insights into the intriguing mechanisms at work – from simple pigment cups to independently flexible, telescopic, facet and lens eyes. Educational, exciting, entertaining till the last page, this is a book for anyone who is interested in evolution, nature and the miracle of life.

Overview At the beginning of 1999, Springer-Verlag published the book Open Geo- try OpenGL +Advanced Geometry. There, the authors Georg Glaeser and Hellmuth Stachel presented a comprehensive library of geometric me- odsbasedonOpenGLroutines. AnaccompanyingCD-ROMprovidedthesource code and many sample ?les. Many diverse topics are covered in this book. The theoretical background is carefully explained, and many examples are given. Since the publication of Open Geometry, the source code has been improved andmanyadditionalfeatureshavebeenaddedtotheprogram. Contributorsfrom allovertheworldhavecomeupupwithnewideas,questions,andproblems. This process has continued up to the present and Open Geometry is growing from daytoday. In order to make all of these improvements accessible to the public, and also in order to give deeper insight into Open Geometry, we decided to write this new Handbook on Open Geometry GL 2.0. It will ?ll certain gaps ofOpen Geometry 1.0 and explain new methods, techniques, and examples. On the accompanying CD-ROM the new source code and the sample ?les are included. The Handbook now contains 101 well-documented examples and the reader is able to learn about Open Geometry by working through them. In addition, we present a compendium of all important Open Geometry classes and their methods. vi Preface However, we did not intend to write a new tutorial for Open Geometry. The Handbook is rather a sequel, written for the readers of the ?rst book and for advancedprogrammers. Furthermore,itisasourceofcreativeandgoodexamples from diverse ?elds of geometry, computer graphics, and many other related ?elds like physics, mathematics, astronomy, biology, and geography.

Mathematicians with special interest in biology, physics, geography, astronomy, architecture, design, etc., and being prepared to take pictures at any time, might try to answer unusual questions like the followings: What do a zebra, a tiger shark, and a hard coral have in common? How is this with drying mud, wings of dragon flies, and the structures of leaves? What is the “snail king” and is there also a “worm king”? Which curves stay of the same type after being photographed? Do fishes see like we do if we look through a fisheye lens? Which geometric properties of an object have physical consequences? Which kinds of geometric patterns appear when waves are interfering? In this book you can find 180 double pages with at least as many questions of this kind. The principle to attack a problem is often similar: It starts with a photo that is for some reasons remarkable. In a short description an explanation is offered, including relevant Internet links. Additionally one can frequently find computer simulations in order to illustrate and confirm.

No detailed description available for "Geometry and its Applications in Arts, Nature and Technology".

Overview At the beginning of 1999, Springer-Verlag published the book Open Geo- try OpenGL +Advanced Geometry. There, the authors Georg Glaeser and Hellmuth Stachel presented a comprehensive library of geometric me- odsbasedonOpenGLroutines. AnaccompanyingCD-ROMprovidedthesource code and many sample ?les. Many diverse topics are covered in this book. The theoretical background is carefully explained, and many examples are given. Since the publication of Open Geometry, the source code has been improved andmanyadditionalfeatureshavebeenaddedtotheprogram. Contributorsfrom allovertheworldhavecomeupupwithnewideas,questions,andproblems. This process has continued up to the present and Open Geometry is growing from daytoday. In order to make all of these improvements accessible to the public, and also in order to give deeper insight into Open Geometry, we decided to write this new Handbook on Open Geometry GL 2.0. It will ?ll certain gaps ofOpen Geometry 1.0 and explain new methods, techniques, and examples. On the accompanying CD-ROM the new source code and the sample ?les are included. The Handbook now contains 101 well-documented examples and the reader is able to learn about Open Geometry by working through them. In addition, we present a compendium of all important Open Geometry classes and their methods. vi Preface However, we did not intend to write a new tutorial for Open Geometry. The Handbook is rather a sequel, written for the readers of the ?rst book and for advancedprogrammers. Furthermore,itisasourceofcreativeandgoodexamples from diverse ?elds of geometry, computer graphics, and many other related ?elds like physics, mathematics, astronomy, biology, and geography.

This book is about graphics programming based on OPENGL. The program­ ming language is C++. The programs will run under various operating systems, among them WINDOWS 9x, ALPHA-STATIONS (Digital workstations) and SILI­ CON GRAPHICS workstations. Hardware is used if accessible. The book provides a graphics library. This library is based on OPENGL and expands the elemen­ tary routines. Thus, the reader is enabled to realize direct geometrical thinking without having to care much about implementation. The enclosed modules provide the reader with solutions for: • The most common intersection problems and measuring tasks of both pla­ nar and spatial geometry. • The creation ofarbitrary geometric objects, e.g., by means ofdifferent kinds of "sweeping." • The creation of the most general solids by means of Boolean operations (intersection, union, and complements of solid polyhedra). The book presents: • A well documented, versatile, and robust geometry library. The reader can use it very easily and expand it in any way he/she likes. vi Preface • A programming course that provides a deeper insight into object-oriented thinking and programming. It contains an introduction to C++ (for begin­ ners and intermediate programmers) that is influenced by the experience gained from thousands of programming hours (which may even be useful to experienced programmers).

In this book, a variety of algoritbms are described that may be of interest to everyone who writes software for 3D-graphics. It is a book that haB been written for programmers at an intermediate level as well aB for experienced software engineers who simply want to have some particular functions at their disposal, without having to think too much about details like special cases or optimization for speed. The programming language we use is C, and that has many advantages, because it makes the code both portable and efficient. Nevertheless, it should be possible to adapt the ideas to other high-level programming languages. The reader should have a reasonable knowledge of C, because sophisticated pro­ grams with economical storage household and fast sections cannot be written without the use of pointers. You will find that in the long run it is just aB easy to work with pointer variables as with multiple arrays . . Aß the title of the book implies, we will not deal with algorithms that are very computation-intensive such as ray tracing or the radiosity method. Furthermore, objects will always be (closed or not closed) polyhedra, which consist of a certain number of polygons.