The Dot Comparable

In the past decade, the field of comparative cognition has grown and thrived. No less rigorous than purely behavioristic investigations, examinations of animal intelligence are useful for scientists and psychologists alike in their quest to understand the nature and mechanisms of intelligence. Extensive field research of various species has yielded exciting new areas of research, integrating findings from psychology, behavioral ecology, and ethology in a unique and wide-ranging synthesis of theory and research on animal cognition. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Cognition contains sections on perception and illusion, attention and search, memory processes, spatial cognition, conceptualization and categorization, problem solving and behavioral flexibility, and social cognition processes including findings in primate tool usage, pattern learning, and counting. The authors have incorporated findings and theoretical approaches that reflect the current state of the field. This comprehensive volume will be a must-read for students and scientists who want to know about the state of the art of the modern science of comparative cognition.

The book addresses issues associated with physics and technology of injection lasers based on self-organized quantum dots. Fundamental and technological aspects of quantum dot edge-emitting lasers and VCSELs, their current status and future prospects are summarized and reviewed. Basic principles of QD formation using self-organization phenomena are reviewed. Structural and optical properties of self-organized QDs are considered with a number of examples in different material systems. Recent achievements in controlling the QD properties including the effects of vertical stacking, changing the matrix bandgap and the surface density of QDs are reviewed. The authors focus on the use of self-organized quantum dots in laser structures, fabrication and characterization of edge and surface emitting diode lasers, their properties and optimization with special attention paid to the relationship between structural and electronic properties of QDs and laser characteristics. The threshold and power characteristics of the state-of-the-art QD lasers are demonstrated. Issues related to the long-wavelength (1.3-mm) lasers on a GaAs substrate are also addressed and recent results on InGaAsN-based diode lasers presented for the purpose of comparison.

Ongoing developments in nanofabrication technology and the availability of novel materials have led to the emergence and evolution of new topics for mesoscopic research, including scanning-tunnelling microscopic studies of few-atom metallic clusters, discrete energy level spectroscopy, the prediction of Kondo-type physics in the transport properties of quantum dots, time dependent effects, and the properties of interacting systems, e.g. of Luttinger liquids. The overall understanding of each of these areas is still incomplete; nevertheless, with the foundations laid by studies in the more traditional systems there is no doubt that these new areas will advance mesoscopic electron transport to a new phenomenological level, both experimentally and theoretically. Mesoscopic Electron Transport highlights selected areas in the field, provides a comprehensive review of such systems, and also serves as an introduction to the new and developing areas of mesoscopic electron transport.