S. Lynch, The Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, England

Dynamical Systems with Applications using MAPLE 2nd ed.

Readership : Mathematicians, Engineers, Scientists

For students and researchers

Cost : 59.95 US dollars, about 40 UK pounds

This 545 page book covers standard material for an introduction to dynamical systems theory. To help with the understanding of the subject, the Maple package is used as a tool throughout the text. The book contains over 500 examples and exercises with solutions, and has a very hands-on approach. There are over 400 individual figures including about 250 Maple plots with simple commands and programs listed at the end of each chapter. The bibliography includes over 150 textbooks and over 150 journal papers. Colourful pictures and animations along with the related Maple commands and programs can be viewed at the web-sites

http://www.birkhauser.com/cgi-win/ISBN/0-8176-4150-5 (1st ed.)

http://www.mapleapps.com/index.html

The text begins with a tutorial guide to MAPLE and thereafter is divided into two main areas: continuous systems using ordinary differential equations and discrete dynamical systems. The differential equations are used to model examples taken from various topics such as mechanical systems, chemical kinetics, electric circuits, interacting species and economics. Both real and complex discrete dynamical systems are considered in the second section of the text and examples are taken from economics, population dynamics, neural networks, nonlinear optics and materials science. The book ends with chapters on Simulation and Examination-Type questions.

There are common themes which run through several chapters of the book such as bifurcation, bistability, chaos, fractals and multifractals, instability, multistability, periodicity and quasiperiodicity, for instance.

The text is aimed at both final year undergraduates and postgraduates, and is appropriate for engineers and scientists. Some of the chapters are concerned with recently published research articles and provide a useful resource for project work or open problems in nonlinear dynamics.

This publication will provide a solid basis for research in nonlinear dynamical systems both in the technological and natural sciences.