http://scitation.aip.org/ SIAM Review http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/181/1&agg=rss Bob O'Malley<br/> Even long-time readers of SIAM Review may wonder what a featured review is. I, too, sometimes wonder. Occasionally, two or three related books are reviewed simultaneously. More often, the objective is to highlight an important new book or topic. It takes planning to arrange such a review for each i ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 181 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/157/1&agg=rss Steven J. Cox, Mark Embree, and Jeffrey M. Hokanson<br/> To what extent do the vibrations of a mechanical system reveal its composition? Despite innumerable applications and mathematical elegance, this question often slips through those cracks that separate courses in mechanics, differential equations, and linear algebra. We address this omission by deta ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 157 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/155/1&agg=rss Louis F. Rossi<br/> Back in the late 80s when I learned to fly airplanes, my instructor required all the student pilots to fly without the benefit of noise attenuating headsets. In the air, one of the first lessons I learned was that the sound or spectrum of the engine tells a story. If one listens carefully, it can t ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 155 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/141/1&agg=rss Peter Csorba, Cor A. J. Hurkens, and Gerhard J. Woeginger<br/> We consider a planning problem that generalizes Alcuin's river crossing problem to scenarios with arbitrary conflict graphs. This generalization leads to the so-called Alcuin number of the underlying conflict graph. We derive a variety of combinatorial, structural, algorithmical, and complexity the ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 141 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/139/1&agg=rss The Editors<br/> Alcuin of York was a famous scholar, monk, and teacher in the late eighth century. He was the head of the emperor Charlemagne's Palace School and developed a precursor of our modern alphabet. Alcuin died in 804 A.D. while serving as the Abbot of St. Martin of Tours. This issue's SIGEST paper The ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 139 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/121/1&agg=rss Margot Kimura and Jeff Moehlis<br/> The sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) and related drift-diffusion model (DDM) are optimal for choosing between two hypotheses using the minimal (average) number of samples and relevant for modeling the decision-making process in human observers. This work extends these models to group decisi ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 121 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/119/1&agg=rss Ilse Ipsen<br/> A new section with a new direction. Research Spotlights replaced Expository Research Papers on January 31, 2012. Papers in Research Spotlights should cover topics in applied and computational mathematics of particularly wide interest and importance. Contributions must also be accessible to the br ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 119 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/52/1&agg=rss Gareth Wyn Jones and S. Jonathan Chapman<br/> The biomechanical modeling of growing tissues has recently become an area of intense interest. In particular, the interplay between growth patterns and mechanical stress is of great importance, with possible applications to arterial mechanics, embryo morphogenesis, tumor development, and bone remod ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 52 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/3/1&agg=rss J. R. Ockendon and R. H. Tew<br/> This paper concerns a certain class of two-dimensional solutions to four generic partial differential equationsthe Helmholtz, modified Helmholtz, and convectiondiffusion equations, and the heat conduction equation in the frequency domainand the connections between these equations for this particula ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 3 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012. http://link.aip.org/link/?SIR/54/1/1&agg=rss Desmond J. Higham<br/> The first article of this section, Thin-Layer Solutions of the Helmholtz and Related Equations, by Ockendon and Tew, is firmly rooted in the customs of applied mathematical analysis. The survey considers four intimately related elliptic PDEs: Helmholtz, modified Helmholtz, convection-diffusion, and ... [SIAM Rev. 54, 1 (2012)] published Wed Feb 8, 2012.