This book is dedicated to the memory of Donald E. Carlson, who enjoyed a long distinguished career as a Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; he influenced the mechanics community through his teachings, publications and interactions. The book disseminates unique research investigations which give breadth and depth to the field of continuum mechanics and provide a vision for future advancements. The common bond of Don's publications was his sound theoretical developments and fundamental insight. He carefully delineated the principal roles of kinematics, conservation laws (including the second law of thermodynamics) and constitutive assumptions not only in his discussions and writings about fundamentals in mechanics but also in his work on the formulation of initial-boundary value problems that arise in modeling the behavior of elastic and thermoelastic bodies. This book expands this lucid practice by applying these roles to model a plethora of physical phenomena on the foundations and applications of modern continuum mechanics. This is a hardbound spinoff edition previously published in the Journal of Elasticity, volumes 104 and 105, 2011.