The Sixth Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution for the first time has also been a Euroconference. This year we focused on "First Steps in the Origin of Life in the Universe". (Both this Centre and the ICGEB have been sponsors since we first started planning the series with Professors Abdus Salam and Cyril Ponnamperuma. ) The conference had the following 11 sponsors: The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, The European Commission, The SETI Institute, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy, The International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Trieste, The European Space Agency (ESA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Universite Paris 12, The ICTP Public Information Office, La Fondazione Internazionale Trieste per il Progresso e la Liberta della Scienza, and II Laboratorio dell'Immaginario Scientifico. of our Over 90 participants allowed us to make a truly comprehensive review subject. In 82 presentations we had contributions from experts in questions related to the origin, evolution, distribution and destiny of life in the universe, topics that are known together as the science ofastrobiology. The publication ofthese proceedings was largely due to a generous grant form the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Rome, Italy. The general topic of the conference concerned the origin, evolution, distribution and destiny of life in the Universe, a subject referred to as astrobiology and also as exobiology. In this report we prefer the synonym Astrobiology.

The present volume gathers together the talks presented at the second colloquim on the Future Professional Communication in Astronomy (FPCA II), held at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) on 13-14 April 2010. This meeting provided a forum for editors, publishers, scientists, librarians and officers of learned societies to discuss the future of the field. The program included talks from leading researchers and practitioners and drew a crowd of approximately 50 attendees from 10 countries. These proceedings contain contributions from invited and contributed talks from leaders in the field, touching on a number of topics. Among them: - The role of disciplinary repositories such as ADS and arXiv in astronomy and the physical sciences; - Current status and future of Open Access Publishing models and their impact on astronomy and astrophysics publishing; - Emerging trends in scientific article publishing: semantic annotations, multimedia content, links to data products hosted by astrophysics archives; - Novel approaches to the evaluation of facilities and projects based on bibliometric indicators; - Impact of Government mandates, Privacy laws, and Intellectual Property Rights on the evolving digital publishing environment in astronomy; - Communicating astronomy to the public: the experience of the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

A major fraction of star formation in the universe occurs in starbursts. These regions of particularly rapid star formation are often located towards the centers of host galaxies. Studies of this kind of star formation at high redshift have produced astonishing results over recent years that were only possible with the latest generation of large ground-based and space telescopes. The papers collected in this volume present these results in the context of the much firmer foundation of star formation in the local universe, and they emphasize all the important topics, from star formation in different environments to the cosmic star formation history.

From August 21 through August 27, 1989 the Nato Advanced Research Workshop Probabilistic Methods in Quantum Field Theory and Quantum Gravity" was held at l'Institut d'Etudes Scientifiques, Cargese, France. This publication is the Proceedings of this workshop. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together a group of scientists who have been at the forefront of the development of probabilistic methods in Quantum Field Theory and Quantum Gravity. The original thought was to put emphasis on the introduction of stochastic processes in the understanding of Euclidean Quantum Field Theory, with also some discussion of recent progress in the field of stochastic numerical methods. During the final preparation of the meeting we broadened the scope to include all those Euclidean Quantum Field Theory descriptions that make direct reference to concepts from probability theory and statistical mechanics. Several of the main contributions centered around a more rigorous discussion of stochastic processes for the formulation of Euclidean Quantum Field Theory. These rather stringent mathematical approaches were contrasted with the more heuristic stochastic quantization scheme developed in 1981 by Parisi and Wu: Stochastic quan tization, its intrinsic BRST -structure and stochastic regularization appeared in many disguises and in connection with several different problems throughout the workshop.

An up-to-date presentation of the progress and current problems in the early universe, cosmic microwave background radiation, large scale structure formation, and the interplay between them. The emphasis is on the mutual impact of fundamental physics and cosmology, both at theoretical and experimental (observational) levels within a deep, well- focused and well-defined programme. The nature of the domain itself leads to different aspects, approaches and points of view on the same topic. Special care has been taken to provide the reader the basis of the different, sometimes competing lines of research. All contributions are uniformly excellent, with a careful selection of the subjects and approaches covered, presenting a unifying and rigorous view of the field. Audience: experimentalists and theoreticians from a variety of backgrounds: physics, astrophysics and astronomy. An excellent reference for post-doctoral scientists. Useful for senior scientists and advanced graduate students.

This volume is concerned primarily with the chemical and physical effects of shock waves on typical materials. It compares naturally occurring materials with similar materials produced by shock compression in the laboratory, providing clues about the environment and events that produced the natural materials.

The recent discovery of a type II supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud provides a rare chance to compare models of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis directly with observations. This workshop covers thermonuclear reaction rates in chaos (experimental and theoretical), stellar evolution, nucleosynthesis and isotopic anomalies in meteorites and, in a final section, the supernovae, in particular SN 1987A. It brings the most interesting news in the rapidly developing field of nuclear astrophysics to researchers and also to graduate students. Recent and future developments are discussed. Special emphasis is placed on experimental and theoretical approaches to obtaining nuclear reaction rates, models of stellar evolution and explosions, and theories of nucleosynthesis. Various aspects of stellar evolution, nucleosynthesis, and thermonuclear reactions of astrophysical interest are reviewed. Several contributions deal with supernova explosions of massive stars, and in particular with Supernova 1987A and its impact on current models of the evolution of massive stars, the gravitational collapse of stellar cores, and neutrino physics and astronomy.

Due to the advent of a new generation of detectors, X-ray polarimetry promises to join X-ray imaging, spectroscopy and timing as one of the main observational techniques in high energy astrophysics. This has renewed interest in the field, and indeed several polarimetric missions have recently been proposed. This volume provides a complete and up-to-date view of the subject for researchers in astrophysics. The contributors discuss the present status and perspectives of instruments, review current theoretical models, and examine future missions. As well as detailed papers, the book contains broad reviews that can be easily understood by astrophysicists new to the field.

In 1995, the German Space Agency DARA selected the CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) mission for development under a special support programme for the space industry in the new states of the unified Germany, with the Principal Investigator and his home institution GFZ Potsdam being ultimately responsible for the success of all mission phases. After three years of spacecraft manufactur ing and testing, the satellite was injected successfully into its final, near circular, almost polar and low altitude (450 km) orbit from the cosmodrome Plesetsk in Russia on July 15, 2000. After a nine month commissioning period during which all spacecraft systems and instruments were checked, calibrated and validated, the satellite has been delivering an almost uninterrupted flow of science data since May 2001. Since this date, all science data have been made available to the more than 150 selected co-investigator teams around the globe through an international Announcement of Opportunity. The scientific goals of the CHAMP mission are to gain a better understanding of dynamic processes taking place in the Earth's interior and in the space near Earth. These goals can be achieved by improved observation of the Earth's gravity and magnetic fields and their time variability with high-performance on-board instru mentation and by exploring the structure of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere through radio occultation measurements.

This volume contains results gained from the EU-funded 6th Framework project ADIGMA (Adaptive Higher-order Variational Methods for Aerodynamic Applications in Industry). The goal of ADIGMA was the development and utilization of innovative adaptive higher-order methods for the compressible flow equations enabling reliable, mesh independent numerical solutions for large-scale aerodynamic applications in aircraft industry. The ADIGMA consortium was comprised of 22 organizations which included the main European aircraft manufacturers, the major European research establishments and several universities, all with well proven expertise in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The book presents an introduction to the project, exhibits partners methods and approaches and provides a critical assessment of the newly developed methods for industrial aerodynamic applications. The best numerical strategies for integration as major building blocks for the next generation of industrial flow solvers are identified. "

Topological defects have recently become of great interest in condensed matter physics, particle physics and cosmology. They are the unavoidable remnants of many symmetry breaking phase transitions. Topological defects can play an important role in describing the properties of many condensed matter systems (e.g. superfluids and superconduc tors); they can catalyze many unusual effects in particle physics models and they may be responsible for seeding the density perturbations in the early Universe which de velop into galaxies and the large-scale structure of the Universe. Topological defects are also of great interest in mathematics as nontrivial solutions of nonlinear differential equations stabilized by topological effects. The purpose of the Advanced Study Institute "Formation and Interactions of Topo logical Defects" was to bring together students and practitioners in condensed matter physics, particle physics and cosmology, to give a detailed exposition of the role of topo logical defects in these fields; to explore similarities and differences in the approaches; and to provide a common basis for discussion and future collaborative research on common problems.

This volume contains the lectures and contributions presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on "Frontier Topics in Nuclear Physics", held at Predeal in Romania from 24 August to 4 September 1993. The ASI stands in a row of 23 Predeal Summer Schools organized by the Institute of Atomic Physics (Bucharest) in Predeal or Poiana-Brasov during the last 25 years. The main topics of the ASI were cluster radioactivity, fission and fusion. the production of very heavy elements, nuclear structure described with microscopic and collective models, weak: interaction and double beta decay, nuclear astrophysics, and heavy ion reactions from low to ultrarelativistic energies. The content of this book is ordered according to these topics. The ASI started with a lecture by Professor Greiner on the "Present and future of nuclear physics", showing the most important new directions of research and the interdisciplinary relations of nuclear physics with other fields of physics. This lecture is printed in the first chapter of the book.

The discovery of chemical elements in celestial bodies and the first estimates of the chemical composition of the solar atmosphere were early results of Astrophysics - the subdiscipline of Astronomy that was originally concerned with the general laws of radiation and with spectroscopy. Following the initial quantitative abundance studies by Henry Norris Russell and by Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a tremendous amount of theoretical, observa tional, laboratory and computational work led to a steadily improving body of knowledge of photospheric abundances - a body of knowledge that served to guide the theory of stellar evolution. Solar abundances determined from photospheric spectra, together with the very similar abundances determined from carbonaceous chondrites (where extensive information on isotopic composition is available as well), are nowadays the reference for all cosmic composition measures. Early astrophysical studies of the solar photospheric composition made use of atmosphere models and atomic data. Consistent abundances derived from different atmospheric layers and from lines of different strength helped to confirm and estab lish both models and atomic data, and eventually led to the now accepted, so-called "absolute" abundance values - which, for practical reasons, however, are usually given relative to the number of hydrogen nuclei.

Research and publications in the field of Astronomy have undergone dramatic changes in the last half-century. While activities just slowed down during World War II in the US and in Latin America, they were very strongly affected by the difficult conditions prevailing among the European belligerent nations. Half a century ago, re search activities were mostly confined to observatories (linked or not to universities) and usually separated from the teaching of physical sciences. Hence, directors of observatories played an important role in the choice of the research fields, and "schools" of research appeared at various places, de veloping specific instrumentation, reduction techniques and mathematical methods to achieve their scientific goals. Reorganising the research activities after the war was no minor under taking, specially because communications were interrupted for over five years and isolated continental Europe from overseas activities. Scarcity of observing instruments (some of them being requisitioned by occupy ing armies), enormous gaps in the available litterature led to local research activities, conducted independently of similar efforts undertaken elsewhere."

Electroweak Phase Transition and the Early Universe, a NATO Advanced Re- search Workshop, was held March 23-25, 1994, at the Hotel Tivoli in Sintra, Portugal. The meeting was co-sponsored by three other Lisbon-based institutions: the Fundac;ao Gulbenkian, J. N.!. C. T. (Junta Nacional para Investigac;ao Cientifica e Tecnologica) and G. T. A. E. (Grupo Teorico de Alta Energias). The workshop brought together a large number of theoretical physicists who are actively researching topics relevant to the understanding of the standard model of electroweak interactions in the early universe. We were pleased and overwhelmed by the positive, and sometimes instan- taneous response that our enterprise raised right from its inception. The old town of Sintra provided a serene and pleasant environment for the par- ticipants. Some heated and controversial discussions on many unanswered questions in the standard model took place throughout the three days of the workshop. If one consensus emerged from the meeting, it was the imperative need for non-perturbative techniques for the understanding of the electroweak phase transition.

1.1. MISSION BACKGROUND The scientific objective of this magnetospheric physics mission was a detailed in vestigation of the Aurora Borealis, or 'Northern Lights'. The fields experiments (electric and magnetic) were constructed by the University of California at Berke ley (UCB), and Los Angeles (UCLA) respectively. The particles instruments were constructed by UCB and the University of New Hampshire in collaboration with Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory. The instrument data processing unit was provided by UCB. The spacecraft bus, telemetry, and launch services were provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center SMEX office. The science principal investigator is Dr C. W. Carlson of UCB, and the program is managed by the SMEX office. The UCB design philosophy emphasizes the demonstration of design margins set by peer review. As a result, each boom system was extensively tested at a prototype level before the flight units were manufactured. Additionally, the design, assembly and testing of each boom mechanism was conducted by a single engineer solely responsible for its success.

Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) - astronomer, mathematician, chemist - was one of the most important English scientists of the nineteenth century. Son of the famous astronomer William Herschel and nephew of Caroline, he was persuaded by his father to pursue the astronomical investigations William could no longer undertake; John's subsequent career resulted in a knighthood and a lifetime of accolades. Outlines of Astronomy (1849), an updated and expanded version of his 1833 Treatise on Astronomy, went through eleven editions in two decades and was translated into several languages. Outlines examines terrestrial and celestial phenomena, providing the reader with a wide range of knowledge about the physical world as a whole. The work is an important textbook, the object of which 'is not to convince or refute opponents, nor to inquire ... for principles of which we are all the time in full possession - but simply to teach what is known'.

It has always been ESO's aim to operate the VLT in an interferometric mode (VLTI) which allows the coherent combination of stellar light beams col lected by the four 8-m telescopes and by several smaller auxiliary telescopes. In December 1993, in response to financial difficulties, the ESO Council de cided to postpone implement at ion of the VLTI, Coude trains and associated adaptive optics for all the UTs but included provisions for continuing tech nological and development programmes devoted to the aim of reintroducing these capabilities at the earliest possible date. The desirability of carrying out the full VLTI programme as originally envisaged at the earliest possible moment has not, however, diminished, es pecially in view of VLTI's exceptional capabilities and resulting potential for new and exciting discoveries. In recent years, interferometric projects have begun to playa central role in ground-based high-resolution astronomy, and numerous instruments have been completed or are in the process of construc tion. Several large-aperture interferometers will probably co me on-line near the turn of the century. The impending presence of these new instruments represents an important incentive both for clarifying the scientific cases for various VLTI implementation plans and for ensuring VLTI's competitiveness in the international context over the next 1O 20 years."

These Transactions provide a record of the formal organisational and administrative proceedings of the IAU XXVII General Assembly which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It includes the admission of new members, the Resolutions passed, an account of the regular Business Meetings of the Executive Committee, the Divisions, Commissions and Working Groups, and gives the detailed status of the Membership of the IAU. 2434 registered attendees from 76 nations enjoyed a rich scientific programme of 6 Symposia, 16 Joint Discussions, 10 Special Sessions, and 7 scientific sessions. During the programme over 700 papers were presented and more than 1500 posters displayed. The Proceedings of the Symposia are published in the Proceedings of the IAU Symposia Series, and those of the Invited Discourses, Joint Discussions and Special Sessions will feature in Highlights of Astronomy, Volume 15. Together with those 7 volumes, these Transactions cover the entire General Assembly.

This book is a collection of selected papers presented at the symposium titled "In situ Spectroscopy in Monomer and Polymer Synthesis," held at the April, 2001 ACS National Meeting in San Diego, California, USA. The co-organizers of this symposium were Timothy Long, Judit E. Puskas, Robson F. Storey, and J. Andrews. In situ spectroscopic monitoring is gaining popularity both in academia and industry. FfIR monitoring is used most frequently, but UV-visible, raman, and NMR spectroscopy are also important. This book concentrates mostly on FfIR monitoring, both in the near and mid-infrared ranges. The first chapter is a short general overview of FfIR spectroscopy, followed by the symposium contribu tions. We thought that this would be especially useful for student readers. We hope that the book will present a state-of-the-art overview of research related to in situ spectroscopic monitoring. -Judit E. Puskas ix Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the dedicated effort of the chapter contributors and the symposium committee: Professor Judit E. Puskas Professor Timothy Long Professor Robson F. Storey Professor J. Andrews The symposium was financially supported by: ACS-Petroleum Research Fund REMSPEC Co. Wyatt Technology Co.

Habent sua Jata colloquia. The present volume has its ongms in a spring 1984 international workshop held, under the auspices of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, by The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas of Tel-Aviv University in cooperation with The Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation. It contains twelve of the twenty papers presented at the workshop by the twenty-six participants. As Proceedings of conferences go, it is a good representative of the genre, sharing in the main characteristics of its ilk. It may even be one of the rare instances of a book of Proceed ings whose descriptive title applies equally well to the workshop's topic and to the interrelations between. the various papers it includes. Tension and Accommodation are the key words. Thus, while John Glucker's paper, 'Images of Plato in Late Antiqu ity, ' raises, by means of the Platonic example, the problem of interpreta tion of ancient texts, suggesting the assignment of proper weight to the creator of the tradition and not only to his many later interpreters in assessing the proper relationship between originator and commentators, Abraham Wasserstein's 'Hunches that did not come off: Some Prob lems in Greek Science' illustrates the long-lived Whiggish tradition in the history of science and mathematics. As those familiar with my work will undoubtedly note, Wasserstein's position is far removed from my stance on ancient Greek mathematics."

The successful launch on November 17, 1995 of ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) by means of an Ariane 4 carrier, has set in motion a true revolution in quantitative infrared astronomy. For the first time since the very successful IRAS mission in 1983, the astronomical community has uninterrupted access to the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The four focal plane instruments on board of ISO ( the camera ISOCAM, the photometerjcamera ISOPHOT, and the short and long wavelength spec trographs ISO-SWS and ISO-LWS), perform very well and live up to the high expectations all of us had at launch. In the spring of 1996, Thijs de Graauw (principal investigator of the SWS) first suggested the idea to organize a conference dedicated to ISO re sults in the area of stars and circumstellar matter, and coined the title ISO 's View on Stellar Evolution. At the first scientific meeting to highlight some of the early ISO results which was held in May of 1996 at ESA's laboratory ESTEC in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, the conference was announced and a preliminary science organizing committee was formed. The conference was held from July 1 to 4, 1997, in conference centre de Leeuwenhorst, Noord wijkerhout, the Netherlands. The conference was opened by the Director of ESA 's Science Programme, Professor R. Bonnet.

Simon Newcomb (1835-1903) was an astronomer and mathematician remembered for his work in recalculating the major astronomical constants to a new international standard. He was a founding member of the American Astronomical Society and became its first president in 1899. Although Newcomb's mathematical work is well known, this autobiography, first published in 1903, focuses on his achievements and work as an astronomer. In it he provides an account of his scientific research with comments on his approach, which together with his descriptions of scientific discoveries and collaborations occurring in Washington DC show the variety of scientific research being conducted in the United States in the late nineteenth century. His detailed descriptions of how telescopes were used, together with accounts of his experience of working conditions in various observatories, provide valuable insights into astronomical research methods in the late nineteenth century.

In 1988, in an article on the analysis of the measurements of the variations in the radial velocities of a number of stars, Campbell, Walker, and Yang reported an - teresting phenomenon;the radial velocity variations of Cephei seemed to suggest the existence of a Jupiter-like planet around this star. This was a very exciting and, at the same time, very surprising discovery. It was exciting because if true, it would have marked the detection of the ?rst planet outside of our solar system. It was surprising because the planet-hosting star is the primary of a binary system with a separation less than 19 AU, a distance comparable to the planetary distances in our solar system. The moderatelyclose orbit of the stellar companionof Cephei raised questions about the reality of its planet. The skepticism over the interpretation of the results (which was primarily based on the idea that binary star systems with small sepa- tions would not be favorable places for planet formation) became so strong that in a subsequent paper in 1992, Walker and his colleagues suggested that the planet in the Cephei binary might not be real, and the variations in the radial velocity of this star might have been due to its chromospheric activities.