The 30 contributions of this volume cover the main European regions for oil and gas exploration: the North Sea and adjacent areas, the central and eastern Mediterranean including offshore Albania, central and eastern Europe including Poland, Hungary, the Russian platform and offshore Bulgaria. Main topics are investigations to sequence stratigraphy, 3D-quantitative restoration and balanced structural sections, using the LOCACE equipment. Additional studies deal with a Monte Carlo method for generating models of porosity and permeability, with facies characterization using wireline logs or with petrographic applications of image analysis. As further reading this volume is of significant interest for researchers in oil and gas industries but also for scientists at universities.

Reflecting the historic first European seismic code, this professional book focuses on seismic design, assessment and retrofitting of concrete buildings, with thorough reference to, and application of, EN-Eurocode 8. Following the publication of EN-Eurocode 8 in 2004-05, 30 countries are now introducing this European standard for seismic design, for application in parallel with existing national standards (till March 2010) and exclusively after that. Eurocode 8 is also expected to influence standards in countries outside Europe, or at the least, to be applied there for important facilities. Owing to the increasing awareness of the threat posed by existing buildings substandard and deficient buildings and the lack of national or international standards for assessment and retrofitting, its impact in that field is expected to be major.

Written by the lead person in the development of the EN-Eurocode 8, the present handbook explains the principles and rationale of seismic design according to modern codes and provides thorough guidance for the conceptual seismic design of concrete buildings and their foundations. It examines the experimental behaviour of concrete members under cyclic loading and modelling for design and analysis purposes; it develops the essentials of linear or nonlinear seismic analysis for the purposes of design, assessment and retrofitting (especially using Eurocode 8); and gives detailed guidance for modelling concrete buildings at the member and at the system level. Moreover, readers gain access to overviews of provisions of Eurocode 8, plus an understanding for them on the basis of the simple models of the element behaviour presented in the book.

Also examined are the modern trends in performance- and displacement-based seismic assessment of existing buildings, comparing the relevant provisions of Eurocode 8 with those of new US prestandards, and details of the most common and popular seismic retrofitting techniques for concrete buildings and guidance for retrofitting strategies at the system level. Comprehensive walk-through examples of detailed design elucidate the application of Eurocode 8 to common situations in practical design. Examples and case studies of seismic assessment and retrofitting of a few real buildings are also presented.

From the reviews
"This is a massive book that has no equal in the published literature, as far as the reviewer knows. It is dense and comprehensive and leaves nothing to chance. It is certainly taxing on the reader and the potential user, but without it, use of Eurocode 8 will be that much more difficult. In short, this is a must-read book for researchers and practitioners in Europe, and of use to readers outside of Europe too. This book will remain an indispensable backup to Eurocode 8 and its existing Designers Guide to EN 1998-1 and EN 1998-5 (published in 2005), for many years to come. Congratulations to the author for a very well planned scope and contents, and for a flawless execution of the plan." AMR S. ELNASHAI

"The book is an impressive source of information to understand the response of reinforced concrete buildings under seismic loads with the ultimate goal of presenting and explaining the state of the art of seismic design. Underlying the contents of the book is the in-depth knowledge of the author in this field and in particular his extremely important contribution to the development of the European Design Standard EN 1998 - Eurocode 8: Design of structures for earthquake resistance. However, although Eurocode 8 is at the core of the book, many comparisons are made to other design practices, namely from the US and from Japan, thus enriching the contents and interest of the book." EDUARDO C. CARVALHO"

Mixture concepts are nowadays used in a great number of subjects of the - ological, chemical, engineering, natural and physical sciences (to name these alphabetically) and the theory of mixtures has attained in all these dis- plines a high level of expertise and specialisation. The digression in their development has on occasion led to di?erences in the denotation of special formulations as 'multi-phase systems' or 'non-classical mixtures', 'structured mixtures', etc., and their representatives or defenders often emphasise the di?erences of these rather than their common properties. Thismonographisanattempttoviewtheoreticalformulationsofprocesses which take place as interactions among various substances that are spatially intermixedandcanbeviewedtocontinuously?llthespacewhichtheyoccupy as mixtures. Moreover, we shall assume that the processes can be regarded to becharacterisedbyvariableswhichobeyacertaindegreeofcontinuityintheir evolution, so that the relevant processes can be described mathematically by balance laws, in global or local form, eventually leading to di?erential and/or integralequations, towhichtheusualtechniquesoftheoreticalandnumerical analysis can be applied. Mixtures are generally called non-classical, if, apart from the physical laws (e. g. balances of mass, momenta, energy and entropy), also further laws are postulated, whicharelessfundamental, butmaydescribesomefeaturesofthe micro-structure on the macroscopic level. In a mixture of ?uids and solids - thesearesometimescalledparticleladensystems-thefractionofthevolume that is occupied by each constituent is a signi?cant characterisation of the micro-structure that exerts some in?uence on the macro-level at which the equations governing the processes are formulated. For solid-?uid mixtures at high solids fraction where particle contact is essential, friction between the particles gives rise to internal stresses, which turn out to be best described by an internal symmetric tensor valued variable.

Rifted Ocean-Continent Boundaries covers a wide range of topics, from quantitative modelling to current knowledge of the structure and evolution of specific margins around the world. Special emphasis is placed on the structure and evolution of various Atlantic margins. After an introduction to volcanic margin concepts, the first articles report the results of numerical models of the mechanics of rift propagation, melt generation and sources of extensional stresses that may cause break-up. One part of the book is dedicated to current knowledge of the structure and evolution of various Atlantic margins. After a brief incursion into the Mediterranean, succeeding articles report on the transform and active margins of the Ivory Coast-Ghana transform margin and the Sea of Japan.

Physical and chemical studies of the earth and planets along with their sur roundings are now developing very rapidly. As these studies are of essentially international character, many international conferences, symposia, seminars and workshops are held every year. To publish proceedings of these meetings is of course important for tracing development of various disciplines of earth and plane tary sciences though publishing is fast getting to be an expensive business. It is my pleasure to learn that the Center for Academic Publications Japan and the Japan Scientific Societies Press have agreed to undertake the publication of a series "Advances in Earth and Planetary Sciences" which should certainly become an important medium for conveying achievements of various meetings to the aca demic as well as non-academic scientific communities. It is planned to publish the series mostly on the basis of proceedings that appear in the Journal of Geomagnetism and Geoelectricity edited by the Society of Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity of Japan, the Journal of Physics of the Earth by the Seismological Society of Japan and the Volcanological Society of Japan, and the Geochemical Journal by the Geochemical Society of Japan, although occasional volumes of the series will include independent proceedings. Selection of meetings, of which the proceedings will be included in the series, will be made by the Editorial Committee for which I have the honour to work as the General Editor."

This volume is a selection of the most significant papers Yu, V. Riz nichenko wrote during his 30-year career and concerns the development of fundamental problems of seismology. The book is in five parts. The first is devoted to source seismicity. It starts with a chapter on the "elementary unit" of seismicity, viz. the earthquake source. The size of an earthquake is in itself a significant problem in seismology and, is discussed here. The main energetic parameters of the source are consi dered, namely, seismic energy, magnitude, seismic moment, geometric size of the main fault, displacements along the fault, and stress drop. The main results of comparison, mutual adjustment and correlations between these parameters are presented. The following chapters are a logical continuation of the first: from an individual earthquake source to a set of earthquakes in space and time, viz. a seismic regime. The chapters convey the now classical principles of seismic regime parametrization and mapping techniques for long-term average seismic activity based on basic principles. How to determine the maximum possible earthquake is a central question. Both the theoretical (or gnostic) and practical i.e. seismic zon ing, aspects are considered. Methods of determining and mapping the maximum possible earthquakes are proposed, in particular, by correlating them with seismic activity and, in general, from seismological and other geophysical, geological, geomorphological and geodetical data sets."

A IUTAM symposium on 'Waves in Liquid/Gas and Liquid/Vapor Two-Phase Systems' was held in Kyoto, Japan, 9-13 May 1994. Sixty-three scientists partici pated coming from ten countries, and forty-two lectures were presented. The list of participants and the program are included in this volume. The symposium was held in response to the request of the participants in the IUTAM symposium 'Adiabatic Waves in Liquid-Vapor System' held at Gottingen in 1989. At that time, the need for another symposium in about five years had been indicated by all the participants. This symposium intends to develop the subject of wave properties in more general liquid-gas two-phase systems. Topics in this symposium may be classified as (1) waves in liquid-gas bubble systems including interfacial effects, (2) waves in gas( vapor )-droplets systems, (3) waves in films or stratified systems, (4) waves with liquid-vapor transition, (5) waves with vapor-liquid transition, (6) wave propagation near the critical point and (7) waves with low pressure effect. As for topic (1), experiments, numerical simulations and analytical approaches to waves in bubly liquids were discussed. The importance of interbubble interactions through the liquid-field is now well established at least in terms of potential theory. There was also a progress concerning the well-posedness of governing equations for void waves. For pressure waves there were some new phenomena, such as bubble cluster formation and the occurrence of three-dimensional structures, in addition to a progress from more qualitative studies to quantitative ones."

This book appears a century after the discovery of radioactivity. It was in 1896, when Henri Becquerel reported his first results about the penetrating radiation, which could darken the packed photographic plates. The initial fascination of radioactivity, e.g., the discovery of new radioactive elements, the first real description of the structure of atoms and their nuclei, the applications of radiotracers, the high sensitivity of activation analysis, etc., was followed by the use of atomic bomb in 1945. The mushroom cloud became a symbol of destructive nuclear power. And even nuclear energy production (which provides about 20% of the world's electricity) is overshadowed by radioactive waste. However, the latest results suggest that the Accelerator-Driven Transmutation Technology (ADTT) will solve this problem, since this technique can decrease the lifetime of the fission products comparatively to the human lifespan. Practical control of fusion may also be possible in the first decades of the next millennium.

The subject of this volume is the observation and modelling of the gravity wave field in the atmosphere. The focus is on the question of how to include the effects of small-scale gravity waves in sophisticated global climate models.
The book comprises 26 chapters, including contributions from distinguished experts in observation and theory, along with results from studies of gravity wave parameterization within comprehensive climate models.

This book resulted from lectures which I gave at the Universities of Kyoto, Cologne, and Bonn. Its objective is to summarize in a unifying way two other wise rather separately treated subjects of atmospheric electrodynamics: elec tric fields of atmospheric origin, in particular thunderstorm phenomena and related problems on the one hand, and magnetic fields, in particular those which are associated with electric currents of upper atmospheric origin, on the other. Geoelectricity and geomagnetism were not always considered as be longing to quite different fields of geophysics. On the contrary, they were re cognized by the physicists of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century as two manifestations of one and the same physical phenomenon, which we pre sently refer to as electromagnetic fields. This can still be visualized from the choice of names of scientific journals. For instance, there still exists the Japanese Journal of Geomagnetism and Geoelectricity, and the former name of the present American Journal of Geophysical Research was Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity. Whereas geomagnetism became the root of modern magnetospheric phys ics culminating in the space age exploration of the earth's environment, geo electricity evolved as a step-child of meteorology. The reason for this is clear. The atmospheric electric field observed on the ground reflects merely the local weather with all its frustrating unpredictability. The variable part of the geomagnetic field, however, is a useful indicator of ionospheric and magneto spheric electric current systems."

Since the year 2000 the ESA Cluster mission has been investigating the small-scale structures and processes of the Earth's plasma environment, such as those involved in the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetospheric plasma, in global magnetotail dynamics, in cross-tail currents, and in the formation and dynamics of the neutral line and of plasmoids. This book contains presentations made at the 15th Cluster workshop held in March 2008. It also presents several articles about the Cluster Active Archive and its datasets, a few overview papers on the Cluster mission, and articles reporting on scientific findings on the solar wind, the magnetosheath, the magnetopause and the magnetotail.

The Second International Symposium on Observation of the Continental Crust Through Drilling (supported by the Alfred Wegener Foundation, the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology, the German Research Society and the Inter-Union Commission on the Lithosphere) took place in Seeheim (Odenwald) and included a discussion on the Continental Deep Drilling Programme of the Federal Republic of Germany. This sym- posium was regarded as the continuation of a course agreed upon in Tarrytown in 1984. Here, the scientific contents and technical con- cepts of the technically complex and expensive experiments of conti- nental drillings were carefully coordinated before the national commit- tees carne to practical decisions. In Seeheim, rather than in Tarrytown, the methods of technical realization were in the foreground, as the results of scientific projects, e. g. , the NAGRA or the Salton Sea Scien* tific Drilling Project, were evaluated, supplementing industrial ultra- deep drilling experience. The presentation and discussion of the Con- tinental Deep Drilling Project of the Federal Republic of Germany was also granted ample scope with nine lectures and sixty posters. The con- tents of the KTB presentation have been summed up in two contributions and included in this volume. The conference centered on three major subjects: The National- Prograrrunes and Aspects of Geoscience: H. Vidal, FRG; H. Riesen- huber, FRG; E. Seibold, FRG; K. Fuchs, FRG; Cl. Megnien, F; R. S. An- drews, USA; F. G. Stehli, USA; E. A. Kozlovsky, USSR; E. V.

Recently there has been growing interest in the physical properties of rocks. To interpret data on the geophysical fields observed near the Earth's surface, we must know the physical properties of the materials composing the interior. Moreover, the development of geophysical methods (in particular, electrical methods) is necessitating a multiple approach to the study of the physical properties of rocks and minerals. In connection with problems now appearing, the physical properties of rocks must be studied in the laboratory under var ious thermodynamic conditions. Electrical methods of geophysi cal exploration often may require only data obtained at atmos pheric pressure and room temperature, or at temperatures below 100 DegreesC. If, however, we have in mind geophysical field observa tions on the composition and state of matter deep in the Earth's crust and mantle, we must conduct laboratory experiments at high pressures and temperatures. For example, in interpreting data from geomagnetic soundings of the mantle, we may need experi mental results on the electrical properties of rocks at pressures of tens of kilobars and temperatures of the order of lOOO DegreesC. In this connection, we must remember that pressure has relatively little effect on the electrical properties of rocks, whereas, tem perature affects them very strongly. v vi FOREWORD At present, while research into the mechanical properties of rocks (relating to the problems of geophysics, geochemistry, geology, and mining) is pressing forward on a wide front, much less work is being done with electrical properties.

In regard to global change, emphasis is generally placed on the increase in global temperature, but large changes in the distribution of precipitation are also likely to occur. Such changes have been redorded in the past by paleoclimatological studies or in the field of climatology. Different approaches to monitoring and forecasting the evolution of climate-scale precipitation are reviewed by paleoclimatologists, hydrologists, satellite meteorologists, and climate modellers.

A scientific overview of current and future satellite systems for mobile and broadband communications. In part I, the fundamentals of geostationary and non-geostationary satellite constellations and the related questions of communications technology are treated. Part II deals with satellite systems for mobile communications and treats several network features as well as their technology, regulation and financing. Part III is devoted to future satellite systems for broadband communications and explains the specialities of satellite communications, particularly on the basis of ATM and TCP/IP. An extensive survey on operating and planned satellite systems completes the book.

consequences of broken symmetry -here parity-is studied. In this model, turbulence is dominated by a hierarchy of helical (corkscrew) structures. The authors stress the unique features of such pseudo-scalar cascades as well as the extreme nature of the resulting (intermittent) fluctuations. Intermittent turbulent cascades was also the theme of a paper by us in which we show that universality classes exist for continuous cascades (in which an infinite number of cascade steps occur over a finite range of scales). This result is the multiplicative analogue of the familiar central limit theorem for the addition of random variables. Finally, an interesting paper by Pasmanter investigates the scaling associated with anomolous diffusion in a chaotic tidal basin model involving a small number of degrees of freedom. Although the statistical literature is replete with techniques for dealing with those random processes characterized by both exponentially decaying (non-scaling) autocorrelations and exponentially decaying probability distributions, there is a real paucity of literature appropriate for geophysical fields exhibiting either scaling over wide ranges (e. g. algebraic autocorrelations) or extreme fluctuations (e. g. algebraic probabilities, divergence of high order statistical moments). In fact, about the only relevant technique that is regularly used -fourier analysis (energy spectra) -permits only an estimate of a single (power law) exponent. If the fields were mono-fractal (characterized by a single fractal dimension) this would be sufficient, however their generally multifractal character calls for the development of new techniques.

According to my latest model for the last glacial maximum (LGM) (Grosswald 1988), the Arctic continental margin of Eurasia was glaciated by the Eurasian ice sheet, which consisted of three interconnected ice domes --the Scandinavian, Kara, and East Siberian. The Kara Sea glacier was largely a marine ice dome grounded on the sea's continental shelf. The ice dome discharged its ice in all directions, northward into the deep Arctic Basin, southward and westward onto the mainland of west-central North Siberia, the northern Russian Plain, and over the Barents shelf into the Norwegian-Greenland Sea On the Barents shelf, the Kara ice dome merged with the Scandinavian ice dome. In the Arctic Basin the discharged ice floated and eventually coalesced with the floating glacier ice of the North-American provenance giving rise to the Central-Arctic ice shelf. Along its southern margin, the Kara ice dome impounded the northward flowing rivers, causing the formation of large proglaciallakes and their integration into a transcontinental meltwater drainage system. Despite the constant increase in corroborating evidence, the concept of a Kara ice dome is still considered debatable, and the ice dome itself problematic. As a result, a paleogeographic uncertainty takes place, which is aggravated by the fact that a great deal of existing knowledge, no matter how broadly accepted, is based on ambiguous interpretations of the data, most of which are published in Russian and, therefore, not easily available to western scientists.

In their approach to Earth dynamics the authors consider the fundamentals of "Jacobi Dynamics" (1987, Reidel) for two reasons. First, because satellite observations have proved that the Earth does not stay in hydrostatic equilibrium, which is the physical basis of today's treatment of geodynamics. And secondly, because satellite data have revealed a relationship between gravitational moments and the potential of the Earth's outer force field (potential energy), which is the basis of "Jacobi Dynamics." This has also enabled the authors to come back to the derivation of the classical virial theorem and, after introducing the volumetric forces and moments, to obtain a generalized virial theorem in the form of Jacobi's equation. Thus a physical explanation and rigorous solution was found for the famous Jacobi's equation, where the measure of the matter interaction is the energy.
The main dynamical effects which become understandable by that solution can be summarized as follows:
" "the kinetic energy of oscillation of the interacting particles which explains the physical meaning and nature of the gravitation forces;
" "separation of the shell's rotation of a self-gravitating body with respect to the mass density;
difference in angular velocities of the shell rotation;
" "continuity in changing the potential of the outer gravitational force field together withchanges in density distributionof the interacting masses (volumetric center of masses);
" "the nature of the precession of the Earth, the Moon and satellites; the nature of the rotating body's magnetic field and the generation of the planet's electromagnetic field.As a final result, the creation of the bodies in the Solar System having different orbits was discussed. This result is based on the discovery that all the averaged orbital velocities of the bodies in the Solar System and the Sun itself are equal to the first cosmic velocities of their proto-parents during the evolution of their redistributed mass density.
Audience
The work is a logical continuation of the book "Jacobi Dynamics" and is intended for researchers, teachers and students engaged in theoretical and experimental research in various branches of astronomy (astrophysics, celestial mechanics and stellar dynamics and radiophysics), geophysics (physics and dynamics of the Earth's body, atmosphere and oceans), planetology and cosmogony, and for students of celestial, statistical, quantum and relativistic mechanics and hydrodynamics.

This book willbcof value to anyone who wishes to consider the use of SQUID-based magnetic sensing for anyone of a number of practical applications. The focus here is to examine in detail how SQUID technology is used and how. the results of the measurements obtained can be interpreted to provide useful information in a variety of real-world applications. The concentration is on those areas that have received the most attention, namely bioma etism and nondestructive evaluation, but. the topics chosen include as well, geophysics, underwater ordnance detection, accelerometry and a few somewhat more exotic applications. To provide a reasonable perspective. an attempt has been made to consider competing technologies for most applications, and in some cases to consider how SQUID-based technology may be integrated with other technologies to provide an optimum total-system configuration. It is also the intention of the editor, that this book will be of major value to those scientists and engineers who will be required to build both the essential components and complete cryogenic SQUID systems which will be utilized in the various applications presented. Thus, there is a comprehensive review of the principles of SQUID operation, and a detailed exposition on the fabrication of high-temperature-superconducting (HTS) SQUIDs. Although the market is currently dominated by low-temperature superconducting (L TS) SQUIDs, it is reasonably certain that in the near future HTS SQUIDs will take over in most situations."

This book is a study of plasma waves which are observed in the earth's magnetosphere. The emphasis is on a thorough, but concise, treatment of the necessary theory and the use of this theory to understand the manifold varieties of waves which are observed by ground-based instruments and by satellites. We restrict our treatment to waves with wavelengths short compared with the spatial scales of the background plasma in the mag netosphere. By so doing we exclude large scale magnetohydrodynamic phenomena such as ULF pulsations in the Pc2-5 ranges. The field is an active one and we cannot hope to discuss every wave phenomenon ever observed in the magnetosphere We try instead to give a good treatment of phenomena which are well understood, and which illustrate as many different parts of the theory as possible. It is thus hoped to put the reader in a position to understand the current literature. The treatment is aimed at a beginning graduate student in the field but it is hoped that it will also be of use as a reference to established workers. A knowledge of electromagnetic theory and some elementary plasma physics is assumed. The mathematical background required in cludes a knowledge of vector calculus, linear algebra, and Fourier trans form theory encountered in standard undergraduate physics curricula. A reasonable acquaintance with the theory of functions of a complex vari able including contour integration and the residue theorem is assumed."

0 apparent decrease from the 56 Degrees - 58 Degrees zone to the 58 Degrees -60 zone is due to the lack of data in that region. The lower diagrams seem to indicate that the number of auroras seen in the northermost region (58 Degrees -60 Degrees) varies relatively little throughout the year, but at lower latitudes during equinoctial periods the belt in which overhead auroras are seen becomes, on the average, broad. Such a study must be supplemented in the future, particularly in the regions to the north of gm lat. 58 Degrees, by all-sky camera data. d) Sunspot cycle. It has long been suggested that the main belt of auroras contracts during periods of low sunspot number; and conversely, at times of large sunspot number, the radius of the main belt is enlarged, moving towards lower gm latitudes. Observing auroras at a station to the south of the (northern) auroral zone, the appearance frequency of auroras increases with increase of the sunspot number (d. MEINEL, NEGAARD and CHAMBERLAIN 1954 [50J; see also Sect. 32a and Fig. 51). However, no detailed study of the sunspot cycle variation of the auroral distribution has yet been made in any systematic way. It is expected that iso auroral diagrams will be constructed from data obtained during the I QSY, which will enable us to compare them with the IGY isoauroral diagrams, such as that produced by FELDSTEIN and SOLOMATINA (1960 [18J). SO far, the information available on this subject is fragmentary.

In the programme of the symposium was written: "The International Union of Theoretical and Applied Me- chanics has taken the initiative to organize the sympo- sium. As the name of IUTAM implies, the organization brings forward achievements within the field of theore- tical mechanics for application in science and engineer- ing. According to the rules of IUTAM that only invited persons can attend, all lecturers and participants have been ap- pOinted by the members of the scientific committee. To facilitate contact among the attending persons, it has been decided to restrict the total number to 85 persons including the lecturers. Only one session is planned, making it possible for everybody to attend all lectures. Most scientists and engineers have realized that the knowledge attained by extensive basic research is essen- tial in order to solve technological problems. In the process of acquiring this knowledge we often fail to un- derstand that scientific progress is only achieved by two main principles: (1) By studying the scientific litera- ture and applying or improving the theories in order to predict behaviour and forces correctly, or (2) by re- jecting existing theories and developing new ways to cope with the problem, resulting in a more differenti- ated and, hopefully, more exact theory. Ice seems to be a simple material, but it is in fact so complex and strange that it is only in the latest dec- ades that we have come to know some of the natural laws governing its behaviour.

The Thirteenth International Conference on Basement Tectonics was held on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia from June 2 -6, 1997. The oral presentations and discussions over three days covered a wide range of topics, and provided the international audience with a perspective on scientific efforts underway around the world. The conference participants were able to attend two separate field trips: (I) a pre-conference trip guided by Professor Robert Hatcher of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, examined the Basement rocks in the North Carolina -Tennessee region of the Appalachian Mountains, and (2) a mid-conference field trip guided by A.K. Sinha, convener of the conference, allowed participants to examine the complex rock associations and structures of the> 1000 m.y. old basement rocks in Virginia. Both the field trip guidebooks and abstract volumes were published for the conference. The meeting brought together scientists from more than 14 countries. Their participation, and the fiscal success of the meeting would not have been possible without the support of the Department of Geological Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences (VPI&SU) and the Basement Tectonics Association. Their support is gratefully acknowledged. As Chairman of the Organizing Committee, I would like to thank Margie Sentelle, Jay Thomas, Peter Welch, and Barry Robinson for the smooth operation of the conference.

Problems of current interest relating to the earth's physical history will be discussed in this volume. Each chapter constitutes a subject in itself, but the sequence I have chosen will, I hope, show and explain the deeper correlation of several terrestrial pro cesses which, at first sight, appear to be heterogeneous. The geologist follows the changing face of the earth, the oscillations of the sea-level, the pulsation of folding and mountain-building, the periodicity of the ice-ages, the rhythmical cadence of Life. Just as the physician will draw his conclttsions from outward symptoms when examining his patient, so the geologist tries to discover the deeper significance of the sequence of observed phenomena by ieeling the pulse of the earth. The many additions and revisions which have had to be made in this second. edition include three new chapters, several new sections in other chapters, I09 new textfigures, I2 tables and 2 plates. A leu) fundamental geological terms have been explained in Chapter I."

7 Fig. 3. Photographie de la lueur nocturne it I'horizon, obtenue it bord d'une fusee Aerobee it 184 km d'altitude Ie ler (l