These review articles by outstanding specialists cover the present status ofthe observations of the spectrum and of the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Experimental developments, data analysis and related theoretical aspects are also treated. The idea is to review and discuss at a level accessible to non-specialised astronomers and graduate students the most recent developments in this field as well as the future perspectives for astrophysics and cosmology in particular.

These proceedings bring together ideas from solar and stellar physics. The sun is near enough for rather detailed observations and one chapter is devoted to the more recent experimental data from observations from space. On the other hand the multitude of stars provides a wide range of physical parameters to test hypotheses in solar and stellar astrophysics. The reader will find an illuminating overview of these fields ranging from the dynamo in the convection zone to the stellar envelopes and winds in the outer regions. In particular the importance of small-scale magnetohydrodynamic processes for the activity phenomena plays an important role in the contributions to this volume. For both students and researchers the general introduction by N. O. Weiss makes an excellent guide to this very active field of research. (See also Lecture Notes in Physics Vol. 291.)

This book provides an in-depth coverage of modern research on dynamical systems. The first part discusses stellar dynamics, integrable systems, the transition to chaos and instabilities in stellar dynamics as well as the dynamics of spiral galaxies. Models are given and compared with observations. The second part is devoted to the direct method of N-body simulations, to gas dynamics simulations and to galaxy formation.
Special care is taken to give to a pedagogical presentation of the material which makes this a unique text well suited for graduate courses in astrophysics.

The volume consists of up-to-date reviews and a selection of contributed papers on subjects including the structure and physical properties of molecular clouds, their role in the star formation process, their dust and chemical properties, molecular cloud surveys of the Milky Way, cloud evolution, problems in cloud mass determinations (a panel discussion and review), the CO properties of external galaxies, nuclei of galaxies as revealed by molecular observations, and galactic spiral structure as reflected by molecular cloud distributions. The abstracts of poster papers on these topics presented at the conference are also included. This book is both a valuable reference and a compendium of current knowledge in this field. It should be of special interest to all students and researchers who work on the physics of star formation, the interstellar medium, molecular clouds and galactic structure.

This book begins with a very readable survey "The Sun Today" by J.-C. Pecker. It is followed by thorough reviews from leading experts covering theory and observations. The focus shifts from the solar core, studied via neutrino emissions and helioseismology, through the interface regions where it is believed the large-scale magnetic fields are generated, to the corona, where most of the high temperature phenomena characteristic of this region may be studied directly. As energetic particles play such a vigorous role in this part of the sun, a separate session was devoted to their transport and storage in the corona.

This is an exhaustive survey of present-day solar research including both theory and observations. It deals with eruptive flares, filament eruption in x-rays and radio waves, energy release and transport, and terrestrial response to solar flares. Details of the most recent SOLAR-A project (launched shortly after the conference) are also presented.

The ESO jIAC Workshop on Quasar Hosts was held in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, from 24 to 27 September 1996 in the Conference Centre of the Ca- bildo Insular de Tenerife. The four days of the meeting were filled with fasci- nating new results and interesting discussions, and ranged from the centre of our own galaxy to some of the most distant objects known in the universe. Quasar Host studies are going through an exciting time, and are benefiting from new facilities, including the refurbished HST and the Keck, and from novel techniques, including adaptive optics and deconvolution methods. We also saw the first of hopefully many results from the ISO satellite. These re- sults were presented during the many sessions and discussed in the gardens over coffee, and on the bus during our tour of the Canaries Observatories. We would very much like to thank the secretaries of ESO and lAC, Christina Stoffer, Pamela Bristow, Monica Murphy, Judith de Araoz, and Beatriz Mederos, who we depended on for their expertise and efficiency. Our colleagues on the scientific organising committee, Phil Crane, Bob Fosbury, Marie-Helene Ulrich, Peter Shaver and Jose Rodriguez-Espinosa, deserve considerable thanks for their contributions to the programme. We must also thank the local organising committee, Fernando Cabrera- Guerra, Monica Murphy, Ismael Perez-Fournon, Ana Perez-Garcia, Luis Ramirez-Castro, and Montserrat Villar-Martin, for all their efforts in making sure things ran smoothly on the day.

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."

During the last 30 years the study of the magnetic properties of rocks and minerals has substantially contributed to several fields of science. Perhaps the best known and most significant advances have resulted from the study of palaeomagnetism, which led to quantitative confirmation of continental drift and polar wandering through interpretation of the direction of remanent magnetism observed in rocks of different ages from different continents. Palaeomagnetism has also, through observations of reversals of magnetiz ation, ancient secular variation and ancient field intensities provided data relevant to the origin of the geomagnetic field, and other investigations have contributed significantly to large-scale and local geological studies, the dating of archaeological events and artefacts and more recently to lunar and meteoritic studies. Rock and mineral magnetism has proved to be an interesting study in its own right through the complex magnetic properties and interactions observed in the iron-titanium oxide and iron sulphide minerals, as well as contributing to our understanding of remanent magnetism and magnetization processes in rocks. Simultaneous with the development of these studies has been the develop ment of instruments and techniques for the wide range of investigations involved."

The "European Experiment on the Transport and Transformation of Environmentally Relevant Trace Constituents over Europe" (EUROTRAC) was established in 1986 to tackle the scientific problem and combine the expertise, knowledge and resources in Europe, in order to apply them over a large region covering the greater part of the continent. EUROTRAC is a coordinated multidisciplinary scientific research project involving field measurements, laboratory studies, instrument development and development of comprehensive computer models for the simulation of the physical and chemical processes in the lower atmosphere.

The articles collected in this volume cover topics ranging from Planck-scale physics to galaxy clustering. They deal with various new ideas from cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics that might lead to a better understanding of our physical universe. Among the topics covered are inflationary models, nucleosynthesis, dark matter, large-scale clustering, cosmic microwave background radiations and more. The book addresses researchers but it also gives a good overview of the subject for graduate students in astrophysics and particle physics.

This is the first volume of a series on a regular up-to-date coverage of important developments in astronomy and astrophysics jointly published by ESO and Springer-Verlag. Here the reader finds a thorough review of the abundances of the elements up to Boron. Special emphasis is laid on primordial abundances of interest to cosmologists in particular, and on stellar production or destruction respectively. The articles written for researchers and graduate students cover theory and most recent data from telescope observations.

The ARTEMIS mission was initiated by skillfully moving the two outermost Earth-orbiting THEMIS spacecraft into lunar orbit to conduct unprecedented dual spacecraft observations of the lunar environment. ARTEMIS stands for Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun. Indeed, this volume discusses initial findings related to the Moon s magnetic and plasma environments and the electrical conductivity of the lunar interior. This work is aimed at researchers and graduate students in both heliophysics and planetary physics. Originally published in Space Science Reviews, Vol. 165/1-4, 2011."

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."

In the last 40 years geophysicists have found that it is possible to construct images and even determine important physical characteristics of rocks that can yield information about oil and gas bearing structures in the earth. To make these images and extract this information requires the application of an advanced understanding of the mathematical physics of wave propagation. The oil and gas industry labels a major collection of the necessary seismic data processing methods by the name seismic "migration."
This text ist the first to treat many kinds of migration in a unified mahtematical way. The audience is mathematically oriented geophysicists or applied mathematicians working in the field of "inverse scattering imaging." The text can serve as a bridge between the applied math and geophysics community by presenting geophysicists with a practical introduction to advanced engineering mathematics, while presenting mathematicians with a window into the world of the mathematically sophistiated geophysicist.

This book brings together a variety of review articles on dynamical phenomena in the solar corona in order to work out the unifying aspects of magnetic energy releases. The experimental data from groundbased methods of radio astronomy as well as from satellites are also discussed. The book addresses researchers in astrophysics, and planetary science but should also be accessible to graduate students.

ESO's new and exciting telescope, the VLT in Chile, will certainly bring a host of new results in optical astronomy for the years to come. This workshop surveys a large variety of possible observations and the needed instrumentation. It is an exciting overview of front research in astronomy rarely published before. The book covers the whole gamut of optical-IR astronomy from the solar system, search for planets in nearby stars, physics of galactic stars and clusters, galactic structure, structure of nearby galaxies, AGN and quasars, clusters of galaxies, to large structure and cosmology. Furthermore it summarizes the two panel discussions.

The book contains the notes of the lectures presented by outstanding experts at the 7th EADN School on plasma astrophysics. It is an up-to-date review of a number of basic topics in the physics of cosmic plasmas. The subject is treated both from a theoretical point of view and from that of the observational and diagnostic tools that provide us with the physically relevant data. The reader will have at hands a comprehensive and rather complete presentation of the subject, thanks also to the parallel development of the theoretical and experimental aspects. The book addresses graduate students and researchers in different areas who want to have a rapid and up-to-date introduction to this subject.

In this volume seven leading theoreticians and experimenters review the origin of the asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the Big Bang, solar neutrinos, the physics of enormous densities and temperatures in stars and of immense magnetic fields around collapsed stars, strong electric fields in heavy ion collisions, and the extreme conditions in quark-gluon plasmas. The articles address nuclear and particle physicists, especially graduate students, but also astrophysicists and cosmologists, since they have to deal with events under the extreme physical conditions discussed here.

The five lectures presented in this volume address very timely mathematical problems in relativity and cosmology. "Part I" is devoted to the initial value and evolution problems of the Einstein equations. Especially it deals with the Einstein-Yang-Mills-Boltzmann system, fluid models with finite or infinite conductivity, global evolution of a new (two-phase) model for gravitational collapse and the structure of maximal, asymptotically flat, vacuum solutions of the constraint equations which have the additional property of containing trapped surfaces. "Part II" focuses on geometrical-topological problems in relativity and cosmology: on the role of cosmic censorship for the global structure of the Einstein-Maxwell equations and on the mathematical structure of quantum conformal superspace.

In the dozen years since the first edition appeared, there has been a great advance in understanding of the Earth's deep interior. This is not because there have been breakthroughs in understanding, or even many changes of ideas, but largely because of many small advances, often the result of improved tech niques. This has led to a complete revision of the book. For instance, we have a much better idea of how the cloud of gas that formed the Solar Nebula evolved into the Sun and the planets, and of the chemical processes that accompanied its evolution and determined the mix of elements in the Earth. We have a better understanding of convection and how plates are an essential part of it, and how it is accompanied by chemical processes that have extracted the materials to build continents. Although the major variation within the Earth is radial, improved geophysical and geochemical techniques have made progress in investigating and under standing the lateral heterogeneities, and it is encouraging that when geochemists and geophysicists talk about lateral heterogeneities they can sometimes be referring to the same thing. Plumes have become very fashionable as the cause of hot-spot magmatism and associated geochemical anomalies, probably origi nating at the base of the mantle (though clear evidence for their existence is lacking)."

The purpose of this book is to gather contributions from scientists in fluid mechanics who use asymptotic methods to cope with difficult problems. The selected topics are as follows: vorticity and turbulence, hydrodynamic instability, non-linear waves, aerodynamics and rarefied gas flows. The last chapter of the book broadens the perspective with an overview of other issues pertaining to asymptotics, presented in a didactic way.

This book contains the proceedings of a workshop held in Schloss Ringberg to assess developments in molecular cloud research over the last 25 years, and to discuss trends for future research in the field of molecular line astronomy. The topics include the morphology, formation, and lifetimes of molecular clouds, and their relation to star formation. Also, the chemical and isotopic content of these clouds is reviewed, and comparisons with molecular clouds in external galaxies are made. This rather complete survey of this important field of research addresses researchers in astronomy and students alike."

Written as both a textbook and a handy reference, this text deliberately avoids complex mathematics assuming only basic familiarity with geodynamic theory and calculus. Here, the authors have brought together the key numerical techniques for geodynamic modeling, demonstrations of how to solve problems including lithospheric deformation, mantle convection and the geodynamo. Building from a discussion of the fundamental principles of mathematical and numerical modeling, the text moves into critical examinations of each of the different techniques before concluding with a detailed analysis of specific geodynamic applications. Key differences between methods and their respective limitations are also discussed - showing readers when and how to apply a particular method in order to produce the most accurate results. This is an essential text for advanced courses on numerical and computational modeling in geodynamics and geophysics, and an invaluable resource for researchers looking to master cutting-edge techniques. Links to supplementary computer codes are available online.

This book provides an example of a thorough statistical treatment of ocean wave data in space and time. It demonstrates how the flexible framework of Bayesian hierarchical space-time models can be applied to oceanographic processes such as significant wave height in order to describe dependence structures and uncertainties in the data.

This monograph is a research book and it is partly cross-disciplinary. The methodology itself is firmly rooted in the statistical research tradition, based on probability theory and stochastic processes. However, that methodology has been applied to a problem in the field of physical oceanography, analyzing data for significant wave height, which is of crucial importance to ocean engineering disciplines. Indeed, the statistical properties of significant wave height are important for the design, construction and operation of ships and other marine and coastal structures. Furthermore, the book addresses the question of whether climate change has an effect of the ocean wave climate, and if so what that effect might be. Thus, this book is an important contribution to the ongoing debate on climate change, its implications and how to adapt to a changing climate, with a particular focus on the maritime industries and the marine environment.

This book should be of value to anyone with an interest in the statistical modelling of environmental processes, and in particular to those with an interest in the ocean wave climate. It is written on a level that should be understandable to everyone with a basic background in statistics or elementary mathematics, and an introduction to some basic concepts is provided in the appendices for the uninitiated reader. The intended readership includes students and professionals involved in statistics, oceanography, ocean engineering, environmental research, climate sciences and risk assessment. Moreover, the book s findings are relevant for various stakeholders in the maritime industries such as design offices, classification societies, ship owners, yards and operators, flag states and intergovernmental agencies such as the IMO."