This book analyses the rationale and history of space programs in countries of the developing world.

Space was at one time the sole domain of the wealthiest developed countries. However, the last couple of decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century have witnessed the number of countries with state-supported space programs blossom. Today, no less than twenty-five developing states, including the rapidly emerging economic powers of Brazil (seventh-largest), China (second-largest), and India (fourth-largest), possess active national space programs with already proven independent launch capability or concrete plans to achieve it soon.

This work places these programs within the context of international relations theory and foreign policy analysis. The author categorizes each space program into tiers of development based not only on the level of technology utilised, but on how each fits within the country s overall national security and/or development policies. The text also places these programs into an historical context, which enables the author to demonstrate the logical thread of continuity in the political rationale for space capabilities generally.

This book will be of much interest to students of space power and politics, development studies, strategic studies and international relations in general.

In summary, we can conclude that the contributions of the different ionization processes to the total ionization rate for the most abundant interstellar species are basically known. The ionization of the noble gases He and Ne is almost completely dominated by photoionization, whereas for H charge-exchange with the solar wind is most important. For other species, such as 0 and Ar, both processes contribute significantly. Electron impact ionization can typically contribute by '" 10% to the total rate in the inner Solar System. Because direct measurements of the solar EUV flux are not yet continuously available, the variation of the ionization rate over the solar cycle still contains a relatively large uncertainty. The recent measurements of pickup ion distributions and of the neutral helium gas provide an independent tool to determine the total ionization rate that can be used to cross calibrate with the results obtained for the individual ionization processes. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to M. Allen for supplying us with new data on photoioniza tion cross-sections compiled by him. We thank also M. Gruntman for drawing our attention to and support in collecting the most recent data on charge-exchange cross-sections. D. R. was supported by grant No. 2 P03C. 004. 09 from the Com mittee for Scientific Research (Poland). This work was also supported in part through NASA contract NAS7-918, NSF Grant INT-911637, NASA Grant NAGW- 2579.

Since the discovery of the cluster soft excess (CSE) over eight years ago, its properties and origin have been the subject of debate. With the recent launch of new missions such as XMM-Newton and FUSE, we are beginning to answer some of the complex issues regarding the phenomenon. This conference proceedings is an attempt to bring together the latest research results and covers both observational and theoretical work on the CSE and related topics. One of the main topics is the possible relationship between the CSE and the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM), which is believed to harbor 50% of the baryons in the near Universe.

New data from both XMM-Newton and FUSE have indicated a possible causal link between the WHIM and CSE. Evidence is based on the apparent detection of O VII emission lines in the soft excess spectrum of the outskirts of several clusters, as well as reports of absorption lines at local and higher redshifts (seen in the spectra of distant sources) as signature of the WHIM. However, while there has been considerable optimism in attributing a substantial fraction of the cluster soft excess flux to WHIM emission, other work shows that, for example, the amount of WHIM material predicted by theoretical simulations falls way short of that necessary to account for the CSE. Other work indicates that at the cores of some cluster this excess emission is so strong, it is impossible to invoke the thermal model without at the same time enlisting radically new physics. Thus alternative interpretations involving non-thermal processes are also reported and being pursued in earnest.

Whatever the origin of CSE may turn out to be, results in this book show that it has become beyond reasonable doubt that the phenomenon itself is observationally established. This book reports the scientific progress made by bringing together scientists from a wide range of disciplines. It clearly demonstrates the importance of such meetings and participants if we are to solve this puzzle.

This volume is aimed at scientists and graduate students in astronomy who want to learn about the latest results on cluster soft excess observations and theoretical implications.

This illustrated monograph explores the fundamentals, current practice, and theoretical perspectives of modern plasma astrophysics. The opening part covers basic principles and practical tools for understanding and working with plasma astrophysics. The second section examines the physics of magnetic reconnection and flares of electromagnetic origin in space plasmas in the solar system, and more. Designed mainly for professional researchers, it will be useful to graduate students in space sciences and geophysics.

Planetary Aeronomy is a modern and concise introduction to the underlying physical and chemical processes that govern the formation and evolution of the upper atmospheres of planets. The general approach employed permits consideration of the growing number of extrasolar planets, the detailed observation of which will become possible over the next decades. The book explains the physics behind many atmospheric processes, which are relevant for the evolution of planetary atmospheres and their water inventories, and also contains useful scaling laws and analytical expressions that can be applied to any planet. Readers thus gain insight into the evolution of terrestrial planets and their long-time habitability, atmospheric stability, etc. This volume can be used both as graduate textbook for students wishing to specialize in the field as well as succinct compendium for researchers in the field.

For the very first time, this book provides updated, integrated and organized, theoretical and methodological information on regional climate change and the associated environmental and socio-economic impacts on a regional scale. The most recent findings in the field of long-term climate change, which improve our understanding of the global climate puzzle, will be presented. Readers are introduced to state-of-the-art research in downscaling and GCMs, which involve the construction of reliable regional climate scenarios and the solution to key problems regarding the assessment of the impacts of climate change in the most important geographical areas of the world, from the Arctic to Antarctic regions, with special emphasis on the Northern Hemisphere.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the Fifth Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Espanola de Astronomfa, SEA). The meeting was held at the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha in Toledo, from September 9 to 13, 2002. The event brought together 219 participants who pre sented their latest results in many different subjects. In comparison with the previous scientific meetings of the Society, the numbers of oral talks and poster contributions (122 and 64, respectively) are rapidly increasing, confirming that the SEA conferences are becoming a point of reference to assess the interests and achievements of astrophysical research in Spain. During the meeting, the SEA made public the granting of the Prize to the Best Spanish Ph. D. Thesis in As tronomy and Astrophysics for the period 2000-2001 ex aequo to Dr. A. Zurita and Dr. E. Villaver. This is the second time that the SEA is awarding this prize, which aim is to encourage young spanish astrophysicists to pursue a high level scientific career. The Society is indebted to the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, and, in particular, to the San Pedro Martir staff, for its hospitality. It is also indebted to the Local Organizing Committee for its dedication and the good atmosphere that prevailed at any moment, and to the Scientific Organizing Committee for its excel lent work."

Planetary nebulae are the classic subject of astrophysics. The physical pro cesses occurring in this highly ionized gaseous medium, the formation of emis sion lines in clearly specified conditions, the continuous emission extending from the far ultraviolet up to infrared and radio frequencies, the generation of exotic forms of radiation predicted by atomic physics, along with methods for deciphering the observed spectra and detecting physical and kinematic parameters of the radiating medium, etc. - all these problems form the solid foundations of the physical theory of gaseous nebulae. They are an essential part of the arsenal of powerful tools and concepts without which one cannot imagine understanding and interpreting the enormous diversity of processes taking place in the Universe - in gaseous envelopes surrounding the stars of various classes, from cool dwarfs and flare stars up to hot supergiants, as well as in stellar chromospheres and coronae, in atmospheres of unstable and anomalous stars, in circumstellar clouds and gaseous shells born in nova and supernova explosions, in diffuse nebulae and the interstellar medium, in interacting binary systems, in galaxies with emission lines, in quasars, etc. The last thirty years have seen a turning-point in our knowledge concern ing the very nature of planetary nebulae (PNs). The radio emission of PNs was discovered after it was predicted theoretically. On the other hand, the powerful infrared emission discovered both in the continuum and in emission lines was never expected."

Observations and physical concepts are interwoven to give basic explanations of phenomena and also show the limitations in these explanations and identify some fundamental questions.

Compared to conventional plasma physics textbooks this book focuses on the concepts relevant in the large-scale space plasmas. It combines basic concepts with current research and new observations in interplanetary space and in the magnetospheres.

Graduate students and young researchers starting to work in this special field of science, will find the numerous references to review articles as well as important original papers helpful to orientate themselves in the literature.

Emphasis is on energetic particles and their interaction with the plasma as examples for non-thermal phenomena, shocks and their role in particle acceleration as examples for non-linear phenomena.

This second edition has been updated and extended. Improvements include: the use of SI units; addition of recent results from SOHO and Ulysses; improved treatment of the magnetosphere as a dynamic phenomenon; text restructured to provide a closer coupling between basic physical concepts and observed complex phenomena.

Andrew F. Nagy Originally published in the journal Space Science Reviews, Volume 139, Nos 1-4. DOI: 10. 1007/s11214-008-9353-0 (c) Springer Science+Business Media B. V. 2008 Keywords Aeronomy The term "aeronomy" has been used widely for many decades, but its origin has mostly been lost over the years. It was introduced by Sydney Chapman in a Letter to the Editor, entitled "Some Thoughts on Nomenclature," in Nature in 1946 (Chapman 1946). In that letter he suggested that aeronomy should replace meteorology, writing that the word "meteor is now irrelevant and misleading." This proposal was apparently not received with much support so in a short note in Weather in 1953 Chapman (1953)wrote: "If, despite its obvious convenience of brevity in itself and its derivatives, it does not commend itself to aeronomers, I think there is a case for modifying my proposal so that instead of the word being used to signify the study of the atmosphere in general, it should be adopted with the restricted sense of the science of the upper atmosphere, for which there is no convenient short word. " In a chapter, he wrote in a 1960 book (Chapman 1960), he give his nal and de nitive de nition, by stating that "Aeronomy is the science of the upper region of the atmosphere, where dissociation and ionization are important." The Workshop on "Comparative Aeronomy" was held at ISSI during the week of June 25-29, 2007.

J.L. Burch.V. Angelopoulos Originally published in the journal Space Science Reviews, Volume 141, Nos 1-4, 1-3. DOI: 10.1007/s11214-008-9474-5 (c) Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 The Earth, like all the other planets, is continuously bombarded by the solar wind, which is variable on many time scales owing to its connection to the activity of the Sun. But the Earth is unique among planets because its atmosphere, magnetic eld, and rotation rates are each signi cant, though not dominant, players in the formation of its magnetosphere and its reaction to solar-wind inputs. An intriguing fact is that no matter what the time scale of solar-wind variations, the Earth's response has a de nite pattern lasting a few hours. Known as a magnetospheric substorm, the response involves a build-up, a crash, and a recovery. The build-up (known as the growth phase) occurs because of an interlinking of the geom- netic eld and the solar-wind magnetic eld known as magnetic reconnection, which leads to storage of increasing amounts of magnetic energy and stress in the tail of the mag- tosphere and lasts about a half hour. The crash (known as the expansion phase) occurs when the increased magnetic energy and stresses are impulsively relieved, the current system that supports the stretched out magnetic tail is diverted into the ionosphere, and bright, dynamic displays of the aurora appear in the upper atmosphere. The expansion and subsequent rec- ery phases result from a second magnetic reconnection event that decouples the solar-wind and geomagnetic elds."

The workshop "Nonhnear MHD Waves and Turbulence" was held at the - servatoire de Nice, December 1-4, 1998 and brought together an international group of experts in plasma physics, fluid dynamics and applied mathematics. The aim of the meeting was to survey the current knowledge on two main topics: (i) propagation of plasma waves (like Alfven, whistler or ion-acoustic waves), their instabilities and the development of a nonlinear dynamics lea ding to solitonic structures, wave collapse or weak turbulence; (ii) turbulence in magnetohydrodynamic flows and its reduced description in the presence of a strong ambient magnetic fleld. As is well known, both aspects play an important role in various geophysical or astrophysical media such as the - gnetospheres of planets, the heliosphere, the solar wind, the solar corona, the interplanetary and interstellar media, etc. This volume, which includes expanded versions of oral contributions pre sented at this meeting, should be of interest for a large community of resear chers in space plasmas and nonlinear sciences. Special effort was made to put the new results into perspective and to provide a detailed literature review. A main motivation was the attempt to relate more closely the theoretical un derstanding of MHD waves and turbulence (both weak and strong) with the most recent observations in space plasmas. Some papers also bring interesting new insights into the evolution of hydrodynamic or magnetohydrodynamic structures, based on systematic asymptotic methods."

Astromineralogy deals with the science of gathering mineralogical information from the astronomical spectroscopy of asteroids, comets and dust in the circumstellar environments in general. It is only recently, however, that this field has received a tremendous boost with the reliable identification of minerals by the Infrared Space Observatory. This book is the first comprehensive and coherent account of this exciting field. Beyond addressing the specialist in the field, the book is intended as a high-level but readable introduction to astromineralogy for both the nonspecialist researcher and the advanced student.

Digital sky surveys, data from orbiting telescopes, and advances in computation have increased the quantity and quality of astronomical data by several orders of magnitude in recent years. Making sense of this wealth of data requires sophisticated statistical and data analytic techniques. Fortunately, statistical methodologies have similarly made great strides in recent years. Powerful synergies thus emerge when astronomers and statisticians join in examining astrostatistical problems and approaches. The volume focuses on several themes: .The increasing power of Bayesian approaches to modeling astronomical data .The growth of enormous databases, leading an emerging federated Virtual Observatory, and their impact on modern astronomical research .Statistical modeling of critical datasets, such as galaxy clustering and fluctuations in the microwave background radiation, leading to a new era of precision cosmology .Methodologies for uncovering clusters and patterns in multivariate data .The characterization of multiscale patterns in imaging and time series data As in earlier volumes in this series, research contributions discussing topics in one field are joined with commentary from scholars in the other. Short contributed papers covering dozens of astrostatistical topics are also included."

Uncertainty for Everyone The one thing that is certain about the world is that the world is uncertain. I have here, the question that apart of the matter, living matter, has to resolve in each and every one of its moments of existance. The environment of a living being is apart of the living being where it turns out, the rest of the living beings live. This is the drama of life on earth. Every living individual debates with his environment, exchanging matter, energy and information in the hope of staying alive, the same as all living beings who share that same environment. The adven ture of a living being (of all living beings ) is to maintain reasonable independ ence in face ofthe fluctuations ofuncertainty within the environment. The range of restrictions and mutual relationships is colossal. How is the tran seendental pretension of staying alive regulated? There is an equation imposed by the laws ofthermodynamics and the mathematical theory ofinformation about the interaction ofa living being with his environment which we could state like this: The complexity 01 a living individual plus his capacity for anticipation in re spect to his environment is identical to the uncertainty of the environmentplus the capacity of that living being to change the environment."

This volume presents the edited lecture notes of the First JETSET School on Jets from Young Stars: Models and Constraints, held by the Marie Curie Research and Training Network on JET Simulations, Experiments and Theory. The first half of the book is devoted to general observational constraints. The second section is devoted to theoretical knowledge of magneto-hydrodynamic processes pertinent to the jet launching mechanism in young stars.

The reference work on astrophysics to provide a comprehensive introduction to the physics of Interstellar Matter. The objective of the book is to show how physics can be applied to the understanding and diagnosis of the phase structure, the physical conditions and the chemical make-up and evolution of the interstellar medium. Unlike other textbooks in the field, here a more systematic approach has been adopted based on the authors' lecture course experience. It is aimed primarily at those undertaking post-graduate courses, or those doing advanced projects as part of honours undergraduate courses in physics or astrophysics.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the Fourth Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (Sociedad Espanola de Astronomfa, SEA). The meeting was held at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Galicia from September 11 to 14, 2000. The event brought together 156 participants who pre- sented their latest results in many different subjects. In comparison with the previous scientific meetings of the Society, the numbers of oral talks and poster contributions (95 and 51, respectively) are rapidly increasing, confirming that the SEA conferences are becoming a point of reference to assess the interests and achievements of astrophysical research in Spain. During the meeting, the SEA made public the granting of the Prize to the Best Spanish Ph. D. Thesis in As- tronomy and Astrophysics for the period 1998-1999 to Dr. H. Socas. This is the first time that the SEA is awarding this prize, which aim is to encourage young spanish astrophysicists to pursue a high level scientific career. The Society is indebted to the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, and, in particular, to the Observatorio Astronomico Ramon Marfa Aller, for its hospi- tality. The Local Organizing Committee took care of all the logistics details to ensure a nice stay for all the participants. The effort of the Scientific Organizing Committee was decisive in determining the organizational and scientific success of the meeting.

This book was conceived during the Workshop "Calibration and Orientation of Cameras in Computer Vision" at the XVIIth Congress of the ISPRS (In ternational Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing), in July 1992 in Washington, D. C. The goal of this workshop was to bring photogrammetry and computer vision experts together in order to exchange ideas, concepts and approaches in camera calibration and orientation. These topics have been addressed in photogrammetry research for a long time, starting in the sec ond half of the 19th century. Over the years standard procedures have been developed and implemented, in particular for metric cameras, such that in the photogrammetric community such issues were considered as solved prob lems. With the increased use of non-metric cameras (in photogrammetry they are revealingly called "amateur" cameras), especially CCD cameras, and the exciting possibilities of acquiring long image sequences quite effortlessly and processing image data automatically, online and even in real-time, the need to take a new and fresh look at various calibration and orientation issues became obvious. Here most activities emerged through the computer vision commu nity, which was somewhat unaware as to what had already been achieved in photogrammetry. On the other hand, photogrammetrists seemed to ignore the new and interesting studies, in particular on the problems of orienta tion, that were being performed by computer vision experts."

This is quite simply the first volume of its kind dedicated to the area of high time resolution astrophysics. High time resolution astrophysics (HTRA) is an important new window on the universe and a vital tool in understanding a range of phenomena from diverse objects and radiative processes. Underlining this science foundation, technological developments in both instrumentation and detectors are described.

C. T. Russell Originally published in the journal Space Science Reviews, Volume 136, Nos 1-4. DOI: 10. 1007/s11214-008-9344-1 (c) Springer Science+Business Media B. V. 2008 The Sun-Earth Connection is now an accepted fact. It has a signi cant impact on our daily lives, and its underpinnings are being pursued vigorously with missions such as the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, commonly known as STEREO. This was not always so. It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that Edward Sabine connected the 11-year geomagnetic cycle with Heinrich Schwabe's deduction of a like periodicity in the sunspot record. The clincher for many was Richard Carrington's sighting of a great whi- light are on the Sun, on September 1, 1859, followed by a great geomagnetic storm 18 hours later. But was the Sun-Earth Connection signi cant to terrestrial denizens? Perhaps in 1859 it was not, but a century later it became so. Beginning in the 1930's, as electrical powergrids grew in size, powercompanies began to realize that they occasionally had power blackouts during periods of intense geomagnetic activity. This correlation did not appear to be suf ciently signi cant to bring to the attention of the public but during the International Geophysical Year (IGY), when geomagnetic activity was being scrutinized intensely, the occurrence of a large North American power blackout during a great magnetic storm was impossible to ignore.

Over the past ten years, the discovery of extrasolar planets has opened a new field of astronomy, and this area of research is rapidly growing, from both the observational and theoretical point of view. The presence of many giant exoplanets in the close vicinity of their star shows that these newly discovered planetary systems are very different from the solar system. New theoretical models are being developed in order to understand their formation scenarios, and new observational methods are being implemented to increase the sensitivity of exoplanet detections. In the present book, the authors address the question of planetary systems from all aspects. Starting from the facts (the detection of more than 300 extraterrestrial planets), they first describe the various methods used for these discoveries and propose a synthetic analysis of their global properties. They then consider the observations of young stars and circumstellar disks and address the case of the solar system as a specific example, different from the newly discovered systems. Then the study of planetary systems and of exoplanets is presented from a more theoretical point of view. The book ends with an outlook to future astronomical projects, and a description of the search for life on exoplanets. This book addresses students and researchers who wish to better understand this newly expanding field of research.

A comprehensive description of hybrid plasma simulation models providing a very useful summary and guide to the vast literature on this topic.

This volume is the outgrowth of several international meetings to discuss a vision for the future of solar radio physics: the development of a new radio instrument. From these discussions, the concept for the Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope (FASR) was born. Most of the chapters of this book are based oninvitedtalksattheFASRScienceWorkshop,heldinGreenbank,WVinMay 2002, and a special session on Solar and Space Weather Radiophysics held at the 200th American Astronomical Society meeting held in Albuquerque, NM in June 2002. Although many of the chapters deal with topics of interest in planning for FASR, other topics in Solar and Space Weather Radiophysics, such as solar radar and interplanetary scintillation, are covered to round out the discipline. The authors have been asked to write with a tutorial approach, to make the book useful to graduate students and scientists new to radio physics. This book is more than a compilation of FASR science topics. The FASR instrument concept is so revolutionary-by extending capability by an order of magnitude in several dimensions at once (frequency coverage, spatial reso- tion,dynamicrange,timeresolution,polarizationprecision)-thatitchallenges scientiststothinkinnewways. Theauthorsofthefollowingchaptershavebeen taskednotonlywithreviewingthecurrentstateofthe?eld,butalsowithlooking to the future and imagining what is possible. Radio emission is extremely complex because it is generated so readily, and every imaginable plasma parameter affects it. This is both its great strength and its weakness.

Presenting some of the most recent results of Russian research into shock compression, as well as historical overviews of the Russian research programs into shock compression, this volume will provide Western researchers with many novel ideas and points of view. The chapters in this volume are written by leading Russian specialists various fields of high-pressure physics and form accounts of the main researches on the behavior of matter under shock-wave interaction. The experimental portions contain results of studies of shock compression of metals to high and ultra-high pressure, shock initiation of polymorphic transformations, strength, fracture and fragmentation under shock compression, and detonation of condensed explosives. There are also chapters on theoretical investigations of shock-wave compression and plasma states in regimes of high-pressure and high- temperature. The topics of the book are of interest to scientists and engineers concerned with questions of material behavior under impulsive loading and to the equation of state of matter. Application is to questions of high-speed impact, inner composition of planets, verification of model representations of material behavior under extreme 1oading conditions, syntheses of new materials, development of new technologies for material processing, etc. Russian research differs from much of the Western work in that it has traditionally been wider-ranging and more directed to extremes of response than to precise characterization of specific materials and effects. Western scientists could expect to benefit from the perspective gained from close knowledge of the Russian work.