This book is concerned with the configuration of polymers at the interfacial zone between two other phases or immiscible components. In recent years, developments in technology combined with increased attention from specialists in a wide range of fields have resulted in a considerable increase in our understanding of the behavior of polymers at interfaces. Inevitably these advances have generated a wealth of literature and although there have been numerous reviews, a critical treatment with adequate descriptions of both theory and experiment, including detailed analysis of the two, has been missing. This text hopes to fill this gap, providing a timely and comprehensive account of the field as it stands today. This long needed work will be invaluable to experts as well as newcomers in the broad field of polymers, interfaces and colloids, both in industry and academia. Whilst industrial laboratories involved in this field will find it indispensable, it will be equally important to anyone with an interest in interfacial polymer or colloidal research.

This book is concerned with the configuration of polymers at the interfacial zone between two other phases or immiscible components. In recent years, developments in technology combined with increased attention from specialists in a wide range of fields have resulted in a considerable increase in our understanding of the behavior of polymers at interfaces. Inevitably these advances have generated a wealth of literature and although there have been numerous reviews, a critical treatment with adequate descriptions of both theory and experiment, including detailed analysis of the two, has been missing. This text hopes to fill this gap, providing a timely and comprehensive account of the field as it stands today. This long needed work will be invaluable to experts as well as newcomers in the broad field of polymers, interfaces and colloids, both in industry and academia. Whilst industrial laboratories involved in this field will find it indispensable, it will be equally important to anyone with an interest in interfacial polymer or colloidal research.

This volume presents the contributions of participants in the Symposium on Swarm Studies and Inelastic Electron-Molecule Collisions, held on July 19-23, 1985, in Tahoe City, California. This was a joint meeting of the Fourth International Swarm Seminar and the Electron-Molecule Collisions Symposium which have been traditionally separate satellite symposia to the International Conference on the Physics of Electronic and Atomic Collisions (ICPEAC). In the early stages of planning for these two satellite symposia to the XIVth ICPEAC, a group of us recognized the significant scientific merit and advantages of having a joint symposium. This idea was particularly appealing due to a large mutual interest in important advances (theoretical, experimental, and modeling) in both fields, and because it provides a forum to bring together a single-collision point of view with a multiple-collision one. For example, studies of multiple-term solutions to Boltzmann's equation and their application to swarm systems are intrinsically coupled to the availability of both integral and differential cross-sections for electron-molecule collisions. In tum, experimental and theoretical studies of these electron-molecule scattering cross-sections are becoming quite sophisticated, accurate, and comprehensive. Furthermore, in swarm studies, computational and experimental methods have advanced to the point where detailed and meaningful comparison with, and use of, single-collision beam data is now possible. More over, recent experimental advances in the study of single-collision electron at tachment phenomena have provided a significant overlap with swarm data and extension to subthermal energies."

In this work, the authors present current research in the study of the practices, perspectives and challenges of pattern recognition. The topics include the practical usage of algorithmic probability in pattern recognition; application of pattern recognition in optimisation-simulation techniques; pattern recognition applied to spectroscopy; optimisation of an embedded simplified fuzzy ARTMAP implemented on a microcontroller using MATLAB GUI environment; pattern recognition using quaternion colour moments; and pattern recognition by Bessel mask and one-dimensional signatures.