This book is exceptional in that it treats death as it has not yet been treated before. It presents a comprehensive updated overview of what happened to death in the last decades since the taboo against death has been lifted. The book is based on contributions from experts in different disciplines from the US, Europe and Israel, each focused on treating the death situation from a specific point of view. The first part of the book presents death from the viewpoint of various disciplines and concludes with an exceptional discussion of near-death experiences. The second part of the book deals with various more specific issues involved in death. In addition, the book also provides theoretical background and practical guidance for professionals and others concerned with helping dying individuals as well as their families and caretakers.

The concept of <<virtuality>> has introduced a completely new mode of representing, presenting, as well as acquiring knowledge. The present collection of papers acknowledges this development and gives a survey over the most important developments, issues, and foundations from an interdisciplinary perspective.

This book intends to enlarge the definition of virtual reality in order to go beyond the toy character it may still have in the public. The contributions show that virtuality has not only been successfully applied in various technical and medical domains but also touches basic philosophical problems and questions related to cognitive science. In fact, developing the concept of virtuality further will be the key to many challenges in both theoretical and technical domains.