Because of the sheer size of the plastics industry, the title Developments in Plastics Technology now covers an incredibly wide range of subjects or topics. No single volume can survey the whole field in any depth and so what follows is therefore a series of chapters on selected topics. The topics were selected by us, the editors, because of their immediate relevance to the plastics industry. When one considers the materials produced and used by the modern plastics industry, there is a tendency to think of the commodity thermoplastics (such as poly(vinyl chloride) or polyethylene); the thermosetting materials are largely ignored. Because of this attitude we are very pleased to include in this volume a chapter which deals with the processing of a thermosetting material, i.e. the pultrusion of glass reinforced polyester. The extrusion of plastics is, of course, a very important subject but an aspect which is often overlooked is the need to remove volatile matter during processing: for this reason we have included a chapter on devolatilisation. Current industrial practice is towards materials modification and this attitude is reflected in the chapters on the transformation of ethylene vinyl acetate polymers and the use of wollastonite in two important thermoplastics. When assessing the performance of materials, there is a tendency to concentrate on short-term mechanical tests and ignore such topics as fatigue and longer-term testing. We are therefore very pleased to include a chapter on this subject.

Injection moulding is the most important moulding process used by the plastics industry and some idea of its importance can be obtained by considering the following figures. The value of the UK market for plastics processing equipment was GBP60 million in 1977. Of this sum, GBP23 million was spent on injection moulding machines, that is, 40 % of all the money spent on plastics processing equipment in the UK. It has been estimated that one-third of all plastics materials are processed by injection moulding. At the present time the process is of greater importance to the thermoplastics industry but its relevance to the thermoset industry should not be ignored. Most ofthe equipment now used is based on single-screw pre-plasticising units. Once these machines had become established, in the 1960s, it was felt that the ultimate had been reached in machine design and utilisation. However, since that time, machines, processes and materials have undergone extensive development to make injection moulding safer, more reliable, easier to use and more economical to operate. The purpose ofthis book is to review some of the developments that have taken place in this very important area. These developments are described by specialists in the field, who have extensive industrial experience and whose contribution will therefore be of immediate relevance to those concerned with the usage and application of this, the most important plastics moulding process.

Written in 1942-43, this book explores France and French culture at a time when France seemed cut off. The book is obsessed with the pleasures of life at a time when nearly all pleasures were forbidden. It proclaims its faith in the unity and continuity of Western culture in its moment of greatest crisis in the war years. Connnolly assumed the name of Palinurus - Aeneas' pilot - to suggest the core of melancholy which lies at the heart of this book. A lament for a vanishing world, this book is also a spiritual odyssey, a meditation on literature, love, nature and religion and a collection of aphorisms and epigrams. By the author of The Rock Pool, Enemies of Promise and The Evening Colonnade.

In "Without Proof or Evidence" O. K. Bouwsma weaves through the central topics of Western religion: the rationality of religious belief, the nature of Christianity, the promise of eternal life, the definition of faith, and proofs of the existence of God. When he works with the problems of Descartes or Moore or Wittgenstein, surveying the marketplace of language in which we all have commerce, he has the familiarity of an experienced trader. But in his work with the problems of Anselm or Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, in which the Scriptures move between background and foreground, there is another dimension, a concern with whether the Scriptures have been properly understood, what such an understanding might be, and how it affects someone who so understands them.

O. K. Bouwsma, one of America's foremost Wittgensteinians, was also an extraordinarily dedicated and effective teacher. The present collection, assembled posthumously from his papers, includes twelve essays, all but one previously unpublished and all characterized by the humor, common sense, and wisdom that marked his classroom lectures.

Ranging in subject matter from topics in Wittgenstein to Descartes to aesthetics, the pieces all show the influence of Wittgenstein. Some of the questions they raise deal with the traditional and historical background of twentieth-century philosophy--"Am I dreaming?" "Is what I see real?" "Are there material objects?"--while others relate to considerations peculiar to thinkers today, for example, "What is Wittgenstein doing in his writing?" "What does philosophy have to do with language?"

Bouwsma wants first to understand the philosophical questions--to unknit the knit eyebrows it produces. Accordingly, his major concern is how we as thinkers, readers, writers, and speakers, separate what we understand from what we do not understand: hence his consideration, in the opening essay, of "a new sensibility in the matter of our language." Always approaching the subject as a practical problem rather than as an abstract, theoretical issue, these essays demonstrate, with patience and wit, ways to achieve clarity on puzzles long thought intractable.