There is a great deal of research into wave propagation in random media, in such fields as applied mathematics, acoustics, optics, materials science, atomic physics and geophysics. This book provides theoretical and practical introductions at research level to topics such as localization of waves, band gap materials, random matrices, dielectric media, laser cooled atoms, wave scattering from rough surfaces, randomly layered media, seismic waves and imaging the earth.

The content of this book is multidisciplinary by nature. It uses mathematical tools from the theories of probability and stochastic processes, partial differential equations, and asymptotic analysis, combined with the physics of wave propagation and modeling of time reversal experiments. It is addressed to a wide audience of graduate students and researchers interested in the intriguing phenomena related to waves propagating in random media. At the end of each chapter there is a section of notes where the authors give references and additional comments on the various results presented in the chapter.

The past decade has witnessed a considerable upsurge of clinical and research interest in the problems of developmentally and physically the fields of psychology, disabled persons. Indeed, professionals from special education, rehabilitation, psychiatry, and social work have all directed attention to the development and implementation of evaluation and remedial programs. The heightened activity in this area is in part a result of early assessment research with these popUlations, which provided preliminary evidence of difficulties in social and emotional adjustment in many disabled individuals. In response to these findings, many intervention efforts have been implemented to deal with these issues and improve the life situation of the disabled. Also, there were indications that developmentally and physically disabled children often were deprived of adequate educations. As a result, legal and legislative initiatives have been enacted in recent years to make public education available to all students irrespective of disability. Central to all therapeutic and psychoeducational endeavors with the disabled is psychological evaluation. Only through careful and com prehensive psychological evaluation can areas of deficit as well as strengths be identified. Once treatment targets and goals have been ascertained, psychological evaluation is needed to determine the efficacy of intervention strategies. However, the field of psychological evalua tion, in general, and with disabled persons, in particular, has become highly specialized. This is largely a function of the changing roles of psychological evaluators."

The past decade has witnessed a considerable upsurge of clinical and research interest in the problems of developmentally and physically the fields of psychology, disabled persons. Indeed, professionals from special education, rehabilitation, psychiatry, and social work have all directed attention to the development and implementation of evaluation and remedial programs. The heightened activity in this area is in part a result of early assessment research with these popUlations, which provided preliminary evidence of difficulties in social and emotional adjustment in many disabled individuals. In response to these findings, many intervention efforts have been implemented to deal with these issues and improve the life situation of the disabled. Also, there were indications that developmentally and physically disabled children often were deprived of adequate educations. As a result, legal and legislative initiatives have been enacted in recent years to make public education available to all students irrespective of disability. Central to all therapeutic and psychoeducational endeavors with the disabled is psychological evaluation. Only through careful and com prehensive psychological evaluation can areas of deficit as well as strengths be identified. Once treatment targets and goals have been ascertained, psychological evaluation is needed to determine the efficacy of intervention strategies. However, the field of psychological evalua tion, in general, and with disabled persons, in particular, has become highly specialized. This is largely a function of the changing roles of psychological evaluators."

The content of this book is multidisciplinary by nature. It uses mathematical tools from the theories of probability and stochastic processes, partial differential equations, and asymptotic analysis, combined with the physics of wave propagation and modeling of time reversal experiments. It is addressed to a wide audience of graduate students and researchers interested in the intriguing phenomena related to waves propagating in random media. At the end of each chapter there is a section of notes where the authors give references and additional comments on the various results presented in the chapter.

The NATO Advanced Study Institute on Diffuse Waves in Complex Media was held at the "Centre de Physique des Houches" in France from March 17 to 27, 1998. The Schools' scientific content, wave propagation in heterogeneous me dia, has covered many areas of fundamental and applied research. On the one hand, the understanding of wave propagation has considerably improved during the last thirty years. New developments and concepts such as, speckle correlations, weak and strong localization, time reversal, near-field propagation are under active research. On the other hand, wave propagation in random media is now being investigated in many different fields such as applied mathematics, acoustics, optics, atomic physics, geo physics or medical sciences. Each community often uses its own langage to describe the same phenomena. The aim of the School was to gather worldwide specialists to illuminate various aspects of wave propagation in random media. This volume presents fourteen expository articles corresponding to courses and seminars given during the School. They are arranged as follows. The first three articles deal with the phenomena of localization of waves: B. van Tiggelen (p. 1) gives a critical review of the physics of localization, J. Lacroix (p. 61) presents the mathematical theory and A. Klein (p. 73) describes recent results for randomized periodic media."

Building upon the ideas introduced in their previous book, Derivatives in Financial Markets with Stochastic Volatility, the authors study the pricing and hedging of financial derivatives under stochastic volatility in equity, interest-rate, and credit markets. They present and analyze multiscale stochastic volatility models and asymptotic approximations. These can be used in equity markets, for instance, to link the prices of path-dependent exotic instruments to market implied volatilities. The methods are also used for interest rate and credit derivatives. Other applications considered include variance-reduction techniques, portfolio optimization, forward-looking estimation of CAPM 'beta', and the Heston model and generalizations of it. 'Off-the-shelf' formulas and calibration tools are provided to ease the transition for practitioners who adopt this new method. The attention to detail and explicit presentation make this also an excellent text for a graduate course in financial and applied mathematics.

This important work addresses problems in financial mathematics of pricing and hedging derivative securities in an environment of uncertain and changing market volatility. These problems are important to investors from large trading institutions to pension funds. The authors present mathematical and statistical tools that exploit the volatile nature of the market. The mathematics is introduced through examples and illustrated with simulations and the modeling approach that is described is validated and tested on market data. The material is suitable for a one-semester course for graduate students with some exposure to methods of stochastic modeling and arbitrage pricing theory in finance. The volume is easily accessible to derivatives practitioners in the financial engineering industry.

The main theme of this volume is credit risk and credit derivatives. Recent developments in financial markets show that appropriate modeling and quantification of credit risk is fundamental in the context of modern complex structured financial products. The reader will find several points of view on credit risk when looked at from the perspective of Econometrics and Financial Mathematics. The volume consists of eleven contributions by both practitioners and theoreticians with expertise in financial markets, in general, and econometrics and mathematical finance in particular. The challenge of modeling defaults and their correlations is addressed, and new results on copula, reduced form and structural models, and the top-down approach are presented. After the so-called subprime crisis that hit global markets in the summer of 2007, the volume is very timely and will be useful to researchers in the area of credit risk.

The Handbook on Systemic Risk, written by experts in the field, provides researchers with an introduction to the multifaceted aspects of systemic risks facing the global financial markets. The Handbook explores the multidisciplinary approaches to analyzing this risk, the data requirements for further research, and the recommendations being made to avert financial crisis. The Handbook is designed to encourage new researchers to investigate a topic with immense societal implications as well as to provide, for those already actively involved within their own academic discipline, an introduction to the research being undertaken in other disciplines. Each chapter in the Handbook will provide researchers with a superior introduction to the field and with references to more advanced research articles. It is the hope of the editors that this Handbook will stimulate greater interdisciplinary academic research on the critically important topic of systemic risk in the global financial markets.