Epilepsy is a devastating group of neurological disorders characterized by periodic and unpredictable seizure activity in the brain. There is a critical need for new drugs and approaches given than at least one-third of all epilepsy patients are not made free of seizures by existing medications and become "medically refractory". Much of epilepsy research has focused on neuronal therapeutic targets, but current antiepileptic drugs often cause severe cognitive, developmental, and behavioral side effects. Recent findings indicate a critical contribution of astrocytes, star-shaped glial cells in the brain, to neuronal and network excitability and seizure activity. Furthermore, many important cellular and molecular changes occur in astrocytes in epileptic tissue in both humans and animal models of epilepsy. The goal of Astrocytes and Epilepsy is to comprehensively review exciting findings linking changes in astrocytes to functional changes responsible for epilepsy for the first time in book format. These insights into astrocyte contribution to seizure susceptibility indicate that astrocytes may represent an important new therapeutic target in the control of epilepsy. Astrocytes and Epilepsy includes background explanatory text on astrocyte morphology and physiology, epilepsy models and syndromes, and evidence from both human tissue studies and animal models linking functional changes in astrocytes to epilepsy. Beautifully labelled diagrams are presented and relevant figures from the literature are reproduced to elucidate key findings and concepts in this rapidly emerging field. Astrocytes and Epilepsy is written for neuroscientists, epilepsy researchers, astrocyte investigators as well as neurologists and other specialists caring for patients with epilepsy.

This text is the proceedings volume of a NATO Advanced Research Workshop, held in Eliat, Israel, April 5th-8th, 2000. It brings together interdisciplinary contributions ranging from applied mathematics, theoretical physics, quantum chemistry and molecular biology, all addressing different facets of the problem to connect the many scales of the computer simulation of many systems of interest in chemistry - polymetric materials, biological molecules, clusters, surface and interface structure. Emphasis is placed on the multigrid technique and its applications, ranging from electronic structure calculations to the statistical mechanics of polymers.

Epilepsy research has entered an exciting phase as advances in molecular analysis have supplemented in vitro and in vivo electrophysiologic and phenotypic characterization. Recent Advances in Epilepsy Research sets forth a series of chapter reviews by researchers involved in these advances. This volume is a composite profile of some exciting recent investigations in select areas of enquiry.
Key features: neurogenetics of seizure disorders, new developments in cellular and molecular neurobiology of seizure disorders, the role of growth factors in seizures, new advances in the roles of metabotropic glutamate receptors and GABA receptors and transporters, gap junctions, neuroimmunology of epilepsy, malformations of cortical development, neurogenesis, new animal models of epilepsy and the use of brain stimulation to treat epilepsy. This book should be of interest to a wide variety of audiences, including graduate students in neurobiology and related disciplines, neuroscientists, medical students, neurologists, neurosurgeons, and industry including pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies. There are many ideas in this book that will lead ingenious innovators in academia and industry to develop new and better therapies.

The rapidly-developing field of confined polymers is reviewed in this volume. Special emphasis is given to polymer aspects of this interdisciplinary problem. Taken together, the contributions offer ample evidence of how the field of polymer science continues to evolve with the passage of time. The topics revolve around the tendency of surfaces to impede chain relaxation and to stimulate new sorts of chain organization. These have been implicated in a variety of spectacular phenomena. Here is a listing of authors and affiliations: K. Binder (Johannes Gutenberg-Universit t Mainz, Germany); P.-G. de Gennes (College de France, France); E.P. Giannelis, R. Krishnamoorti, and E. Manias (Cornell University and University of Houston, USA); G.S. Grest (Exxon Research and Engineering Co., USA); L. Leger, E. Raphael, and H. Hervet (College de France, France); S.-Q. Wang (Case Western Reserve University, USA).

During the past fifteen years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of different surfaces whose structures have been determined experimentally. For example, whereas in 1979 there were only 25 recorded adsorption structures, to date there are more than 250. This volume is therefore a timely review of the state-of-the-art in this dynamic field.

Chapter one contains a compilation of the structural data base on surfaces within a series of tables that allows direct comparison of structural parameters for related systems. Experimental structural trends amongst both clean surfaces and adsorbate systems are highlighted and discussed.

The next chapter outlines the successes of local density functional theory in predicting the relaxations and reconstructions of clean metal and semiconductor surfaces, and the behaviour of adsorbates such as hydrogen, oxygen and alkali elements on metal surfaces, thereby explaining some of the experimental trends observed within the database. These "ab initio" density functional calculations are of ground state properties at the absolute zero of temperature.

Chapter three provides an introduction to finite temperature effects in a pedagogical review of current statistical mechanical treatments of phase transitions at surfaces, many of which display the prominent role of fluctuations or non-mean field behaviour.

The final chapter discusses the relationship of the reactivity of a surface to its morphology and composition, which is particularly relevant to a fundamental understanding of catalysis.

Posttraumatic Epilepsy: Basic and Clinical Aspects provides a synthesized resource on the recent basic and clinical science developments in the field of posttraumatic epilepsy. This book provides a clear understanding of the history of studies and epidemiology of posttraumatic epilepsy after head injury. The book also considers the neuropathology of posttraumatic epilepsy and clinical trials of antiepileptogenic agents evaluated after traumatic brain injury. The book covers the basic science of animal models of traumatic brain injury and the necessary and sufficient changes that must occur to generate epilepsy after head trauma. The authors explore potential mechanisms and novel therapeutic approaches to prevent posttraumatic epilepsy. The book is written for basic and clinical researchers in neuroscience as well as for clinicians treating patients with epilepsy.

Soft matter science is nowadays an acronym for an increasingly important class of materials, which ranges from polymers, liquid crystals, colloids up to complex macromolecular assemblies, covering sizes from the nanoscale up the microscale. Computer simulations have proven as an indispensable, if not the most powerful, tool to understand properties of these materials and link theoretical models to experiments. In this first volume of a small series recognized leaders of the field review advanced topics and provide critical insight into the state-of-the-art methods and scientific questions of this lively domain of soft condensed matter research.

Monte Carlo computer simulations are now a standard tool in scientific fields such as condensed-matter physics, including surface-physics and applied-physics problems (metallurgy, diffusion, and segregation, etc. ), chemical physics, including studies of solutions, chemical reactions, polymer statistics, etc., and field theory. With the increasing ability of this method to deal with quantum-mechanical problems such as quantum spin systems or many-fermion problems, it will become useful for other questions in the fields of elementary-particle and nuclear physics as well. The large number of recent publications dealing either with applications or further development of some aspects of this method is a clear indication that the scientific community has realized the power and versatility of Monte Carlo simula tions, as well as of related simulation techniques such as "molecular dynamics" and "Langevin dynamics," which are only briefly mentioned in the present book. With the increasing availability of recent very-high-speed general-purpose computers, many problems become tractable which have so far escaped satisfactory treatment due to prac tical limitations (too small systems had to be chosen, or too short averaging times had to be used). While this approach is admittedly rather expensive, two cheaper alternatives have become available, too: (i) array or vector processors specifical ly suited for wide classes of simulation purposes; (ii) special purpose processors, which are built for a more specific class of problems or, in the extreme case, for the simulation of one single model system."

Epilepsy research has entered an exciting phase as advances in molecular analysis have supplemented in vitro and in vivo electrophysiologic and phenotypic characterization. Recent Advances in Epilepsy Research sets forth a series of chapter reviews by researchers involved in these advances. This volume is a composite profile of some exciting recent investigations in select areas of enquiry.
Key features: neurogenetics of seizure disorders, new developments in cellular and molecular neurobiology of seizure disorders, the role of growth factors in seizures, new advances in the roles of metabotropic glutamate receptors and GABA receptors and transporters, gap junctions, neuroimmunology of epilepsy, malformations of cortical development, neurogenesis, new animal models of epilepsy and the use of brain stimulation to treat epilepsy. This book should be of interest to a wide variety of audiences, including graduate students in neurobiology and related disciplines, neuroscientists, medical students, neurologists, neurosurgeons, and industry including pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies. There are many ideas in this book that will lead ingenious innovators in academia and industry to develop new and better therapies.

The rapidly-developing field of confined polymers is reviewed in this volume. Special emphasis is given to polymer aspects of this interdisciplinary problem. Taken together, the contributions offer ample evidence of how the field of polymer science continues to evolve with the passage of time. The topics revolve around the tendency of surfaces to impede chain relaxation and to stimulate new sorts of chain organization. These have been implicated in a variety of spectacular phenomena. Here is a listing of authors and affiliations: K. Binder (Johannes Gutenberg-Universit t Mainz, Germany); P.-G. de Gennes (College de France, France); E.P. Giannelis, R. Krishnamoorti, and E. Manias (Cornell University and University of Houston, USA); G.S. Grest (Exxon Research and Engineering Co., USA); L. Leger, E. Raphael, and H. Hervet (College de France, France); S.-Q. Wang (Case Western Reserve University, USA).

Soft matter science is nowadays an acronym for an increasingly important class of materials, which ranges from polymers, liquid crystals, colloids up to complex macromolecular assemblies, covering sizes from the nanoscale up the microscale. Computer simulations have proven as an indispensable, if not the most powerful, tool to understand properties of these materials and link theoretical models to experiments. In this first volume of a small series recognized leaders of the field review advanced topics and provide critical insight into the state-of-the-art methods and scientific questions of this lively domain of soft condensed matter research.

Deals with the computer simulation of complex physical sys- tems encounteredin condensed-matter physics and statistical mechanics as well as in related fields such as metallurgy, polymer research,lattice gauge theory and quantummechanics.

In the seven years since this volume first appeared. there has been an enormous expansion of the range of problems to which Monte Carlo computer simulation methods have been applied. This fact has already led to the addition of a companion volume ("Applications of the Monte Carlo Method in Statistical Physics", Topics in Current Physics. Vol . 36), edited in 1984, to this book. But the field continues to develop further; rapid progress is being made with respect to the implementation of Monte Carlo algorithms, the construction of special-purpose computers dedicated to exe cute Monte Carlo programs, and new methods to analyze the "data" generated by these programs. Brief descriptions of these and other developments, together with numerous addi tional references, are included in a new chapter , "Recent Trends in Monte Carlo Simulations" , which has been written for this second edition. Typographical correc tions have been made and fuller references given where appropriate, but otherwise the layout and contents of the other chapters are left unchanged. Thus this book, together with its companion volume mentioned above, gives a fairly complete and up to-date review of the field. It is hoped that the reduced price of this paperback edition will make it accessible to a wide range of scientists and students in the fields to which it is relevant: theoretical phYSics and physical chemistry , con densed-matter physics and materials science, computational physics and applied mathematics, etc.

The discovery that a variety of growth factors modulate excitability in the adult brain, and that the expression of growth factors and their receptors are often modulated by seizure activity, has opened an exciting new chapter in epilepsy research. Recent findings shed new light on these and other ways growth factor neurobiology impacts epilepsy research, including the role of growth factors in seizure-induced neurogenesis, kindling, and morphological changes that contribute to the epileptic phenotype. In addition to neurotrophins such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and the p75 and trk receptors for neurotrophins, recent studies also implicate vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in seizure-induced structural and functional changes. The current volume highlights seminal contributions to this field by renowned scientists in both the growth factor and epilepsy research fields.