The studies by Santiago Ram6n y Cajal on astrocytes, and the extense work developed by Pio del Rio Hortega dealing with microglia and oligodendrocytes are with no doubt two important milestones of neurobiology, and specially cf glial research. Since these classical studies, the curiosity for understanding glial cells has continuously grown. During the last two decades, the development of new meth- ods of study, including cell culture techniques and the use of histochemical and immunocytochemical markers, has allowed a remarkable advance in this field. This increasing interest is reflected by the creation of local and international glial networks, the publication of the journal Glia, the celebration of periodic interna- tional meetings and the publication of extensive books focused on glial cells. In February 1997, with the establishment of the Spanish Glial Network, arose the early idea of publishing a compendium of selected work by Spanish glial research teams, which has fmally materialised in Understanding Glial Cel/s, a book whose objective is to present topics of current interest in glial cell biology.

The studies by Santiago Ram6n y Cajal on astrocytes, and the extense work developed by Pio del Rio Hortega dealing with microglia and oligodendrocytes are with no doubt two important milestones of neurobiology, and specially cf glial research. Since these classical studies, the curiosity for understanding glial cells has continuously grown. During the last two decades, the development of new meth- ods of study, including cell culture techniques and the use of histochemical and immunocytochemical markers, has allowed a remarkable advance in this field. This increasing interest is reflected by the creation of local and international glial networks, the publication of the journal Glia, the celebration of periodic interna- tional meetings and the publication of extensive books focused on glial cells. In February 1997, with the establishment of the Spanish Glial Network, arose the early idea of publishing a compendium of selected work by Spanish glial research teams, which has fmally materialised in Understanding Glial Cel/s, a book whose objective is to present topics of current interest in glial cell biology.

This book presents a comprehensive tutorial on propagation, diffraction and scattering problems from the basic principles of physical optics. Beginning with the fundamental differential and integral equations for wavefields, the text presents an exhaustive discussion on the extinction theorem as a non-local boundary condition; this has been extensively employed for the rigorous solution of scattering and diffraction problems.There is also an in-depth presentation of the topic of scattering from rough surfaces, in particular the phenomenon of enhanced backscattering, as well as a detailed development of the angular spectrum representation of fields leading to questions on non-diffraction beams. Of key interest in near field optical microscopy and nanooptics, the S-matrix theory based on the angular spectrum for propagating components and the recently discovered properties of the S-matrix for evanescent components of wavefields are considered. In addition, the book deals with the healing effect of phase conjugation on waves, and focuses on some applications concerning the relationship with time reversal.Readers will also find discussions on image recovery from partial information data (phase problems and super-resolution problems), as well as a chapter on the fundamentals of near field optical microscopy techniques, including the hot topic of propagation in negative index media.

?Que pasaria si tuvieses que asistir a una fiesta y todo a tu alrededor cambiase de repente? Oliver Ventura es un hombre encerrado en una vida monotona, el trabajo, su padre y su mejor amigo. Pero todo esto cambia desde el momento en que recibe una carta, una invitacion a una reunion de antiguos alumnos. Desde el primer momento que vuelve a pisar aquel colegio, nada volvera a ser como el recordaba. Comenzara una batalla interna entre lo que cree que es real o no.