This book, the first in the Cambridge Nonlinear Science Series, presents the fundamentals of chaos theory in conservative systems, providing a systematic study of the theory of transitional states of physical systems which lie between deterministic and chaotic behaviour. The authors' treatment of transitions to chaos, the theory of stochastic layers and webs, and the numerous applications of this theory, particularly to pattern symmetry, will make the book of importance to scientists from many disciplines.The authors have been meticulous in providing a detailed presentation of the material, enabling the reader to learn the necessary computational methods and to apply them in other problems. The inclusion of a significant amount of computer graphics is also an important aid to understanding. The final section of the book contains a fascinating collection of patterns in art and living nature. The book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in physics and mathematics who are interested in problems of chaos, irreversibility, statistical mechanics and theories of spatial patterns and symmetries. The perhaps unconventional links between chaos theory and other topics make the book particularly interesting.

There has been considerable interest recently in microgravity physics and the effects of gravitation on crystal growth, alloy solidification, and other processes in space manufacturing. Regel' [1] has provided an extensive but not exhaustive bibliography on micro gravity physics and materials science in space, in which the major aspects are discussed along with the state of the art and future research prospects. The literature survey in [1] covered a period of about 10 years, including some publications appearing in 1983 that reflected not only theoretical and experi mental studies completed by 1983 but also a list of experiments to be carried out in the next few years. In particular, the closing part of the survey [1] enumerated ex periments planned under the Intercosmos program and by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the flight of Spacelab-l and D-l in 1985 and under the Eureka programs. Some of the space experiments planned in 1983 have now been com pleted, and the results have been published. It is therefore desirable to survey again research on materials science in space for the last few years and extend the literature survey begun in [1]. The literature listing on materials science in space begun in [1] is supplemented (there were 1061 citations in [1]) by recent publications (beginning with 1982).

This book, the first in the Cambridge Nonlinear Science Series, presents the fundamentals of chaos theory in conservative systems, providing a systematic study of the theory of transitional states of physical systems which lie between deterministic and chaotic behaviour. The authors' treatment of transitions to chaos, the theory of stochastic layers and webs, and the numerous applications of this theory, particularly to pattern symmetry, will make the book of importance to scientists from many disciplines.The authors have been meticulous in providing a detailed presentation of the material, enabling the reader to learn the necessary computational methods and to apply them in other problems. The inclusion of a significant amount of computer graphics is also an important aid to understanding. The final section of the book contains a fascinating collection of patterns in art and living nature. The book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in physics and mathematics who are interested in problems of chaos, irreversibility, statistical mechanics and theories of spatial patterns and symmetries. The perhaps unconventional links between chaos theory and other topics make the book particularly interesting.