In this volume, I have collected several papers which were presented at the international conference called "Venice-2/Symposium on Applied and In dustrial Mathematics." Such a conference was held in Venice, Italy, between June 11 and 16,1998, and was intended as the follow-up of the very successful similar event (called "Venice-1/Symposium on Applied and Industrial Math ematics"), that was also organized in Venice in October 1989. The Venice-1 conference ended up with a Kluwer volume like this one. I am grateful to Kluwer for having accepted to publish the present volume, the aim of which is to update somehow the state-of-the-art in the field of Ap plied Mathematics as well as in that of the nowadays rather more developed area of Industrial Mathematics. The most of the invited (key-note) speakers contributed to this volume with a paper related to their talk. There are, in addition., a few significant contributed papers, selected on the basis of their quality and relevance to the present-time research activities. The topics considered in the conference range from rather general sub jects in applied and numerical analysis, to more specialized subjects such as polymers and disordered media, granular flow, semiconductor mathematics, superconductors, elasticity, tomography and other inverse problems, financial modeling, photographic sciences, etc. The papers collected in this volume provide a selection of them. It is clear from the previous list that some attention has been paid to relatively new and emerging fields."

'Et moi, ..., si j'avait su comment en revenir, One service mathematics has rendered the je n'y serais point all."' human race. It has put common sense back Jules Verne where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non. The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. able to do something with it. Eric T. Bell O. Hea viside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

This book provides an up-to-date overview of research articles in applied and industrial mathematics in Italy. This is done through the presentation of a number of investigations focusing on subjects as nonlinear optimization, life science, semiconductor industry, cultural heritage, scientific computing and others.

This volume is important as it gives a report on modern applied and industrial mathematics, and will be of specific interest to the community of applied mathematicians.

This book collects selected papers presented at the 9th Conference of SIMAI. The subjects discussed include image analysis methods, optimization problems, mathematics in the life sciences, differential models in applied mathematics, inverse problems, complex systems, innovative numerical methods and others.

'Et moi, ..., si j'avait su comment en revenir, One service mathematics has rendered the je n'y serais point all."' human race. It has put common sense back Jules Verne where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non. The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. able to do something with it. Eric T. Bell O. Hea viside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

In this volume, I have collected several papers which were presented at the international conference called "Venice-2/Symposium on Applied and In dustrial Mathematics." Such a conference was held in Venice, Italy, between June 11 and 16,1998, and was intended as the follow-up of the very successful similar event (called "Venice-1/Symposium on Applied and Industrial Math ematics"), that was also organized in Venice in October 1989. The Venice-1 conference ended up with a Kluwer volume like this one. I am grateful to Kluwer for having accepted to publish the present volume, the aim of which is to update somehow the state-of-the-art in the field of Ap plied Mathematics as well as in that of the nowadays rather more developed area of Industrial Mathematics. The most of the invited (key-note) speakers contributed to this volume with a paper related to their talk. There are, in addition., a few significant contributed papers, selected on the basis of their quality and relevance to the present-time research activities. The topics considered in the conference range from rather general sub jects in applied and numerical analysis, to more specialized subjects such as polymers and disordered media, granular flow, semiconductor mathematics, superconductors, elasticity, tomography and other inverse problems, financial modeling, photographic sciences, etc. The papers collected in this volume provide a selection of them. It is clear from the previous list that some attention has been paid to relatively new and emerging fields."