The theory of two-person, zero-sum differential games started at the be- ginning of the 1960s with the works of R. Isaacs in the United States and L. S. Pontryagin and his school in the former Soviet Union. Isaacs based his work on the Dynamic Programming method. He analyzed many special cases of the partial differential equation now called Hamilton- Jacobi-Isaacs-briefiy HJI-trying to solve them explicitly and synthe- sizing optimal feedbacks from the solution. He began a study of singular surfaces that was continued mainly by J. Breakwell and P. Bernhard and led to the explicit solution of some low-dimensional but highly nontriv- ial games; a recent survey of this theory can be found in the book by J. Lewin entitled Differential Games (Springer, 1994). Since the early stages of the theory, several authors worked on making the notion of value of a differential game precise and providing a rigorous derivation of the HJI equation, which does not have a classical solution in most cases; we mention here the works of W. Fleming, A. Friedman (see his book, Differential Games, Wiley, 1971), P. P. Varaiya, E. Roxin, R. J. Elliott and N. J. Kalton, N. N. Krasovskii, and A. I. Subbotin (see their book Po- sitional Differential Games, Nauka, 1974, and Springer, 1988), and L. D. Berkovitz. A major breakthrough was the introduction in the 1980s of two new notions of generalized solution for Hamilton-Jacobi equations, namely, viscosity solutions, by M. G. Crandall and P. -L.

Game Theoretical Applications to Economics and Operations Research deals with various aspects of game theory and their applications to Economics and OR related problems. It brings together the contributions of a wide spectrum of disciplines such as Statistics, Mathematics, Mathematical Economics and OR. The contributions include decision theory, stochastic games, cooperative and noncooperative games. The papers in the volume are classified under five different sections. The first four sections are devoted to the theory of two-person games, linear complimentarity problems and game theory, cooperative and noncooperative games. The fifth section contains diverse applications of these various theories. Taken together they exhibit a rich versatility of these theories and lively interaction between the mathematical theory of games and significant economic problems.

The theory of two-person, zero-sum differential games started at the be- ginning of the 1960s with the works of R. Isaacs in the United States and L. S. Pontryagin and his school in the former Soviet Union. Isaacs based his work on the Dynamic Programming method. He analyzed many special cases of the partial differential equation now called Hamilton- Jacobi-Isaacs-briefiy HJI-trying to solve them explicitly and synthe- sizing optimal feedbacks from the solution. He began a study of singular surfaces that was continued mainly by J. Breakwell and P. Bernhard and led to the explicit solution of some low-dimensional but highly nontriv- ial games; a recent survey of this theory can be found in the book by J. Lewin entitled Differential Games (Springer, 1994). Since the early stages of the theory, several authors worked on making the notion of value of a differential game precise and providing a rigorous derivation of the HJI equation, which does not have a classical solution in most cases; we mention here the works of W. Fleming, A. Friedman (see his book, Differential Games, Wiley, 1971), P. P. Varaiya, E. Roxin, R. J. Elliott and N. J. Kalton, N. N. Krasovskii, and A. I. Subbotin (see their book Po- sitional Differential Games, Nauka, 1974, and Springer, 1988), and L. D. Berkovitz. A major breakthrough was the introduction in the 1980s of two new notions of generalized solution for Hamilton-Jacobi equations, namely, viscosity solutions, by M. G. Crandall and P. -L.

Game Theoretical Applications to Economics and Operations Research deals with various aspects of game theory and their applications to Economics and OR related problems. It brings together the contributions of a wide spectrum of disciplines such as Statistics, Mathematics, Mathematical Economics and OR. The contributions include decision theory, stochastic games, cooperative and noncooperative games. The papers in the volume are classified under five different sections. The first four sections are devoted to the theory of two-person games, linear complimentarity problems and game theory, cooperative and noncooperative games. The fifth section contains diverse applications of these various theories. Taken together they exhibit a rich versatility of these theories and lively interaction between the mathematical theory of games and significant economic problems.

Strigolactones (SLs) are a class of sesquiterpene lactones are derived from carotenoids and contain a large four ring backbone. Biosynthesis occurs mainly in roots and isolated from roots of a variety of plant species. SLs have three distinct biological activities: Induction of seed germination of root parasitic seeds, induction of hyphal branching of Arbascular Mycorrhizal (AM) fungi and inhibition of shoot branching in plants.

This set of lecture notes is based on a series of ten lectures given by Professor T. Parthasarathy at Chennai Mathematical Institute. Topics in matrix and bimatrix games, stochastic games (finite, infinite, and undiscounted stochastic games) and cooperative games are covered. The topics include minimax theorem on unit square, a square root game, orderfield property, classes of stochastic games and product solutions for simple games. Most of the work discussed/covered in this set of lectures include those done by Parthasarathy and his collaborators. It is next to impossible to cover all the results related to stochastic games and other topics for lack of time and space. However enough references are given so that interested readers can consult them.