This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the International Seminar on Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems toward Zero Release of Radioactive Wastes, which was held in Japan in November 2000.
Scientists and engineers working in academia, research organizations and industry came together to discuss the role and contributions of nuclear energy to the environmental issues in the new millennium. It provided a forum for open discussions about the pursuit of solutions for the reduction of nuclear wastes based on the accelerator and fusion technologies, in addition to the advanced fission technology to harmonize the nuclear energy systems with the global environment. It also promoted future international collaboration in the following research fields: the role of nuclear energy in the new millennium; waste management; transmutation of minor actinides and fission products; advanced fission systems, accelerator driven systems, fusion systems, nuclear database, and advanced nuclear fuel cycles for transmutation of wastes.

Published originally as a special issue (volume 40/3-4) of the international journal "Progress in Nuclear Energy."

E. L. Cooper The Immunodefense System Because invertebrates are exceedingly diverse and numerous, estimates reveal nearly 2 million species classified in more than 20 phyla from unicellular organisms up to the complex, multicellular protostomes and deuterostomes. It is not surprising to find less diverse defense/immune responses whose effector mechanisms remain to be completely elucidated. Of course, I am not advocating that the few of us devoted to analyzing invertebrate immunity attempt the Herculean task of examining all these species to uncover some kind of unique response As these two volumes will reveal, we are doing fairly well in examining in depth only the most miniscule examples of invertebrates, some of which have great effects on human populations such as edible crustaceans or insect pests. This is in striking contrast to the mass of information on the mammalian immune response which has been derived essentially from the mouse, a member of one phylum, Vertebrata, an approach, reductionist to be sure, but one that has served well both the technological and conceptual advances of immunology as a disci pline. The essential framework of immunology, the overwhelming burst of results since the 1960s, have emanated primarily from this single animal. We should not forget the thymus and the bird's bursa of Fabricius, without which we might have been slower to recognize the bipartite T /B system."

This is not your ordinary historical novel. In a world filled with insecurity, terror, and doomsday scenarios there is a hunger for a new vision of hope. This book presents such a vision in the palatable form of an informative and rewarding story. Woven into the storyline is a valuable Student Handbook on Life that gives the novel a unique and profound philosophical significance. This is a novel that not only spans oceans, continents and generations, but also challenges the intellect and touches the emotions of everyone who has been directly or indirectly affected by the consequences of war...and the yearning for peace. It is an international story of mistakes made - and lessons unlearned.
The novel takes the reader on an exotic journey through historical time to the fabled "Land of the Dolls" where Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier landed like a tsunami wave in 1549 and set in motion a tide of events that rippled across the Pacific Ocean and centuries later lapped upon the shores of British Columbia. From the martyrdom of Paul Miki, samurai warrior and Jesuit priest, on Nishizaka Hill in 1597, the discovery of the Kakure Kirishitan by Father Bernard Petitjean in 1865, the arrival in Steveston, BC in 1913 of the Miki brothers, Kasuzimo and Hideo, the evacuation of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast during the Second World War, to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, we learn how the events of the past mitigate upon the present.