In the maintenance and development of sound standards of radiation protection, many types of enquiry are important. These range from the purely technical examination of the ways in which exposure may occur or radionuclides may enter the body under existing or new conditions of occupational activity, to the most fundamental studies of the interaction of high energy particulate radiation with matter or the metabolic localisation and kinetics of unfamiliar radionuclides. One of the most important, and most basic, problems, however, is to establish a quantitative estimate for the frequency with which various types of injury would be induced in man following exposure to low doses of radia tion delivered at low dose rates. No sound limits can be proposed for appropriately safe levels of occupational or population exposure unless the associated hazard-or its maximum likely value-can be at least approximately assessed. It is one of the most important tasks of those concerned with radiation protection that these criteria should be kept under constant review in the light of developing knowledge, and that the fields in which further information is needed should be defined and described."

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the multitude of different forms of thermotherapy in connection with aspects of thermal physiology and cell biology. The aim is to elucidate the scientific background of therapeutic actions and to promote effective new applications at the beginning of the 21st century. Significant to these purposes is cooperation between experts in the fields of thermal biology, hyper thermic oncology, rheumatology, and balneology, as represented by the editors. Emphasis has been placed on a balanced choice of contributions, in the hope that this will enable the reader to draw helpful connections between the principles and prac tice of thermotherapy. It is apparent that a wealth of published data exists concerning thermotherapy on the one hand and thermal physiology on the other. However, in the former field empirical aspects of therapeutic usefulness prevail, while in the latter, aspects of basic science are in the foreground. Accordingly, the sources where published data may be found are quite different and as a consequence many findings of potential mutual interest published in medical journals have gone unnoticed by readers of physio logical journals, and vice versa. It is hoped that this book will bridge the gap and encourage researchers' efforts to integrate the available knowledge to attain optimal coordination of clinical and theoretical aspects.