In February, 1974, an 'International Workshop on Membrane Transport in Plants' was held at the Nuclear Research Centre, JLiI ich, West Germany. More than two hundred and fifty people, from fourteen countries, took part in this highly successful meeting. A somewhat similar meeting took place in Liverpool, England, two years ago and it became clear there that progress in the field of membrane transport in plants was now so marked that a second, and wider, meeting in Germany was more than fully justified. The members of our pro gramme committee (U. Zimmermann, Chairman, JLilich (FRG); J. Dainty, Toronto (Canada); F. FLihr, JLilich (FRG); N. Higinbotham, Pullman, Wa. (USA); A. B. Hope, Adelaide (Australia); A. Lev, Leningrad (USSR); U. LLittge, Darmstadt (FRG); HW. NLirnberg, JLilich (FRG); E. A. C. MacRobb-ie, Cambridge (UK); H. Stieve, JLilich (FRG); M. Thellier, Rouen (France); K. Wagener, JLilich (FRG)) decided on a broad spectrum of topics including thermodynamics of transport processes, water relations, primary reactions of photosynthesis, as well as the more conventional aspects of membrane transport. They were thus, for instance, particularly concerned to bring advanced thermodynamical concepts to the attention of biologists and to show physical chemists what the more complex biological systems were like. We have taken considerable editorial liberty with the manuscripts submitted for this book, for we were very conscious of the necessity to make all papers understandable by as wide a circle of readers as possible."

The volume contains a selection of manuscripts of lectures presented at the International Symposi- um on Operations Research (SOR 96). The Symposium took place at the Technical University of Braunschweig, September 3-6, 1996. SOR 96 was organized under the auspices of the two German societies of Operations Research, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Operations Research (DGOR) and Gesellschaft fur Mathematik, Okonomie and Operations Research (GMOOR) in cooperation with the Working Group Discrete Optimization of the IFIP (WG7.4). Since 1995, DGOR and GMOORjointly prepare the Symposium as a common annual conference. In particular, the annual general meetings of the DGOR, the GMOOR and the WG7.4 took place during the conference. The Symposi~m had 527 participants from 32 countries around the world, including 92 partici- pants from Eastern Europe. The Symposium obviously attracts an international audience of workers fully covering the broad spectrum of Operations Research and related areas in economics, mathema- tics and computer science. The importance of a highly interdisciplinary field as Operations Research is increasing owing to the growth in applications in related disciplines. Technological advances in computer science and algorithmic mathematics are crucial for attacking the great challenges waiting in the areas of applications of Operations Research effectively. As a participant of SOR 96 one could well observe the current pace of achievements. Many of these results are in these proceedings. The program consisted of two plenary, 17 semiplenary, and 335 contributed lectures in 18 sections.