The Seventh Symposium was held on the campus of Stanford University with*a combination offacilities and weather which made it possible to add open-air poster sessions and coffee breaks to the programme. This was particularly convenient as the call for papers attracted close to three hundred abstracts and a total number of participants well in excess of this number. Some one hundred and thirty papers were presented in carefully phased parallel sessions and thirty six further contributions were made available in the form of posters. In addition, a lively open-forum session allowed additional speakers to make brief presentations. The staff of the Thermo-Sciences Division of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford undertook the local arrangements with evident success and their extensive record of contributions to Turbulent Shear Flows made the venue particularly appropriate. Also, the Centre for Turbulence Studies, based on the faculty of the University and the NASA Ames Research Center, provided a considerable body of expertise with emphasis on direct numerical stimulation.

This concise text provides an essential treatment of thermodynamics and a discussion of the basic principles built on an intuitive description of the microscopic behavior of matter. Aimed at a range of courses in mechanical and aerospace engineering, the presentation explains the foundations valid at the macroscopic level in relation to what happens at the microscopic level, relying on intuitive and visual explanations which are presented with engaging cases. With ad hoc, real-word examples related also to current and future renewable energy conversion technologies and two well-known programs used for thermodynamic calculations, FluidProp and StanJan, this text provides students with a rich and engaging learning experience.