With the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope in 1982 by Binnig and Rohrer and the subsequent award of the Nobel Prize, the field of scan ning microscopy was given a strong boost in view of its wide range of ap plications. In particular, expanding the capability to access nature's foundations at the atomic level is now recognized as having the potential for major impact in Infonnation Technology. This third volume of the ESPRIT Basic Research Series provides a well structured overview of the state of the art of scanning microscopy and re cent advances including results of ESPRIT...

Research into Fully Integrated Data Environments (FIDE) has the goal of substantially improving the quality of application systems while reducing the cost of building and maintaining them. Application systems invariably involve the long-term storage of data over months or years. Much unnecessary complexity obstructs the construction of these systems when conventional databases, file systems, operating systems, communication systems, and programming languages are used. This complexity limits the sophistication of the systems that can be built, generates operational and usability problems, and...

Information Technology is having an increasing influence on medicine. This can be readily observed by anybody visiting a hospital or consulting a doctor, or even by going to the chemist. A range of new medical instruments, new scanners, new on-line diagnostics as well as more effective distribution methods all increasingly contain IT elements that enable new more effective medical tools and services. But there is also a lot going on "behind the scenes," at the research and development level, that will greatly influence the medical tools and services of tomorrow. In this respect, Esprit, the...

This volume is a monograph on parallel optical interconnects. It presents not only the state- of-the-art in this domain but also the necessary physical and chemical background. It also provides a discussion of the potential for future devices. Both experts and newcomers to the area will appreciate the authors' proficiency in providing the complete picture of this rapidly growing field. Optical interconnects are already established in telecommunications and should eventually find their way being applied to chip and even gate level connections in integrated systems. The inspiring environment of...