Robust Control is one of the fastest growing and promising areas of research today. In many practical systems there exist uncertainties which have to be considered in the analysis and design of control systems. In the last decade methods were developed for dealing with dynamic systems with unstructured uncertainties such as HOO_ and I-optimal control. For systems with parameter uncertainties, the seminal paper of V. L. Kharitonov has triggered a large amount of very promising research. An international workshop dealing with all aspects of robust control was successfully organized by S. P....

From Sunday evening, April 5, until Thursday afternoon, April 9, 1992,49 scientists from 10 countries met at the Centro Stefano Franscini on Monte VeritA overlooking Ascona, in the state of Ticino in Switzerland, for an international workshop on Muonic Atoms and Molecules. More than two-thirds of the participants presented their results in talks of 20 to 40 minutes' duration. In addition, Prof. Gabriele Torelli gave, under the patronage of the Ministro del Ambiente of the state of Ticino, Dr. Mario Camani, a lecture in Italian entitled "Un modo insolito di studiare Ie proprieta nucleari,...

This volume contains the proceedings of the workshop on "Soil Monitoring: Methods for Early Detection and Surveying of Soil Contamination and Degradation," held at the ETH seminar centre "Stefano Franscini" of Monte Verita, Ascona (Switzerland) from October 18 - 23, 1992. Seventy participants, representing a variety of institutions, nations, and disciplines, discussed the concepts, approaches, status, gaps, problems, and perspectives of soil pollution monitoring. The idea for this workshop came from A. Desaules when he was installing the Swiss National Soil Monitoring Network (NABO) as his...

Massively Parallel Systems (MPSs) with their scalable computation and storage space promises are becoming increasingly important for high-performance computing. The growing acceptance of MPSs in academia is clearly apparent. However, in industrial companies, their usage remains low. The programming of MPSs is still the big obstacle, and solving this software problem is sometimes referred to as one of the most challenging tasks of the 1990's. The 1994 working conference on "Programming Environments for Massively Parallel Systems" was the latest event of the working group WG 10.3 of the...

The Conference on "Statistical Science", held in Monte Verita (Switzerland) on 18/20 November 1996, was intended to honour the memory of Stefano Franscini at the occasion of the bicentennial of his birth (1796-1996). It was jointly organized by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the Swiss Federal Statistical Office and the University of Geneva. These proceedings gather a selected collection of contributions presented by statisticians from universities, research institutes and national statistical services of Europe, North America and Asia. Part I focuses on a historical...

This book contains the proceedings of the first workshop held at Monte Verita near Ascona, Switzerland on September 24-29, 1989. The workshop was designed to survey the current understanding of water and solute transport through unsaturated soils under field conditions, and to foster research by discussing some unresolved key issues relative to transport modeling and experimentation in four "Think Tank" groups. The first part of this book consists of the reports prepared by the Think Tank groups, who discussed the following topics: modeling approaches, effective large scale properties,...

The idea of organising a colloquium on turbulence emerged during the sabbatical leave of Prof. Arkady Tsinober in Zurich. New experimental observations and the insight gained through direct numerical simulations have been stimulating research in turbulence and are leading to the developments of new concepts. The organisers felt the necessity to bring together researchers who have contributed significantly to the advances in this field in a colloquium in which the current achievements and the future development in the theoretical, numerical and experimental approaches would be discussed. The...

Recent climatic shifts, based on mild winters and more hot summers have released vegetation shifts all over the world. The book presents numerous case studies from Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Caucasus, Italy, Ireland, China, Japan, United Staes, Brazil and Chile. The authors analyse the resulting changes in compositions and structures of the forest vegetations, especially the process of Laurophyllisation.

Das Centro Stefano Franscini der ETH Zurich macht es sich zur Aufgabe, wissen schaftliche Arbeitstagungen auf dem Monte Verita. oberhalb Ascona zu veranstalten. Organisatoren konnen Dozenten schweizerischer Hochschulen sein, die Themen sollen dem Bereich universitarer Forschung entsprechen. Das Polyprojekt "Risiko und Sicherheit technischer Systeme" der ETH Zurich hat zum Ziel, sich in einem interdisziplinaren Rahmen mit technischen Risiken auseinan derzusetzen. Eine Kombination dieser beiden Zielsetzungen fuhrte im November 1992 zu einem Workshop des Polyprojekts auf dem Monte Verita. zum...

One of the fascinating aspects of the field of ferroelectric ceramics is its interdisciplinary nature. This aspect is also a source of difficulty for the people working in the field. In a successful team of ferroelectricians the physics theoretician must understand the sintering technologist, the electrical engineer has to communicate with the crystallographer, the organic chemist will interact with the microelectronics engineer, the electron microscopist should collaborate with the systems engineer. It was the purpose of the summer school on ferroelectric ceramics that took place at the...