The calculation of cross sections and rate constants for chemical reactions in the gas phase has long been a major problem in theoretical chemistry. The need for reliable and applicable theories in this field is evident when one considers the significant recent advances that have been made in developing experimental techniques, such as lasers and molecular beams, to probe the microscopic details of chemical reactions. For example, it is now becoming possible to measure cross sections for chemical reactions state selected in the vibrational rotational states of both reactants and products....

Canadian financial institutions have been in rapid change in the past five years. In response to these changes, the Department of Finance issued a discussion paper: The Regulation of Canadian Financial Institutions, in April 1985, and the government intends to introduce legislation in the fall. This paper studi.es the combinantion of financial institutions from the viewpoint of ruin probability. In risk theory developed to describe insurance companies 1,2,3,4,5J, the ruin probability of a company with initial reserve (capital) u is 6 1 -: -7;;f3 u 1jJ(u) = H6 e H6 (1) Here, we assume that...

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Fother 'The Hennit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van GWs The Chinese More Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It...

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Les Arcs, France, July 13-25, 1986

Proceedings of the ISPRA Course Held November 25-29, 1985, Organized in Collaboration with the European Safety and Reliability Association-ESRA

There comes a time in the affairs of every organization when we have to sit down and take stock of where we are and where we want to go. When the International Heat Flow Committee (as it was first called), IHFC, was formed in 1963 at the San Francisco International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics with Francis Birch as its first Chairman, the principal purpose was to stimulate work in the basic aspects of geothermics, particularly the measurement of terrestrial heat-flow density (HFD) in what were then the 'geothermally underdeveloped' areas of the world. In this, the IHFC was remarkably...

In many contexts of everyday life we find ourselves faced with the problem of reconciling the views of several persons. These problems are usually solved by resorting to some opinion aggre- gating procedure, like voting. Very often the problem is thought of as being solved after the decision to take a vote has been made and the ballots have been counted. Most official decision making bodies have formally instituted procedures of voting but in informal groups such procedures are typically chosen in casu. Curiously enough people do not seem to pay much attention to which particular procedure is...

The contributions to this book follow a topical trend. In several geophysical fields evidence is accumulating concerning the deviation of the earth's structure from radial symmetry. Seismology provides the most adequate resolution for revealing the earth's lateral inhomogeneity on a global to local scale. Lateral structure in the density distribution is also manifest in the earth's gravity field and in the geoid. Asphericity in physical parameters, generally supposed only to vary with the vertical coordinate, has a profound influence on geodynamics. The effects of these deviations from...