After almost half a century of existence the main question about quantum field theory seems still to be: what does it really describe? and not yet: does it provide a good description of nature? J. A. Swieca Ever since quantum field theory has been applied to strong int- actions, physicists have tried to obtain a nonperturbative und- standing. Dispersion theoretic sum rules, the S-matrix bootstrap, the dual models (and their reformulation in string language) and s the conformal bootstrap of the 70 are prominent cornerstones on this thorny path. Furthermore instantons and topological solitons...

The importance of technology transfer to innovation and wealth creation is now recog- nised by most governments. As the policy debate has intensified, however, it has become clear that the problem of encouraging successful transfer is complex, and requires an interdisciplinary approach. The collection of papers in this volume is deliberately diverse. It offers perspectives from economics, sociology, science, engineering and public administration, and also from outside academic life, from those involved at the 'sharp end' of technology licensing and administering government research...

The scope of this study is both ambitious and modest. One of its ambitions is to reintegrate Hegel's theory of knowledge into main stream epist ology. Hegel's views were formed in consideration of Classical Skepticism and Modern epistemology, and he frequently presupposes great familiarity with other views and the difficulties they face. Setting Hegel's discussion in the context of both traditional and contemporary epistemology is therefore necessary for correctly interpreting his issues, arguments, and views. Accordingly, this is an issues-oriented study. I analyze Hegel's problematic and...

Adaptive optics allows the theoretical limit of angular resolution to be achieved from a large telescope, despite the presence of turbulence. Thus an eight meter class telescope, such as one of the four in the Very Large Telescope operated by ESO in Chile, will in future be routinely capable of an angular resolution of almost 0.01 arcsec, compared tot he present resolution of about 0.5 arcsec for conventional imaging in good condition.
All the world's major telescopes either have adaptive optics or are in the process of building AO systems. It turns out that a reasonable fraction of the...

Decomposition methods aim to reduce large-scale problems to simpler problems. This monograph presents selected aspects of the dimension-reduction problem. Exact and approximate aggregations of multidimensional systems are developed and from a known model of input-output balance, aggregation methods are categorized. The issues of loss of accuracy, recovery of original variables (disaggregation), and compatibility conditions are analyzed in detail. The method of iterative aggregation in large-scale problems is studied. For fixed weights, successively simpler aggregated problems are solved and...

Catalysts are central in modern industrial chemistry and there is an urgent need to develop new catalysts. Such a rapid pace of development brings with it a new set of challenges at all levels of research, from synthesis and characterization to testing and modelling.
This book reviews the current status of combinatorial catalysis, scientific catalyst design techniques, methods for preparing inorganic combinatorial libraries, experimental design methods, data processing, system modelling an simulation, and catalyst testing. The individual contributions reveal the development of high...

Emphasizing a clear exposition for readers familiar with elementary measure theory and the fundamentals of set theory and general topology, presents the basic notions and methods of the theory of Hilbert spaces, a part of functional analysis being increasingly applied in mathematics and theoretical

GeoENV96, the First European Conference on Geostatistics for Environmental Applications held in Lisbon, was conceived to bring together researchers, mostly from, but not limited to Europe, working on environmental issues approached by geostatistical methods. Papers were attracted from fields as diverse as hydrogeology. biology, soil sciences, air pollution or ecology. It is clear that there is a lot of activity on geostatistics for environmental applications as the collection of papers in this book reveals. GeoENV96 was successful in the number and quality of the papers presented which...

When this two-day meeting was proposed, it was certainly not conceived as a celebration, much less as a party. However, on reflection, this might have been a wholly appropriate gesture because geostatistical simulation came of age this year: it is now 21 years since it was first proposed and implemented in the form of the turning bands method. The impetus for the original development was the mining industry, principally the problems encountered in mine planning and design based on smoothed estimates which did not reflect the degree of variability and detail present in the real, mined values....