Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Basic Concepts and Applications of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, Erice, Italy, April 17-29, 1989

About 20 years ago the emphasis in soil chemistry research switched from studies of problems related to scarcities of plant nutrients to those arising from soil pollutants. The new problems have come about because of the excessive uses of fertilizers, the inputs from farm and industrial wastes, the widespread applications of anthropogenie xenobiotic chemicals, and the deterioration of soil structure resulting from certain modern agriculture practises. The International Society of Soil Science (ISSS) recognized these problems and challenges. A provisional Working Group was set up in 1978 to...

Survival analysis is a highly active area of research with applications spanning the physical, engineering, biological, and social sciences. In addition to statisticians and biostatisticians, researchers in this area include epidemiologists, reliability engineers, demographers and economists. The economists survival analysis by the name of duration analysis and the analysis of transition data. We attempted to bring together leading researchers, with a common interest in developing methodology in survival analysis, at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop. The research works collected in this...

Sensors and Sensory Systems for an Electronic Nose reviews the current state of progress in the development of an electronic instrument capable of olfaction. The instrument -- the so-called electronic nose -- has enormous potential for application in such areas as product flavor control and environmental monitoring.
The book discusses the essential elements of an electronic nose, such as chemical sensors, signal processing, and pattern recoginiton techniques. It is also one of the first contributions to the new and exciting field of machine olfaction.

Reliability-based design (RBD) procedures for engineered structures are being developed and quickly gaining acceptance by cade agencies throughout the world. Numerous organizations are involved in the development of national or regional cades without the benefit of interchange of ideas and methodologies. Harmonization and coordination of these activities is absolutely essential if the ever-increasing international commerce is to flourish. This NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) was organized to bring together, for the first time, experts on RBD and related subjects from various countries...

This volume contains papers arising out of the program of the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) of the University of California at Santa Bar- bara, August-December 1991, on the subject "Topological Fluid Dynamics". The first group of papers cover the lectures on Knot Theory, Relaxation un- der Topological Constraints, Kinematics of Stretching, and Fast Dynamo Theory presented at the initial Pedagogical Workshop of the program. The remaining papers were presented at the subsequent NATO Advanced Re- search Workshop or were written during the course of the program. We wish to acknowledge...

This volume and its companion volume includes the edited versions of the principal lectures and selected papers presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Optimization and Decision Support Systems in Civil Engineering. The Institute was held in the Department of Civil Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh from June 25th to July 6th 1989 and was attended by eighty participants from Universities and Research Institutes around the world. A number of practising civil and structural engineers also attended. The lectures and papers have been divided into two volumes to reflect the...

This volume and its companion volume includes the edited versions of the principal lectures and selected papers presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Optimization and Decision Support Systems in Civil Engineering. The Institute was held in the Department of Civil Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh from June 25th to July 6th 1989 and was attended by eighty participants from Universities and Research Institutes around the world. A number of practising civil and structural engineers also attended. The lectures and papers have been divided into two volumes to reflect the...

This book is an up-to-date review of the different aspects and concepts related to the optical properties of semiconductors. It bridges the dielectric constant concept and the more recent experimental investigations. In particular, the optical response function to time-resolved, high energy, Raman spectroscopies are reviewed. New results focusing on the properties of correlated electrons are also discussed in detail, with a special emphasis on magnetic field-induced properties. As a result of these advanced investigations, this book provides up-to-date reviews of the principles and...

In recent years there has been great interest in large scale and real-time matrix computations; these computations arise in a variety of fields, such as computer graphics, imaging, speech and image processing, telecommunication, biomedical signal processing, optimization and so on. This volume, which is an outgrowth of a NATO ASI, held at Leuven, Belgium, August 1992, gives an account of recent research advances in numerical techniques used in large scale and real-time computations and their implementation on high performance computers. For anyone interested in any of these disciplines, this...