This book is a compilation of articles based on some of the talks given at the Centro de Estudios Cientificos (CECS) in Valdivia during the course of a celebration to th mark the 60 birthdays of Ramon Latorre and Enrico Stefani. Ramon Latorre is one of the most outstanding figures in channel Biophysics today. The first surprise is that he trained as a Biochemist He soon, however, became a biophysicist through his work with Guayo (Eduardo) Rojas who guided him during his Ph. D thesis in the Laboratorio de Fisiologia Celular in Montemar. His work at N. I. H with Gerald Eherenstein and Harold...

This volume is based on a meeting on Quantum Mechanics of Fundamental Systems, held December 17-20 of 1987, at the Centro de Estudios Cientificos de Santiago (CECS). The meeting was intended to review new developments in the field defined by its purposely vague title. We were especially interested in communicating important advances in a broad perspective and in a self-contained manner to a wide colleague ship, and in particular to Latin American physicists. Whatever success we may have achieved in that direction would cer tainly not have been possible without the help and generosity of many...

From January 8-13,1990, distinguished physicists from many nations came to Chile to share with each other and with Latin American students exciting recent developments. The occasion was the third of a series of meetings on Quantum Mechanics of Fundamental Systems which are held every two years at the Centro de Estudios Cientificos de Santiago. This volume grew out from that gathering. The meeting was possible thanks to the generous support of the Tinker Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the Ministere des AfIaires...

The present volume originated from the workshop "Transduction in Biological Sys- tems," held at the Marine Biological Station of the Universidad de Valparaiso, Mon- temar, Chile, May 23-30, 1988, and contains contributions from most of the partici- pants in the workshop. The title of both the workshop and the book reflects accurately the central theme discussed during several days of intense debate and profound intellectual exchange in the peaceful environment offered by the central coast of Chile. It was apparent that the workshop was a great success-a sentiment expressed by many seasoned...

The majesty of the icefields is beyond description. He who has been fortunate to be there once, remains bound forever. To a theoretical physicist working on black holes the icefields produce a familiar vertigo, the instinctive certainty of being confronted with something so simple and beautifully extreme that it must be of importance. The meeting whose proceedings are contained in this volume was conducted onboard of a vessel that went to the icefields, and the participants could literally set foot on them. It was expected that, for those who had not been there before, this would constitute a...

The almost irresistible beauty of string theory has seduced many theoretical physicists in recent years. Even hardened men have been swept away by what they can already see and by the promise of even more. It would appear fair to say that it is not yet clear what form the theory will finally take and in what precise way it will relate to the physical world. However, it would seem equally fair to state that, most likely, strings are here to stay and will playa profound and central role in our conception of the universe. There is therefore a pressing need to provide both practicing physicists...

Il capitano generale lagrimo per allegrezza e nomino quel capo: Deseado, perehe l'avevamo gia gran tempo desiderato. Antonio Pigafetta Il Primo Viaggo in torno al Mondo I would like to take some poetic license in introducing this volume in a way that seems appropriate for a country, like Chile, that Iooks to the ocean. I believe it was Heisenberg who compared different times in physics with sailing a ship. He said that most of the time we keep our ships in port, or in the protection of a bay. But on a few occasions we go into the open sea, and those occasions are really the great times in...

This book is based on a series of lectures for a course on ionic channels held in Santiago, Chile, on November 17-20, 1984. It is intended as a tutorial guide on the properties, function, modulation, and reconstitution of ionic channels, and it should be accessible to graduate students taking their first steps in this field. In the presentation there has been a deliberate emphasis on the spe- cific methodologies used toward the understanding of the workings and function of channels. Thus, in the first section, we learn to "read" single- channel records: how to interpret them in the...