This series presents critical reviews of the present position and future trends in modern chemical research. It contains short and concise reports on chemistry, each written by the world renowned experts - it is still valid and useful after 5 or 10 years. More information as well as the electronic version of the whole content available at: springerlink.com. The book will appeal to scientists and practitioners in the mentioned fields and in industry.

Understanding the origin of high-mass stars is central to modern astrophysics. We shed light on this problem using novel radiation-hydrodynamic simulations that consistently follow the gravitational collapse of a massive molecular cloud, the subsequent build-up and fragmentation of the accretion disk surrounding the nascent star, and, for the first time, the interaction between its intense UV radiation field and the infalling material. We show that ionization feedback can neither stop protostellar mass growth nor suppress fragmentation. We present a consistent picture of the formation and...