We both found ourselves working on water-soluble polymers for oil recovery in the early 1980' s. Our previ ous backgrounds i nvo 1 ved the synthesi sand characteri zati on of hydrocarbon polymers for everythi ng from elastomers to plastics. As such, we were largely unprepared for the special difficulties associated with water soluble polymers in genera 1, and thei ruse in enhanced oi 1 recovery (EOR), in parti cul ar. Oil patch applications have a jargon and technical heritage quite apart from that usually experienced by traditional polymer scientists. At that time, no books were available to...

This volume contains the Proceedings of the Fourth Seminar on Stochastic Analy- sis, Random Fields and Applications, which took place at the Centro Stefano Fran- scini (Monte Verita) in Ascona (Ticino), Switzerland, from May 20 to 24, 2002. The first three editions of this conference occured in 1993, 1996 and 1999. The Seminar covered several topics: fundamental aspects of stochastic analysis, such as stochastic partial differential equations and random fields, and applications to current active fields such as probabilistic methods in fluid dynamics, biomathe- matics, and financial modeling....

We both found ourselves working on water-soluble polymers for oil recovery in the early 1980' s. Our previ ous backgrounds i nvo 1 ved the synthesi sand characteri zati on of hydrocarbon polymers for everythi ng from elastomers to plastics. As such, we were largely unprepared for the special difficulties associated with water soluble polymers in genera 1, and thei ruse in enhanced oi 1 recovery (EOR), in parti cul ar. Oil patch applications have a jargon and technical heritage quite apart from that usually experienced by traditional polymer scientists. At that time, no books were available to...