This book contains work-outs of the notes of three 15-hour courses of lectures which constitute surveys on the concerned topics given at the St. Flour Probability Summer School in July 1992. The first course, by D. Bakry, is concerned with hypercontractivity properties and their use in semi-group theory, namely Sobolev and Log Sobolev inequa- lities, with estimations on the density of the semi-groups. The second one, by R.D. Gill, is about statistics on survi- val analysis; it includes product-integral theory, Kaplan- Meier estimators, and a look at cryptography and generation of randomness....

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications STOCHASTIC MODELS IN GEOSYSTEMS is based on the proceedings of a workshop with the same title and was an integral part of the 1993-94 IMA program on "Emerging Applications of Probability." We would like to thank Stanislav A. Molchanov and Wojbor A. Woyczynski for their hard work in organizing this meeting and in edit ing the proceedings. We also take this opportunity to thank the National Science Foundation, the Office of N aval Research, the Army Research Of fice, and the National Security Agency, whose financial support made this workshop...

Molchanov, S.: Lectures on random media.- Zeitouni, Ofer: Random walks in random environment.-den Hollander, Frank: Random polymers ​