The recent conferences in this series were organised in Montreal (1987), Budapest (1989), Kyoto (1991), St Louis (1993) and Palanga (1995). The aim of the conference was to bring together specialists in fluctuation phenomena from different fields and to make a bridge between theoretical scientists and more applied or engineering oriented researchers. Therefore a broad variety of topics covering the fundamental aspects of noise and fluctuations as well as applications in various fields are addressed. Noise in materials, components, circuits and electronic, biological and other physical systems...