The papers in this volume were presented at an International Symposium on Optimal Estimation in Approximation Theory which was held in Freudenstadt, Federal Republic of Germany, September 27-29, 1976. The symposium was sponsored by the IBM World Trade Europe/Middle East/Africa Corporation, Paris, and IBM Germany. On behalf of all the participants we wish to express our appreciation to the spon- sors for their generous support. In the past few years the quantification of the notion of com- plexity for various important computational procedures (e. g. multi- plication of numbers or matrices)...

Over 100 scientists met at the IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose. California for a symposium on the Physics and Chemistry of Liquid Crystal Devices. The two-day meeting was intellectually stimulating with excellent oral presentations and with person-to-person discussions. The applications of liquid crystals have developed dramatically in the past ten years. In these few years, they have moved from being a laboratory curiosity to products in the market place. The first commercial application (1940's) of liquid crystals was the preparation of a light polarizer. The second commercial...