Ownership-based economics has led to the rapid development and apparent universal success of the market economy. It is a system built on the deception of resource availability, ill-defined profit, and misled by the idea that an invisible hand can be an equitable system of distribution. It has resulted in a high living standard for a few select individuals, but at the expense of mankind and nature, ultimately culminating in the development of human conflict.This is a book with a blueprint for the twenty-first century, proposing a two-fold approach to easing the pressure on both the human race and the world we live in. It calls for a change of mindset from ownership to stewardship and a shift of responsibility to the corporate entities as a sub-system of the market economy.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 12th Italian Conference on General Relativity and Gravitational Physics, held in Rome in September 1996. Following the established pattern, the conference was structured such that there were a number of invited lectures and three workshops in parallel sessions regarding astrophysics, general relativity (both classical and quantum) and experimental and observational gravity.

This conference reviewed the current status of General Relativity and Classical Theories of Gravitation, Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology, Experimental and Observational Gravitation, Supergravity and Quantum Gravity.

This is the proceedings of the 9th conference in this series. In addition to papers presented at the conference proper, it contains some papers delivered at Peter G Bergmann's 75th Birthday meeting (Capri, 24 Sept 1990). Among the subjects covered are cosmology and astrophysics, both theoretical and experimental.

A survey of the most recent developments in general relativity and in the theory of the unification of Fundamental Interactions is presented in this book. The theoretical results, the cosmological and astrophysical aspects, the experimental and observational programs are shown in 26 general talks by renowned scientists active in this field.

Since 1975, the triennial Marcel Grossmann Meetings have been organized in order to provide opportunities for discussing recent advances in gravitation, general relativity and relativisitic field theories, emphasizing mathematical foundations, physical predictions, and experimental tests.The proceedings of the Seventh Marcel Grossmann Meeting include the invited papers given at the plenary sessions, the summaries of the parallel sessions, the contributed papers presented at the parallel sessions, and the evening public lectures.The authors of these papers discuss many of the recent theoretical, observational, and experimental developments that have significant implications for the fields of physics, cosmology, and relativistic astrophysics.

In recent years there has been a steadily increasing cross-fertilization between cosmology and particle physics, on both the theoretical and experimental levels. Particle physics has provided new experimental data from the big accelerators in operation, and data from space satellites are accumulating rapidly. Cosmology is still one of the best laboratories for testing particle theory. The present work discusses such matters in the context of inflation, strings, dark matter, neutrinos and gravitational wave physics in the very early universe, field theory at the Planck scale, and high energy physics. A particular emphasis has been placed on a new topology for spatial infinity, on the relation between temperature and gravitational potential, a canonical formulation of general relativity, the neutrino mass, spin in the early universe, the measurement of gravity in the 10--100 m range, galaxy--galaxy and cluster--cluster correlation, black holes, string theory and string/string duality. The work also presents a beautiful review of high energy elementary particle physics, treating the meaning, status and perspectives of unification and standard model gauge couplings.

The Tenth International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR10) was held from July 3 to July 8, 1983, in Padova, Italy. These Conferences take place every three years, under the auspices of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, with the purpose of assessing the current research in the field, critically discussing the prog ress made and disclosing the points of paramount im portance which deserve further investigations. The Conference was attended by about 750 scientists active in the various subfields in which the current research on gravitation and general relativity is ar ticulated, and more than 450 communications were sub mitted. In order to fully exploit this great occur rence of experience and creative capacity, and to pro mote individual contributions to the collective know ledge, the Conference was given a structure of work shops on the most active topics and of general sessions in which the Conference was addressed by invited speakers on general reviews or recent major advance ments of the field. The individual communications were collected in a two-volume publication made available to the participants upon their arrival and widely distributed to Scientific Institutions and Research Centres.