The School explored the delicate interplay between geometry and statistical mechanics in these materials such as microemulsions, wetting and growth interfaces, bulk lyotropic liquid crystals, chalcogenide glasses and sheet polymers, using tools from the fields of polymer physics, of differential geometry and of critical phenomena.

Supernovae are highly energetic phenomena for which it is necessary to use simultaneously particle physics, nuclear physics and hydrodynamics to study the creation of the strong explosions involved. Supernovae synthesize heavy elements and in some cases lead to the formation of neutron stars or black holes. Recent progress has revealed new classes of explosions, and new insights into the evolution and explosion mechanisms including that of the dramatic event SN 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Major questions still remain, concerning the evolution of massive stars in binary systems, the nature of gravitational collapse, and the physical processes involved in the thermonuclear explosion of degenerate stars. This School explores our current understanding of supernovae, and areas of active study.

The proceedings consist of four lectures which give a general review as well as discuss some of the recent advances on the topics listed.

This book covers the recently developed understanding of Electro-Mechano-Biology (EMB) in which the focus is primarily on the couplings between the electric and mechanical fields. The emphasis lies on the analytical and computational aspects of EMB at the cellular level. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part, the author starts by defining and discussing the relevant basic aspects of the electrical and mechanical properties of cell membranes. He provides an overview of some of the ways analytical modelling of cell membrane electrodeformation (ED) and electroporation (EP) appears in a variety of contexts as well as a contemporary account of recent developments in computational approaches that can feature in the theory initiative, particularly in its attempt to describe the cohort of activities currently underway. Intended to serve as an introductory text and aiming to facilitate the understanding of the field to non-experts, this part does not dwell on the set of topics, such as cellular mechanosensing and mechanotransduction, irreversible EP, and atomistic molecular dynamics modelling of membrane EP. The second (and larger) part of the book is devoted to a presentation of the necessary analytical and computational tools to illustrate the ideas behind EMB and illuminate physical insights. Brief notes on the history of EMB and its many applications describing the variety of ideas and approaches are also included. In this part, the background of the first principles and practical calculation methods are discussed to highlight aspects that cannot be found in a single volume.

This invaluable book explores the delicate interplay between geometry and statistical mechanics in materials such as microemulsions, wetting and growth interfaces, bulk lyotropic liquid crystals, chalcogenide glasses and sheet polymers, using tools from the fields of polymer physics, differential geometry, field theory and critical phenomena. Several chapters have been updated relative to the classic 1989 edition. Morever, there are now three entirely new chapters -- on effects of anisotropy and heterogeneity, on fixed connectivity membranes and on triangulated surface models of fluctuating membranes.

The 19th IUPAP International Conference on Statistical Physics is devoted to the general field of statistical physics, including traditional topics such as statistical methods concerning the static and dynamic properties of mesoscopic and macroscopic states of matter, as well as hot topics of current interest in applications of statistical physics. These include quantum chaos and turbulence, structures and patterns, fractals, neural networks, computer simulation and visualization in statistical physics, disordered systems and heterogeneous systems, simple and complex fluids.

The field of phase transitions and critical phenomena continues to be active in research, producing a steady stream of interesting and fruitful results. It has moved into a central place in condensed matter studies.Statistical physics, and more specifically, the theory of transitions between states of matter, more or less defines what we know about 'everyday' matter and its transformations.The major aim of this serial is to provide review articles that can serve as standard references for research workers in the field, and for graduate students and others wishing to obtain reliable information on important recent developments.

This volume discusses the latest developments in the quantum theory of gravity.

The proceedings of this workshop contains 5 important papers by S A Edwards on the Edwards Model and includes discussions on recent theoretical developments in polymer physics.A few decades ago, polymers were not considered part of conventional physics. However, the scenario changed drastically in the sixties and seventies with the introduction of path integral methods, fields theory in the n → limits, and renormalization group approach. A vital step in this progress is the path integral Hamiltonian that S F Edwards proposed in 1965-66 to study a single chain. This model now called the Edwards model, is considered to be the minimal model for polymers, and it has been phenomenal in unraveling the universal properties of polymers, be it a single chain or many, equilibrium or dynamics. It has now crossed the boundary of polymers and is finding applications through appropriate generalizations in many other problems.

The Cargese Summer School "Low Dimensional Applications of Quantum Field Theory" was held in July 1995. The School was dedicated to the memory of Claude Itzykson. This session focused on the recent progress in quantum field theory in two dimen sions with a particular emphasis on integrable models and applications of quantum field theory to condensed matter physics. A large fraction of the school was also devoted to a detailed review of the exciting developments in four dimensional super symmetric Yang-Mills theory. The diversity of the topics presented constitute, in our opinion, one of the most attractive features of these proceedings. Some contributions constitute a very thor ough introduction to their subject matter and should be helpful to advanced students in the field while others present entirely new research, not previously published, and should be of considerable interest to the specialist. There were in depth introductory lectures on the application of conformal field theory techniques to disordered systems, on the quantum Hall effect, on quantum in tegrable systems, on the thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz and on the new developments in supersymmetric gauges theories. The computation of the three point function of the Liouville model using conformal bootstrap methods was presented in detail.