It's a time of change. While mankind is adjusting to its first encounter with an alien civilisation, black-ops soldier Jim Leyton has absconded from the agency that trained him, and allied himself with a mysterious faction in order to rescue the woman he loves. Since his death, scientist and businessman Philip Kaufman has realised that there is more to the virtual world than he'd suspected. Yet it soon becomes clear that all is not well in Virtuality. Both men begin to suspect that the much heralded 'First Contact' was anything but, and that a sinister con is being perpetrated on the whole of humankind. Now all they have to do is prove it.

On the brink of perfecting the long sought-after human/AI interface, Philip Kaufman finds his world thrown into turmoil as a scandal from the past returns to haunt him and dangerous information falls into his hands. Pursued by assassins and attacked in his own home, he flees. Leyton, a government black-ops specialist, is diverted from his usual duties to hunt down the elusive pirate vessel The Noise Within, wondering all the while why this particular freebooter is considered so important. Two lives collide in this stunning space-opera from debut novelist Ian Whates!

This book is written to conclude the NATO Advanced Research Workshop "Quantum Noise in Mesoscopic Physics" held in Delft, the Netherlands, on June 2-4, 2002. The workshop was co-directed by M. Reznikov of Israel Institute of Technology, and me. The members of the organizing committee were Yaroslav Blanter (Delft), Chirstopher Glattli (Saclay and ENS Paris) and R. Schoelkopf (Yale). The workshop was very successful, and we hope that the reader will be satisfied with the scientific level of the present book. Before addressing scientific issues I find it suitable to address several non-scientific ones. The workshop was attended by researchers from many countries. Most of them perform their activities in academic institutions, where one usually finds the necessary isolation from the problems and sores of the modem world. However, there was a large group of participants for which such isolation was far from perfect. War, hatred, and violence rage just several miles away of their campuses and laboratories, poisoning everyday life in the land of Israel.

This book has been written to provide an intro Chapter 2 deals with the mechanism of hear duction to the fundamental concepts of sound ing and the subjective rating of sound, includ and a comprehensive coverage whereby un ing age-related and noise-induced hearing loss. wanted sound (noise) can be controlled. Al Assessment of any noise problem involves a though there are many notable textbooks which knowledge of the instrumentation available for deal primarily with the physics (or theory) of measurements, the limitations of this instru sound, and others which treat noise control in mentation, the appropriate procedures for mak a strictly practical (and sometimes even empir ing the measurements with the instrumentation, ical) manner, there are few textbooks that pro and the methods by which the measured data vide a bridging between the necessary under can be analyzed. Chapter 3 provides an up-to standing of the fundamentals of sound (its date coverage of these requirements, including generation, propagation, measurement) and the a section on one of the newest and most valu application of these fundamentals to its control. able tools in noise studies-sound intensity This book provides that link. measurement. The capability of being able to The text presents noise control primarily at measure sound intensity as compared with con the introductory level.

The International Conference on Noise in Physical Systems and 1/f Fluctuations brings together physicists and engineers interested in all aspects of noise and fluctuations in materials, devices, circuits, and physical and biological systems. The experimental research on novel devices and systems and the theoretical studies included in this volume provide the reader with a comprehensive, in-depth treatment of present noise research activities worldwide.

All papers in this proceedings volume were peer reviewed. The purview of this third conference was shifted toward biology and medicine. Among the topics covered were: the constructive role of noise in the central nervous system, neuronal networks, and sensory transduction (hearing in humans, photo- and electroreception in marine animals), encoding of information into nerve pulse trains, single molecules and noise (including single molecule detection and characterization by nanopores - molecular "Coulter counting"), concepts of noise in neurophysiology (randomness and order in brain and heart electrical activities under normal conditions and in pathology), the role of noise in genetic regulation and gene expression, biosensors, etc.