One of the key missions of Computational Science is to drive to a solution the challenges posed by several scientific and technological problems. Satisfactory solutions to these problems, however, can be worked out only through massive computational campaigns exploiting the innovative features of platforms based on a large number of cpus that can be offered only by highly parallel machines or distributed Grid infrastructures. Recent European projects have boosted the latter technology by...

These proceedings contain the lecture notes of the 2002 Trieste Spring School on String Theory, by B. Acharya, N. Berkovits, K. Hori, J. Maldacena, F. Quevedo and B. Zwiebach. The lectures covered essentially all the most interesting latest developments in String Theory around that period. B. Acharya reviewed the use of G2 manifolds in obtaining M-theory compactifications with N=1 four-dimensional supersymmetry, N. Berkovits discussed a novel, covariant approach to superstring quantization...

(Dedicated to H. Bass on the occasion of his 70th birthday). The School and Conference on Algebraic K-theory which took place at ICTP July 8-26, 2002 was a follow-up to the earlier one in 1997, and like its predecessor, the 2002 meeting endeavoured to emphasise the multidisciplinary aspects of the subject. However, one special feature of the 2002 School and Conference is that the whole activity was dedicated to H. Bass, one of the founders of Algebraic K-theory, on the occasion of his...

These lectures throw a spotlight on different aspects of the evolution of telecommunications networks, namely on the various facets of service and network convergence. The last years progress in data and telecommunications technologies, such as IP-based networks, and the enormous potential of mobile communication systems and users' demands for comprehensive and network-independent have led to a convergence of data and telecommunications infrastructures in many aspects. In order to help the...

The 2002 Summer School on Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology was held at ICTP, in the three weeks from June 17 to July 5. As in previous Schools in this series, the main topics were covered by sets of 3-5 lectures (regular courses); some special topics were presented in dedicated sessions (special lectures); and emphasis was given to the discussion sessions. We were greatly pleased - and to some extent surprised - that most lecturers agreed to give lectures at the blackboard, thus giving a...

Asked at the 20th anniversary College on Soil Physics, 'what soil physics means', Professor Edward L. Skidmore, a research leader at the USDA-ARS Wind Erosion Unit, Manhattan, Kansas, USA, defined it in simple terms as 'the study of the physical charactersitics of soil' or 'as the study of the physical laws of nature governing the behaviour of soil'. The study and potential applications of soil physics involve an understanding not only of physics, but of biology, chemistry, hydrology,...

This volume includes expanded lecture notes from the School and Conference in Probability Theory held at ICTP in May, 2001. Probability theory is a very large area, too large for a single school and conference. The organizers, G. Lawler, C. Newman, and S. Varadhan chose to focus on a number of active research areas that have their roots in statistical physics. The pervasive theme in these lectures is trying to find the large time or large space behavior of models defined on discrete lattices....

The School on Automorphic Forms on GL(n) took place at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste from 31 July to 18 August 2000, under the direction of G. Harder (Universität Bonn) and M.S. Raghunathan (Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, Mumbai). The local organizer was Lothar Göttsche (ICTP). The central topics of the school were the theory of automorphic forms on GL(n) and the local theory of representations on GL(n) over p-adic fields. The programme...

This volume contains a partial collection of lectures delivered at the workshop on "Nuclear Reaction Data and Nuclear Reactors: Physics, Design and Safety", held at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in February-March 2002. The aim of the Workshop was to present extensive, and up-to-date information on the whole scientific field underlying nuclear reactor calculations, from the theory of nuclear reactions and nuclear data production and validation down to the...

The School on Intersection Theory and Moduli took place at ICTP, Trieste, 9-27 September 2002. It was organized by E. Arbarello (Università di Roma, "La Sapienza", Italy), G. Ellingsrud (University of Oslo, Norway) and L. Göttsche (ICTP, Italy). The main subjects of the school were, algebraic stacks, their cohomology and intersection theory, orbifolds, moduli spaces of curves and Gromov-Witten invariants, hyperkähler manifolds and symplectic moduli spaces, motivic integration and vertex...

This volume is based on the lecture notes of the minicourses given in the frame of the school on Mathematical Control Theory held at the Abdus Salam ICTP from 3 to 28 September 2001. Mathematical Control Theory is a rapidly growing field which provides strict theoretical and computational tools for dealing with problems arising in electrical and aerospace engineering, automatics, robotics, applied chemistry, and biology etc. Control methods are also involved in questions pertaining to the...

This is the first volume of a new series of lecture notes of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics. These new lecture notes are put onto the web pages of the ICTP to allow people from all over the world to access them freely. In addition a limited number of hard copies is printed to be distributed to scientists and institutions which otherwise possibly do not have access to the web pages. This first volume contains the lecture notes of the School on Algebraic Geometry...

There was a School and Conference on Algebraic K-theory and its applications from May 14 to June 1, 2007. The first two weeks, May 14-25, were devoted to the School while the Conference took place May 28 - June 1. This volume contains the expository lectures given at the School. The School and Conference was a follow-up to the earlier ones in 1997 and 2002. The Proceedings of the 1997 School and Conference was published by World Scientific in 1999. The 2002 School and Conference was dedicated...

The Workshop on "Nuclear Reaction Data for Science and Technology: Materials Analysis" was held at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in May 19-30, 2003. It was intended to present an extensive, and up-to-date, overview of the applications of nuclear data to materials analysis and validation. Dedicated lectures were given on prompt-charged particle analysis, particle-induced X-ray spectrometry, nuclear reaction analysis, prompt gamma and neutron activation analyses,...

These notes contain an overview of basic problems of the International Radio Regulations. Access to the existing information infrastructure, and to that of the future Information Society, depends critically on radio, especially in poor, remote and sparsely populated regions with under-developed telecommunication infrastructure. How the spectrum of radio frequencies is regulated has profound impact on the society, its security, prosperity, and culture. The radio regulations represent a very...

This volume contains the notes of lectures given at the workshops 'Hybrid Nuclear Systems for Energy Production, Utilisation of Actinides & Transmutation of Long-lived Radioactive Waste' and 'Nuclear Data for Science and Technology: Accelerator Driven Waste Incineration', held at the Abdus Salam ICTP in September 2001. The subject of the first workshop was focused on the so-called Accelerator Driven Systems, and covered the most important physics and technological aspects of this...

The aim of this school was to give a panoramic view on the field of particle physics with its achievements and problems, successes and failures. The standard model of the electroweak and strong interactions is in perfect shape. Physics of the standard model and its precision tests have been extensively discussed during the school. What is next? Do we have a 'standard model' of physics beyond the standard model? In this connection the status of low scale supersymmetry, supersymmetric Grand...

The School on High-Dimensional Manifold Topology took place at the Abdus Salam ICTP, Trieste from 21 May 2001 to 8 June 2001 under the direction of F.T. Farrell (State University of New York at Binghamton) and W. Lück (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster). The local organizer was Lothar Göttsche (ICTP). The focus of the school was on the classification of manifolds and related aspects of K-theory, geometry, and operator theory. The topics covered included: surgery theory, algebraic...

The School on High-Dimensional Manifold Topology took place at the Abdus Salam ICTP, Trieste from 21 May 2001 to 8 June 2001 under the direction of F.T. Farrell (State University of New York at Binghamton) and W. Lück (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster). The local organizer was Lothar Göttsche (ICTP). The focus of the school was on the classification of manifolds and related aspects of K-theory, geometry, and operator theory. The topics covered included: surgery theory, algebraic...

This volume is based on the lecture notes of the minicourses given in the frame of the school on Mathematical Control Theory held at the Abdus Salam ICTP from 3 to 28 September 2001. Mathematical Control Theory is a rapidly growing field which provides strict theoretical and computational tools for dealing with problems arising in electrical and aerospace engineering, automatics, robotics, applied chemistry, and biology etc. Control methods are also involved in questions pertaining to the...

This proceedings contains the lectures given at the 2001 Trieste Spring School on String Theory. Several important and active areas of research in string theory related topics were covered in this school. One of the main topics of the School was the recently conjectured duality between gauge theory living on D-branes and and gravity (or more precisely string theory) living in the near horizon geometry around the D-branes. J. Maldacena gave a set of lectures on the gauge theory/gravity...

The School on Vanishing Theorems and Effective Results in Algebraic Geometry took place in ICTP, Trieste from 25 April 2000 to 12 May 2000. It was organized by J. P. Demailly (Université de Grenoble I) and R. Lazarsfeld (University of Michigan). The main topics considered were vanishing theorems, multiplyer ideal sheaves and effective results in algebraic geometry, tight closure, geometry of higher dimensional projective and Köhler manifolds, hyperbolic algebraic varieties. The school...

These two volumes contain the lecture notes of the workshop "Nuclear Reaction Data and Nuclear Reactors: Physics, Design and Safety", which was held at the Adbus Salam ICTP in the Spring of 2000. The workshop consisted of five weeks of lecture courses followed by practical computer exercises on nuclear data traetment and design of nuclear power systems. The spectrum of topics is wide enought to timely cover the state-of-the-art and the perspectives of this broad field. The first two weeks...

These two volumes contain the lecture notes of the workshop "Nuclear Reaction Data and Nuclear Reactors: Physics, Design and Safety", which was held at the Adbus Salam ICTP in the Spring of 2000. The workshop consisted of five weeks of lecture courses followed by practical computer exercises on nuclear data traetment and design of nuclear power systems. The spectrum of topics is wide enought to timely cover the state-of-the-art and the perspectives of this broad field. The first two weeks...