The Current state of expectations is that Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) will ulti mately determine the industrial growth of world nations within the next few decades. Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), Robotics together with Knowledge and Information Based Systems (KIBS) and Com munication Networks are expected to develop to a mature state to respond effectively to the managerial requirements of the factories of the future that are becoming highly integrated and complex. CIM represents a new production approach which will allow the factories to deliver a high variety of products at a low cost and with short production cycles. The new technologies for CIM are needed to develop manufacturing environments that are smarter, faster, close-cou pled, integrated, optimized, and flexible. Sophistication and a high degree of specialization in materials science, artificial intelligence, communications technology and knowledge-information science techniques are needed among others for the development of realizable and workable CIM systems that are capable of adjusting to volatile markets. CIM factories are to allow the production of a wide variety of similar products in small batches through standard but multi mission oriented designs that accommodate flexibility with specialized software.

In recent years geometry seems to have lost large parts of its former central position in mathematics teaching in most countries. However, new trends have begun to counteract this tendency. There is an increasing awareness that geometry plays a key role in mathematics and learning mathematics. Although geometry has been eclipsed in the mathematics curriculum, research in geometry has blossomed as new ideas have arisen from inside mathematics and other disciplines, including computer science. Due to reassessment of the role of geometry, mathematics educators and mathematicians face new challenges. In the present ICMI study, the whole spectrum of teaching and learning of geometry is analysed. Experts from all over the world took part in this study, which was conducted on the basis of recent international research, case studies, and reports on actual school practice. This book will be of particular interest to mathematics educators and mathematicians who are involved in the teaching of geometry at all educational levels, as well as to researchers in mathematics education.

The combinatorial theory of species, introduced by Joyal in 1980, provides a unified understanding of the use of generating functions for both labelled and unlabelled structures and as a tool for the specification and analysis of these structures. Of particular importance is their capacity to transform recursive definitions of tree-like structures into functional or differential equations, and vice versa. The goal of this book is to present the basic elements of the theory and to give a unified account of its developments and applications. It offers a modern introduction to the use of various generating functions, with applications to graphical enumeration, Polya theory and analysis of data structures in computer science, and to other areas such as special functions, functional equations, asymptotic analysis and differential equations. This book will be a valuable reference to graduate students and researchers in combinatorics, analysis, and theoretical computer science.