During the past several years there has been a shortage of flight opportunities for biological and medical projects. And those that were available usually had severe restrictions on instrumentation, number of subjects, duration, time allotted for performing the experiments, a possibility for repetition of experiments. It is our hope and expectation that this will change once the international Space Station is in full operation. The advantages of a permanent space station, already demonstrated by the Russian Mir station, are continuous availability of expert crew and a wide range of equipment, possibility of long-term experiments where this is waranted, increased numbers of subjects through larger laboratory space, proper controls in the large 1-G centrifuge, easier repeatability of experiments when needed. The limited number of flight opportunities during recent years probably explains why it has taken so long to acquire a sufficient number of high quality contributions for this seventh volume of Advances in Space Biology and Medicine. While initially the series wassailed at annually appearing volumes, we are now down to a biannual appearance. Hopefully, it will be possible to return to annual volumes in the future when results from space station experimentation at beginning to pour in. The first three chapters of this volume deal with muscle. Fejtek and Wassersug provide a survey of all studies on muscle of rodents flown in space, and include an interesting demography of this aspect of space research. Riley reviews our current knowledge of the effects of long-term spaceflight and re-entry on skeletal muscle, and considers the questions still to be answered before we can be satisfied that long-term space missions, such as on the space station, can be safely undertaken. Stein reviews our understanding of the nutritional and hormonal aspects of muscle loss in spaceflight, and concludes that the protein loss in space could be deleterious to health during flight and after return. Strollo summarizes our understanding of the major endocrine systems on the ground, then considers what we know about their functioning in space, concluding that there is much to be learned about the changes taking place during spaceflight. The many problems of providing life support (oxygen regeneration and food supply) during extended stay on the Moon, on Mars, or in space by means of plant cultivation are discussed by Salisbury. The challenges of utilizing electrophoresis in microgravity for the separation of cells and proteins are illustrated and explained by Bauer and colleagues. Finally, the chapter on teaching of space life sciences by Schmitt shows that this field of science has come of age, but also that its multidisciplinary character poses interesting challenges to teaching it.

Advances in Space Environment Research - Volume I contains the proceedings of two international workshops, the World Space Environment Forum (WSEF2002) and the High Performance Computing in Space Environment Research (HPC2002), organized by the World Institute for Space Environment Research (WISER) from 22 July to 2 August 2002 in Adelaide, Australia. The articles in this volume review the state-of-the-art of the theoretical, computational and observational studies of the physical processes of Sun-Earth connections and Space Environment. They cover six topical areas: Sun/Heliosphere, Magnetosphere/Bow Shock, Ionosphere/Atmosphere, Space Weather/Space Climate, Space Plasma Physics/Astrophysics, and Complex/Intelligent Systems.

Advances in Space Science and Technology, Volume 5 looks into the major unsolved solar problems of thermodynamic structure, geometrical structure, velocity fields, flares and other transient phenomena, solar magnetic fields, and corpuscular emission. This book discusses the design, development, and testing of launching rockets. Organized into five chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the role of space observations in solar physics. This text then examines the progress in communication relay satellite techniques, which is a very important aspect of space technology. Other chapters provide a comprehensive review of solid propellant rocker technology, treating such subjects as factors affecting propellant performance, ignition, grain design, testing, quality control, and thrust vector control. This book discusses as well the characteristics of an environmental control compatible with requirements within the manned space vehicle. The final chapter deals with orbital operations. This book is a valuable resource for astronautical researchers, astronomers, and scientists.