Lists citations with abstracts for aerospace related reports obtained from world wide sources and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database.

In this volume we compare modem observations of solar flares with results from recent theoretical research and simulation studies on current-carrying loops and their interaction. These topics have undergone rapid developments in the course of recent years. Observational results by X-ray monitoring and imaging spacecraft in the seventies and by dedicated imaging instrumentation in the satellites Solar Max imum Mission and Hinotori, launched 1980 and 1981, have shown the importance of X-ray imaging for understanding the ignition processes of solar flares. Such observations, in tum, stimulated theoretical studies, centered around the flux-tube concept. The classical idea that flares originate by interaction of current-carrying loops was developed and proved to be promising. Concepts on reconnection and coalescence of flux tubes were developed, and their consequences studied. The Yohkoh spacecraft, launched 1991, showed the overwhelming importance of coro nal flux tubes and their many possible ways of interaction. Subsequent and parallel theoretical studies and simulations, differentiating between the topology of interact ing fluxtubes, demonstrated that the mutual positioning and the way of interaction are important for the subsequent processes of energy release in flares and the many associated phenomena such as the expUlsion of jets and the emission of X -ray and microwave radiation. The new developments now enable researchers to understand and classify flares in a physically significant way. Various processes of accelera tion are active in and after flares on greatly varying timescales; these can now be distinguished and explained.

These papers span the entire range of multi-disciplinary studies of transients propagating from the sun through the interplanetary medium and represent a current assessment of theoretical studies and analyses, computer simulation, and in situ measurements of these phenomena. This includes solar phenomena as the source of transient events propagating through the solar system, and theoretical and observational assessments of the dynamic processes involved as these transients propagate through the interplanetary medium. The subjects covered are solar physics, solar radio astronomy, interplanetary scintillation measurements, cometary studies, direct spacecraft observations from Venera 9, Venera 10, Helios 1 and Helios 2, energetic particle propagation in the interplanetary medium and shock-particle interactions. Also included are reports on coronal hole and solar wind studies during STIP Interval I (September-October 1975) and the dynamic solar-Terrestrial events that occurred during STIP Interval II (15 March-15 May 1976).

These proceedings contain the review and contributed papers given at the SMY--SMA Workshop held in Irkutsk (USSR), 17--24 June 1985. The main themes of the Workshop were plasma physics and magnetohydrodynamics with applications to processes occurring in solar flares. The papers published in this volume are organized around the following topics: -- the reconnection of coronal magnetic fields as a source of flare energy -- the acceleration of particles to high energies -- the dynamics of interplanetary clouds and shocks