This volume is devoted to HERA physics (HERA is the electron-proton collider at DESY, Hamburg). The lectures cover the main areas of current research in the field of deep inelastic scattering at high energies, at both the theoretical and the experimental level. Particularly interesting are the presentations on data from both HERA experiments, namely H1 and ZEUS.

This book provides an up-to-date, self-contained account of deep inelastic scattering in high-energy physics, intended for graduate students and physicists new to the subject. It covers the classic results which led to the quark-parton model of hadrons and the establishment of quantum chromodynamics as the theory of the strong nuclear force, in addition to new vistas in the subject opened up by the electron-proton collider HERA. The extraction of parton momentum distribution functions, a key input for physics at hadron colliders such as the Tevatron at Fermi Lab and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, is described in detail. The challenges of the HERA data at 'low x' are described and possible explanations in terms of gluon dynamics and other models outlined. Other chapters cover: jet production at large momentum transfer and the determination of the strong coupling constant, electroweak interactions at very high momentum transfers, the extension of deep inelastic techniques to include hadronic probes, a summary of fully polarised inelastic scattering and the spin structure of the nucleon, and finally a brief account of methods in searching for signals 'beyond the standard model'.

Experts on elementary-particle physics, both theorists and experimentalists, met to present their latest results on the various aspects of HERA physics, specifically, the H1 and ZEUS collaborations at HERA and the collaborations at LEP and the Tevatron were presented. The topics included: proton structure function; polarized ep scattering; final states in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS), with special emphasis on jet production at low x, power corrections in DIS, soft particle production, and instanton effects; photon structure function; photoproduction of jets and hadrons; heavy-flavour and charmonium production; elastic and diffractive ep scattering; and new physics at HERA.

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.

The International Conference, Orbis Scientiae 1996, focused on the topics: The Neutrino Mass, Light Cone Quantization, Monopole Condensation, Dark Matter, and Gravitational Waves which we have adopted as the title of these proceedings. Was there any exciting news at the conference? Maybe, it depends on who answers the question. There was an almost unanimous agreement on the overall success of the conference as was evidenced by the fact that in the after-dinner remarks by one of us (BNK) the suggestion of organizing the conference on a biannual basis was presented but not accepted: the participants wanted the continuation of the tradition to convene annually. We shall, of course, comply. The expected observation of gravitational waves will constitute the most exciting vindication of Einstein's general relativity. This subject is attracting the attention of the experimentalists and theorists alike. We hope that by the first decade of the third millennium or earlier, gravitational waves will be detected, opening the way for a search for gravitons somewhere in the universe, presumably through the observations in the CMBR. The theoretical basis of the graviton search will take us to quantum gravity and eventually to the modification of general relativity to include the Planck scale behavior of gravity -at energies 19 of the order of 10 Ge V.