Most of the papers in this volume were presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop High Performance Computing: Technology and Application, held in Cetraro, Italy from 24 to 26 of June, 1996. The main purpose of the Workshop was to discuss some key scientific and technological developments in high performance computing, identify significant trends and defme desirable research objectives. The volume structure corresponds, in general, to the outline of the workshop technical agenda: general concepts and emerging systems, software technology, algorithms and applications. One of the Workshop innovations was an effort to extend slightly the scope of the meeting from scientific/engineering computing to enterprise-wide computing. The papers on performance and scalability of database servers, and Oracle DBMS reflect this attempt We hope that after reading this collection of papers the readers will have a good idea about some important research and technological issues in high performance computing. We wish to give our thanks to the NATO Scientific and Environmental Affairs Division for being the principal sponsor for the Workshop. Also we are pleased to acknowledge other institutions and companies that supported the Workshop: European Union: European Commission DGIII-Industry, CNR: National Research Council of Italy, University of Calabria, Alenia Spazio, Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali, ENEA: Italian National Agency for New Technology, Energy and the Environment, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard-Convex, Hitachi, NEC, Oracle, and Silicon Graphics-Cray Research. Editors January 1997 vii LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Ecole Nonnale Su¢rieure de Lyon, 69364 Abarbanel. Robert M.

This series of books, which is published at the rate of about one per year, addresses fundamental problems in materials science. The contents cover a broad range of topics from small clusters of atoms to engineering materials and involve chemistry, physics, and engineering, with length scales ranging from Ångstroms up to millimeters. The emphasis is on basic science rather than on applications. Each book focuses on a single area of current interest and brings together leading experts to give an up-to-date discussion of their work and the work of others. Each article contains enough references that the interested reader can access the relevant literature. Thanks are given to the Center for Fundamental Materials Research at Michigan State University for supporting this series. M. F. Thorpe, Series Editor E-mail: thorpe@pa. msu. edu v PREFACE th th During the period 4 -8 August 1996, a conference with the same title as this book was held in Traverse City, Michigan. That conference was organized as a sequel to an interesting and successful WEM workshop in a similar area run by Profs. Hans Bonzel and Bill Mullins in May 1995. This book contains papers presented at the Traverse City conference. The book focuses on: atomic processes, step structure and dynamics; and their effect on surface and interface structures and on the relaxation kinetics of larger leng- scale nonequilibrium morphologies.

Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts is devoted to the recording, summarizing and indexing of astronomical publications throughout the world. Two volumes are scheduled to appear per year. Volume 67 records 10,903 papers covering besides the classical fields of astronomy and astrophysics such matters as space flights related to astronomy, lunar and planetary probes and satellites, meteorites and interplanetary matter, X rays and cosmic rays, quasars and pulsars. The abstracts are classified under more than one hundred subject categories thus permitting quick surveying of the bulk of material published on the same topic within six months. For instance, this volume records 119 papers on minor planets, 155 papers on supernovae, and 554 papers on cosmology.