Environmental Biotechnology is an emerging field of scientific and technological investigations that is truly global. People around the world are now joined together by a common technical bond. Furthermore, popular recognition is high for the environmental problems being faced and solved by biotechnology methods. With a feeling of winning, but recognizing there is much work to be done, workers with in-depth experience in solving one problem in environmental biotechnology meet to learn from the background of other workers how they, too, are addressing and solving environmental problems. This text includes papers from the third biennial meeting of the International Society for Environmental Biotechnology, the ISEB, held in Boston, Massachusetts, on the campus of Northeastern University. Technical oral presentations of state-of-the-art research were integrated with tutorials and workshops by practising technologists in the broad field of environmental biotechnology. This meeting was in every respect truly global. For example, presentations were heard from technical workers in Southeast Asia, Russia, China, Europe, North Africa, India, and the United States. By having these selected presenters, all participants benefited from this interactive symposium. Various persons of political stature were the keynote, banquet, and luncheon speakers; these social events further promoted informal exchange of ideas, discussions of technical problems, and exploration of new applications. This international symposium on environmental biotechnology was held on the campus of Northeastern University, but all Boston area universities were included and participated as conference Co-Chairs. This symposium was considered a success because workers with experience in one area of environmental biotechnology learned from the wealth of established backgrounds of those in other areas of environmental biotechnology. To formally disseminate conference results, all technical presentations were reviewed for formal publication.

The book aims to provide a comprehensive view of advanced environmental approaches for wastewater treatment, heavy metal removal, pesticide degradation, dye removal, waste management, microbial transformation of environmental contaminants etc. With advancements in the area of Environmental Biotechnology, researchers are looking for the new opportunities to improve quality standards and environment. Recent technologies have given impetus to the possibility of using renewable raw materials as a potential source of energy. Cost intensive and eco-friendly technology for producing high quality products and efficient ways to recycle waste to minimize environmental pollution is the need of hour. The use of bioremediation technologies through microbial communities is another viable option to remediate environmental pollutants, such as heavy metals, pesticides and dyes etc. Since physico-chemical technologies employed in the past have many potential drawbacks including higher cost, and lower sustainability. So there is need of efficient biotechnological alternatives to overcome increasing environmental pollution. Hence, there is a need for environmental friendly technologies that can reduce the pollutants causing adverse hazards on humans and surrounding environment.

MARK FINKELSTEIN National Renewable Energy Laboratory BRIAN H. DAVISON Oak Ridge National Laboratory The proceedings of the 19th symposium on Biotechnologyfor Fuels and Chemicals, held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, May 4-8, 1997, had over 200 attendees. This meeting continues to provide a unique forum for the presentation of new applications and recent research advances in the production of fuels and chemicals through biotech nology. The utilization of renewable resources, and in particular cellulosic biomass, has broad implications in today's world of green house gases, global warming, ozone layers, climate change, energy sustainability, and carbon emissions. It also has relevance to the chemical industry's continuing need to both lower current chemi cal production costs and produce novel chemicals. Biotechnology and bioprocessing are now making it possible to convert this bio mass to fuels and chemicals in a commercially attractive fashion. The 19th Symposium captures a wide range of technical topics from an academic, industrial, or government perspective. A vari ety of biomass feedstocks are discussed in Session 1, along with several updated and innovative pretreatment processing approaches. The ability to turn lignocellulosic materials into simple sugars offers great opportunities to generate cost-effective feed stocks to be used in biotechnological processes for the production of fuels and chemicals. Through the advent of genetic engineering, the development of a series of exciting new biocatalysts and microbes were presented in Session 2.

Biotechnology offers a `natural' way of addressing environmental problems, ranging from identification of biohazards to bioremediation techniques for industrial, agricultural and municipal effluents and residues. Biotechnology is also a crucial element in the paradigm of `sustainable development'. This collection of 66 papers, by authors from 20 countries spanning 4 continents, addresses many of these issues. The material presented will interest scientists, engineers, and others in industry, government and academia. It incorporates both introductory and advanced aspects of the subject matter, which includes water, air and soil treatment, biosensor and biomonitoring technology, genetic engineering of microorganisms, and policy issues in applying biotechnology to environmental problems. The papers present a variety of aspects ranging from current state-of-the-art research, to examples of applications of these technologies.