The main advantages of sandwiches as structural components are now well known and well-established. Due to the progress in polymer science and engineering and advances in manufacturing processes, sandwich structures can blend various functional and structural properties and therefore lead to highly innovating systems. The current difficulty to overcome is to provide designers with proper methodologies and tools that could enable them to design improved sandwich structures. Such dedicated design tools should be efficient, reliable, flexible and user-friendly. They should be based on advanced knowledge of sandwich behaviour at global and local scales. Such approach relies on our capability to test, identify, control and model structure performances. The impressive variety of core and face materials and the rapid developments in forming processes give new opportunities to design components which have more complex shapes and higher integrated functional and structural properties. Interest in sandwiches is permanently growing in industry and refined testing and modelling approaches should be encouraged to set up relevant guidelines to design reliable advanced structures. The European Society for Mechanics sponsored the EUROMECH 360 Colloquium on the 'Mechanics of Sandwich Structures' in Saint-Etienne, France, on 13 - 15 May 1997. The main purpose of EUROMECH 360 was to go into the most recent progresses in sandwich analysis and design, including mechanical modelling and testing. It was expected that the Colloquium should contribute to define new research directions to support development of advanced applications in strategic industrial sectors such as ground transportations or building and civil engineering.

Theses on any subject submitted by the academic libraries in the UK and Ireland.

Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences was first conceived, published, and disseminated by the Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis (CINDAS) * at Purdue University in 1957, starting its coverage of theses with the academic year 1955. Beginning with Volume 13, the printing and dissemination phases of the activity were transferred to University Microfilms/Xerox of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the thought that such an arrangement would be more beneficial to the academic and general scientific and technical community. After five years of this joint undertaking we had concluded that it was in the interest of all con cerned if the printing and distribution of the volume were handled by an international publishing house to assure improved service and broader dissemination. Hence, starting with Volume 18, Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences has been disseminated on a worldwide basis by Plenum Publishing Cor poration of New York, and in the same year the coverage was broadened to include Canadian universities. All back issues can also be ordered from Plenum. We have reported in Volume 26 (thesis year 1981) a total of 11 ,048 theses titles from 24 Canadian and 21 8 United States universities. We are sure that this broader base for these titles reported will greatly enhance the value of this important annual reference work. While Volume 26 reports theses submitted in 1981, on occasion, certain univer sities do report theses submitted in previous years but not reported at the time.