On August 2000 in the Lomonosov Moscow State University the first scientific conference dedicated to chaos in the real astronomical systems was held. The most prominent astrophysisists - specialist in the field of stochastic dynamics - attended the conference. A broad scope of the problems related to the observed manifes tations of chaotic motions in galactic and stellar objects, with the involvement of basic theory and numerical modeling, were addressed. The idea (not so obvious, as we believe, to many astrophysicists) was to show that, while great progress in the field of stochastic mechanics was accomplished, the science of chaos in actually observed systems is only just being born. Basically, the situation described prompted the organizers to hold the meeting in order to discuss chaotic processes in real systems. It seemed worthwhile to begin these introductory remarks with a brief descrip tion of some events that preceeded the conference. Since actually existing systems are the subject of the natural sciences, and in the latter experiments play the key role, we shall begin our account with the experimental results.

This book arose from a conference organized under the auspices of the Australian Research Council?s Complex Open Systems Research Network (which has become the most prominent for complex systems in the world ? just Google ?complex systems network?), the ANU Centre for Complex Systems, and the Asia-Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics. The book is unique in the scope of its coverage of applications of complex systems science: Extraterrestrial ? astrophysical, solar and space plasmas; Earth System ? climate, ecosystems; Human systems ? brain dynamics, social networks, financial statistics, advanced technologies. It also presents up-to-date discussions of new theoretical approaches, in particular those based on entropy and entropy production maximization, a field still under development but with much promise for providing a much-needed unifying principle for complex systems science. The authors are at the forefront of their fields, and organized their chapters to effectively bring out common features of complex systems. A comprehensive and common lexicon of keywords has been used to unify indexing, thus making the book an invaluable introduction to anyone seeking an overview of complex systems science.

Every 3rd issue is a quarterly cumulation.

"A review of astronomy" (varies).