After hearing the sirens of a fire truck and an ambulance, Samantha starts thinking. How did they know when and where there was an emergency. Grandma said there was a special telephone number people could call. Grandma decided it was time for Samantha to learn how to use that special number.

This book contains a complete detailed description of two classes of special numbers closely related to classical problems of the Theory of Primes. There is also extensive discussions of applied issues related to Cryptography.In Mathematics, a Mersenne number (named after Marin Mersenne, who studied them in the early 17-th century) is a number of the form Mn = 2n - 1 for positive integer n.In Mathematics, a Fermat number (named after Pierre de Fermat who first studied them) is a positive integer of the form Fn = 2k+ 1, k=2n, where n is a non-negative integer.Mersenne and Fermat numbers have many other interesting properties. Long and rich history, many arithmetic connections (with perfect numbers, with construction of regular polygons etc.), numerous modern applications, long list of open problems allow us to provide a broad perspective of the Theory of these two classes of special numbers, that can be useful and interesting for both professionals and the general audience.

This book, in honor of Hari M. Srivastava, discusses essential developments in mathematical research in a variety of problems. It contains thirty-five articles, written by eminent scientists from the international mathematical community, including both research and survey works. Subjects covered include analytic number theory, combinatorics, special sequences of numbers and polynomials, analytic inequalities and applications, approximation of functions and quadratures, orthogonality and special and complex functions. The mathematical results and open problems discussed in this book are presented in a simple and self-contained manner. The book contains an overview of old and new results, methods, and theories toward the solution of longstanding problems in a wide scientific field, as well as new results in rapidly progressing areas of research. The book will be useful for researchers and graduate students in the fields of mathematics, physics and other computational and applied sciences.

Identifies and describes specific government assistance opportunities such as loans, grants, counseling, and procurement contracts available under many agencies and programs.

These are the proceedings of the conference "Symbolic Computation, Number Theory, Special Functions, Physics and Combinatorics" held at the Department of Mathematics, University of Florida, Gainesville, from November 11 to 13, 1999. The main emphasis of the conference was Com puter Algebra (i. e. symbolic computation) and how it related to the fields of Number Theory, Special Functions, Physics and Combinatorics. A subject that is common to all of these fields is q-series. We brought together those who do symbolic computation with q-series and those who need q-series in cluding workers in Physics and Combinatorics. The goal of the conference was to inform mathematicians and physicists who use q-series of the latest developments in the field of q-series and especially how symbolic computa tion has aided these developments. Over 60 people were invited to participate in the conference. We ended up having 45 participants at the conference, including six one hour plenary speakers and 28 half hour speakers. There were talks in all the areas we were hoping for. There were three software demonstrations.