The papers which make up this volume reflect the very diverse nature of nondestructive evaluation; covering as they do topics ranging from traditional NDE to newly developing NDE methods such as structural health monitoring; where nondestructive technologies are rapidly progressing by integrating emerging technologies from various fields.

This volume is dedicated to the science and technology of the semi-solid processing of metals.

In modern society, the demand for means of suppressing the vibration of machine parts and tools is increasing; due to the need to solve noise problems and to improve the accuracy of mechanical systems.  The most direct way of coping with such vibration problems is to use high damping materials to make the critical parts.

The aim of the celebrated High Pressure School (HPS) is to provide a platform where both young and experienced researchers can meet and exchange their experiences in high-pressure research techniques.

This substance is very much a material for the new millennium, since its new manifestation as a high-temperature superconductor can be dated precisely from the seminal 2001 Nature paper (1st March, p63), Superconductivity at 39K in Magnesium Diboride, by J.Nagamatsu, N.Nakagawa, T.Muranaka, Y.Zenitani and J.Akimitsu of the Physics Department of Aoyama-Gakuin University, Tokyo. Until then, it had been seen and used only as a rather nondescript ceramic/abrasive.

This book consists of a compilation of the papers presented at the Asian International Conference on Advanced Materials (AICAM 2005), which was held in Beijing, China, from November 3rd to 5th, 2005.

Materials science and engineering is a multidisciplinary area of research which encompasses the physics, chemistry and engineering of every class of material. In recent years, the field has attracted increasing attention, following the discovery of new types of material and their subsequent application in new technologies.

This book contains more than 200 papers; all dealing with recent research findings related to engineering ceramics and associated materials. Particular emphasis is placed on the consideration of novel technical challenges and innovative technologies in advanced engineering ceramics: including new classes of high-temperature structural ceramics, nanomaterials/nanocomposites, environmental- and energy-related ceramics and so on, which are expected to open up new frontiers for engineering ceramics in the 21st century.

The aim of this book is to provide the reader with the latest advanced research results on, and an improved understanding of, various aspects of the processing and characterization of materials.

Advances in the welfare of humans tends to be directly related to advances in the science and technology of advanced materials. Hybrid materials make up just one such class of materials, and they are unique in the sense that they exhibit properties that cannot be achieved by using conventional materials design and - at the same time - cannot be predicted by using conventional extrapolations: such as a simple weighted average of the constituents’ properties.