A. Smirnov – författare

Contrary to popular opinion, contemporary psychology in the USSR is far from being monolithic. It is true that the development of Soviet psychology does have characteristic features which distinguish it from the development of Western (and particularly Anglo-American) psychology. Perhaps the most distinguishing features of Soviet psychology are represented by the pre­ dominance of the historical-evolutionary approach and the emphasis on integrative physiological mechanisms underlying behavior. The development of Soviet psychological thinking can also be characterized as having been free of the fruitless discussions of mind-body dualism and of dominance by rat-and-pigeon-centered behaviorism. Soviet psychology had the benefit of a rich inheritance from the Sech­ that laid the foundation for modern psycho­ enov-Botkin-Pavlov school biology and biological psychiatry. Unfortunately, the politically engendered omnipresent dogmatism during the Lysenko-Stalin era of obscurantism tended to pervert this rich scientific heritage and hindered the development of a diversity of concepts and methods in the behavioral and biological sciences.

Contrary to popular opinion, contemporary psychology in the USSR is far from being monolithic. It is true that the development of Soviet psychology does have characteristic features which distinguish it from the development of Western (and particularly Anglo-American) psychology. Perhaps the most distinguishing features of Soviet psychology are represented by the pre­ dominance of the historical-evolutionary approach and the emphasis on integrative physiological mechanisms underlying behavior. The development of Soviet psychological thinking can also be characterized as having been free of the fruitless discussions of mind-body dualism and of dominance by rat-and-pigeon-centered behaviorism. Soviet psychology had the benefit of a rich inheritance from the Sech­ that laid the foundation for modern psycho­ enov-Botkin-Pavlov school biology and biological psychiatry. Unfortunately, the politically engendered omnipresent dogmatism during the Lysenko-Stalin era of obscurantism tended to pervert this rich scientific heritage and hindered the development of a diversity of concepts and methods in the behavioral and biological sciences.

In this volume recent developments in the nonperturbative aspects of string theory, duality in N = 1 string compactifications, orientifolds and F-theory as well as the matrix model description of M-theory are reported. The D-brane approach to black holes and their entropy is also discussed.The phenomenological part is devoted to the main fields of present-day astroparticle physics: supersymmetry, neutrino physics and cosmology. The two most important aspects of supersymmetry are covered: Searches for superpartners (G Kane) and mechanisms of supersymmetry breaking (G Dvali).Results from recent neutrino experiments and their implications are presented (S Pakvasa). The central issues of modern cosmology such as inflation (R Brandenberger), formation of topological defects (T Vachaspati) and dark matter (M Kamionkowski) are discussed.

This volume collates papers presented at Phenomenological Aspects of Superstring Theories PAST-97, a workshop held in Trieste, Italy between 2-4 October 1997.

This volume presents introductory lectures on the Standard Model and Higgs physics, as well as QCD. These lectures provided the particle physics background for the main topics of the school: astroparticle physics and modern cosmology.