E. van Groesen - Böcker

The International Conference on Differential Equations, theor*y, nu- merics and applications(ICDE'96-Bandung) was held successfully at the West Aula of Institut TeknoIogi Bandung on September 29 - October 2, 1996, hosted by the Center of Mathematics and the Department of Mathe- matics ITB. This was the first international conference on differential equa- tions in the region and attended by participants from 12 countries: Aus- tralia, Cambodia, Hong Kong, France, IndonE'sia, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippine, Thailand, Singapore, USA and Vietnam. We would like to express our gratitude to the following organizations and institution: Directorate General of Higher Education of Indonesia (through Center Grant Project), Institut Teknologi Bandung, UNESCO (through Participating Programme and ROSTSEA Programme), European Economic Community(through the Joint Research Project between the Faculty of Ap- plied Mathematics, Universiteit Twente and the Department of Mathemat- ics, Institut Teknologi Bandung), South East Asian Mathematical Society (SEAMS), French Embassy in Jakarta and local sponsors for their generolls support which have made this conference possible.

Mathematical modeling - the ability to apply mathematical concepts and techniques to real-life systems - has expanded considerably over the last decades, making it impossible to cover all of its aspects in one course or textbook. Continuum Modeling in the Physical Sciences provides an extensive exposition of the general principles and methods of this growing field with a focus on applications in the natural sciences. The authors present a thorough treatment of mathematical modeling from the elementary level to more advanced concepts.Most of the chapters are devoted to a discussion of central issues such as dimensional analysis, conservation principles, balance laws, constitutive relations, stability, robustness, and variational methods, and are accompanied by numerous real-life examples. Readers will benefit from the exercises placed throughout the text and the Challenging Problems sections found at the ends of several chapters. The last chapter is devoted to elaborated case studies in polymer dynamics, fiber spinning, water waves, and waveguide optics.