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In this volume a wide range of topics in particle physics, string theory and cosmology and their interconnections is covered.

At the time of writing (mid-October 1998) we can look back at what has been a very successful ECOOP’98. Despite the time of the year – in the middle of what is traditionally regarded as a holiday period – ECOOP'98 was a record breaker in terms of number of participants. Over 700 persons found their way to the campus of the Brussels Free University to participate in a wide range of activities. This 3rd ECOOP workshop reader reports on many of these activities. It contains a careful selection of the input and a cautious summary of the outcome for the numerous discussions that happened during the workshops, demonstrations and posters. As such, this book serves as an excellent snapshot of the state of the art in the field of object oriented programming. About the diversity of the submissions A workshop reader is, by its very nature, quite diverse in the topics covered as well as in the form of its contributions. This reader is not an exception to this rule: as editors we have given the respective organizers much freedom in their choice of presentation because we feel form follows content. This explains the diversity in the types of reports as well as in their lay out.

Helps to make the beginner more comfortable in using a PC and make computers less terrifying. This guide allows you to work at your own pace and discover what all the fuss is about.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, KI-98, held in Bremen, Germany, in September 1998. The 16 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the proceedings. Also included are three invited papers and abstracts of two invited talks, as well as an appendix containing up-to-date descriptions of German AI projects. Thus the volume gives a unique overview of AI research in Germany.

Some of the best current research on realistic rendering is included in this volume. It emphasizes the current "hot topics” in this field: image based rendering, and efficient local and global-illumination calculations. In the first of these areas, there are several contributions on real-world model acquisition and display, on using image-based techniques for illumination and on efficient ways to parameterize and compress images or light fields, as well as on clever uses of texture and compositing hardware to achieve image warping and 3D surface textures. In global and local illumination, there are contributions on extending the techniques beyond diffuse reflections, to include specular and more general angle dependent reflection functions, on efficiently representing and approximating these reflection functions, on representing light sources and on approximating visibility and shadows. Finally, there are two contributions on how to use knowledge about human perception to concentrate the work of accurate rendering only where it will be noticed, and a survey of computer graphics techniques used in the production of a feature length computer-animated film with full 3D characters.