Bøger i Developments Series serien

Since the first edition of this book was written, public awareness of tropical rain forests has become so great that issues involving their exploitation are the stuff of daily newspapers, radio and television.

This book is appropriate for advanced undergraduate students of micro biology and biological sciences in universities and colleges, as well as for research workers entering the field and requiring a broad contemporary view of anaerobic bacteria and associated concepts.

In the field of plastics technology, the process of extrusion is widespread and important. This has occurred not only by the use of modern screw extruders, but also by the incorporation of improved process control systems, the better design of dies and extrudate handling machinery and by the utilisation of improved plastics materials and additives.

Rather it is that the biologist, lacking the physicist's or chemist's experience in "reading" mathematical formulae, finds it difficult to appreciate what is happening in a mathematical treatment and to grasp the implications of the results obtained, when these are given in mathematical form.

Any series with a title beginning Developments in. . . is obviously intended to report innovatory and novel ideas. The trouble with innovatory thinking is that it often seems too esoteric for practical people to bother with. Certainly, this book is not meant primarily to be a quick-reference manual for fabricators. Its purpose is rather to signal the kind of developments which almost certainly will impinge on the world of reinforced plastics in, say, four or five years' time. In this particular volume most of the authors have directly or indirectly addressed the practical problems of processing and fabrica­ tion with reinforced plastics. There has been no attempt to review the current state-of-the-art of producing fabricated articles in reinforced plastics by such techniques as filament winding or pultrusion because these subjects have already been well covered elsewhere. Nor have I even tried to provide a comprehensive survey of all that could be called new in this field. Instead, I have simply taken a number of important and somewhat underestimated topics, generally material­ orientated rather than machine-centred, and asked leading figures to summarise the scene. At the risk of appearing arbitrary let us consider the first chapter by Cattanach and Cogswell. They tell us how a new material has been produced which not only adds to the range of composites available, it makes possible new fabrication processes (at least, new to FRP). Consequently it should result ultimately in many new markets and products. The opportunities are lucidly and imagina­ tively set out.