Since the presentation of the first Fields Medal in 1936, the award has played the role of the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. Awarded to mathematicians under the age of 40, it recognizes both existing mathematical work and the promise of future achievement.

Field Medallists such as Kunihiko Kodaira (1954), Richard E Borcherds (1998), William T Gowers (1998), Maxim Kontsevich (1998), Curtis T McMullen (1998) and Vladimir Voevodsky (2002), converged in this invaluable volume to provide a bird's-eye view of developments in mathematics over the past 60 years. It highlights the areas in which greatest progress has been made at various times.

Written for those who are concerned about Chinese medicine - how it works, what its current state is and, most important, how to make full use of it - the book helps clinicians serve their patients better and supplements the patients' conventional treatment.

The authors belong to three different fields, viz. clinical and basic sciences, Chinese medicine and pharmacology. Together, they have taken a macroscopic and philosophical approach, providing information from their areas of expertise, and attempting to make it comprehensive for users.

The Big Bang, the birth of the universe, was a singular event. All of the matter of the universe was concentrated at a single point, with temperatures so high that even the familiar protons and neutrons of atoms did not yet exist, but were replaced by a swirling maelstrom of energy, matter and antimatter. Exotic quarks and leptons flickered briefly into existence, before merging back into the energy sea.

This book explains the fascinating world of quarks and leptons and the forces that govern their behavior. Told from an experimental physicist's perspective, it forgoes mathematical complexity, using instead particularly accessible figures and apt analogies. In addition to the story of quarks and leptons, which are regarded as well-accepted fact, the author who is a leading researcher at the world's highest energy particle physics laboratory, also discusses mysteries on both the experimental and theoretical frontier, before tying it all together with the exciting field of cosmology and indeed the birth of the universe itself.

This important book reviews extensively the preparative chemistry of various nano-structured materials, as well as structural-property correlations for these new materials. Materials of current interest, such as nanocrystals, nanowires, nanotubes, porous materials, and composites, are compre-hensively covered.

The author, one of the world's foremost experts on nanoscale materials and electro-optics, is a member of the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society and the Materials Research Society. The 32-year-old's name was added to the 2003 list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review magazine, published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

This is an invaluable five-volume reference on the very broad and highly significant subject of computer aided and integrated manufacturing systems. It is a set of distinctly titled and well-harmonized volumes by leading world experts.

The techniques and technologies used in computer aided and integrated manufacturing systems have produced, and will no doubt continue to produce, major annual improvements in productivity, which is defined as the goods and services produced from each hour of work. This publication deals particularly with more effective utilization of labor and capital, especially information technology systems. Together the five volumes treat comprehensively the major techniques and technologies that are involved.

The term "economic globalization" has been discussed extensively in the popular press, by business executives and by policy-makers all over the world. While academic economists have made some excellent contributions to specific, technical aspects of economic globalization, there appears to be a need for economists to discuss the broader aspects of the issue in a more accessible manner. Failing this, the general debate will be informed only by the writings of non-economists.

That is the motivation for this book, which is a collection of essays on various aspects of economic globalization in general, but with specific reference to Asia.