Bøger i Aging serien

This volume is a compilation of papers presented at the International Workshop on the Theory and Applications of the Cluster Variation and Path Probability Methods, held in the city of San Juan, Teotihuacan, Mexico, during June 18-22, 1995. The presentations at the workshop provided a state of the art review of the fundamental aspects of the CVM and PPM and their application to a wide range of problems in statistical mechanics and alloy theory. The volume begins with several articles dealing with the study of the kinetics of ordering in Ising sytems and alloys using the PPM and other classical techniques. These articles are followed by the contribution of Professor Masuo Suzuki on the Coherent Anomaly Method which has added a new dimension to mean field theory, and the CVM in particular, in the study of critical phenomena. The remaining of the volume is dedicated to fundamental aspects and specific applications of the CVM in a wide range of subjects ranging from bulk and surface studies to new areas of inquiry such as the problem of image reconstruction. Since the inception by Prof. Ryoichi Kikuchi of the CVM in 1950 and of the PPM in 1966, the latter after a gestation period of approximately six years, the tech­ niques have found wide acceptance in the physics and materials science communities. Both methods are properly regarded as seminal contributions to equilibrium and non­ equilibrium statistical mechanics.

On aper capita basis, the aged-that is those 65 and older-appear in outpatient health care facilities at a rate wh ich is approximately fifty percent greater than their adult peers, stay about three times as long in general medical and surgical facilities, and represent more than 90 percent of the long-term-care beds in the United States.