ISSN 0378-3472 VO § υ φ (Ti 2 ι υ .ü E υ Ω ο ■ Ζ ΙΛ . Contents 1 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 13 CHEMISTRY 21 EARTH SCIENCES 27 ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY 40 ENERGY PRODUCTION, CONVERSION AND CONSERVATION 44 LIFE SCIENCES 54 MATERIALS 62 MATHEMATICS, COMPUTERS, TELECOMMUNICATIONS 63 NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING 67 PHYSICS euro M lm"Pillili SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION FROM EUROPEAN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT abstracts 35/1181-35/1624 INFORMATION CONTENT The European Union's research and technological development (RTD) programmes give rise to a wide variety of publications, ranging from technical reports on individual projects or results, to volumes of conference proceedings, scientific directories and guides, and state-of-the-art reviews of particular scientific or technical areas. Information is also published in the form of articles in scientific and technical journals, and as oral papers at conferences, workshops and similar meetings. These documents are published through a variety of sources, including EUR-OP (the Office of Official Publications), individual RTD programmes and commercial publishers. This section of the journal provides abstracts and bibliographic details for these publications. Where a document is published originally in a language other than English, the abstract is given in both the original language and English (in italics).