February 9-10, 1989, Chubu University, Japan
Many natural systems have their own characteristic patterns, which are formed by various mechanisms such as aggregation, self-organization, and so on. Recently, considerable progress in the study of pattern formation has been seen in various scientific fields, including ecology, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics. On the basis of the progress in these fields, we would like to search for and discover some universal aspects by which we could understand the logical interrelations among the mechanisms of different kinds of phenomena.
This volume contains proceedings of the Second Nagoya Meeting on Pattern Formation, which was held at Chubu University, Nagoya, Japan from February 9 to 10, 1989. The invited talks covered a wide range of topics, from biology to applied mathematics, whose manuscripts were requested to be published as soon as possible by many attendees and others. It was very nice for us to have a proposal for publication by Prof. Ryuji Takaki, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal "Forma". Inspired by these circumstances, we edited this volume, hoping to further progress in this area of research. It was also a great pleasure to have a number of attendees from various parts of Japan who were eager to get useful information.
Finally, we thank Chubu University for giving the opportunity to have the meeting at the Learning Resources Center. We also wish to thank Prof. Tomoyasu Tanaka for his help in the organization and his encouragement during the meeting. The contributions of graduate school students T. Kakiuchi, Y. Ohta, and Y. Fujimoto are acknowledged. We would like to express sincere thanks to all authors for their kind cooperation in sending their manuscripts.
June, 1989
T. SEKIMURA and S. MIYAZIMA
Chubu University
Kasugai, Aichi 487, Japan