Birthday Celebration Research Articles

BRUCKNER AND THE THIRD REICH: PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON TASTE

Anton Bruckner (1824–1896), the Austrian composer famous for his monumental and sophisticated symphonies, has never been among the most popular composers in the English-speaking world. However, the fact that his works became the favourites of the Nazis before and during WWII has been the subject of an ongoing scholarly debate since the 1990's. Not only did Hitler show personal approval of the symphonist (see figures 1 and 2), the National Socialist Party used the orchestral music of Bruckner to accompany a number of important party events. For example, in the 1939 video footage of Hitler's 50th birthday celebration, we hear the final climax of the Fifth Symphony accompanying images of the Führer. After the German radio announced the death of Hitler on 1st May 1945, the Adagio of the Seventh Symphony was played, perhaps as a kind of funeral music for the Nazi dictator.

Theatre Dancers at the Court of Queen Anne

When fierce competition between London’s two theatre companies in the late 1690’S led to the engagement of the French dancers Anthony l’Abbe and Claude Balon for Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, these celebrated performers were summoned to dance before King William at Kensington Palace. Virtuoso French dancers were engaged on the London stage throughout the reign of Queen Anne, despite the war with France, together with English female dancers trained in the French tradition. These stage dancers appeared in the theatrical entertainments that were a traditional part of celebrations at court, particularly on the monarch’s birthday. Dancers played an important role in the birthday celebrations of 1704-1707, but in the later years of the Queen’s reign they were at least partially eclipsed by Italian castrati and foreign prima donnas.

Anthony l’Abbé and the Court of st James’s: Dances to Honour the Hanoverian Royal Family

In the early eighteenth century the celebration of royal birthdays was the most important and best-attended event in the English court calendar, and this tradition was to continue during the Hanoverian era. A number of ballroom dances still survive which were created by the dancing-master Anthony L’Abbé for the birthdays of members of the Hanoverian royal family between 1715 and 1733, and published for sale to dancing-masters and members of the public wishing to study the latest royal birthday dances. This essay looks firstly at the royal birthday celebrations and the place of dance within them — what was danced, where, and by whom; secondly at Anthony L’Abbé himself—who he was, what his connections with the English court were; and thirdly, sets the extant ballroom dances by L’Abbé against that court context to explore the differences of intent between L’Abbé’s birthday dances and his ‘dances for the year’,

Editorial

Editorial

REASONING BY ANALOGY: ATTEMPTS TO SOLVE THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT PARADOX

Talk given by one of us (A. Zee) at Murray Gell-Mann's 80th Birthday Celebration held in Singapore, February 2010. Based on R. A. Porto and A. Zee, Class. Quant. Grav. 27, 065006 (2010) [arXiv:0910.3716 [hep-th]]

Benson R. Wilcox—Industry, Genius, Judgment

The 29th President of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, Benson R. Wilcox, MD, died at his home in Fearington Village Center, NC, on May 11, 2010. In 2 weeks, he would have been 78 years old, and the focus of a birthday celebration for his wife, Patsy Davis, his 4 children, Adelaide, Sandra, Melissa, and Reid, 11 grandchildren, and many loved ones. With his death, caused by brain cancer, the University of North Carolina lost one of its most prolific and loyal sons, and the profession of thoracic surgery, one of its wisest leaders. Two facts are certain: Ben will be remembered forever by his students, residents, and colleagues, and our sky is, indeed, Carolina blue.

Anticipated Versus Actual Alcohol Consumption During 21st Birthday Celebrations

The 21st birthday celebration is often associated with excessive alcohol consumption. The current study examined whether individuals consume more alcohol than anticipated during their celebration and whether situational factors contribute to prediction errors. College students (N = 150; 50% female) who planned to drink during their 21st birthday celebration were contacted by telephone 1 week before their celebrations and asked about their birthday plans, including anticipated alcohol consumption. The week after the celebration, in-person semi-structured interviews and self-report measures were administered to obtain information about the 21st birthday celebration, including type and amount of alcohol consumed, pace of drinking, influential peer involvement, and engagement in 21st birthday traditions. The majority of 21st birthday celebrants consumed more alcohol than they anticipated, with men showing greater prediction error than women. Situational factors were positively associated with the discrepancy between anticipated and actual alcohol consumption. Drinking shots, drinking at a fast pace, celebrating with influential peers, and engaging in 21st birthday traditions were associated with drinking more alcohol than anticipated during 21st birthday celebrations. Findings suggest future interventions that target situational factors could reduce excessive 21st birthday drinking.

Sufi Pluralism in Bangladesh: The Case of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa

28 *Sarwar Alam received his doctorate in Public Policy at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, in 2006. Before moving to the United States, he served in the Civil Service of Bangladesh. He has been a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia since 2007. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, Fall 2010 Sufi Pluralism in Bangladesh: The Case of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa Sarwar Alam* (I) The following statement was made by one of the devotees of Maizbhandariyya Tariqa of Bangladesh: “I have been familiar with Maizbhandar Sharif for about 23 years, but I have been attached to it for about the past 12 years. I first heard the name of Shahanshah Ziaul Haque Maizbhandari in 1985/86. During the year 1987, I attended his birthday celebration (Khoshroz Sharif) with the intention of just socializing and eating, but I ended up catching a glimpse of him. I visited the place again with one of my friends in 1991. I went there around ten or eleven o’clock at night. I ate tabarruk (blessed food) and went to the fifth floor of the guesthouse, where I slept on a bamboo mat with a brick under my head. I woke up the next morning and walked around on the main street of the Dargah Sharif, where I enjoyed the morning breeze and felt something in my heart….I felt from my soul an attachment to the Maizbhandar Sharif; and I cried….Everything of mine becomes tranquil when I go there. Everything in me…I mean, how to say, I just simply do not feel the urge to ever return home.” During an in-depth interview, he expressed the process of his interiorization of experience as a devotee as well as of his faith in the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa. This article discusses the influence of Sufism, especially the Maizbhandari Sufis in Bangladesh, in developing a harmonious and pluralistic society. 29 1. Anisuzzaman, Muslim-manash o Bangla Shahitya [Muslim-intellect and Bengali Literature], third edition (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Muktadhara, 1983), 25; Muhammad Enamul Haq, A History of Sufi-ism in Bengal (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1975), 260; Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims in Bengal (Down to A. D. 1538), second edition (Chittagong, Bangladesh: Baitush Sharaf Islamic Research Institute, 1985), 185. 2. Sarwar Alam, ForDomestic Use Only: Muslim Women’s Perception of Power and Powerlessness in a Bangladesh Village (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arkansas, 2006), 81. 3 Peter J. Bertocci (2002), “Form and Variation in Maizbhandari Sufism.” Available at http://www.sunnirazvi.org/Data/Jan%202005/Bertocci.doc retrieved on May 31, 2007 4 Karim 1985, 185 5 Vincent J. Cornell, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco: Epistemological Dimensions of a Polemic,” in Frederick De Jong & Bernd Radtke (eds.) Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999, pp. 207-224), 207. The population of Bangladesh is 135 million, out of which 88 percent is Muslim, making Bangladesh the third largest Muslim country in the world. Most scholars believe that the majority of the population embraced Islam through the influence of the Sufis (mystics, holy men);1 but also through the influence of non-Sufi preachers. Both the urban and rural societies in Bangladesh contain four overlapping Islamic traditions: (i) an accommodationist and tolerant tradition of coexistence of different faiths that influence one another on a religio-cultural basis under the influence of Sufis and Pirs (spiritual preceptor); (ii) a scripturally literalist and socially active Islamic tradition derived from the influence of revivalist reform movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (iii) a modern Islamist tradition mostly derived from radical and militant Islamist political parties and organizations ; and (iv) a secularized and modernist tradition of Islam derived from the European education introduced by the British colonial rulers.2 Alongside the non-Sufi Sunni Islamic tradition, Sufi ideologies of different traditions have a great influence upon the daily lives of most Bangladeshi Muslims. Like in the early days of Islam on the Bengal frontier, Sufis still maintain important connections between Islam and the masses. In fact, a large majority of Bangladeshi Muslims perceives Sufis...

Introduction: Good Things Come to Those Who Negotiate

On May 15, 2008, the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) held its twentieth birthday celebration at the Agassiz Theatre in Radcliffe Yard. I was next door at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library, sleepily perusing my next fat folder of government documents. As the laughter and singing wafted its way across the quad, the choice of whether to stay or go was clear. I followed the trail of balloons to the theater, grabbed my complimentary union tote bag, smiled at all the lovingly crafted refreshments that awaited the revelers, and squeezed into a tiny space in the front as the lights went down. Long familiar with the upbeat and bold spirit of the union, I was still caught off guard when the lights came back up. Seated a few feet from me on the stage was a 1940s femme fatale who began to belt out “A Union Is a Girl's Best Friend.”

The Satirist Who Clowns: Mark Twain’s Performance at the Whittier Birthday Celebration

The Satirist Who Clowns: Mark Twain’s Performance at the Whittier Birthday Celebration James E. Caron In December 1877, Sam Clemens participated in the public celebration of John Greenleaf Whittier’s seventieth birthday staged by the publisher of The Atlantic Monthly. The story he told as part of the parade of after-dinner encomiums has been stigmatized by William Dean Howells as “that hideous mistake of poor Clemens” (qtd. in Smith, “Mistake” 162), and the memory of it for Clemens was apparently so fraught with anxiety and uncertainty about the propriety of telling the tale that Richard Lowry has referred to it as a primal scene of Mark Twain criticism (24). Indeed, most analyses of the speech and its aftermath investigate the personal stakes for Sam Clemens, and Lowry’s comment channels the psychoanalytical undercurrent in many of them. The other focal point for analysis has been what Mark Twain’s Whittier birthday speech implies for American culture, an emphasis initiated by Bernard DeVoto and then amplified by Henry Nash Smith. This essay will show that these disparate focal points name two sides of the same performance of satire rather than advance competing interpretations. I will not ignore the personal side of the inquiry into possible meanings of Mark Twain’s Whittier birthday speech, but rather than investigate the event as a primal scene that generates a personal story of identity crisis, I will stress the symbolism of cultural processes that enable a narrative of literary history. The speech and reactions to it function as a drama that symbolically enacted American literary culture in 1877. Moreover, the tensions that defined the drama subsequently generated a particular narrative about American literary history. Conceptualized as a cultural primal scene, the Whittier birthday event therefore provides the historical narrative’s rationale and presents to literary critics and historians a tangle of motivations for the principal actors in the drama. For Clemens as well as for the honored guests, a personal level existed in the drama that was nevertheless charged with cultural meaning: Whittier and the other honored guests were both individual men and cultural icons, but so was Clemens an [End Page 433] individual while his literary alter ego, Mark Twain, also stood iconic before the crowd. Certainly, the literati audience reacted to the event at the personal and cultural levels, as did contemporary newspaper editors in Boston and elsewhere. For William Dean Howells and Henry Houghton, respectively editor and publisher of The Atlantic Monthly, personal and cultural levels existed as well, but so too did a commercial aspect. For subsequent generations of literary critics, the event continues to register as a cultural benchmark. Together these groups represent a complicated layering of audiences for the symbolic drama of the primal scene. Thus they necessarily participate in the drama’s recurring cultural performance. The personal level of the event signifies the obvious and yet easily overlooked social interaction among putative equals expected at a festive dinner, that is, the manners expressing and customs regulating the participants’ behaviors in that interaction. Though the story Mark Twain tells travesties this personal quality of politeness and dignity, Clemens carefully constructed the text to separate actual men from fictional characters. Nevertheless, some in the audience, including Howells, misread travesty as personal insult. Howells’s misreading has decisively shaped all subsequent narratives about the event, which points to the pivotal supporting role that friend and editor Howells played in the symbolic drama while Clemens as Mark Twain played the lead role of a satiric clown. In this role, Mark Twain displayed his own foolishness in order to show his audience theirs. As the clown of the drama, Mark Twain embodies symbolic indeterminacy of a kind and on a scale that the settled narrative of Bostonian cultural superiority could not incorporate. The tale Mark Twain performed as a recalled memory triggered this disruption. Operating in the subjunctive mood of “What if?,” the tale imagines an alternative cultural narrative that outraged and scandalized a literary world that thought it still held sway as the country’s cultural pole star. As symbolic drama, the Whittier birthday speech disclosed what was at stake culturally: the role of the satirist in nineteenth-century American...

Social Norms vs. Risk Reduction Approaches to 21st Birthday Celebrations

Background: Celebratory drinking among college students on their 21st birthday often involves dangerous levels of alcohol consumption. Purpose: This study utilized an experimental design to assess the efficacy of social norm and risk reduction strategies developed to reduce high-risk drinking and alcohol related consequences among college students on their 21st birthday. Methods: Students were randomly assigned to one of four cohorts including a control group, a social norms group, a risk reduction group and a combination of both social norms and risk reduction. Each group received an electronic birthday card with intervention specific information. Students were sent an electronic survey three days after their birthday to assess alcohol consumption levels and related behaviors (n=702). Results: No significant differences existed among the four cohorts in students' drinking behavior, negative consequences, or protective behaviors employed. Discussion: This inquiry revealed that social norm, risk reduction messages or combination of the two strategies, delivered electronically, failed to influence celebratory drinking patterns. Translation to Health Education Practice: Interventions addressing 21st birthday celebrations may need to extend beyond targeting the individual to yield significant behavioral changes.

Alcohol use by undergraduate students on their 21st birthday: Predictors of actual consumption, anticipated consumption, and normative beliefs.

Recent research has identified celebration of a 21st birthday as an environmental event during which many college students engage in risky levels of alcohol consumption. The current study examined the relationship between personality and different aspects of alcohol use during 21st birthday celebrations: actual amount consumed for those who had turned 21, anticipated amount consumed for those under the age of 21, and normative beliefs regarding the amount other students consume on their 21st birthdays. Sensation seeking and impulsivity both displayed significant bivariate relationships with all three aspects of 21st birthday drinking. Personality traits did not contribute unique variance to actual 21st birthday drinking after the effects of typical alcohol consumption were accounted for in the models. Impulsivity contributed unique variance to models accounting for anticipated drinking and normative beliefs. Additional research is necessary to better understand the role personality variables play on alcohol consumption during 21st birthday celebrations.

Collection of materials presented at the conference “Geometry and Operator Theory” dedicated to N. Teleman’s 65th birthday celebration, Ancona, 20–22 September 2007

This paper precludes the proceedings of the conference “Geometry and Operator Theory” dedicated to N. Teleman’s 65th birthday celebration (Ancona, September 2007)

Where's the Library? Teaching Braille Reading with a Meaning-oriented Focus

It was my first week as a teacher in the new resource room for young braille readers. I had spent all summer gathering materials and setting up my classroom. Proudly I showed the principal around the room, pointing out the stacks of basal readers in braille, the shelf of fine motor manipulatives, the acorns and brightly colored fall leaves on the feely board, and the slightly tattered play kitchen acquired from a departing teacher. The principal paused and scanned the room thoughtfully. But, Ms. Swenson, the principal said, where is your classroom library of books for the children to I was stunned, both by my glaring oversight and the implications of her question. What was the point in teaching children braille, if there was nothing for them to read? After five years as an itinerant teacher working primarily with middle school students, I was highly unqualified to teach beginning readers. Building a classroom library was the first of an ever-expanding array of new challenges that awaited me. Yet, it is the one that has remained with me the longest. Throughout my 30 years as a teacher of students who are visually impaired, I have taken great pleasure in creating motivating reading materials and selecting braille books that my students want to read. It is my belief that providing children with enticing, well-written books builds the foundation for a lifetime of reading enjoyment. The early 1980s, when I started as a resource room teacher, was still the era of phonics workbooks, basal readers, and scripted lessons. Soon, however, the whole-language movement began to challenge traditional methods with its meaning-based orientation to reading and writing. Emergent reading behaviors, such as turning pages, reciting text from memory, or scribbling a message with a crayon, were encouraged as approximations of mature reading. Authentic children's literature that used colorful words and interesting plots replaced the stilted, controlled vocabulary of stories that were common in basal readers, and young writers were encouraged to express their thoughts using temporary spelling, a process by which children write letters that match the sounds they hear in words. The advent of the whole-language approach was a turning point in my teaching career. Watching my students' progress and their enthusiasm for the new methods and materials convinced me that a focus on meaning was central to literacy instruction. Meaning-oriented instruction does not negate the need for discrete skill-based learning in areas such as braille character recognition and phonics. In my view, beginning readers need a balance of skill-oriented and meaning-oriented instruction. Skills taught in isolation, however, should be integrated into meaningful reading and writing contexts as soon as possible. The ultimate goal for readers of any age is to derive meaning from text. MAKING BRAILLE INSTRUCTION MEANINGFUL FOR PRESCHOOLERS How can we make very early braille instruction meaningful for young children? A love of books begins with story time. As families and teachers print-braille books aloud in a comfortable setting, children discover that the bumps on the page convey spoken words. Even more important, they learn to expect wonderful things from books: rhymes and rhythms that dance in their ears, experiences as familiar as taking a bath or as exotic as a flight to the moon, and questions that deepen their thinking about the world around them. After they have memorized their favorite story, preschoolers run their fingers over the braille and read it themselves. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Creating simple braille books with tactile illustrations broadens and individualizes the emergent literacy experiences of young children. Student-made books may focus on basic concepts, such as textures, shapes, or numbers. Or they may draw their inspiration from a child's own experiences--perhaps a day at the beach illustrated with shells and a small bag of sand or a birthday celebration featuring a plastic fork, candles, and ribbons. …

The warm ionized medium in spiral galaxies

This article reviews observations and models of the diffuse ionized gas that permeates the disk and halo of our Galaxy and others. It was inspired by a series of invited talks presented during an afternoon scientific session of the 65th birthday celebration for Professor Carl Heiles held at Arecibo Observatory in August 2004. This review is in recognition of Carl's long-standing interest in and advocacy for studies of the ionized as well as the neutral components of the interstellar medium.

Subjective Responses to Alcohol Prime Event-Specific Alcohol Consumption and Predict Blackouts and Hangover

Individual differences in subjective response to alcohol and the occurrence of blackouts and hangover are associated with the development of alcohol-use disorders. As such, subjective responses to alcohol, blackouts, and hangover may share a biological vulnerability to excessive alcohol consumption. The purpose of the current study was to examine subjective responses to alcohol as predictors of estimated blood alcohol concentration (BAC), blackouts, and hangover for a single heavy drinking event. Data were collected on 150 (50% female) college students at a large, public university who reported consuming alcohol during their 21st birthday celebration. Using semi-structured interviews and self-report measures, subjective responses to alcohol (at midpoint of a 21 st birthday celebration) were examined as predictors of final estimated BAC, blackouts, and hangover. Stimulant effects reported for the midpoint of the drinking event predicted final estimated BAC. Both stimulant and sedative alcohol effects directly predicted blackouts during the drinking event and the occurrence of a hangover. Neither stimulant nor sedative effects were mediated by final estimated BAC. Retrospective reports of subjective responses to alcohol were associated with the level of intoxication, blackouts, and hangover during a heavy drinking event. Findings therefore suggest the utility of incorporating subjective responses to alcohol into event-specific interventions that are designed to reduce or prevent heavy episodic drinking.

A LIFE OF INTEGRITY: A TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN

Previous articleNext article No AccessA LIFE OF INTEGRITY: A TRIBUTE TO PROFESSOR JOHN HOPE FRANKLINGenna Rae McNeilGenna Rae McNeil Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 94, Number 3Summer 2009The Legacy of Dr. John Hope Franklin A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/JAAHv94n3p323 Views: 5Total views on this site © ASALHPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A tribute to Jagadis Chunder Bose on the occasion of his sesquicentennial birthday celebration [Reverberations

Jagadis Chunder Bose, popularly known as J.C. Bose, was a quiet, gentle, and unassuming scientist, with an avuncular disposition. You wouldn't know if you just took a casual glance at him, but who--in the opinion of many--was well ahead of his time by about 50 or 60 years. Many of the pioneering discoveries he made, for instance in the areas of wireless propagation, mm waves, crystal detectors, and semiconductor physics, to name just a few, date back to late 19th and early 20th century, long before they became so intertwined with our lives that we don't even give them a second thought when we use devices based on these discoveries.

REBEL YELL: The politics of The Celebration/Festen (1998)

The Celebration/Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998, Denmark) was the first film to have been certified under the rigours of the Dogme95 Vow of Chastity (von Trier and Vinterberg, 1995). It is also notable as a political film that presents a rebellion against an abusive patriarchal regime on the microcosmic bourgeoisie estate during the titular birthday celebration. In fashioning a comprehensive treatment of The Celebration's text and its context, I open with an account of ideology that is indebted to the materialist emphases of Louis Althusser (1994) and Terry Eagleton (1991). Next, I briefly address the trajectory of Denmark's national film history out of which Dogme and The Celebration emerge. With respect to Dogme, I cross-examine assumptions about realism by positing it as irreducibly a style and artistic strategy (Stam 2000); in turn, I shift the accent from the quest for realism to whether The Celebration meets the looser standard of being surface-plausible. In detail, I discuss the film's style as it deviates from realism via shadings of foreshadowing and extensive cross-cutting. Finally, I interpret the film as a progressive (but not humourless) myth of ‘bottom-up’ revolt against abusive authority and the ideologies that nourish it.

Preface

Abstract The POLYCHAR 16: World Forum on Advanced Materials, organized by the University of Lucknow, was held from 17 to 21 February 2008 in the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. The annual POLYCHAR conferences have been sponsored by IUPAC for several years and are known for combining the broad field of materials sciences with a clear focus on polymeric materials (the name "POLYCHAR" is derived from the term "polymer characterization"). POLYCHAR 16 was supported by many scientific associations and industries such as IUPAC, Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) (Trieste, Italy), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) (India), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (India), Reliance Industries Ltd. (India), Department of Science and Technology (India), Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Uttar Pradesh Council of Science and Technology (UPCST) (India), Lucknow Chapter, Materials Research Society of India (MRSI), and University of Lucknow. As in past years, POLYCHAR puts emphasis on the quality of research presented - in contrast to maximizing the number of participants. The areas covered include nanomaterials and smart materials; natural and biodegradable materials and recycling; materials synthesis; polymers for energy; rheology, solutions, and processing; mechanical properties and performance; characterization and structure-property relationships; biomaterials and tissue engineering; dielectric and electrical properties; surfaces, interfaces, and tribology; and predictive methods. Symptomatically, the number of papers on "green" science was higher than at POLYCHAR 15 last year in Búzios, Rio de Janeiro. There were a total of 292 registered participants from 35 countries (Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Fiji, UK, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Mauritius, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sri Lanka, Slovakia, South Africa, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela). This reflects the philosophy of POLYCHAR to provide an international forum to encourage young scientists and advanced students to present their scientific work and give them the opportunity to meet with colleagues and well-known scientists to discuss their results, exchange experiences, and make new contacts, in particular, international ones. Many industrial contacts and much international cooperation with exchange of students and scientists have resulted from this and earlier POLYCHAR meetings. This conference volume represents only a small fraction of the multitude of contributions from different parts of materials science - 48 oral contributions and 170 posters. Many of the contributions have review character, some represent excellent original contributions. Only a small number could be selected for this volume because of the limited space that is available. All this was possible with the sponsorship of IUPAC. Highlights of the conference were the Paul J. Flory Research Award (ex aequo) to Prof. Jiasong He, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; the International Materials Research Award to Dr. Rameshvar Adhikari, Tribhuvan University, Katmandu, Nepal; and numerous awards for young scientists and students, including the IUPAC Poster Award. Special Prof. Brar's 60th Birthday Celebration Awards were given to IUPAC poster prize winners. The next POLYCHAR will be hosted by Jean-Marc Saiter, University of Rouen, Rouen, France in April 2009. Poonam Tandon Conference Executive Secretary and Co-editor