EDITORIAL INFORMATION

The subject of the 9th meeting of the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Cosmic Velocity Fields, really started to emerge during a workshop in Jerusalem in 1990. It is clear that numerous advances have been made, on both the theoretical and observational front. The IAP meeting was the first international meeting to permit a global assessement of the observational data available today, of the methods used to gather and analyse them, and of their consequences for our ideas of the time evolution of the Universe.

(Extracted from the Foreword).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Avant-Propos.

-Foreword.

-List of Participants.

-Program of the Meeting.

-Voyage Dans la Lune - Trip to the Moon.

-An Introduction to Cosmic Velocity Fields.

-Part 1: From Distance Indicators to Velocities.

-Distances to Centaurus Ellipticals Using the Surface Brightness Fluctuation Technique.
-A Homogeneus Catalog of 3300+ Galaxy Peculiar Motions.
-What Do We Mean By "Malmquist Bias"?
-Bivariate Distributions, Selections Functions, and Bias in Astrophysics. A Case Study: The Tully-Fisher Relation.
-Abell 2199 and Abell 2634 Revisited.
-Bias in Velocity Field Recoveries.
-Testing the Tully-Fisher Relations: A Comparison With Distances Estimated Via Supernovae of Types Ia and II.
-The Motion of the Local Group With Respect to the 15,000 km/sec Abell Cluster Frame.
-How Accurately Can Relative Distances Be Measured Using the Tully-Fisher Relation?
-Mass-to-light Ratio and the Tully-Fisher Relation.
-The Brightest Stars in Galaxies Are not Good Distance Indicators.
-A Local Whole-sky Redshift Sample.
-About Biases on the Determination of H0 and of Distances of Galaxies.
-Study of Peculiar Velocity in the Nearby Region.

-Part 2: Kinematical and Dynamical Analyses.

-Kinematical and Dynamical Approaches to Gravitational Instability.
-Inference of Peculiar Velocities Derived from (formula).
-Determining omega from Peculiar Velocities.
-Measuring Bulk Flows in Large Scale Surveys.
-A Spherical Harmonic Approach to Redshift Distortion: Implications for omega0 and the Power Spectrum.
-Reliability of the Peculiar Velocity Field Predicted from Redshift Surveys.
-Optical Galaxies within 8000 km/s and the Predicted Peculiar Velocity Field.
-Spherical Harmonic Reconstruction of Cosmic Problems with Mixed Boundary Conditions.
-Wavelet Analysis of the Cosmic Velocity Field.
-Constraints upon the Cosmological Density Parameter from Tully-Fisher Observations of IRAS Galaxies.
-Potent and Max-flow Algorithms.
-Bayesian Estimates of the Large-scale Velocity Field in Real Space and Redshift Space.

-Part 3: Connection with Dynamics.

-Connection with Dynamics: General Introduction.
-Do the Cosmological Density-velocity Correlations Test the Gravitational Instability Hypothesis?
-The Significance of the Cosmic Virial Theorem.
-What Can We Learn from the Large-Scale Velocity Field?
-Perturbation Theory Confronts Observations: Implications for the Initial Conditions and omega.
-Cosmological Velocity Bias.
-Redshift-space Distribution of Galaxies and Large-scale Velocity Field.
-New Approximation in the Adhesion Model for Describing Large-Scale Structure of the Universe.
-The Potential Drop Test.
-Non-Linear Evolution of the Cosmic Velocity Field.
-Reconstruction of the Large Scale Structure.
-Lagrangian Kinematics and Dynamics.
-Non-linear Dynamics of Irrotational Dust: Eulerian and Lagrangian Approaches.
-Quasi-linear Regime of Gravitational Instability: Implication to Density-Velocity Relation.
-Variational Principle Calculations of Large-Scale Structure.

-Part 4: Velocities in Specific Models.

-The Density Evolution of Voids.
-Testing Models for Structure Formation.
-Galaxy Velocity Field in Titled Cold Dark Matter Models.
-Confrontation of the CDM+HDM Model with Observational Data.
-Confrontation of the Lauer and Postman Cluster Velocity Field with Models.
-Peculiar Velocities and Microwave Background Anisotropies from Cosmic Strings.
-Voids and their Velocity Fields in Gravitational Instability Scenarios.
-The Second Coming of Cold Dark Matter?
-Special Session: The Southern Sky Survey.

-Conclusion.

-What I Learned this Week in Paris (About Cosmic Velocity Fields).
-Summary - Theoretical Issues.

-Poster Contributions.

OUR REVIEW

As is stated at the foreword of this book, a compilation of the papers presented during the 9th. meeting of astrophysics of the IAP, from July 12 - 17, 1993, the progress both at a theoretical level and at that of observational data recently obtained around the theme it deals about, made it necessary for a high level meeting to be held where specialized scientists could share experiences and results to allow for the faster progress of this sector of astrophysics. The cosmic fields of velocity, a question that was not thoroughly examined before some 20 years ago, have nevertheless a great importance for the development of our knowledge of the Universe, most specially on its structure, distribution, dark matter, etc. Throughout its 600 pages, the publishers and the contributors to this book update us about everything we know about this issue.

The mathematical and theoretical depth with which each one of its parts is treated, render this work an eminently technical product aimed at astrophysicians who are remarkably interested in this scientific region.