In the opening session the Chairman of the Seminar underlined the important role of the permanent monitoring panels with respect to the 15 planetary emergencies. A special session of the Seminar was devoted to reporting on the activity of these panels. Short papers, abstracts and transparencies in the opening session introduced the subjects of the contributions: 'Climatology and El Nino' (Nadia Pinardi, Neville Nicholls, Congbin Fu, Akimasa Sumi, William Sprigg and Llowell Wood) and 'Desertification' (Douglas Johnson, Xinmin Liu, Lennart Olsson and Norman Rosenberg). Contributions on 'Medicine & Biotechnologies' were presented by Paul Brown, Robert Will, Benardino Ghetti and Guy de The. The Theme 'Defence Against Cosmic Objects' was covered by Walter Huebner, John Remo and William Bottke; 'Water and Pollution' by Herman Bouwer, Gennady Palshin, David Rice and Paolo Ricci; and problems centered upon 'Food' by Carlo Lerici and Silvia Franceschi, 'Proliferation and Weapons of Mass Destruction' was discussed by Henning Wegener, Andrei Piontkovski, Reiner Huber, Tony Mason, Willis Stanley, Gregory Canavan and Povl Olgaard; 'Limits of Development' by Hilmar Schubert and Leonardas Kairiukstis; and 'Energy' by Stanislav Subbotin, Andrei Gagarinski and Eugeni Velikhov. T D Lee closed the Seminar by emphasizing the link between basic science and planetary emergencies.

This was the first of a number of seminars dealing with one of the most complex of the new challenges in the 21st century, which call for the participation of a broad range of experts. Eminent economists, decision-makers, defence specialists, political analysts and sociologists presented their views and participated in the debates. In the wake of the dramatic event of 11 September 2001, the Afghanistan war and the resurgence of terrorist acts on all the continents, a host of issues were reconsidered and the role of science and technology was reassessed. The 27th Session was primarily oriented toward the definition of the new types of confrontation, and the identification of various factors and issues that gave rise to them and global trends.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings® (ISSHP® / ISI Proceedings)• Index to Social Sciences & Humanities Proceedings (ISSHP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)

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