Includes Part 1A: Books, Part 1B: Pamphlets, Serials and Contributions to Periodicals and Part 2: Periodicals. (Part 2: Periodicals incorporates Part 2, Volume 41, 1946, New Series)

Readers will find fascinating details about the discovery, whereabouts, and value of famous opals, from such classic specimens as the Burning of Troy Opal to the Bonanza Opal and other more recent discoveries. Finally, the book surveys today's major opal-producing areas and provides current information on opal occurrence worldwide. Punctuating the text are useful tables, extensive glossaries of opal types and opal-related terms, and beautiful photographs that capture the essence and mystery of this most exquisite stone.

The authors present a new method of producing high-temperature dielectric crystals, including cubic zirconia, glass, and melted ceramic materials, based on direct induction melting in a cold container.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, in conjunction with Springer-Verlag New York, is pleased to announce a new series: CRYSTALS Growth, Properties, and Applications The series presents critical reviews of recent developments in the field of crystal growth, properties, and applications. A substantial portion of the new series will be devoted to the theory, mechanisms, and techniques of crystal growth. Occasionally, clear, concise, complete, and tested instructions for growing crystals will be published, particularly in the case of methods and procedures that promise to have general applicability. Responding to the ever-increasing need for crystal substances in research and industry, appropriate space will be devoted to methods of crystal characterization and analysis in the broadest sense, even though reproducible results may be expected only when structures, microstructures, and composition are really known. Relations among procedures, properties, and the morphology of crystals will also be treated with reference to specific aspects of their practical application. In this way the series will bridge the gaps between the needs of research and industry, the pos sibilities and limitations of crystal growth, and the properties of crystals. Reports on the broad spectrum of new applications - in electronics, laser tech nology, and nonlinear optics, to name only a few - will be of interest not only to industry and technology, but to wider areas of applied physics as well and to solid state physics in particular. In response to the growing interest in and importance of organic crystals and polymers, they will also be treated.