Launching the Marine and Maritime book series, the 61 papers cover ship building and design; hydrodynamics; materials problems, ship propulsion, and equipment; navigation and ship operation; reliability and safety; environmental issues; structural aspects; deep sea systems and vehicles; and management aspects. Specific topics include optimizing fast craft hull structure by the genetic algorithm, transfer functions of nonlinear motion for a ship advancing in head seas, the alloys used for screw propellers in the Polish shipbuilding industry, the influence of different controllers on ship motion stabilization at applied an active fin stabilizer, an intelligent method of planning a ship's trajectory at sea, occupational accidents at sea, the latest standing regulation for preventing sea pollution from ships, a simple method for evaluating the three-dimensional welding effects on thin stiffened panel assemblies in shipbuilding, the methodology of remotely operated vehicle design, and new tools for managing terminal containers. There is no subject index. Distributed in North America by Computational Mechanics. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)