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The present volume, with contributions of R. Dijkgraaf, C. Faber, G. van der Geer, R. Rain, E. Looijenga, and F. Oort, originates from the Dutch Intercity Seminar on Moduli (year 1995-96). Some of the articles here were discussed, in preliminary form, in the seminar; others are completely new. Two introductory papers, on moduli of abelian varieties and on moduli of curves, accompany the articles. Topics include a stratification of a moduli space of abelian varieties in positive characteristic, and the calculation of the classes of the strata, tautological classes for moduli of abelian varieties as well as for moduli of curves, correspondences between moduli spaces of curves, locally symmetric families of curves and jaco­ bians, and the role of symmetric product spaces in quantum field theory, string theory and matrix theory. This Intercity Seminar is part of the long term project'Algebraic curves and Riemann surfaces: geometry, arithmetic and applications', sponsored hy the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), that has been running since 1994. Its ancestry can be traced back to joint activities in the seventies (if not earlier), which as of 1980 had evolved into active biweekly research seminars. These have been a focal point of Dutch algebraic geometry and singularity theory since. We are grateful to NWO for its support for the project. C.F. thanks the Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik, Bonn, for support during the final stages of the preparation of this volume.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 12th conference on Arithmetic, Geometry, Cryptography and Coding Theory, held in Marseille, France from March 30 to April 3, 2009, as well as the first Geocrypt conference, held in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe from April 27 to May 1, 2009, and the European Science Foundation exploratory workshop on Curves, Coding Theory, and Cryptography, held in Marseille, France from March 25 to 29, 2009. The articles contained in this volume come from three related symposia organized by the group Arithmétique et Théorie de l'Information in Marseille. The topics cover arithmetic properties of curves and higher dimensional varieties with applications to codes and cryptography.

The 13 chapters of this book centre around the proof of Theorem 1 of Faltings'paper'Diophantine approximation on abelian varieties', Ann. Math.133 (1991) and together give an approach to the proof that is accessible to Ph.D-level students in number theory and algebraic geometry. Each chapter is based on an instructional lecture given by its author ata special conference for graduate students, on the topic of Faltings'paper.

The series is aimed specifically at publishing peer reviewed reviews and contributions presented at workshops and conferences. Each volume is associated with a particular conference, symposium or workshop. These events cover various topics within pure and applied mathematics and provide up-to-date coverage of new developments, methods and applications.

This book presents the results of Cleverbio, a project funded by the European Commission. The project examined the process of growth and development of clusters in the biotech industry, identifying and studying the main driving forces. The empirical work involved in-depth analysis of five clusters at different stages of development: Cambridge, the most important cluster in Europe; Heidelberg, one of the strongest in Germany; Aarhus in Denmark; Marseille in France; and Milano in Italy at an early stage of development. Other clusters were also analysed, such as Paris-Evry (France), Uppsala (Sweden), Biovalley (Switzerland), Bay Area and San Diego (US).The ultimate aim of Cleverbio has been to build a normative model that incorporates:• the preconditions for a cluster to grow (scientific base and/or industrial base, innovative financing, etc.);• the driving forces for cluster growth and development, i.e. the key factors of development (new company creation, IP rules, acceptance of biotech products, services and infrastructures, etc.);• best practices in cluster management (barrier removal, network creation, marketing, technology transfer, etc.).The book also identifies different forms of cluster creation. In some cases clusters were born and grew spontaneously as a consequence of the original co-presence of the key success factors (spontaneous clusters); in other cases they were born of the actions of public actors (industry restructuring and industry development policies). Finally, in a few cases, the process of clustering started as a result of a combination of different original conditions (hybrid clusters).