C. S. Calude, M. J. Dinneen (eds.). Combinatorics, Computation and Logic. Proceedings of DMTCS'99 and CATS'99, Springer-Verlag, Singapore, 1999, vi + 368 pp. ISBN: 981-4021-56-3. US$59 softcover.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DMTCS'99) and the 5th Australasian Theory Symposium (CATS'99). Both were held as part of the Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW'99) in Auckland, New Zealand, January 1999. The topics presented included those on: abstract data types and specifications; algorithms and data structures; automata and formal languages; computability and complexity; computational algebras, biology, geometry, logic, and number theory; concurrency, distributed systems, and parallel computing; constructive mathematics; discrete mathematics and combinatorial computing; formal semantics, specification, synthesis, and verification. These proceedings, comprised of 5 invited papers and 19 contributed refereed papers, thus provide the latest research in these fields.

Contents: Invited papers: Parametric complexity after (almost) ten years: review and open questions (RG Downey & MR Fellows); Hidden algebra for software engineering (JA Goguen); Crossroads in flatland (J Pach); On negative informations in language theory (F Mignosi & A Restivo); Efficiency vs. security in the implementation of public-key cryptography (PG Walsh). Some archetypal contributed papers: Permuting mechanisms and closed classes of permutations (MD Atkinson & R Beals); A stability theorem for recursive analysis (V Brattka); Towards automtaic bisimilarity checking in the spi calculus (AS Alkjaer et al); The pagenumber of de Bruijn and Kautz digraphs (T Hasunuma); Formal synthesis for pipeline design (H Hinrichsen et al); On the approximability of physical map problems using single molecule methods (L Parida); Lower bounds on negation-limited inverters (SC Sung & K Tanaka), and other papers.