"Written versions of the invited talks delivered at the Symposium of Current Topics in Physics, held in Mexico City (June 2003)"--Pref.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

pt.1. Disorder and dynamical systems. Reflections on the beguiling but wayward spherical model -- Phase transitions in vector spin glasses -- Transitions, dynamics and disorder: From equilibrium to nonequilibrium systems -- Two-dimensional growth in a three component mixture with competing interactions -- Glassy dynamics at the edge of chaos.

pt. 2. Structures and glasses. Flexibility in biomolecules -- Lattice dynamics of carbon nanotubes -- Glassy behavior due to kinetic constraints: From topological foam to backgammon -- On glass transition with rapid cooling effects -- The dielectric loss function and the search for simple models for relaxation in glass formers -- The theory of turing pattern formation -- The dioctadecylamine monolayer: Non-equilibrium phase domains.

Electrical and magnetic properties. Multiple scattering effects in the second harmonic generation of light reflection from a randomly rough metal surface -- Theory for large-scale electronic structure calculations -- Symmetric magnetic clusters -- Optical and Fermi-edge singularities in one-dimensional semiconductor quantum wires -- Probing the magnetic coupling in multilayers using domain wall excitations -- Density of electronic states in the quantum percolation problem -- Power terms in the construction of thermodynamic functions for melting description.

Electronic reproduction. Singapore : World Scientific Publishing Co., 2005. System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Mode of access: World Wide Web. Available to subscribing institutions.