TO THE READERS OF INZHENERNO-FIZICHESKII ZHURNAL

The Vth Minsk International Forum on Heat and Mass Exchange 
was held from the 24th to 28th May, 2004, in Minsk at the A. V. Luikov 
Heat and Mass Transfer Institute of the National Academy of Sciences 
of Belarus. The organizers of the forum were the National Academy 
of Sciences of Belarus, the Heat and Mass Transfer Institute of the 
National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the State Committee on Science 
and Technologies of the Republic of Belarus, the Ministry of Power 
Engineering of the Republic of Belarus, the "Beltransgaz" Public Corporation, 
the "Belarusian Metallurgical Plant" Republic Unitary Enterprise, 
the Department of Power Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mechanics, 
and Processes of Control of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the National 
Committee of the Russian Academy of Sciences on Heat and Mass Transfer, 
the Ministry of General and Professional Education of the Russian 
Federation, the Institute of Technical Thermophysics of the National 
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and the International Center on Heat 
and Mass Transfer. Information support to the forum was provided by 
the "Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal."

Reports of leading scientists of the Republic of Belarus, 
Russia, Ukraine, and the USA were heard at two plenary sessions. In 
10 sections, 507 papers and reports were presented: 
"Convective Heat and Mass Exchange" - 83, 
"Radiative and Combined Heat Exchange" - 53, 
"Heat Conduction and Problems of Optimization of Heat Exchange" - 38, 
"Heat and Mass Exchange in Chemically Reacting Systems" - 40, 
"Heat and Mass Exchange in Two-Phase (Vapor-Liquid) Systems" - 69, 
"Heat and Mass Exchange in Disperse and Rheological Systems" - 50, 
"Heat and Mass Exchange in Capillary Porous Bodies (including 
the processes of drying)" - 47, 
"Heat and Mass Exchange in Power-Generating Devices" - 55, 
"Thermophysics and Heat Technology of Metallurgical Processes" - 37, 
and "Heat and Mass Exchange in Technological Processes and Devices" - 35.

Three round tables - "Thermal Pumps and Refrigerators," 
"Problems of Heat and Mass Exchange in Nanotechnologies," and "Results 
and Prospects for Studying Natural and Domestic Fires" - were 
held during the forum.

Two volumes of extended abstracts of papers and reports 
and "Annotations of Papers and Reports" were published in English 
by the beginning of the forum. The proceedings of the forum are presented 
in electronic form on a compact disk and are to be found on the web 
site of the Heat and Mass Transfer Institute: www.itmo.by.

Individual plenary and problem papers and materials of the round tables 
are published in the present issue of the "Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal."

V. I. Timoshpol'skii and I. G. Gurevich