Economics, and the economic way of thinking, have had an important influence on business and government affairs for at least the last two centuries. The Scottish author Adam Smith espoused the foundations of modern economic thought in 1776 (Smith, 1976 [1776]). His famous volume – The Wealth of Nations1 – ushered in a revolution in economic thinking. His ideas formed the basis of the new academic field of political economy, which writers such as William Stanley Jevons renamed as economics some 100 years later.

Many of the methods now used for gold extraction are based on techniques that have been known or established for centuries. Gravity concentration, amalgamation, cyanide leaching, chlorination, zinc precipitation, and carbon/charcoal adsorption are all processes that have been used for at least a hundred years, and combinations of these remain as the basis for most gold recovery flowsheets.

Melt inclusions (MI) are small droplets of melt now containing some combination of crystals, glass and vapor that are trapped in crystals formed in magmas. Over the past few decades, the study of MI has matured to become an accepted technique to investigate melt evolution in volcanic systems (Clocchiatti 1975, Roedder 1979, Lowenstern 1995, 2003, Sobolev 1996, Frezzotti 2001, Hauri et al. 2001, Anderson 2003, Schiano 2003). MI in volcanic rocks are commonly large (>50 µm), glassy and contained in fresh and transparent minerals, and are generally easy to identify. MI in volcanic rocks generally provide consistent and reasonable results concerning the chemistry of melts at depth and provide the best tool available for assessing the volatiles in magmas (Anderson 1973, 1974, Lowenstern 1994, 1995, 2003). The best MI are often found in the most rapidly cooled parts of pyroclastic deposits and glassy rinds of lavas, which are not so easy to find (A.T. Anderson, Jr., personal communication, 2006).

The discovery of electron diffraction in the laboratories of C.J. Davisson and G.P. Thomson in 1927 certainly ranks as one of the monumental discoveries in the history of science. Soon after this invention, it was realised that electrons - like X-rays - are diffracted by the atoms in matter and thus can be used for structure determination. Because the attainable scattered  intensities for electrons are about 106 times larger than for X-rays, electron diffraction allows us to study the interior structure of matter down to a few cubic-nanometers in size. This is far beyond the capabilities of X-ray crystallography or even a modern synchrotron.

Lasi II was the second in a series on international meetings dealing with the physical geology of subvolcanic systems and demonstrated the diversity of techniques utilised in the analysis of shallow intrusions. These included both numerical and analogue modelling of magmatic processes, the analysis of magnetic fabrics to understand magma flow, the interpretation of seismic reflection data as well as outcrop-based studies. This diversity of research methodologies was applied to a range of shallow intrusions including sills, dykes and laccoliths as well as the interaction of magma with sediments. The presentations provided new insights into the morphological development of igneous intrusions, in particular re-assessments of the controls on their emplacement; the interactions between propagating magma bodies, between intrusions and overlying volcanic centres as well as magma-sediments interactions and their potential climatic effects. <...>