Eight reviews written especially for the series by scientists mostly from Russia and eastern Europe, but also Brazil and Japan, look at such topics as the production of C2 hydrocarbons from methane conversion in the flowing afterglow of a di-nitrogen microwave plasma, magnetosonic solitary waves and jumps in a cold plasma, plasma-wave instability under external fields from a quantum mechanical viewpoint, and measuring ion density using quantitative spectroscopy. The papers are reproduced from typescripts, several of them double spaced.