Dietary fiber (DF) is receiving increasing attention, and its importance in pig nutrition is now acknowledged. Although DF for pigs was frowned upon for a long time because of reductions in energy intake and digestibility of other nutrients, it has become clear that feeding DF to pigs can affect their well-being and health. This review aims to summarize the state of knowledge of studies on DF in pigs, with an emphasis on the underlying mode of action, by considering research using DF in sows as well as suckling and weaned piglets, and fattening pigs. These studies indicate that DF can benefit the digestive tracts and the health of pigs, if certain conditions or restrictions are considered, such as concentration in the feed and fermentability. Besides the chemical composition and the impact on energy and nutrient digestibility, it is also necessary to evaluate the possible physical and physiologic effects on intestinal function and intestinal microbiota, to better understand the relation of DF to animal health and welfare. Future research should be designed to provide a better mechanistic understanding of the physiologic effects of DF in pigs.

In order to ensure the quality of the source catalogue derived from the SASS processing an automatic as well as a visual screening procedure was applied to 1378 survey fields. Most (94%) of the 18,811 sources were confirmed by this screening process. The rest is flagged for various reasons. Broad band images are available for a subset of the flagged sources. Details of the screening process can be found at www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/survey/rass-bsc/doc.html.

Spectrally resolved X-ray images of the Cygnus Loop and the Vela supernova remnant have been obtained during the ROSAT all sky survey. The remnants show highly filamentary brightness distributions. Temperatures between 1·106 K and 10·106 K have been measured. Both remnants show significant deviation from thermal pressure equilibrium. The highest pressure excursions of up to a factor of 50 are associated with the X-ray brightest filaments. Pressure variations are expected for very recently shocked clouds, on a smaller scale though. In a limited search of the all sky survey data 14 extended objects have been found, which have tentatively been identified as previously unknown supernova remnants. A total number of ~ 60 new remnants are expected from the analysis of the full sky.

The Joint European X-Ray Telescope, JET-X, is one of the core instruments of the scientific payload of the USSR SPECTRUM-X astrophysics mission due for launch in 1993. The JET-X instrument concept is described and its scientific performance and capability discussed.

A review is given of recent observations of the X-ray emission from supernova remnants carried out on the Einstein, Tenma and EXOSAT satellites as well as from a few sounding rocket experiments. Our current interpretation of the high resolution images, high resolution energy spectra and the first few spectrally resolved images is discussed.

A brief review of the observations of X-ray emission from supernova remnants is presented including the results from the Einstein, EXOSAT and TENMA satellites. The status of the interpretation of the spectra and images is highlighted and the need for broad band, spectrally resolved imaging measurements is emphasized.