"This volume presents the proceedings from the conference on low dimensional topology held at the University of Madeira (Portugal)."--BOOK JACKET. "The book has two main parts. The first is devoted to the Poincare conjecture, characterizations of PL-manifolds, covering quadratic forms of links and to categories in low dimensional topology that appear in connection with conformal and quantum field theory. The second part of the volume covers topological quantum field theory and polynomial invariants for rational homology 3-spheres, derived from the quantum SU(2)-invariants associated with the first cohomology class modulo two, knot theory, and braid groups. This collection reflects development and progress in the field and presents interesting and new results."--BOOK JACKET.