Scope of the conference: The Diffusion Fundamentals Conferences are held every two years. They represent a unique international forum bringing together the specialists from disciplines in different fields of materials science, chemistry, physics and engineering as well as archaeology, ecology, epidemics, ethnology, linguistics and sociology. They all are concerned with the phenomenon of random movement which is known to occur on molecular scales just as over macroscopic dimensions. Diffusion is thus among the major processes which decide over the final result of a large spectrum of phenomena. This made us suggest the question "Evolution or Degradation?" as one of the key topics of this year's Diffusion Fundamentals conference.