These notes constitute the text of a sequence of lectures given at the University of New England, a brief synopsis of which was presented at the Conference on Analysis in Linear Spaces. There is nothing new here in terms of mathematical knowledge; our only hope is that this theory be new to the audience. Readers who like what they sample here will love Professor Gilles Pisier's forthcoming monograph on "Factorization of Operators between Banach Spaces", the present notes are subsummed by the first section of Pisier.

This report will describe some recent work done jointly with D.H. Phong [4], [5]. Only a sketch of the main ideas, the background, and the motivation will be presented here. The reader who is interested in further details may consult the cited literature.