Dynamics of Cosmological Phase Transitions: What Can We Learn from   Condensed Matter Physics?
  A brief outline is given of the description of phase transition kinetics in condensed matter systems with a continuous symmetry, emphasising the roles of dissipation, coarse-graining and scaling. The possible relevance of these ideas to the early universe is explored in the contexts of the GUT string transition and the electroweak transition. 
Nigel Goldenfeld (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)