The cosmological constant problem and Kaluza-Klein theory

We present technical results which extend previous work and show that the cosmological constant of general relativity is an artefact of the reduction to 4D of 5D Kaluza-Klein theory (or 10D superstrings and 11D supergravity). We argue that the distinction between matter and vacuum is artificial in the context of ND field theory. The concept of a cosmological constant (which measures the energy density of the vacuum in 4D) should be replaced by that of a series of variable fields whose sum is determined by a solution of ND field equations in a well-defined manner.