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  • Vibrational Spectra: Principles and Applications with Emphasis on Optical Activity

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 85
    • P.L. Polavarapu
    • English
    This book originated out of a desire to combine topics on vibrational absorption, Raman scattering, vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) and Raman optical activity (VROA) into one source. The theoretical details of these processes are presented in ten different chapters. Using dispersive and Fourier transform techniques, the instrumentation involved in these spectral measurements are given in three chapters. Major emphasis is placed on the newer techniques, i.e. VCD and VROA, with the conventional vibrational absorption and vibrational Raman scattering methods incorporated as natural parts of the newer methods.Features of this book:• Comprehensive coverage of vibrational circular dichroism and vibrational Raman optical activity.• Coverage of theoretical and instrumental details.• A comprehensive survey of VCD and VROA applications is included, so that the reader can get an overview of theory, instrumentation and applications in one source.The topics covered are of an advanced level, which makes this book invaluable for graduate students and practising scientists in vibrational spectroscopy.

  • Intelligent Components for Vehicles

    • 1st Edition
    • A. Ollero
    • English
    The IFAC Workshop on Intelligent Components for Vehicles (ICV'98) was held in Seville (Spain), on March 23-24 1998. The event follows the Workshop on Intelligent Components for Autonomous and Semiautonomous Vehicles (ICASAV'95) held in Toulouse (France, October 1995). The main objective of ICV'98 was to bring together specialists on components and instruments for automotive systems, mobile robots and vehicles in general to enhance the value of their experience in both hardware and software intelligent components. Future vehicles will deal more and more with autonomous functions to improve safety and traffic management and to reduce consumption and pollution. Numerous on-board decision systems will replace the driver in critical running phases. The problems and solutions experienced, by adopting this new technology, will bring out many common points with other transportation systems and mobile robots. Research and Developments on Mobile Robotics have produced many components for perception, control and planning that can be used in vehicles for collision detection and avoidance, position estimation, guidance and manoeuvering aids for drivers, advanced teleoperation, and other applications. The topics of the Workshop are in an emerging field in which the research is quickly being converted into industrial products. Several applications in the automotive domain, marine vehicles, agricultural and others were included in the program. In addition to the presentation of the papers, ICV also included a plenary talk and a round table about intelligent components for future vehicles with the participation of several industrial companies.

  • Handbook of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry

    Principles and Practice
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 1
    • Michael E. Brown
    • English
    Handbook of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry, Volume 1: Principles and Practice describes the basic background information common to thermal analysis and calorimetry in general. Thermodynamic and kinetic principles are discussed along with the instrumentation and methodology associated with thermoanalytical and calorimetric techniques. The purpose is to collect the discussion of these general principles and minimize redundancies in the subsequent volumes that are concerned with the applications of these principles and methods. More unique methods, which pertain to specific processes or materials, are covered in later volumes.

  • Photokinetics

    Theoretical Fundamentals and Applications
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 36
    • H. Mauser + 1 more
    • English
    Many books cover the determination of rate constants under different experimental conditions and different chemical composition of the reaction mixture in their formal treatment of thermal kinetics. However, most textbooks are limited to simple mechanisms. In contrast, analogous treatment of photochemical reactions is limited to the publication of special reactions and investigations. Therefore, this book is aimed at providing an overall description of formal photokinetics covering a wider scope than the usual books on kinetics.This volume attempts to provide a concise treatment of both thermo- and photochemical reactions by means of generalised differential equations, their set-up in matrix notation, and their solution by a formalism using numerical integration. At a first glance this approach might be surprising. However, apart from the argument that the didactics of thermal reactions are easier to handle than those of kinetics, the book provides additional reasons in support of this approach. Therefore, the formalism derived allows the evaluation of photochemical reactions, which are superimposed thermal reactions taking into account that the amount of light absorbed varies during the reaction. Because of this, any approximation, either by using total absorbance or negligible absorbance, will cause considerable errors even for simple reactions. The approach chosen to transform the axis of the radiation time into a new variable that includes the photokinetic factor proves that formal kinetics can be applied to thermal and photochemical reactions as well, and even allows the handling of solutions that cannot be homogenised or solid samples in which the concentration varies locally. By using this approach to introduce partial photochemical quantum yields even complex mechanisms can be determined quantitatively.A large number of examples for different mechanisms and an introduction to many spectroscopic and chromatographic methods suitable for photokinetic analyses are provided to enable the reader to carry out a step-by-step evaluation of his own measurements. To reduce the number of formula in some chapters an appendix has been included which contains a detailed description of the calculus of some essential examples. For the convenience of the reader the following has been included:• A large number of examples describing the use of formula• A detailed description of the procedure for applying photokinetics to complex consecutive photoreactions• An Internet address where the reader can find a tutorial for this procedure:http://www... A simple macro to help in programming his own evaluation procedure.

  • Global Ergonomics

    • 1st Edition
    • P.A. Scott + 2 more
    • English
    Jointly hosted by the Ergonomics Society of South Africa (ESSA) and the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), this conference was attended by over 300 delegates and represented the largest and most prestigious gathering of eminent international ergonomists in the history of Africa. It also marked the beginning of a revival in concern for the well-being and productivity of people at work in South Africa.The conference aimed to juxtapose two great ergonomic themes – the under-developed ethos of the affluent societies and the technologically advanced ethos of the most affluent societies. The structure of the proceedings reflects this with the first section addressing the priorities of countries in transition and the last section addressing the priorities of the most industrially-develop... countries, who have, by and large, long since solved the sorts of ergonomics problems currently of concern in the under-developed world. In between these, in a roughly hierarchical arrangement from micro- to macro- levels of analysis, are sections which collectively help span the whole field of ergonomics. Section overviews are provided to outline the topics included in each section.

  • Light-Weight Materials for Transportation and Batteries and Fuel Cells for Electric Vehicles

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 71
    • R. Ciach + 5 more
    • English
    This hardbound volume covers Symposia J 'Light-Weight Materials for Transportation' and E 'Material Aspects for Electric Vehicles including Batteries and Fuel Cells' which were presented at the combined 1997 International Conference on Applied Materials/European Materials Research Society Spring meeting (ICAM'97/E-MRS'97) held in Strasbourg (France) from 16-20 June 1997. Modern materials are the basis for further progress in industry and in our life. Among them the light-advanced materials with desired ratios of weight/properties and cost/properties are of special value for transportation for almost all applications. Progress in this area depends on cooperation and development of metallurgy, casting and solidification techniques, plastic and superplastic deformation, heat and surface treatment. When dealing with common alloys there are well-defined materials with a wide data base available. However, designing materials based on composites still requires thorough research in order to establish data bases to avoid not only high costs, but also inefficient designs and less than optimal structures. But, however difficult and problematic the composites are they bear the inherent potential of new materials. Materials science in the field of light materials is now transforming from an empirical approach to a more quantitative scientific stage. The revolution in materials has begun with the emergence of supercomputer simulation and computer-enhanced quantitative microscopic image analysis.The advanced materials applied previously in the defence and aerospace area should expand over the commercial market including air transportation and civil engineering. The new generation of modern cars and trains as well as aircraft (Boeing 777) are good examples for the application of new materials.

  • Applications of Markov Chains in Chemical Engineering

    • 1st Edition
    • A. Tamir
    • English
    Markov chains make it possible to predict the future state of a system from its present state ignoring its past history. Surprisingly, despite the widespread use of Markov chains in many areas of science and technology, their applications in chemical engineering have been relatively meager. A possible reason for this phenomenon might be that books containing material on this subject have been written in such a way that the simplicity of Markov chains has been shadowed by the tedious mathematical derivations. Thus, the major objective of writing this book has been to try to change this situation.There are many advantages, detailed in Chapter 1, of using the discrete Markov-chain model in chemical engineering. Probably, the most important advantage is that physical models can be presented in a unified description via state vector and a one-step transition probability matrix. Consequently, a process is demonstrated solely by the probability of a system to occupy or not occupy a state.The book has been written in an easy and understandable form, where complex mathematical derivations are abandoned. The fundamentals of Markov chains are presented in Chapter 2 with examples from the bible, art and real life problems. An extremely wide collection is given of examples viz., reactions, reactors, reactions and reactors as well as combined processes, including their solution and a graphical presentation of it, all of which demonstrates the usefulness of applying Markov chains in chemical engineering.

  • Cell Injury

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 13
    • Edward Bittar
    • English
    At no time since the introduction of cell pathology by Virchov more than a century ago has the outlook for pathology as an integrated discipline been brighter. It is surely clear that the revolution of molecular biology and biotechnology has wrought profound changes in the various basic medical sciences including pathology. But to say this is hardly enough, particularly since the burgeoning field of molecular pathology has been challenged and altered by a powerful concept, namely, programmed cell death. Called apoptosis, which in Greek means falling off, it is intimately connected with cell removal and regeneration; that is, with tissue homeostasis. Nowhere is this more dramatically illustrated as a physiological process than in the gut, endometrium, and embryo. Similarly, little doubt is left that clusters of apoptotic-induced genes are involved in the control of carcinogenesis. The evidence for this is already compelling; it is plain, for instance, that p53 triggers apoptosis whenever DNA repair is incomplete. The question now is, how quickly can the Genome project shed some light on the genetics underlying apoptosis?It is tolerably clear that there is no such thing as a general model of cell injury, but there are models, as it should be. One thing is already certain: cell stress during septicemia is the quintessential model. Death here requires the failure of at least three organs! We are told that oxidative stress plays a major role in the pathogenesis of the syndrome. This is not surprising. The whole subject of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is thus given much weight. By far, the most important mechanisms underlying membrane lesions, due to ROS, are those involving inactivation of several key enzymes among a host of enzymes, lipid peroxidation, and iron speeding up bydroxyl radical production. The stark fact is that evolutionary pressure has produced a fiasco by not endowing the cell with enough antioxidant power or reducing the ROS pool. In organs with high O2 consumption, mitochondrial leakage of O2 (the superoxide anion) could well be considerable. Thus our main point here is that caloric restriction gives us a way of tackling the problem for the time being. One has only to remember that it improves survival.Whether there has been a "breakthrough" is not yet quite certain, but oxidative stress combined with long-term overactivation of glutamate receptors may enable us to understand several neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson's disease. This broad topic is touched upon in detail in the Neurobiology module (Volume 14).There is a vast literature relating to injury of heart muscle. Two chapters address this topic. Looking back, are we to conclude that a membrane lesion, which is essentially functional, does not exist? Consider, as an example, the NMR experiments in which a raised Pco2, leads very rapidly to a fall in heart muscle pH. We also venture whether it begs several fundamental questions relating to events that precede the onset of necrobiosis. A telling argument is that an early event could be as simple as the root of the problem in ischemia is not as simple as that of a leaky membrane. But the initiating event would seem to be a redox imbalance vix., changes in cytosolic and mitochondrial NAD+/NADH.We urge the student to go back to Volume 4 (Part II) and read, once more, the chapter on Cellular ATP by Harris. In Part IV, the chapter on the Human Heat Shock Response by Jurivich merits a second reading. Though the present volume is a veritable source of many unanswered questions, it has the distinct simplicity of telling us that molecular pathology, like molecular biology, represents a way of thinking.

  • Cell Polarity

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 26
    • J.R. Bartles
    • English
    Few cells conform to the stereotype of the spherical blob hastily scribbled on chalkboards and, regrettably, sometimes even displayed prominently in textbooks. Instead, real cells display a remarkable degree of structural and functional asymmetry. In modern cell biological parlance, this asymmetry has come to be lumped under the general heading of "cell polarity". Cell polarity is by no means restricted to the cells of tissues and organs, but can also be displayed by cells that lead a more solitary existence. The amazing extent to which cell morphology is correlated with function has long been a source of inspiration for biologists. Today the fascination continues unabated in the field of cell polarity, where it is fueled by an ever-deepening appreciation for the ways that fundamental cellular processes, such as membrane trafficking and cytoskeleton assembly, contribute to the establishment and maintenance of cell polarity. In the ensuing chapters, a collection of experts will summarize and interpret the findings obtained from basic research on cell polarity in a diverse array of experimental systems.

  • Breast Cancer

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 2
    • W.P. Peters + 1 more
    • English
    Breast cancer research has never been in such an exciting and hopeful phase as today. From a clinical perspective, the discovery of genetic markers of risk in a proportion of familial breast cancer cases has opened up new vistas for understanding and ultimately preventing this disease. On the other hand, aggressive - even daring - therapies are being proven to be effective against advanced breast cancer. For the breast cancer experimentalist, this is also a time of great advance. Although animal and cell culture breast cancer models have proven to be of great use, there are now increasing opportunities to test the concepts developed in these models in actual clinical samples and cases. It is gratifying to see how well these concepts "translate" into the clinical setting. A very active area of research that is linking the laboratory to the clinic is the dissection of the biology and elucidation of the significance of proliferate breast disease and the identification of true, "high risk" or "preneoplastic" legions within the previously ill-defined spectrum of fibrocystic or benign breast disease. One anticipates that discoveries made here will also lead to earlier detection, intervention and prevention of life-threatening cancer.Even, however, as we look with optimism to the eventual eradication of breast cancer, we are once again forced to face the reality that we have not yet achieved our goal. Thus, we are saddened by the much too premature death of Dr. Helene Smith from breast cancer. Helena's work was at the forefront of efforts to understand the biology of human breast cancer at the molecular level. Her insight, open-mindedness, and refusal to sacrifice relevance for convenience will continue to set the standard for all breast cancer researchers. This volume is dedicated to her memory.

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