Elsevier Online Library e-Books

Author: K. Sridharan

About this book: Spectral Methods in Transition Metal Complexes provides a conceptual understanding on how to interpret the optical UV-vis, vibrational EPR, and NMR spectroscopy of transition metal complexes. Metal complexes have broad applications across chemistry in the areas of drug discovery, such as anticancer drugs, sensors, special materials for specific requirements, and catalysis, so a thorough knowledge in preparation and characterization of metal complexes, while niche, is critical. Accessible to both the seasoned researcher and the graduate student alike, this book provides readers with a single source of content that addresses spectral methods in transition metal complexes.

Author:Alexei V. Finkelstein and Oleg B. Ptitsyn

About this book: Protein Physics: A Course of Lectures covers the most general problems of protein structure, folding and function. It describes key experimental facts and introduces concepts and theories, dealing with fibrous, membrane, and water-soluble globular proteins, in both their native and denatured states. The book systematically summarizes and presents the results of several decades of worldwide fundamental research on protein physics, structure, and folding, describing many physical models that help readers make estimates and predictions of physical processes that occur in proteins. New to this revised edition is the inclusion of novel information on amyloid aggregation, natively disordered proteins, protein folding in vivo, protein motors, misfolding, chameleon proteins, advances in protein engineering & design, and advances in the modeling of protein folding. Further, the book provides problems with solutions, many new and updated references, and physical and mathematical appendices. In addition, new figures (including stereo drawings, with a special appendix showing how to use them) are added, making this an ideal resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and researchers in academia in the fields of biophysics, physics, biochemistry, biologists, biotechnology, and chemistry.

Edited by: Atsushi Ikai

About this book: The World of Nano-Biomechanics, Second Edition, focuses on the remarkable progress in the application of force spectroscopy to molecular and cellular biology that has occurred since the book's first edition in 2008. The initial excitement of seeing and touching a single molecule of protein/DNA is now culminating in the development of various ways to manipulate molecules and cells almost at our fingertips, enabling live cell operations. Topics include the development of molecular biosensors, mechanical diagnosis, cellular-level wound healing, and a look into the advances that have been made in our understanding of the significance of mechanical rigidity/flexibility of protein/DNA structure for the manifestation of biological activities. The book begins with a summary of the results of basic mechanics to help readers who are unfamiliar with engineering mechanics. Then, representative results obtained on biological macromolecules and structures, such as proteins, DNA, RNA, polysaccharides, lipid membranes, subcellular organelles, and live cells are discussed. New to this second edition are recent developments in three important applications, i.e., advanced AFM-data analysis, high-resolution mechanical biosensing, and the use of cell mechanics for medical diagnosis.

Edited by Giuseppe Zibordi - Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy Craig J. Donlon - European Space Agency/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Albert C. Parr - Space Dynamics Laboratory, Utah State, University, Logan, UT, USA Volume 47,

About this book: Climate change science relies on the combined use of models and measurements to advance understanding of climate fluctuations and trends, and ultimately to formulate predictions. Gathering measurements for climate change investigations requires well-characterized observing systems and the implementation of strategies to detect decadal variations that are much smaller than those occurring at daily or interannual scales. This requirement imposes the collection of uninterrupted time series of highly accurate measurements traceable to accepted international standards that collectively constitute the evidence baseline for climate research. Satellite systems provide a quasi-synoptic global sampling dimension of climate data measured using a variety of instruments operated over the Earth's surface. Like any observing system devoted to the generation of climate-quality data records, space-based instruments supporting climate change investigations need to deliver continuous highly accurate measurements with defined uncertainties. This imposes lifetime calibration and validation processes for each component of the end-to-end observing system and for the derived data products. During the last few decades, several space missions have been designed to support ocean climate studies through measurement of physical, biological, and chemical variables. Among the various remote sensing technologies, optical sensors operating in the visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared spectrum are well suited to measure variables such as sea surface temperature and water leaving radiance at timescales varying from hours to days and geographical-scales from tens of meters to kilometers. While the sea surface temperature has relevance for the heat, gas, and momentum coupling between the atmosphere and ocean, reconstruction of patterns associated with dynamical processes such as surface currents, eddies, and upwelling, the water-leaving radiance in the visible spectral region is fundamental for the quantification of optically significant seawater constituents, including phytoplankton biomass, that play a major role in the Earth's carbon cycle. Optical remote sensing technologies used to generate climate-quality data records share the need for thorough prelaunch characterization and absolute calibration of the satellite radiometer. These activities are then followed by the postlaunch monitoring of the radiometer stability over the mission lifetime, the continuous assessment of data product quality, and finally, successive reanalysis and reprocessing of all data in conjunction with better understanding of error sources. The postlaunch activities largely rely on in situ reference measurements for the development and assessment of the algorithms and methods applied to determine each climate variable, and successively for the continuous validation of derived satellite products. Furthermore, reference measurements are required to homogenize climate data records obtained from multiple or successive satellite instruments. Because of this, advances in remote sensing optical technology demand progress to deliver in situ reference instrumentation, measurement methods, and field strategies. Such progress embraces the design of increasingly precise and stable field optical radiometers, the improvement of laboratory techniques for their characterization and absolute calibration, the assessment of measurement methods and field intercomparison strategies, and finally, advances in the creation and handling of data repositories. This book, through a number of contributions from various authors, presents the state of the art for optical remote sensing and shows how it can be applied for the generation of marine climate-quality data products. The various chapters are grouped into six thematic parts each introduced by a brief overview. The different parts include: (1) requirements for the generation of climate data records from satellite ocean measurements and the basic radiometry principles addressing terminology, standards, measurement equation, and uncertainties; (2) satellite visible and thermal infrared radiometry embracing instrument design, characterization, and pre- and postlaunch calibration; (3) in situ visible and thermal infrared reference radiometry including overviews on basic principles, technology, and measurement methods required to support satellite missions devoted to climate change investigations; (4) computer model simulations as fundamental tools to support interpretation and analysis of both in situ and satellite radiometric measurements; (5) strategies for in situ reference radiometry to satisfy mission requirements for the generation of climate data records; and finally, (6) methods for the assessment of satellite data products. The expectation of the editors is that this book will become a working tool, as either a reference text or as background literature for discussions, for students and scientists interested in ocean climate studies and satellite radiometry.

Authors: Konstantin V. Kazakov

About this book: Quantum mechanics is one of the most fascinating, and at the same time most controversial, branches of contemporary science. Disputes have accompanied this science since its birth and have not ceased to this day. Uncommon Paths in Quantum Physics allows the reader to contemplate deeply some ideas and methods that are seldom met in the contemporary literature. Instead of widespread recipes of mathematical physics, based on the solutions of integro-differential equations, the book follows logical and partly intuitional derivations of non-commutative algebra. Readers can directly penetrate the abstract world of quantum mechanics.

Edited by Alan Migdall Sergey V. Polyakov Jingyun Fan Joshua C. Bienfang Volume 45, Pages 1-562 (2013)

About this book: Single-Photon Generation and Detection: Physics and Applications Single-photon generation and detection is at the forefront of modern optical physics research. This book is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of single-photon techniques and research methods in the spectral region from the visible to the infrared. The use of single photons, produced on demand with well defined quantum properties, offers an unprecedented set of capabilities that are central to the new area of quantum information, and are of revolutionary importance in areas that range from the traditional, such as high sensitivity detection for astronomy, remote sensing, and medical diagnostics, to the exotic, such as secretive surveillance and very long communication links for data transmission on interplanetary missions. Even some routine applications such as ellipsometry or refractive birefringence measurements can, by making use of a non-classical source’s polarization correlations, be enhanced with these quantum sources and detectors. One of the earliest examples in modern physics of the observable effect of the photon nature of light occurred in Hertz’s experiments on the photoelectric effect, an effect that played a key role in Einstein’s explanation of the nature of light in terms of Planck’s quantum of energy. The photoelectric effect also played a key role in the development of the photomultiplier, a device now commonly used for single-photon detection over a broad range of energies. While people had been detecting energetic single particles and single photons in the X-ray and gamma-ray regions since close to the beginning of the 20th century using the Geiger-Muller tube, the detection of single photons at visible or lower energies was achieved only with the advent of the photomultiplier in the late 1930s. It is this much lower photon energy range, i.e., the visible and infrared, that will be the focus of this book. Efforts to develop single-photon sources in the visible range go back to the use of two-photon atomic cascades in the 1950s in radiometry and lifetime measurements. These sources employed the two-step decay of a selected excited atomic state, with the first decay photon acting as a signal announcing the arrival of the second. Thus while the time of emission was not well defined, the pair emission allowed one photon to herald the existence of the other, effectively creating a single-photon source. (Later source development focused on this issue of controlling the time of emission.) Perhaps the most famous applications of such a cascade source occurred several decades later in the EPR experiments of Aspect et al., in which the cascade was used to produce entanglement, a uniquely quantum mechanical property much beyond simple photon correlations, to explore our most fundamental concepts of reality. There are presently four research areas in which advances in the capabilities and applications of single-photon sources and detectors are of high interest: (a) quantum communication, in which the performance of sources and detectors directly impacts the generation of, for example, secure cryptographic key, imposing stringent demands on source and detector development; (b) quantum computation, a technology offering exponential improvements over classical computing, but where requirements for photonic devices go well beyond what is currently available. Current challenges in this area include on-demand single-photon sources at specific narrow-band frequencies and detectors with very high count rates and very high efficiencies (e.g., 0.999); (c) metrology, where nonclassical control of light offers resolution beyond the classically allowable limits; and (d) fundamental tests of nature, where exquisitely controlled photonic signals are the key to making these schemes work. These fundamental tests include those connected with alternative theories to quantum mechanics and the search for gravitational waves. The goal of this volume will be to provide a researcher with a comprehensive overview of single-photon science and technology to enable and enhance the design of the wide range of experimental research that makes use of these technologies, and to serve as a point of departure for those beginning experimental research in single- and correlated-photon-based science. The book will be broken into chapters focused specifically on the development and capabilities of the available detectors and sources to allow a comparative understanding to be developed by the reader along with an idea of how the field is progressing and what can be expected in the near future. With each technology, we will also provide a survey of the primary (and potential) applications that drive its development. We intend to make this the go-to reference for this field.

Author: Gerald Burns and A.M. Glazer

About this book: This comprehensively revised – essentially rewritten – new edition of the 1990 edition (described as "extremely useful" by MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS and as "understandable and comprehensive" by Scitech) guides readers through the dense array of mathematical information in the International Tables Volume A. Thus, most scientists seeking to understand a crystal structure publication can do this from this book without necessarily having to consult the International Tables themselves. This remains the only book aimed at non-crystallographers devoted to teaching them about crystallographic space groups.

Edited by: Shuichi Kinoshita

About this book:Patterns and their formations appear throughout nature, and are studied to analyze different problems in science and make predictions across a wide range of disciplines including biology, physics, mathematics, chemistry, material science, and nanoscience. With the emergence of nanoscience and the ability for researchers and scientists to study living systems at the biological level, pattern formation research has become even more essential. This book is an accessible first of its kind guide for scientists, researchers, engineers, and students who require a general introduction to this research area, in order to gain a deeper analytical understanding of the most recent observations and experiments by top researchers in physics. Pattern Formations describes the most up-to-date status of this developing field and analyzes the physical phenomena behind a wide range of interesting topics commonly known in the scientific community. The study of pattern formations as a research field will continue to grow as scientists expand their understanding of naturally occurring patterns and mimic nature to help solve complex problems. This research area is becoming more highly recognized due to its contributions to signal processing, computer analysis, image processing, complex networks development, advancements in optics and photonics, crystallography, metallurgy, drug delivery (chemotherapy) and the further understanding of gene regulation.

Edited by Felix Fernandez-Alonso - ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire David L. Price - Synchrotron Radiation and Neutron Research Group, CEMHTI, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Orléans, France Volume 44, Pages 2-545 (2013)

About this book: Just over 80 years ago, a brief letter from James Chadwick to Nature [1], [2] presented conclusive experimental evidence unveiling the existence of a neutral particle (nearly) isobaric with the proton. The discovery of the henceforth-to-be-known-as “neutron” had profound consequences for both scientific research and the destiny of humankind, as it led to the unleashing of the might of nuclear power in less than a decade [3]. The first use of these “neutral protons” to probe the microscopic underpinnings of the materials world around us also dates back to those early years, with pioneering neutron-diffraction experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) in the mid 1940s, and the subsequent development of neutron spectroscopy at Chalk River (Canada) in the 1950s. Since then, neutron-scattering techniques have matured into a robust and increasingly versatile toolkit for physicists, chemists, biologists, materials scientists, engineers, or technologists. At the turn of the last century, the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to C.G. Shull and B.N. Brockhouse recognized their ground-breaking efforts toward the development and consolidation of neutron science as a discipline in its own right [4]. This milestone also served to define neutron scattering as the technique par excellence to investigate where atoms are (structure) and what atoms do (dynamics), a popular motto across generations of neutron-scattering practitioners. Sustained and continued developments in experimental methods over the past few decades have greatly increased the sensitivity and range of applications of neutron scattering. While early measurements probed distances on the order of interatomic spacings (fractions of a nm) and characteristic times associated with lattice vibrations (ps), contemporary neutron-scattering experiments can cover length scales from less than 0.01 to 1000s of nanometers, and timescales from the attosecond to the microsecond. These advances have been made possible via a significant expansion of the range of neutron energies available to the experimenter, from microelectron-volts (particularly at cold sources in research reactors) to hundreds of electron-volts (at pulsed spallation sources), as well as by unabated progress in the implementation of a variety of novel and ingenious ideas such as position- and polarization-sensitive detection or backscattering and spin-labeling methods. As a result, neutron science has grown beyond traditional research areas, from the conventional determination of crystal structures and lattice dynamics of half-a-century ago (not to forget their magnetic analogs), to high-resolution structural studies of disordered thin films, liquid interfaces, biological structures, macromolecular and supramolecular architectures and devices, or the unraveling of the dynamics and energy-level structure of complex molecular solids, nanostructured materials and surfaces, or magnetic clusters and novel superconductors. Along with these scientific and technical developments, the community of neutron scientists has also expanded and diversified beyond recognition. Whereas the early stages of neutron scattering had its roots in condensed-matter physics and crystallography, present-day users of central neutron-scattering facilities include chemists, biologists, ceramicists, and metallurgists, to name a few, as well as physicists with an increasingly diverse range of transdisciplinary interests, from the foundations of quantum mechanics to soft matter, food science, biology, geology, or archeometry. The present and subsequent volumes in this series seek to cover in some detail the production and use of neutrons across the aforementioned disciplines, with a particular emphasis on technical and scientific developments over the past two decades. As such, it necessarily builds upon an earlier and very successful three-volume set edited by K. Sköld and D.L. Price, published in the 1980s by Academic Press as part of Methods of Experimental Physics (currently Experimental Methods in the Physical Sciences). Furthermore, with the third-generation spallation sources recently constructed in the United States and Japan, or in the advanced construction or planning stage in China and Europe, there has been an increasing interest in time-of-flight and broadband neutron-scattering techniques. Correspondingly, the improved performance of cold moderators at both reactors and spallation sources has extended long-wavelength capabilities to such an extent that a sharp distinction between fission- and accelerator-driven neutron sources may no longer be of relevance to the future of the discipline. On a more practical front, the chapters that follow are meant to enable you to identify aspects of your work in which neutron-scattering techniques might contribute, conceive the important experiments to be done, assess what is required to carry them out, write a successful proposal to a user facility, and perform these experiments under the guidance and support of the appropriate facility-based scientist. The presentation is aimed at professionals at all levels, from early-career researchers to mature scientists who may be insufficiently aware or up to date with the breadth of opportunities provided by neutron techniques in their area of specialty. In this spirit, it does not aim to present a systematic and detailed development of the underlying theory, which may be found in superbly written texts such as those of Lovesey [5] or Squires [6]. Likewise, it is not a detailed hands-on manual of experimental methods, which in our opinion is best obtained directly from experienced practitioners or, alternatively, by attending practical training courses at the neutron facilities. As an intermediate (and highly advisable) step, we also note the existence of neutron-focused thematic schools, particularly those at Grenoble [7] and Oxford [8], both of which have been running on a regular basis since the 1990s. With these primary objectives in mind, each chapter focuses on well-defined areas of neutron science and has been written by a leading practitioner or practitioners of the application of neutron methods in that particular field. In this first volume, we start out in Chapter 1 with a self-contained survey of the theoretical concepts and formalism of the technique, and also take the opportunity to establish the notation that will be used throughout. Chapters 2 and 3Chapter 2Chapter 3 review neutron production and instrumentation, respectively, areas which have profited enormously from recent developments in accelerator physics, materials research and engineering, or computing, to name a few. The remaining chapters of this volume treat several basic applications of neutron scattering, including the structure of complex materials (Chapter 4), large-scale structures (Chapter 5), and dynamics of atoms and molecules (Chapter 6). The Appendix goes back to some requisite fundamentals linked to neutron–matter interactions, along with a detailed compilation of neutron-scattering lengths and cross sections across the periodic table. In closing this preface, we wish to thank all authors for taking time out of their busy schedules to be part of this venture, Drs. Thomas Lucatorto and Albert C. Parr for inviting us to undertake this work, and the staff of Academic Press for their encouragement, diligence, and forbearance along the way.