Pan Stanford Publishing
Basic elements of crystallography.
Theoretical physicists Gonzalez (Texas Southern U.) and Teresa (U. of Los Andres, Venezuela) introduce crystallography to graduate and undergraduate students in the physical, biological, and earth sciences and engineering. They discuss the 14 Bravais lattices and the reciprocal to them, basic concepts of point group symmetry, the crystal structure and lattice constants of most elements and about 650 binary compounds. All the notation is consistent with the International Tables for Crystallography. They rely as much on pictures as text, showing rather than describing. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Biomaterials for MEMS.
Engineers and scientists have had to make big leaps across disciplinary boundaries to meet the challenges of BioMEMS, that is, applying microelectromechanical systems technology to biomedical purposes. While MEMS technology has proliferated in other sectors, including automotive, aerospace, and consumer electronics, the medical applications area is less developed. This collection of research articles is intended as an overview. Discussion encompasses silk as a MEMS material, biodegradable elastomeric polymers in tissue engineering, nervous system applications, hydrogel-based microfluids cell culture, drug delivery, surface coatings, vibration-based anti-biofouling of implants, and characterization of biomaterials. J-C Chiao is affiliated with the U. of Texas at Arlington; co-editor M. Chiao, with the U. of British Columbia, Canada. The volume is distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Carbon nanotubes; from bench chemistry to promising biomedical applications.
The tubes display high mechanical stability, electronic properties of both metals and semiconductors, and a large inner volume that could be stuffed with several biomolecules ranging from small derivatives to proteins. Thus they are prime candidates to deliver drugs, except that the physics and chemistry at that scale are not the same down there, and substances that are innocuous here could be chemically or biologically dangerous. Chemists and other pharmaceutical scientists explore some of the issues involved, among them the influence of carbon nanotubes in cancer therapy, the delivery of immunostimulants and vaccines, carbon nanotubes as biosensing and bio-interfacial materials, and their toxicity. Distributed in the US by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Current-driven phenomena in nanoelectronics.
Seven experimental and theoretical studies consider current-driven events in molecular nanojunctions. Physicists discuss electronic structures of metal-molecule interfaces; inelastic tunneling current-driven motions of single adsorbates; an approach to current-induced forces, vibrational signals, and heating in nanocondutors based on a density functional theory and non-equilibrium Green's function; current-induced local heating in molecular junctions, current-induced heating and heat dissipation mechanisms in single C60 molecular junctions; the electronic control of single-molecule nanomachines; and current-driven desorption at the interface between organic molecule and semiconductor, exemplified by cyclopentene on Si(100). Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Disordered semiconductors; physics and applications.
Electrophotographic printers and copiers, liquid crystal displays, and cheap solar cells are among the devices based on disordered semiconductors, says Popov (Moscow Power Engineering Institute), and he links characteristic features of the atomic and electronic structure of disordered semiconductors to the device design process. The textbook is intended for graduate and undergraduate students in electrical and electronic engineering, nano-electronics, material science, and solid state physics. The topics include methods for controlling properties of disordered semiconductors, methods for preparing disordered semiconductor films, and photoelectric and electronic devices. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Functional proteomics & nanotechnology-based microarrays.
Nicolini (biophysics, U. of Genoa) and LaBaer (proteomics, Harvard U.) and colleagues report final results of a collaborative research program between their universities. The topics include nanotechnology applications of nucleic acid programmable protein arrays (NAPPA), the label-free detection of NAPPA with mass spectrometry, anodic porous alumina (APA) as a label-free NAPPA, cell-free expression and APA for NAPPA and protein nanocrystallography, structural and functional studies on the Heliobacter pylori proteome, organ transplants and gene microarrays, and signaling networks that simulate biochemical interactions with applications to molecular oncology. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Handbook of materials for nanomedicine.
Addressing the tremendous potential of nanotechnology in disease diagnosis, imaging, monitoring, and therapy, the publisher has responded with a new series titled "Pan Stanford Series on Biomedical Technology." This first volume covers both organic and inorganic nanostructures in 21 chapters, brought together by editors Vladimir Torchilin and Mansoor M. Amiji of Northeastern University. A sampling of topics: polymeric nanoparticles as target-specific delivery systems, layer by layer microencapsulate technology for fabrication of drug delivery with remote controlling properties, liposomal nanomedicines, biomedical applications of multifunctional silica-based gold nanoshells, and inorganic nanoparticles as non-viral vectors for gene delivery. The volume is distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Handbook of nanoindentation with biological applications.
This being the first book on the nanoindentation testing of biological materials, the focus is on general principles established over the past decade rather than specific results. The first part considers fundamental contact principles of mechanics that underlie the nanoindentation technique in the context of biological materials. The second surveys examples of specific biological systems in which nanoindentation testing has been a key tool in explicating nanomechanical structure-properties relationships. Among the topics are indentation and adhesion at small length scales, instrumentation and experimentation, computational modeling of indentation, nanoindentation of tooth tissue, and cells and membranes. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Handbook of spintronic semiconductors.
From the preface: "As an addition or alternative to electron charge, the storage and transport of electron spin in 'spintronics' can not only improve the performance of and add new functionalities to existing devices but also could revolutionize electronics leading to spin-enabled devices such as magnetic RAM, spin transistors, spin optoelectronic devices, and spin quantum computers." Editors Weimin C. Chen and Irina S. Buyanova are both affiliated with the physics department at Linkoping U., Sweden. They have shaped this handbook to provide an in-depth review of a broad range of topics, for postgraduate students, researchers, and engineers. Distribution in North America is by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The magnesium civilization; an alternative new source of energy to oil.
Yabe (computational fluid dynamics and laser applications, Tokyo Institute of Technology) and technical writer Yamaji describe Yabe's research into technology that converts sunlight directly into a laser beam, which is then used to extract magnesium from seawater. The magnesium is then burned for energy, and the lasers used to return waste back into metal magnesium. Fresh water is a by-product of the process. The topics are natural energy and hydrogen society as alternatives to oil civilization, making laser from sunlight, burning magnesium, extracting freshwater and magnesium from seawater, and the coming magnesium recycling society. Tomoko and Tayfun Tezduyar translated the volume from the Japanese original, for which no publication data is cited. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The microflow cytometer.
Flow cytrometry has become so specialized, so small, and so geared to minimum-wage operators that it is difficult to find information about recent developments in the underlying technology and the current array of applications. Here researchers in such relevant fields as microfluidics, optics, electronics, and nanotechnology review currently available commercial personal cytometers, highlighting both strengths and areas that could use improvement. Among the topics are analyzing single cells using lab-on-a-chip systems, focusing particles without sheath flows in microflow cytometers, integrated optics, electrical detection in microfluidic flow cytometers, the autonomous pathogen detection system, and system integrated. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Optics of nanomaterials.
Noting that optical features are size dependent, Gavrilenko (materials and physics, Norfolk State U., Virginia) compares optical features of materials at the nanometer scale and in bulk. He suggests that such features could prove quite useful in a number of applications, but have been little studied so far. His topics include basics of nanomaterial optics, optical absorption and fluorescence of nanomaterials, the Raman spectroscopy of nanomaterials, nonlinear optics of nanomaterials and nanostructures, and optics of biological nanomaterials. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Power for the world; the emergence of electricity from the sun.
People in the photovoltaic (PV) business review the technical and commercial aspects for non-specialists, then share motivational personal experiences and perspectives. Among these are more electricity for less carbon dioxide, the story of developing solar glass facades, photovoltaics in the World Bank Group portfolio, China's photovoltaic industry in 2009, the the PV World Conference in Vienna, high-efficient PV for a sustainable world, illiterate rural grandmothers solar-electrifying their own villages, and the terrestrial PV industry as just the beginning. There is no index. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Therapy with cultured cells.
Green (cell biology, Harvard Medical School) describes the early history of cell culture, the variety of cultured cell types used for therapy of different diseases, the patients treated, and the results obtained. He details the discoveries in his laboratory that led to this therapy, beginning with the treatment of burns, then diseases of the eye, joints, and others, as well as treatments with allogenic cultured keratinocytes. He includes a description of embryonic stem cells and problems needing to be solved before they can be used for human therapy. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Water; the forgotten biological molecule.
Researchers from a range of biological sciences, but also some physical sciences explore biological dimensions of water. They look at the structure of the water molecule; water as a solvent; water at interfaces; water and cell membranes; water and cellular structure/physiology; and water, health, and life. The studies are independent of each other and vary greatly in technical level. Among the topics are protein dynamics and hydration water, how water meets a hydrophobic interface, the structure and inhibitor of water channels in the brain, interfacial water and cell architecture and function, and water in metabolism and biodiversity. Distributed in North America by CRC Press. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
