Environmental basic research monitoring

The Environmental Monitoring Programme (EMP) implemented at Jubany Station attempts to accomplish these basic objectives while keeping the basic research activities which provide important information for management decisions. 

Several of the research projects carried out in Antarctica under the Italian Programme deal with environmental monitoring for basic research purposes. The applied environmental monitoring implemented at TNB over the last 12 years has borrowed ideas and methodologies from these scientific projects. Scientific monitoring has been concerned with sea water, fresh water, soils, particulates, sediments, air, etc, as well as different biota. Applied environmental monitoring has concentrated on only some of these. 

NP-RTP is in its infancy and basic research on the origin of the NP-RTP phenomenon as well as the basic factors governing it have not yet been established. Looking further into the future, the technique could find many applications for both the monitoring and/or mapping of environmental or biologically important molecules. 

In the previous chapter we have seen how tunable lasers can be used in a multitude of ways to gain basic information on atomic and molecular systems. Thus, the laser has had a considerable impact on basic research, and its utility within the applied spectroscopic field is not smaller. We shall here discuss some applications of considerable interest. Previously, we have mainly chosen atomic spectroscopic examples rather than molecular ones, but in this chapter we shall mainly discuss applied molecular spectroscopy. First we will describe diagnostics of combustion processes and then discuss atmospheric monitoring by laser techniques. Different aspects of laser-induced fluorescence in liquids and solids will be considered with examples from the environmental, industrial and medical fields. We will also describe laser-induced chemical processes and isotope separation with lasers. Finally, spectroscopic aspects of lasers in medicine will be discussed. Applied aspects of laser spectroscopy have been covered in [10.1,2]. 

The need for scientific monitoring in the Antarctic has been clearly identified and its value to both basic and applied research is recognised. A data directory of existing Antarctic environmental data has already been established and is being added to (see latest web version on http.www.comnap.org). 

Other applications. Over recent years TLC-FID technology has been used by researchers in the petrochemical industry as well as by environmental monitoring groups. Workers in these fields realized the capability of TLC-FID for rapid sample synoptic surveys and screening routines. Most of this work was focused on the rapid characterization of crude oils, coal and petroleum products and the basic characterization of petroleum-contaminated soils. A discussion of TLC-FID applications to petrochemical... 

The ability to control the interaction between a wide diversity of biomolecules with surfaces can be also exploited as an effective way to develop reagentless, sensitive, reusable, and real-time biosensors [51-56]. Such sophisticated biosensors are expected to impact a wide range of applications, from clinical diagnosis[57] and environmental monitoring [58] to forensic analysis [59]. Another significant potential application of dynamic surfaces is in bioseparation of proteins and other biomolecules for basic life science research, as well as industrial applications [60-63]. With the rapid development of recombinant proteins in the treatment of various human diseases, the dynamic surface-based bioseparation systems could meet the demand for more reliable and efficient protein purification methods [64]. Stimuli-responsive surfaces are also expected to play a crucial role in the search for more controllable and precise drug delivery systems [65]. 

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