Field Principle Investigators

Organic photoeleclrochemistry is that field of investigation in which redox reactions of carbon-based compounds are initiated or assisted by the absorption of a photon at or near the surface of an electrode The principles of photoelectrochemistry have been well described elsewhere and only a very brief discussion of their salient features is given here. 

The fundamental principle here is that animals are only used when there is no alternative. Researchers have an ethical duty (and in some countries, a legal one) to check all of the available scientific literature to determine if there is an alternative way of acquiring the information that would be gained from an animal study. Innovation in any field of investigation that allows information to be gained from alternative research methodology not involving animals is welcomed by the pharmaceutical industry. 

The exact form of the DLVO potential, the influence of the DLVO forces on aggregation mechanisms and the stmcture of the resulting aggregates is still a major field under investigation in colloidal chemistry. It should be noted here that the DLVO validity is, in principle, limited to large particles with small curvatures and to small separation distances between the two particles. 

For analogous reasons, which again translate into the intrinsic computational cost, extensive and accurate first-principles investigations of chalcogenide glasses could be successfully afforded only recently [40-42], These systems represent a hot topic and constitute a major target in the field of optoelectronics and optical support devices (CD, DVD, optical memory, etc.). 

The principle of fluorescent whitening was described in 1929 (1), but the industrial use of FWAs began about 10 years later. Since that time FWAs have found increasing use in the most diverse fields (2—5). The toxicological properties of fluorescent whiteners have been summarized (6). Commercial products investigated thus fat have been found to be completely harmless. Mote than 2000 patents for FWAs exist, there ate several hundred commercial products, and approximately one hundred producers and distributors. 

More recently, the method of scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) has been applied to LB films of phospholipids and has revealed submicron-domain structures [55-59]. The method involves scanning a fiber-optic tip over a surface in much the same way an AFM tip is scanned over a surface. In principle, other optical experiments could be combined with the SNOM, snch as resonance energy transfer, time-resolved flnorescence, and surface plasmon resonance. It is likely that spectroscopic investigation of snbmicron domains in LB films nsing these principles will be pnrsned extensively. 

From this brief review of marine vertebrate venoms, it is obvious that very few biochemical investigations have been done. The technology to study marine vertebrate venom components is available. There are simply not enough scientists interested enough to enter the field. The first task is to isolate the toxic principles and identify the amino acid sequences. Pharmacological investigation should be done on the purified toxic principle and not on the crude venom, which is a mixture of many proteins and nonproteins. 

As described in Section 9.4, the determination and refinement of molecular conformations comprehends three main methods DG, MD and SA. Other techniques like Monte Carlo calculations have only a limited applicability in the field of structure elucidation. In principle, it is possible to exclusively make use of DG, MD or SA, but normally it is strongly suggested to combine these methods in order to obtain robust and reliable structural models. Only when the results of different methods match a 3D structure should be presented. There are various ways of combining the described techniques and the procedural methods may differ depending on what kind of molecules are investigated. However, with the flowchart in Fig. 9.13 we give an instruction on how to obtain a reliable structural model. 

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