The Goals and Scope of This Volume

A second fundamental source of sensitivity to the environment and, therefore, a second major challenge for adaptation, derives from the fact that, in order to sustain life, cells must be capable of maintaining an adequate level of energy turnover—the synthesis of adeno- 

To summarize, the central challenges faced by all organisms in adaptation to the environment comprise (i) offsetting the direct perturbation of marginally stable biochemical structures by physical and chemical factors, and (ii) coping with the effects of environmental change on rates of metabolic processes. Structure and process must be defended if life is to persist, and the manners in which diverse taxa have responded to these two fundamental challenges under a host of environmental conditions form the focus of this volume. 

To see how these adaptive biochemical feats are accomplished, we first must develop an analytical frame of reference that will enable us to 

The philosophical challenge of adaptation arises from difficult conundrums that are linked to the concept of adaptation. In recent decades these conceptual issues have led to substantial debate about the nature of adaptation and the appropriate means for studying it. These deliberations have served as a strong selective force that has driven an evolutionary change (perhaps even a revolutionary change, in the Kuhnian sense of the word revolution ) in our perspective on adaptive processes. If we are to answer satisfactorily the question that opens this chapter, we must understand what this intellectual ferment is all about. 

What Do We Study When We Examine Biochemical Adaptation What Is a Biochemical Trait  

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A thorough treatment of the mathematics needed for model development and analysis is beyond the scope of this volume, and is presented in numerous sources [ 1,2]. Herein, the goal is to provide a physical understanding of the important issues relevant to hemodynamic flow and transport. Solution methods are summarized, and the benefits associated with use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) packages... 

An important application of FTIR is quantitative spectroscopy, where infrared spectra are used to determine the concentrations of chemical species in samples. Entire books have been written on this subject [ 1 ], and a lengthy description of quantitative spectroscopy is beyond the scope of this volume. My goal here is to introduce you to the fundamentals of quantitative spectroscopy by focusing on the determination of one chemical species at a time. Quantitating multiple chemical species at a lime via infrared spectroscopy is doable given proper technique, equipment, software, and skill and is discussed elsewhere [1]. 

Oxides continue to be the focus of much attention, and increasingly the area is driven by target properties. In this volume we have been largely concerned with properties arising from electronic structure but other applications, in catalysis or in optical media, are equally as important and are researched equally actively. The role of the chemist in synthesis is still paramount, and indeed it is very apparent that the scope for novel compositions and structures is far from being exhausted. More than ever the goal of a particular desirable property and the need to understand structure-property relationships is always in mind in contemporary research. 

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