Thermodynamics as a Basic of Inanimate and Animate Nature

The concepts of classical and quantum physics allow one, either exactly or with a certain probability, to predict the state of macrobodies or microparticles. In particular, this concerns mechanical movement regularities, which can be described by using spatial-temporal, coordinates, the vales of mass, velocity, pulse, wave characteristics, the knowledge of the fundamental t5q)e of interaction. However, there exist some processes whose features can be explained by neither classical physics nor quantum representations. E.g. the existence of bodies to them in different aggregation states, the appearance of elastic forces at deformations of systems, possible transformation of some compounds into others, etc. As a rule, these and similar processes are accompanied by transition of systems fi om one state to another one with changes in thermal energy. Just such processes and most general thermal properties of macroscopic bodies are studied by the section of physics and chemistry called thermodynamics [1, 2, 9-11]. 

Thermod5mamics studies a system, i.e., a body or group of bodies capable of changing imder the influence of physical or chemical processes. Everything surroimding the system forms the external medium (environment). By a body they usually understand any substance having a certain volume and characterized by some physical properties. Thermod5mamic 

Thermodynamics only considers the initial and final states of a system, which are characterized by special thermodynamic parameters. Usually, temperature, pressure, volume, and such characteristic junctions as enthalpy, entropy, internal energy, Helmholtz free energy, Gibbs thermodynamic potential act as such parameters of state. Just these functions and their values characterize the thermodynamic state of a system and 

The physical sense of the concepts of classical (equilibrium) thermodynamics is directly related with its three basic laws, which are general laws of nature. 

The second law of thermodynamics means that the processes of energy transformation can occur spontaneously only provided that energy passes from its concentrated (ordered) form to a diffused (disordered) one. Such energy redistribution in the system is characterized by a quantity which has been named as entropy, which, as a function of state of the thermodynamic system (the more energy irreversible dissipates as heat, the higher entropy is. Whence it follows that any system whose properties change in time aspires to an equilibrium state at which the entropy of the system takes its maximum value. In this coimection, the second law of thermodynamics is often called the law of increasing entropy, and entropy (as a physical quantity or as a physical notion) is considered as a measure of disorder of a physicochemical system. 

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In the first chapter, thermodynamics as a basic of inanimate and animate natures is discussed. In this chapter the concept which allows the investigation of the behavior of open (biological) systems by using the laws of unbalanced (classical) thermodinamics is examined. Nanotherapeutics, as a novel approach of target-based drug delivery, is presented in Chapter 2. 

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