Theoretical Books

this is a very nice book, you can read a review of itat:*************** It says it all.

the book has some typos but it isstill worth it. If you are new to the subject and want to learn it, it is worth the investment.

Indispensable

As a doctoral student in clinical psych with a focus on children I have found this set to not only be well worth the hefty price tag but to have saved me $ since any and everything (from attachment theory to neuro) that I have needed info on was covered in depth and by the giants in each respective arena. BUY IT if it overlaps with your interests! It will become the first place you look for anything relating to child psych. It is technical and scholarly in detail so it's not for the layperson but for students and psychs alike.

You can start learning the subject from the book as well as using it as a handbook for reference.
The illustrations are very good, some photographs are spectacular. Concepts are given in modern tensor calculus notation.

The book contains extensive chapters on tight binding methods, density functional theory, atomistic modeling of materials using molecular dynamical methods, monte-carlo methods, rate equations and continuum methods, and covers processes from thin film growth to radiation damage in solids, defects in crystals to soft condensed matter. Towards the end the plenary chapters give a nice overview of the problems in the field of simulation. The chapters are lucidly written by the foremost researchers in the fields.

My only gripe is that it ignores the field of device simulations, which would have been a nice addition in an encyclopedic book like this.

A must have for any person trying to learn simulation techniques. Definitely five star material.

Handbook of Physical-Chemical Properties and Environmental Fate for Organic Chemicals, Second Edition edited by Donald Mackay (CRC) The Handbook of Physical-Chemical Properties and Environmental Fate for Organic Chemicals, Second Edition is a massive 4 volume essential reference for university libraries, regulatory agencies, consultants, and industry professionals, particularly those concerned with chemical synthesis, emissions, fate, persistence, long-range transport, bioaccumulation, exposure, and biological effects of chemicals in the environment. The handbook contains physical-chemical property data on over 1200 chemicals of environmental concern. It offers approximately 30 percent new and updated information from previous edition. An enhancement to this new edition is the inclusion of measured temperature-dependent data for selected physical-chemical properties.Transport and transformation processes are key for determining how humans and other organisms are exposed to chemicals. These processes are largely controlled by the chemicals' physical-chemical properties. This new edition of the Handbook of Physical-Chemical Properties and Environmental Fate for Organic Chemicals is a comprehensive series in four volumes that serves as a reference source for environmentally relevant physical-chemical property data of numerous groups of chemical substances.
The handbook contains physical-chemical property data from peer-reviewed journals and other valuable sources on over 1200 chemicals of environmental concern. The handbook contains new data on the temperature dependence of selected physical-chemical properties, which allows scientists and engineers to perform better chemical assessments for climatic conditions outside the 20-25-degree range for which property values are generally reported.
Features
Contains introduction on how the data presented are used in chemical assessments
Presents temperature-dependent data for selected physical-chemical properties, such as water solubility, vapor pressure, Henry's law constant, and octanol/water and octanol/air partition coefficients where available
Provides temperature-dependent data in the form of data tables and graphs
Emphasizes experimental data from original sources rather than quoted, estimated, or correlated values
Offers approximately 30 percent new and updated information from the previous edition, including information for nearly 400 new organic chemicals
Expands its coverage of PCBs, PCDDs, PCDFs, as well as brominated and fluorinated hydrocarbons
This second edition of the Handbook of Physical-Chemical Properties and Environmental Fate for Organic Chemicals is an essential reference for university libraries, regulatory agencies, consultants, and industry professionals, particularly those concerned with chemical synthesis, emissions, fate, persistence, long-range transport, bioaccumulation, exposure, and biological effects of chemicals in the environment.
This handbook is a compilation of environmentally relevant physical-chemical data for similarly structured groups of chemical substances. These data control the fate of chemicals as they are transported and transformed in the multimedia environment of air, water, soils, sediments, and their resident biota. These fate processes determine the exposure experienced by humans and other organisms and ultimately the risk of adverse effects. The task of assessing chemical fate locally, regionally, and globally is complicated by the large (and increasing) number of chemicals of potential concern; by uncertainties in their physical-chemical properties; and by lack of knowledge of prevailing environmental conditions such as temperature, pH, and deposition rates of solid matter from the atmosphere to water, or from water to bottom sediments. Further, reported values of properties such as solubility are often in conflict. Some are measured accurately, some approximately, and some are estimated by various correlation schemes from molecular structures. In some cases, units or chemical identity are wrongly reported. The user of such data thus has the difficult task of selecting the "best" or "right" values. There is justifiable concern that the resulting deductions of environmental fate may be in substantial error. For example, the potential for evaporation may be greatly underestimated if an erroneously low vapor pressure is selected.
To assist the environmental scientist and engineer in such assessments, this handbook contains compilations of physical-chemical property data for over 1000 chemicals. It has long been recognized that within homologous series, properties vary systematically with molecular size, thus providing guidance about the properties of one substance from those of its homologs. Where practical, plots of these systematic property variations can be used to check the reported data and provide an opportunity for interpolation and even modest extrapolation to estimate unmeasured properties of other substances. Most handbooks treat chemicals only on an individual basis and do not contain this feature of chemical¬to-chemical comparison, which can be valuable for identifying errors and estimating properties. This most recent edition includes about 1250 compounds and contains about 30 percent additional physical-chemical property data. There is a more complete coverage of PCBs, PCDDs, PCDFs, and other halogenated hydrocarbons, especially brominated and fluorinated substances that are of more recent environmental concern. Values of the physical-chemical properties are generally reported in the literature at a standard temperature of 20 or 25°C. However, environmental temperatures vary considerably, and thus reliable data are required on the temperature dependence of these properties for fate calculations. A valuable enhancement to this edition is the inclusion of extensive measured temperature-dependent data for the first time. The data focus on water solubility, vapor pressure, and Henry's law constant but include octanol/water and octanol/air partition coefficients where available. They are provided in the form of data tables and correlation equations as well as graphs.
We also demonstrate in Chapter 1 how the data may be taken a stage further and used to estimate likely environmental partitioning tendencies, i.e., how the chemical is likely to become distributed between the various media that comprise our biosphere. The results are presented numerically and pictorially to provide a visual impression of likely environmental behavior. This will be of interest to those assessing environmental fate by confirming the general fate characteristics or behavior profile. It is, of course, only possible here to assess fate in a "typical" or "generic" or "evaluative" environment. No claim is made that a chemical will behave in this manner in all situations, but this assessment should reveal the broad characteristics of behavior. These evaluative fate assessments are generated using simple fugacity models that flow naturally from the compilations of data on physical-chemical properties of relevant chemicals. Illustrations of estimated environmental fate are given in Chapter 1 using Levels I, II, and III mass balance models. These and other models are available for downloading gratis from the website of the Canadian Environmental Modelling Centre at Trent University (www.trent.ca/cemc).
This new edition of the handbook should be of incalculable of value to environmental scientists and engineers and to students and teachers of environmental science. It aims to contribute to better assessments of chemical fate in our multimedia environment by serving as a reference source for environmentally relevant physical-chemical property data of classes of chemicals and by illustrating the likely behavior of these chemicals as they migrate throughout our biosphere.

Contents:
Volume I: Introduction and Hydrocarbons
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Aliphatic and Cyclic Hydrocarbons
Chapter 3 Mononuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons
Chapter 4 Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and Related Aromatic Hydrocarbons
Volume II: Halogenated Hydrocarbons
Chapter 5 Halogenated Aliphatic Hydrocarbons
Chapter 6 Chlorobenzenes and Other Halogenated Mononuclear Aromatics
Chapter 7 Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs)
Chapter 8 Chlorinated Dibenzo-p-dioxins
Chapter 9 Chlorinated Dibenzofurans
Volume III: Oxygen Containing Compounds
Chapter 10 Ethers
Chapter 11 Alcohols
Chapter 12 Aldehydes and Ketones
Chapter 13 Carboxylic Acids
Chapter 14 Phenolic Compounds
Chapter 15 Esters
Volume IV: Nitrogen and Sulfur Containing Compounds and Pesticides
Chapter 16 Nitrogen and Sulfur Compounds
Chapter 17 Herbicides
Chapter 18 Insecticides
Chapter 19 Fungicides
Appendix 1 List of Symbols and Abbreviations
Appendix 2 Alphabetical Index
Appendix 3 CAS Registry Number Index

Properties, taxonomy, functions, apllications, plant

Nothing is more complicated than stress. No single volume provides a more balanced and substantive range of theoretical and research articles and chapters devoted to clinical aspects of stress and stress management. The authors/editors wisely warn in chapter one about "Stress Research at a Crossroads." Any professional involved in researching or clinically treating forms of stress knows all too well that stress research is multiplying exponentially and that as the body of information is expanding it is also diversifying and dovetailing with similar topics such as emotion, neurology, physiology and even physics and linguistics. Given, then, that no volume - let alone one that attempts to maintain a substantive input by the classical pioneers such as Selye, Lazarus, Janis and Meichenbaum among many others - can keep up with the research, this one constitutes a masterful, one-stop basic text for integrating the rich underpinnings that launched the stress revolution. The three major strengths of this book that keep it almost constantly on my desktop are its rich classical/historical content (just where exactly did we get the ideas of "eustress and distress"?), the expansive range of topics ranging from medicine and emotion to psychological measurement, diagnosis, and environment, and its applicability to a wide array of practical clinical applications including social turmoil (the Holocaust, migration of populations, HIV), treatment modalities and links to overall physical health. This classic text is the springboard handbook for any professional who makes a living trying to understand or apply stress theory to helping people change, or addressing the social context in which people live.

This collection of articles on the foundations of computer science is a nice addition addition to the literature and guides the reader to further reading on the subject. I did not read all of the chapters so I will concentrate my remarks on the ones that I did: Chapter 4 on Kolmogorov complexity puts emphasis on the applications and the authors endeavor to bring the reader quickly to the level of understanding needed for applications. The ones discussed are primarily in the area of parallel computation and branching programs. The chapter on algorithms for finding patterns in strings is nicely written and the authors do a good job of summarizing the main results. Computational biologists dealing with string matching algorithms may find the presentation very helpful. The author uses pseudocode to illustrate the main algorithms, such as Knuth-Morriss-Platt, Boyer-Moore, Aho-Corasick, and Commentx-Walter. Concrete examples are given for each of these algorithms. The chapter on computational geometry discusses the main algorithms for finding convex hulls and Voronoi diagrams are discussed in fairly good detail. Linear programming, triangulation, and point locating are given a fast treatment. The author does make use of pictures to illustrate the the algorithms. The only disappointment was that combinatorial geometry was given only a very cursory treatment. Of particular importance to me was the chapter on algorithms in number theory. Interestingly, the authors jump right into a discussion of elliptic curves and actually do a fairly good job (within 4 pages) of summarizing this massive area of mathematics. The authors return to elliptic curves in a later section on factoring integers, after discussing algorithms for finite abelian groups. The Shanks baby-step-giant-step, Pollard's rho method, the Chinese Remainder theorem, and the index calculus algorithm are discussed concisely. Elliptic curves are again used in the section on primality testing. There is a good summary of cryptography in Chapter 13, with the most interesting discussions on probabilistic encryption, "over-the-phone" poker, and zero-knowledge interactive proofs. In Volume B, those interested in the foundations of logic and functional programming, Chapter 6 on rewrite systems covers the main points. The chapter is fairly long an detailed. Functional programming and lambda calculus are contained in the next chapter with proofs given of the main results. The most interesting section is on denotational semantics. LISP is discussed a little at the end of the chapter. Chapter 10 also discusses logic programming in a fairly detailed manner. The most interesting sections are the ones on the completion of programs and deductive databases. The author ends the chapter with a brief history of logic programming. In reading this I found out that there has been work done on developing a theory of logic programming based on 3-valued logic and useful references were given. The theory of relational databases in covered in Chapter 17. This is of overwhelming importance today and the author does a decent job of outlining what relational databases are all about. The section on query optimization is particularly illuminating. Although the text is very formal and very far away from the everday practice of database management, reading it does give a deeper appreciation of the foundations of the subject. Overall, a very fine addition to the literature...I hope the publishers decide to move ahead with an updated edition.

Astronomer James J. Garber presents Harmony in Healing: The Theoretical Basis of Ancient and Medieval Medicine, a unique examination of the link between medicine, astronomy, and cosmology, from the era of the Greeks to the modern day. Harmony in Healing pays particular attention to the theoretical baseline of the ancient principle of universal harmony, and its role in helping humanity's efforts to resist disease. Cosmological principles have played a key role in the theory and practice of medicine throughout history, sometimes obscuring human understanding of more accurate models such as modern disease theory, but often leading the way in the spirit of scientific and medical inquisition. "Galen's theory of anatomy and physiology was easily assimilated into a Christian context because he held that God had created each part of the human body for a specific purpose. His was a teleological system utilizing Aristotle's fourth (final) cause. Galen was a pagan who, at one point, criticized Christians for not thinking rationally. This apparently did not put off Christian writers - Galen's works survived without criticism for 1,500 years." A fascinating look at how mankind's understanding of medicine and healing evolved over millennia.

For the advanced organic chemistry researcher who is entering the wonderful world of heterogeneous catalysis in general - and heterogeneous hydrogenation in particular - there is no single resource such as this to guide him. Working in the field of heterogeneous hydrogenation myself, I had felt that a modern, up-to-date, readable text was long overdue. Heterogeneous Catalysis in Organic Chemistry has all of these attributes and much much more. It will help you o brave chemist to safely navigate the enormous and often useless primary literature and reach what you were looking for. Be that experimental details for a particular transformation, current developments in the scope of the field, understanding of the underlying theory. I strongly reccomend all organic synthesis research departments obtain a copy. It will be invaluable for the whole range of staff, from the first year inexperienced graduate student nervously exploring the field, to the research group leader who wants to update his knowledge and understanding, painlesly, accurately and quickly.