Learn and Develop

In The Nucleus, researchers from more than forty leading international laboratories describe state-of-the-art methods for isolating nuclei and their components and for studying their structure and activities, including some pathology-associated features. Volume 2: Chromatin, Transcription, Envelope, Proteins, Dynamics, and Imaging presents biophysical approaches to study the mechanical properties of nuclei, together with a comprehensive range of imaging methods. These include FISH, FRAP, FRET, molecular beacons, fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, single molecule tracking, and combing DNA for optical microscopy, recognition imaging for atomic force microscopy, and hybridisation, tomography, and spectroscopic imaging for electron microscopy.

At almost 450 pages, this handsome book is ideal for any student or researcher who needs a basic understanding of crystallography and diffraction. The consistently high standard of presentation and explanation, the relatively low price (~£30 for the paperback edition), and the fact that this book is now in its third edition tells you everything you need to know. The third edition is longer, by a hundred pages, than the second and is split in to two halves that cover crystallography and diffraction.

Materials science needs a microscopic, if not a nanoscopic knowledge in order to correctly understand and improve the properties of engineering materials. Most of the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of inorganic materials are directly influenced by their microstructure (i.e. size, shape, and orientation of grains and phases composing the bulk) and this fact is strongly affected by the atomic composition and distribution. For materials composed of grains it is obviously of primary importance to know the zone of bonding of these grains, i.e. the grain boundaries. This has been a must since the beginning of the last century. Thanks to the development of investigation techniques characterising this period a dramatic quantity of data concerning grain boundaries and their chemistry as well as their links to macroscopic properties has been collected and elaborated...

This is an excellent book! From an academic curiosity thirty years ago, the convergent-beam electron diffraction (CBED) method has recently become an indispensable tool in semiconductor materials defect analysis, and in nano-phase identification in materials science generally. The method, which is often provided as a "nanodiffraction" mode on modern electron microscopes, provides transmission electron diffraction patterns from sub-nanometer areas of thin crystalline films, using a highly convergent beam, so that Bragg spots appear as discs, and it is the contents of these disks, or "rocking curves" which are analyzed. As interest in the synthesis of finer-grained materials and individual nanostructures grows, techniques such as electron nanodiffraction have increased greatly in importance...

This book is intended to teach students and research workers how to record and interpret atomic-resolution micrographs taken on high resolution electron microscopes (HREM). The content falls into three areas: the theory of electron and wave optics, applications in materials and life sciences, and a practical guide to the design and operation of an HREM. The high-resolution electron microscope is a phase-contrast instrument, and this concept is explained in the very first chapter. Here there is also a practical guide to using an HREM, a valuable theme that Spence replays throughout the book...