Book Reviews

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.

This book forms a comprehensive introduction to the study of crystallography and diffraction. The book is aimed at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying solid state chemistry, physics, materials science and earth sciences. However, the clear and comprehensive nature of this text will also appeal to entry level undergraduates and more experienced researchers in these disciplines. With respect to the first edition, the content of the book has been considerably revised, expanded (from 242 to 331 pages) and updated, with the addition of material of more general scientific interest closely allied to the concepts of 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...

When the light microscope was invented in the late 16thC, a new breathtaking world, namely the microscopic world, has emerged. After a number of slow but consistent developments for just over three hundred years, the transmission electron microscope was materialized in 1931 and the progress picked up the pace afterwards. Many different techniques in light microscopy as well as new microscopes like acoustic and tunneling microscopes were developed, bringing Nobel Prizes to the inventors or the developers...

Although a picture is still worth a thousand words, a lot more information can be teased from living cells using modern techniques of light microscopy. Methods in Cellular Imaging, published under the auspices of the American Physiological Society, contains 24 reviews and is a timely edition that covers most of the more recent techniques (as of 2001 at least) for probing the secrets of living cells with a light microscope, as well as providing a primer on modern methods for imaging fluorescence...

Working with immunocytochemical techniques three players must primarily taken into account: (a) the resin, (b) the labelling agent, and (c), which is sometimes more important, the protocol applied. For the latter, most lab workers will agree to the dictum "Never change a winning team". Indeed, only a few reasons justify changing an effective experimental setup: testing new resins, switching from epoxy to acrylic ones, or utilising other tissue samples. These reasons could explain why your recipe, working fine for so much years, will not work any more. Now you can vary your protocol according to trial-and-error, or - and I recommend you to do so- you could read this book...

Giacovazzo et al. have written the second edition of their book that describes and explains a virtual cornucopia of topics in the broad field of modern crystallography. The chapters are titled: Symmetry in Crystals, Crystallographic Computing, The Diffraction of X-rays by Crystals, Beyond Ideal Crystals, Experimental Methods in X-ray and Neutron Crystallography, Solution and Refinement of Crystal Structures, Mineral and Inorganic Crystals, Molecules and Molecular Crystals, Protein Crystallography, and Physical Properties of Crystals: phenomenology and modelling. All of this is laid out in a generous 825 pages...

Conventional text books on solid state physics tend to begin with geometrical descriptions and methods for analysing crystal structures. It is refreshing, then, to find that A Quantum Approach to Condensed Matter Physics acknowledges from the outset that most of the interesting properties of solids arise from excitations, and that the very first chapter introduces excitations such as phonons, solitons, magnons and plasmons...

In the age of digital imaging, knowledge of a program such as Photoshop is vital for researchers. This book has simplified the workings of this program, for both Mac and Windows users, by dissecting out only the information that is necessary for scientific researchers...