Despite the existence of many competitive analytical techniques, molecular absorption spectrophotometry still remains very popular in practice, particularly in biochemical, clinical, organic, agricultural, food and environmental analyses. This is due mainly to the inherent ease and relative simplicity of spectrophotometric procedures and the availability of reliable and highly-automated instruments. Moreover, the method and its instrumentation has recently undergone considerable development resulting in some new special approaches of spectrophotometry in the ultraviolet (UV) and visible (VIS) regions.Although there are a number of comprehensive textbooks dealing with UV/VIS spectrophotometry, they tend to describe historical aspects or contain collections of detailed procedures for the determination of analytes and do not reflect sufficiently the present state of the method and stage of development reached. This book provides a concise survey of the actual state-of-the-art of UV/VIS spectrophotometry.Special attention has been paid to problems with the Bouguer-Lambert-Beer law, absorption spectra, present trends in instrumentation, errors in spectrophotometry, evaluation of analyte concentration and calibration, optimization procedures, multicomponent analysis, differential spectrophotometries, problem of blanks, derivative and dual-wavelength spectrophotometry, spectrophotometric titration, the strong relations between complex formation and spectrophotometry, spectrophotometric investigation of complex equilibria and stoichiometry or automation in spectrophotometry. The significance of spectrophotometry in connection with liquid-liquid extraction, reaction kinetics, trace analysis, environmental and clinical analysis is also covered.The text is supported by tables and figures, and numerous references are provided for each topic treated. The book is written for all those who use UV/VIS spectrophotometry in the laboratory and will also be useful to students as supplementary reading.

The origin and early years of any rapidly changing scientific discipline runs the risk of being forgotten unless a record of its past is preserved. In this, the first book-length history of clinical chemistry, those involved or interested in the field will read about who and what went before them and how the profession came to its present state of clinical importance. The narrative reconstructs the origins of clinical chemistry in the seventeenth century and traces its often obscure path of development in the shadow of organic chemistry, physiology and biochemistry until it assumes its own identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. The chronological development of the story reveals the varied roots from which modern clinical chemistry arose.

The book focuses in detail on learning and adapting through partnerships between managers, scientists, and other stakeholders who learn together how to create and maintain sustainable resource systems. As natural areas shrink and fragment, our ability to sustain economic growth and safeguard biological diversity and ecological integrity is increasingly being put to the test. In attempting to meet this unprecedented challenge, adaptive management is becoming a viable alternative for broader application. Adaptive management is an iterative decision-making process which is both operationally and conceptually simple and which incorporates users to acknowledge and account for uncertainty, and sustain an operating environment that promotes its reduction through careful planning, evaluation, and learning until the desired results are achieved. This multifaceted approach requires clearly defined management objectives to guide decisions about what actions to take, and explicit assumptions about expected outcomes to compare against actual outcomes. In this edited book, we address the issue by pursuing a holistic and systematic approach that utilizes natural resources to reap sustainable environmental, economic and social benefits for adaptive management, helping to ensure that relationships between land, water and plants are managed in ways that mimic nature.