The book focuses on major aspects of Norbert Elias's social theory through research on supposed “minor” topics, such as manners, sports, leisure and cultural practices. While many of his publications became essential for scholars in the different disciplines concerned, the development of the figurational approach towards these fields was not always completed. The edited volume picks up some lose ends by including archive manuscripts by Elias on the genesis of sport, developments of cultural practices, and the sociology of the body, which are published here for the very first time. Based on critical reviews of these texts, international experts show how the new material adds up to Elias’s oeuvre and how it can be fruitfully applied to current research.

A state-of-the-art review of original research, this book includes discussions of intramolecular photoadditoin of nucleophiles, electrophiles, and radical species to the activated aromatic ring; new methods for regio-, anantio-, and diastereoselective photooxygenations involving singlet oxygen mechanisms; and applications of microreactors for photo

Photo-Excited Processes, Diagnostics and Applications covers the area of photo-excitation and processing of materials by photons from the basic principles and theories to applications, from IR to x-rays, from gas phase to liquid and solid phases. The various chapters give a wide spectral view of this developing field. Twelve leading groups worldwide set down to write this book during the past two years which include the most updated techniques used in their laboratories for investigating photo-excited processes and new applications. This book will be useful to scientists and engineers who have a strong interest in photo-assisted processes development for microelectronics and photonics.

Relaxation phenomena of excited molecular states are abundant in all nature. They mediate such key processes as photochemical reactions or even the pathways of ordinary chemical reactions. However, for a long time the main research in electronic relaxation processes was concerned with anorganic solids, in part because of their great technological importance (photography, semiconductors ... ) in part also because these compounds were the "workhorses" of the solid state physicists. In the last 30 years, there was a steadily increasing interest in organic molecular systems, first in molecular crystals and later in all forms of molecular solids (glasses, polymers, membranes, ... ). The present volume combines papers on quite different types of relaxation phenomena: the type of solid studied, the electronic states involved, the physical processes responsible for the relaxations are all different. Nevertheless, after reading this book, a more clear and complete picture of the phenomenon "relaxa tion" emerges that proves that this volume is more than just a collection of individual articles. The volume starts with the paper "Spin-lattice and spin-spin relaxation in photo-excited triplet states in molecular crystals" by Jan Schmidt. Even in these seemingly simple systems of isolated guest molecules in a single crystal host, the relaxation phenomena are quite involved and a very thorough investigation is necessary to find the key relaxation processes. The end of the article provides a bridge to the following paper: it treats interactions of two molecules (dimers), where resonant interactions become important and lead to new, characteristic relaxation processes.

Discusses classical Greek wrestling, the English foxhunt, medieval ball games, and modern soccer, and examines the psychological, sociological, and biological aspects of sports

The series Topics in Current Chemistry presents critical reviews of the present and future trends in modern chemical research. The scope of coverage is all areas of chemical science including the interfaces with related disciplines such as biology, medicine and materials science. The goal of each thematic volume is to give the non-specialist reader, whether in academia or industry, a comprehensive insight into an area where new research is emerging which is of interest to a larger scientific audience. Each review within the volume critically surveys one aspect of that topic and places it within the context of the volume as a whole. The most significant developments of the last 5 to 10 years are presented using selected examples to illustrate the principles discussed. The coverage is not intended to be an exhaustive summary of the field or include large quantities of data, but should rather be conceptual, concentrating on the methodological thinking that will allow the non-specialist reader to understand the information presented. Contributions also offer an outlook on potential future developments in the field. Review articles for the individual volumes are invited by the volume editors. Readership: research chemists at universities or in industry, graduate students

How do figurational sociologists approach the subjects of sport and leisure? How does their approach differ from other approaches in the field? This major collection, edited by leading writers on sport and leisure, offers a superb introduction to the figurational sociology of sport and leisure. The distinctive features of the approach are clearly explained and contributors show how figurational sociology is applied in the analysis of concrete problems. However, the collection also gives space to critics of the figurational approach. Included here are contributions which claim that the approach is inaccurate, blinkered and irrelevant.

These proceedings report the lectures and seminars presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on "The Spectroscopy of the Excited State," held at Erice, Italy, June 9-24, 1975. This Institute was an activity of the International School of Atomic and Molecular Spectroscopy of the "Ettore Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture. The Institute consisted of a series of lectures on the spectroscopic properties of materials in excited electronic states, that, starting at a fundamental level, finally reached the current level of research. The sequence of lectures and the organization of the material taught were in keeping with a didac tical presentation. In essence the course had the two-fold pur pose of organizing what was known on the subject, and updating the knowledge in the field. The formal lectures were complemented by seminars whose abstracts are also included in these proceedings. The proceedings report also the contributions sent by Professors R.G.W. Norrish and S. C1aesson who, unfortunately, were not able to come because of illness. A total of 62 participants and 7 lecturers came from the following countries: Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Venezuela. The secretaries of the course were: A. La Francesca for the administrative aspects of the meeting and P.Papagiannakopou10s for the scientific aspects of the meeting.