The first presentation of the novel interdisciplinary optical remote sensing technique for various ionized diluted media, based on the collisional polarization of the spectoral emission. The book provides a methodology of the impact spectropolarimetic sensing of many solutions to many practical diagnostic problems.

Chiral Analysis: Advances in Spectroscopy, Chromatography and Emerging Methods, Second Edition covers an important area of analytical chemistry of relevance to a wide variety of scientific professionals, including chemistry graduate students, analytical chemists, organic chemists, professionals in the pharmaceutical industry, and others with an interest in chirality and chiral analysis. This thoroughly revised second edition covers several new, important areas of chiral analysis that have emerged since the first edition. Three of the new methods provide higher sensitivity than can be realized with the current methods and are expected to become mainstream applications: cavity based methods offer vastly higher sensitivity than conventional polarimetric methods, microwave chiral detection provides unsurpassed sensitivity for identifying diastereomers, and the rotating electric field method offers a competing new approach for the separation of enantiomers. Another topic, chirality in extraterrestrial life, has not been discussed in any other book and is important for understanding the origin of life. Offers the only book to cover both spectroscopic and separation methods in a single volume Provides an up-to-date and detailed review of the various techniques available, including new techniques that have emerged since the first edition Includes contributions from a range of leading experts in the field, now edited by award-winning chirality researcher Prasad Polavarapu

The focus for RiMG volume 90 is on rocky exoplanets because the search for truly Earth-like planets is of special interest. The goal is to motivate communication between the disciplines so as to make the best use possible of existing data and data yet to be collected by the James Webb and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopes, since the astronomy community is gathering data on stars and exoplanets at an accelerating rate. Such data now include exoplanet size and mass (i.e., density) as well as their atmospheric compositions, which are collectively telltale of mineralogy and evolution. Much of what is published may still fall in the realm of educated speculation, but our conjectures are metamorphosing into testable hypotheses. There is now a remarkably large amount of astronomical data (with even more on the way) that geochemists and petrologists can make much use of. But just as astronomers may benefit from geologic insights, geologists need our colleagues in astronomy to help interpret their data and their underlying implications to better understand its astronomical context. Our hopes for this volume will be fulfilled if readers initiate their own analyses of what at present may seem like novel or unusual data, and if new collaborations between academic departments and subfields are forged.

This book presents an overview of current views on the origin of life and its earliest evolution. Each chapter describes key processes, environments and transition on the long road from geochemistry and astrochemistry to biochemistry and finally to the ancestors of today ́s organisms. This book combines the bottom-up and the top-down approaches to life including the origin of key chemical and structural features of living cells and the nature of abiotic factors that shaped these features in primordial environments. The book provides an overview of the topic as well as its state of the art for graduate students and newcomers to the field. It also serves as a reference for researchers in origins of life on Earth and beyond.

New Frontiers in Astrobiology presents a simple and concise overview of the emerging field of astrobiology. Astrobiology studies the evolution, origin, and future of life on Earth and beyond. This book provides a brief overview of the current research and future status of this fascinating field. The book covers a wide range of topics from the history of astrobiology, the big bang, prebiotic chemistry, theories of the origin of life, extreme environments on Earth, and the quest for intelligent life in space. Currently, there is a critical gap in knowledge related to the future scope of astrobiology and its applications in science and society. The hallmark of the book is that it takes critical perspectives to analyze the new frontiers in astrobiology post Mars 2020/ExoMars missions that encompass the latestdevelopments in the detection of biosignatures and habitability beyond our Solar System (exomoons, exoplanets). The book will be a valuable resource for students, researchers, and scientists who seek greater insights into understanding the current status and future of astrobiology. Explores the background and historical developments in astrobiology Provides concise cutting-edge reviews on fundamental questions on origin and distribution of life on Earth, habitability beyond Earth, and future of life on Earth Integrates contemporary and critical views in new frontiers in astrobiology

We have developed a circular dichroism spectrometer working in the terahertz (THz) frequency regime. As THz spectroscopy is specific to collective vibrational modes in macromolecules (and collective modes in condensed, polar media such as water), the spectrometer should provide spectral fingerprints of biological materials. Moreover, by focusing on circular dichroism the spectrometer should provide fingerprints of these materials uncontaminated by the strong background absorbance of water and other polar materials. We have built this spectrometer and have pushed its signal to noise down to 1 part in 10^4. While this is more than sufficient to detect the strong circular dichroism of macroscopic, chiral objects, it is apparently insufficient to observe circular dichroism arising from common biological materials. Current efforts are aimed at 1-2 orders of magnitude improvements on this detection limit.