ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: Arsenic is perhaps history’s favorite poison, often termed the "King of Poisons" and the "Poison of Kings" and thought to be the demise of fiction’s most famous ill-fated lovers. The toxic nature of arsenic has been known for millennia with the mineral realgar (AsS), originally named “arsenikon” by Theophrastus in 300 B.C.E. meaning literally "potent." For centuries it has been used as rat poison and as an important component of bactericides and wood preservatives. Arsenic is believed to be the cause of death to Napoleon Bonaparte who was exposed to wallpaper colored green from aceto-arsenite of copper (Aldersey-Williams 2011). The use of arsenic as a poison has been featured widely in literature, film, theatre, and television. Its use as a pesticide made it well known in the nineteenth century and it was exploited by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes novel The Golden Pince-Nez (Conan-Doyle 1903). The dark comedy Arsenic and Old Lace is a prime example of arsenic in popular culture, being first a play but becoming famous as a movie. Arsenic has figured prominently not only in fiction but in historical crimes as well (Kumar 2010). A high profile case of the mid-nineteenth century involved a hydrotherapist, Dr. Thomas Smethurst, who was accused of using arsenic to poison a woman he had befriended (Wharton 2010). Based on analytical evidence from a renowned toxicologist, Alfred Swaine Taylor, a death sentence was imposed, however Taylor had to confess that his apparatus was contaminated. The verdict was overturned after public opinion was voiced against it and a plea for clemency was made to Queen Victoria. In recent years, arsenic has been recognized as a widespread, low-level, natural groundwater contaminant in many parts of the world, particularly in places such as West Bengal and Bangladesh, where it has given rise to chronic human-health issues. Long-term exposure to arsenic has been shown to cause skin lesions, blackfoot disease, and cancer of the skin, bladder, and lungs, and is also associated with developmental effects, cardiovascular disease, neurotoxicity, and diabetes (WHO 2012). Arsenate’s toxicity is caused by its close chemical similarities to phosphate; it uses a phosphate transport system to enter cells. Arsenic occurs in many geological environments including sedimentary basins, and is particularly associated with geothermal waters and hydrothermal ore deposits. It is often a useful indicator of proximity to economic concentrations of metals such as gold, copper, and tin, where it occurs in hydrothermally altered wall rocks surrounding the zones of economic mineralization. Arsenic is commonly a persistent problem in metal mining and there has been significant effort to manage and treat mine waste to mitigate its environmental impacts. This volume compiles and reviews current information on arsenic from a variety of perspectives, including mineralogy, geochemistry, microbiology, toxicology, and environmental engineering. The first chapter (Bowell et al. 2014) presents an overview of arsenic geochemical cycles and is followed by a chapter on the paragenesis and crystal chemistry of arsenic minerals (chapter 2; Majzlan et al. 2014). The next chapters deal with an assessment of arsenic in natural waters (chapter 3; Campbell and Nordstrom 2014) and a review of thermodynamics of arsenic species (chapter 4; Nordstrom et al. 2014). The next two chapters deal with analytical measurement and assessment starting with measuring arsenic speciation in solids using x-ray absorption spectroscopy (chapter 5; Foster and Kim 2014). Chapter 6 (Leybourne and Johannesson 2014) presents a review on the measurement of arsenic speciation in environmental media: sampling, preservation, and analysis. In chapter 7 (Amend et al. 2014) there is a review of microbial arsenic metabolism and reaction energetics. This is followed by an overview of arsenic toxicity and human health issues (chapter 8; Mitchell 2014) and an assessment of methods used to characterize arsenic bioavailability and bioaccessibility (chapter 9; Basta and Jurasz 2014). This leads into chapter 10 (Craw and Bowell 2014), which describes the characterization of arsenic in mine waste with some examples from New Zealand, followed by a chapter on the management and treatment of arsenic in mining environments (chapter 11; Bowell and Craw 2014). The final three chapters are in-depth case studies of the geochemistry and mineralogy of legacy arsenic contamination in different historical mining environments: the Giant gold mine in Canada (chapter 12; Jamieson 2014), the Sierra Nevada Foothills gold belt of California (chapter 13; Alpers et al. 2014), and finally, the hydrogeochemistry of arsenic in the Tsumeb polymetallic mine in Namibia (chapter 14; Bowell 2014).

Description / Table of Contents: Chronology is the backbone of history, and there is a wise saying stating there is no history without a chronology. Earths evolutionary history is built up by geochronology, i.e. time benchmarks upon which the geological history is built up step by step over its total time period of about 4.5 billion years. The first marker in this history is the Jack Hills zircon from Australia dated at about 4.4 GA. The most detailed records come from seasonal changes within annual varves. Stratigraphy provides the basic chronological ordering of layers by layers, units by units, fossil assemblage by assemblage, varves by varves, growth zone by growth zone, etc. The radiometric techniques implied the introduction of absolute age determinations. This book includes a combination of methodological presentations and related case studies, from where we learn about practical problems and achievements. Therefore, the book should be of basic interest both for scientists in their practical in field and laboratory, as well as for general educational purpose.

Description / Table of Contents: The aim of this book is to demonstrate the use of SAR data in three application domains, i.e. land cover (Part II), topography (Part III), and land motion (Part IV). These are preceded by Part I, where an extensive and complete review on speckle and adaptive filtering is provided, essential for the understanding of SAR images. Part II is dedicated to land cover mapping. Part III is devoted to the generation of Digital Elevation Models based on radargrammetry and on a wise fusion (by considering sensor characteristic and acquisition geometry) of interferometric and photogrammetric elevation data. Part IV provides a contribution to three applications related to land motion.

Description / Table of Contents: TRANSMIT (Training Research and Applications Network to Support the Mitigation of Ionospheric Threats) is an initiative funded by the European Commission through a Marie Curie Initial Training Network. It provided a coordinated program of academic and industrial training, focused on atmospheric phenomena that can significantly impair a wide range of systems and applications that are at the core of several activities embedded in our daily life. TRANSMIT deals with the harmful effects of the ionosphere on these systems. Main aim of the project has been to develop a web based prototype demonstrator aiming to showcase the project research outcomes in a user friendly manner, through a series of model outputs and tools that could serve as the blueprint for a future service to assist users and industry to mitigate the effects of ionospheric threats to GNSS. This book is concerned with the TRANSMIT 2014 Workshop Appraisal of Scientific and Technological Output that took place in Torino (Italy) on February 2014, where a full update on the status of the prototype development and the next steps leading to its full implementation were provided.

Description / Table of Contents: Nowadays advanced remote sensing technology plays tremendous roles in building a quantitative and comprehensive understanding of how the Earth system works. The advanced remote sensing technology is also used widely to monitor and survey the natural disasters and man-made pollution. Besides, telecommunication is considered as an accuracy remote sensing advanced technology tool. Precise usage of remote sensing and telecommunication cannot be built without comprehensive understanding of mathematics and physics. This book has three parts (i) microwave remote sensing applications, (ii) nuclear, geophysics and telecommunication; and (iii) environment remote sensing investigations.

Description / Table of Contents: Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between matter and radiation and spectroscopic methods measure this interaction by measuring the radiative energy of the interaction in terms of frequency or wavelength or their changes. A variety of spectroscopic methods saw their first applications in mineralogical studies in the early 1960s and 1970s and since then have flourished where today they are routinely employed to probe both the general nature of mineralogical and geochemical processes as well as more atom specific interactions. In 1988, a Reviews in Mineralogy volume (Volume 18) was published on Spectroscopic Methods in Mineralogy and Geology by Frank Hawthorne (ed). The volume introduced the reader to a variety of spectroscopic techniques that, up to that time, were relatively unknown to most of the mineralogical and geochemical community. The volume was a great success and resulted in many of these techniques becoming main stream research tools. Since 1988, there have been many significant advances in both the technological aspects of these techniques and their applications to problems in Earth Sciences in general while the range and breadth of the techniques currently employed have greatly expanded since those formative years. The current volume compliments the original volume and updates many of the techniques. In addition, new methods such as X-ray Raman and Brillouin spectroscopy have been added, as well as non-spectroscopic chapters such as Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) for completeness. The first chapter by Lavina et al. introduces the reader to current X-ray diffraction methods, while those of Newville and Henderson et al. separately cover the widely used techniques of EXAFS and XANES. The new in situ high-pressure technique of X-ray Raman is covered in the chapter by Lee et al. There is an emphasis in all these chapters on synchrotron based methods which continues in the Luminescence chapter by Waychunas. Chapters on high resolution TEM and its associated spectroscopies, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy are covered by Brydson et al., and Nesbitt and Bancroft, respectively. The study of mineral surfaces by Atomic Force Microscopy has been covered by Jupille. UV/Vis and IR spectroscopies are described in the chapters by Rossman, Clark et al., Della Ventura et al., and Hofmeister. Rossman’s chapter covers the basics of UV/Vis while Clark et al. describes the detection of materials in the Solar system utilizing UV and IR methods. Synchrotron-based IR imaging is covered by Della Ventura et al. and errors and uncertainties associated with IR and UV/Vis data are covered in the chapter by Hofmeister. Photon/phonon interactions such as Raman and Brillouin are outlined by Neuville et al. and Speziale et al. The latter technique is relatively new outside the fields of condensed matter and minerals physics but is gaining increasing use as interest in elastic properties and anomalous behaviors at high pressure continues to grow. The chapters by Stebbins and Xue, and Pan and Nilges outline the current status of magnetic resonance methods such as NMR and EPR, respectively. Finally the last three chapters have been included for completeness and cover the basics of the theoretical simulations that are carried out to investigate phases beyond accessible experimental pressure-temperature ranges, as well as aiding in the interpretation of experimental spectra (Jahn and Kowalski), the high pressure methods that are now commonly employed for many spectroscopic studies (Shen and Wang) and finally a chapter on methods used in high-temperature melt and crystallization studies (Neuville et al.).