Academic literature on the topic 'Health Sciences, Toxicology|Chemistry, Biochemistry'

This volume is intended to employ E–pH diagrams to describe the inorganic solution chemistry of the chemical elements. Such diagrams are very useful in numerous fields of investigation, including electrochemistry, analytical chemistry, inorganic chemistry, geochemistry, environmental chemistry, corrosion chemistry, hydrometallurgy, water chemistry, agricultural chemistry, toxicology, biochemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, health physics, and nutrition. It is assumed that the reader is acquainted with the following major topics which are treated in elementary chemistry: stoichiometry, equilibrium, acid–base phenomena, solubility, complexation, elementary thermodynamics, and electrochemistry. In 1923, W. M. Clark and B. Cohen published a paper in which they introduced the idea of plotting the electromotive force as referred to the hydrogen electrode E against the pH for several chemical systems. In 1928, Clark continued to develop this graphical presentation in his text on the determination of pH. The utility of the method was further extended by numerous other investigators such as M. Pourbaix, G. Valensi, G. Charlot, T. P. Hoar, R. M. Garrels, N. de Zoubov, J. Van Muylder, E. Deltombe, C. Vanleugenhaghe, J. Schmets, M. Maraghini, P. Van Rysselberghe, A. Moussard, J. Brenet, F. Jolas, K. Schwabe, J. Besson, W. Kunz, A. L. Pitman, J. N. Butler, P. Delahay, H. Freiser, H. A. Laitinen, L. G. Sillen, P. L. Cloke, and others. In 1963, M. Pourbaix in collaboration with N. de Zoubov published Atlas d’equilibres electrochimiques, a collection of E–pH diagrams for 90 chemical elements. This volume was translated into English in 1966 by J. A. Franklin and published as Atlas of Electrochemical Equilibria in Aqueous Solutions. Subsequently other investigators published computer programs for constructing the diagrams: L. Santoma; B. G. Williams, and W. H. Patrick; P. B. Linkson, B. D. Phillips, and C. D. Rowles; K. Osseo-Asare, A. W. Asihene, T. Xue, and V. S. T. Ciminellie; D. R. Drewes; M. Mao and E. Peters; H-H. Huang and C. A. Young; J. P. Birk and Laura L. Tayer; G. P. Glasby and H. D. Schulz; and Q. Feng, Y. Ma, and Y. Lu.

Meritocracy flourished most luxuriantly in Harvard’s professional schools. The Big Four—the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Schools of Law, Medicine, and Business—threw off the constraints of lack of money and student cutbacks imposed by World War II. The smaller professional schools—Public Health and Dentistry, Education, Divinity, Design—shared in the good times, though their old problems of scarce resources and conflicted missions continued to bedevil them. The major alteration in the Harvard postgraduate scene was the establishment of the Kennedy School of Government. By the time Derek Bok—as well disposed to the Kennedy School as Conant was to Education and Pusey to Divinity—became president in 1971, this new boy on the Harvard professional school block was well situated to capitalize on his good favor. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences remained, as in the past, rich in renown, poor in fund-raising and administrative autonomy. Between 1952 and 1962, fewer than 5 percent of GSAS alumni donated a total of about $60,000; during the early sixties giving went down to $3,000 a year. Its dean had little or no budgetary or curricular control; its faculty, curriculum, and student admissions were in the hands of the departments. In 1954 Overseer/Judge Charles Wyzanski grandly proposed that admissions to the Graduate School be sharply cut back. The reduction, he thought, would free up the faculty for more creative thought, improve undergraduate education, and upgrade the level of the graduate student body. But the post–Korean War expansion of American higher education led to boom years for the Graduate School. In 1961, 190 male and 60 female Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellows, more than a quarter of the national total, chose to go to Harvard or Radcliffe; 80 of 172 National Science Foundation grantees wanted to go to Harvard. A 1969 rating of the nation’s graduate programs gave Harvard Chemistry a perfect 5, Mathematics 4.9, Physics, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, History, and Classics 4.8, Art History and Sociology 4.7, English and Spanish 4.6, Philosophy and Government 4.5. Impressive enough, all in all, to sustain the faculty’s elevated impression of itself. But in the late sixties the Graduate School bubble deflated. Government aid, foundation fellowships, and college jobs declined; student disaffection grew.

Pharmacology is defined as the study of the effects of drugs on the function of a living organism. It is an inte­grative discipline that tackles drug/ compound behaviours in varied physiological systems and links these to cellular and molecular mechanisms of action. As a scientific endeavour, pharmacology evolved from the early identification of therapeutic properties of nat­ural compounds, with herbal medicines and relatively complex pharmacopoeias widely used in early cultures. Despite this, lack of understanding of the physio­logical, pathological, and chemical processes governing the human body prevented the early establishment of pharmacology as a scientific discipline. Since then, pharmacology has progressed to be considered a fully developed integrative science that employs techniques and theories from various disciplines, such as chemistry, biochemistry, genomics, medicinal chemistry, physi­ology, and cellular and molecular biology. Collectively, these are applied to study disease causality and the rele­vant mechanistic action of compounds, to establish new treatments. In the last 100 years, the importance of clinical pharmacology has increased in line with the scientific and technological advances in biomedical research. Benefits gained from molecular and cellular approaches have enabled a more comprehensive analysis of drugs and their actions in functional context. Now, clinical pharmacology and therapeutics encompass the dis­covery, development, regulation, and application of drugs in a process that integrates scientific research with clinical practice to better treat illness and preserve health. Within this textbook the principles of pharmacology are discussed by therapeutic area so that the reader can link disease pathophysiology, drug mechanism, and modern prescribing behaviours for conditions commonly seen in clinical practice. There are, however, fundamental concepts that are universal in understanding the interaction between drugs and their ‘targets’, including receptor pharmacology, genomic pharmacology, and pharmacokinetics. The pharmacological receptor models preceded by many years the knowledge of the receptor as an entity. It was not until the last 150 years that a series of contributions from many notable biologists and chemists established the principles that founded modern day pharmacology. They produced a significant paradigm shift in therapeutics, where empirical descriptors of the activities observed (heating, cooling, moistening, emetic, etc.) were replaced by the concept of a ‘target’. After more than a century, the basic receptor concept is still the foundation of biomed­ical research and drug discovery.