This series presents critical reviews of the present position and future trends in modern chemical research. It contains short and concise reports on chemistry, each written by a world renowned expert. This publication is still valid and useful after five or ten years. Scientists and practitioners in the mentioned fields and in industry will benefit from this series. Further information as well as the electronic version of the whole content is available at: springerlink.com

Despite more than 200 years of sulfur research the chemistry of elemental sulfur and sulfur-rich compounds is still full of "white spots" which have to be filled in with solid knowledge and reliable data. This situation is parti- larly regrettable since elemental sulfur is one of the most important raw - terials of the chemical industry produced in record-breaking quantities of ca. 35 million tons annually worldwide and mainly used for the production of sulfuric acid. Fortunately, enormous progress has been made during the last 30 years in the understanding of the "yellow element." As the...

With contributions by numerous experts

With contributions by numerous experts

Extracellular MRI and X-ray contrast agents are characterized by their phar- cokinetic behaviour.After intravascular injection their plasma-level time curve is characeterized by two phases. The agents are rapidly distributed between plasma and interstitial spaces followed by renal elimination with a terminal half-live of approximatly 1-2 hours. They are excreted via the kidneys in unchanged form by glomerular filtration. Extracellular water-soluble contrast agents to be applied for X-ray imaging were introduced into clinical practice in 1923. Since that time they have proved to be most...

Strong non-ionic bases are highly advantageous as stoichiometric reagents and as catalysts in synthetic organic chemistry owing to side reactions that f- quently occur when ionic bases such as LDA or alkali metal alkoxides are employed. A second reason that non-ionic bases are frequently more useful in these applications is that such bases are often more soluble in less polar organic solvents, particularly at low temperatures. Thirdly, non-ionic bases can provide reactive naked or tightly associated deprotonated substrate anions that are s- bilized by the relatively large, poorly solvated...

Dendrimers stand within the focus of quite an interdisciplinary area of research: Metallodendrimers bring inorganic chemistry into play. Organic synthesis c- tributes much to the preparation of dendrimers, which are then studied by various physicochemical methods such as small angle neutron scattering, photochemistry, and many others. The relation to macromolecules is straig- forward, but their routine use in biochemistry, e. g. , as gene transfection vectors may be less obvious. Al1 these different aspects have been combined in the Topics tetralogy in order to provide an overview as broad as...