Inorganic Scintillators for Detector Systems by P Lecoq et al., Springer. Hardcover ISBN 9783540277668, £79 (€105.45).
This book covers a highly topical area of modern detector physics – scintillators. Initially developed as a tool for scientific exploration, scintillation detectors rapidly migrated into applications in our day-to-day lives, such as in energy production, security applications and the medical sector. The development of high-quality scintillators is an example of how demanding technological requirements in high-energy physics drive development and optimization processes that eventually benefit the general public. In this book the authors tell the story of two decades of major progress, largely motivated by building the largest electromagnetic calorimeter in high-energy physics with lead tungstate (PbWO4), and by the development of a scintillator, lutetium aluminium perovskite (LuAP), for medical applications.
The introductory chapter deals with the terminology, key aspects and basics of the scintillation process, and it finishes by giving a table based on a combined classification of scintillators. This is most informative for the end-users of scintillators, but caution must be exercised as some of the information is out of date. For example, a rather optimistic light yield for zinc tungstate (ZnWO4) of 21 500 photons/MeV is given (taken from a reference from 1962), whereas around 9300 photons/MeV would be more appropriate. There are also some typos. For example, the scintillation time-constant of calcium tungstate ( CaWO4) is given as "600 ns", whereas it should read 6000 ns.
The next chapter discusses how scintillator development is influenced and guided by user requirements. The authors review five main areas of scintillator applications and set the scene for dealing with the often conflicting demands on scintillator characteristics. Then follows a substantial chapter that discusses the scintillation mechanisms of inorganic scintillators in great detail. The text is well written so that newcomers to the field and experts alike will enjoy it.
Producers of scintillating crystals are the main target audience for the next two chapters, which deal with the influence of crystal structure defects on the scintillation process and on crystal engineering. They give valuable information about crystal production, for PbWO4 in particular, as well as useful recipes and ideas for solutions to various issues. Such information is often absent, or at best summarized, in short publications. A description of strategies that are common to developing scintillators for high-energy physics and for medical applications forms the final chapter.
Overall, the book is interesting and informative for the user – novice and expert – with sections at the right level for each.
Hans Kraus, Oxford University.
Large Scale Structure and Dynamics of Complex Networks: from Information Technology to Finance and Natural Science edited by Guido Caldarelli and Alessandro Vespignani, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789812706645 £49 ($98).
Networks are everywhere, in social institutions as well as in economic, biological and technological systems. They are not a new phenomenon, but our understanding has not kept up with their influence and our increasing dependence on them. The complexity of networks has now become a central issue in characterizing, modelling and understanding them in many different disciplines, from physics, biology and mathematics to engineering and computer science. It is therefore important to seek the development of a methodological and theoretical framework, in order to define the general principles underlying the dynamics and structures of complex networks.
Researchers are now discovering the general concepts and properties of highly diversified networks, from living cells to electric power grids, and, thanks to progress in information technologies, it is possible to analyse the large-scale statistical properties of networks. It is also evident that many complex evolving networks share a sophisticated topology. Intrinsic properties of complex systems, such as robustness to disturbances or information transmission time, are a direct consequence of this underlying network topology, which, in some cases, could be explicitly engineered.
The authors of this volume intend to show both a snapshot of forefront research activities in the field of complex systems and the achievements of the European project on Coevolution and self-organization in dynamical networks (COSIN; see www.cosinproject.org). The wide interdisciplinary approach is emphasized by the various chapters, which start with an introduction to the basic notation and definitions, based on graph theory, followed by an overview of the main classes of models: static random networks and evolving random networks.
Chapters three to six deal mainly with various aspects of complex networks, from the topological properties that may impact a variety of related topics, to the state of the art in network visualization – a challenging issue. The remaining four chapters focus on more specific fields. "Modeling the webgraph: how far we are" considers the graph induced by the hyperlink structure of the web, the nodes of which are the HTML pages with the edges being the links among them. "The large scale structure of the Internet" reviews the results obtained in the characterization of this large-scale complex network. Chapter nine looks at two of the most commonly used characterizations of a community of biological species: the food web and the taxonomic tree. The final chapter reviews some of the main general findings about social networks and then focuses on a specific case of an economical network: the boards of directors of large corporations.
The book also includes a detailed list of references, spanning a wide spectrum of disciplines, which underline the importance of the interdisciplinary approach in this field.
Gian Piero Siroli, University of Bologna and CERN.