Preface

**Section 4 Macromolecules and Food Quality 115**

**VI** Contents

José Luis Rivera Armenta

**Quality and Safety 137** Yankun Peng and Wenxiu Wang

Chapter 7 **Evaluation of Crosslinking Reaction in Adhesive Based Styrene-Butadiene Elastomers Using Infrared Spectroscopy 117** Beatriz Adriana Salazar Cruz, Ana María Mendoza Martínez, Alejandro Esquivel de la Garza, Sergio Moctezuma Espiricueto and

Chapter 8 **Application of Near-infrared Spectroscopy for Assessing Meat**

In this book you can find studies on Infrared Spectroscopy and Near Infrared Spectroscopy, Anharmonicity of biomolecules (proteins), biopolymers food quality and safety as well as Infrared Spectra of human tissues from diseases like Down syndrome tooth disorders and metastatic cancer of bones.

The book contains four sections:

#### **1) Introduction**

**2) Anharmonicity in protein vibrations and biopolymers.** The two chapters in this section are skillfully describing the calculation of anharmonicities for signature bands of proteins and the molecular cross-linking of a biopolymer.

**3) Food quality.** In this section one can find applications of MIRS and NIRS in food industry and research. These include quality control of food, e.g. the structure and dynamics of caro‐ tenoid and chlorophyll triplets in photosynthetic light-harvesting complexes in fruits and in farms in order to determine the amounts of carbon and nitrogen at a farm scale.

**4) Medical applications.** This section contains 3 chapters of MIRS and NIRS on medical ap‐ plications including the role of β-antagonists on the structure of human cancerous bone and characterization of bone-based graft materials; brain-computer interface in rehabilitation and brain oxygenation; and tooth disorders found in Down syndrome. Overall they provide a review of FT-IR on biomedical research in cells and biopolymer modifications in biomedi‐ cal applications.

> **Theophile Theophanides** Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering National Technical University of Athens Chemical Engineering Department Greece

**Section 1**
