Volume 6 of Developments in Applied Spectroscopy presents a collection
of twenty-eight selected papers from those that were pre- sented at the
Eighteenth Mid-America Symposium on Spectroscopy held in Chicago, May 15
to 18, 1967. In general, the papers selected by the editors are those of
the symposium type and not those papers pertaining to a specific
research topic that one expects to be sub- mitted to a journal. Not all
of the submitted papers were included. Some revisions could not meet the
deadline and others were not accepted based on the advice of the
reviewers. It is the opinion of the committee that this type of
publication has -an important place in the literature. The Mid-America
Symposium is sponsored annually by the Chicago Section in cooperation
with the Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Niagara Frontier,
and St. Louis Sections of the Society of Applied Spectroscopy, and the
Chicago Gas Chromatography Group. Although the Mid-America is often
thought of as a regional meeting, its attendees and authors generally
come from all parts of the United States and Canada. Both applied and
theoretical principles were provided in sessions on X-ray, emission,
atomic-absorption, nuclear magnetic resonance, infrared, Raman,
nuclear-particle, and gamma- ray spectroscopy; activation analysis; and
gas chromatography. In addition, there were symposia on absorption
spectra of biologically significant molecules; the structure of ice,
water, and aqueous solu- tions; air and water pollution analyses; and
the practical application of statistics.