KURT BINDER, Condensed Matter Theory Group, Institut Für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany

WILLIAM T. COFFEY, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Printing House, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

KARL F. FREED, Department of Chemistry, James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

DAAN FRENKEL, Department of Chemistry, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

PIERRE GASPARD, Center for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

MARTIN GRUEBELE, Departments of Physics and Chemistry, Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

GERHARD HUMMER, Theoretical Biophysics Section, NIDDK-National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

RONNIE KOSLOFF, Department of Physical Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry and Fritz Haber Center for Molecular Dynamics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

KA YEE LEE, Department of Chemistry, James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Todd J. Martinez, Department of Chemistry, Photon Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Shaul Mukamel, Department of Chemistry, School of Physical Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

Jose N. Onuchic, Department of Physics, Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

Stephen Quake, Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA

Mark Ratner, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

David Reichman, Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York City, NY, USA

GEORGE SCHATZ, Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

STEVEN J. SIBENER, Department of Chemistry, James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

ANDREI TOKMAKOFF, Department of Chemistry, James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

DONALD G. TRUHLAR, Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

JOHN C. TULLY, Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

Advances in science often involve initial development of individual specialized fields of study within traditional disciplines followed by broadening and overlap, or even merging, of those specialized fields, leading to a blurring of the lines between traditional disciplines. The pace of that blurring has accelerated in the past few decades, and much of the important and exciting research carried out today seeks to synthesize elements from different fields of knowledge. Examples of such research areas include biophysics and studies of nanostructured materials. As the study of the forces that govern the structure and dynamics of molecular systems, chemical physics encompasses these and many other emerging research directions. Unfortunately, the flood of scientific literature has been accompanied by losses in the shared vocabulary and approaches of the traditional disciplines, and there is much pressure from scientific journals to be ever more concise in the descriptions of studies, to the point that much valuable experience, if recorded at all, is hidden in supplements and dissipated with time. These trends in science and publishing make this series, Advances in Chemical Physics, a much needed resource.

The Advances in Chemical Physics is devoted to helping the reader obtain general information about a wide variety of topics in chemical physics: a field that we interpret very broadly. Our intent is to have experts present comprehensive analyses of subjects of interest and to encourage the expression of individual points of view. We hope that this approach to the presentation of an overview of a subject will both stimulate new research and serve as a personalized learning text for beginners in a field.