428 Book reviews

applicationsÈgum technology in the food andHydrocolloidother industriesA. Nussinovitch.Blackie Academic & Professional, London, 1997.pp. xiii] 354, price £79.00.ISBN 0-412-62120-7

The intentions of this volume are greatly to be welcomed:water-soluble gums and other polymers are widely employedin many aspects of polymer formulation. Apart from foods,these include adhesives, biotechnology, ceramics, explosives,paper, textiles and many other aspects of the industrial world ;in some cases, useful formulation details are less than readilyavailable.

Here, the main hydrocolloids described in individual chap-ters are agar, alginates, and carrageenans amongst seaweed-based products : pectins, exudate and seed gums ; gellan andxanthan gums (but no other extracellular polysaccharides),and, brieÑy, water-soluble cellulose ethers. Literature refer-ences to the information described are extensive, but, uponcloser inspection, many of these appear to be to rather oldermarketing data, suppliersÏ data sheets (the author appears tohave a useful collection of these) and extracts from earlierstandard textbooks (notably DavidsonÏs Handbook of W ater-soluble Gums and Resins and the earlier editions of R. L.WhistlerÏs Industrial Gums). There is little novel material,apart from extensive accounts from the authorÏs own work, sofar unpublished, on marginally relevant topics (such as adhe-sive peel behaviour, Ñavour encapsulation, and cell immobil-ization in spongy matrices). In other cases (for example, textileÐnishing, and a discussion of some papermaking processes)the chapters are too brief and circumstantial to be useful.

In summary, a rather strange book, with a few gems, whichcould and should have been signiÐcantly shorter with morecritical editing.

A.C. Finch

dental materialsPolymericEdited by M. Braden, R. Clarke, J. Nicholson and S. Parker.Springer-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Heidelberg, 1997.pp. ix] 124, price £76.00.ISBN 3-540-61646-2

Dental materials have been transformed in the lifetime (andthe teeth) of older readers of this book. It is not widely recog-nized that many of the developments have their intellectualdevelopment in academic and government research depart-ments in the UK: some of the more important of these havebeen presented at meetings and in journals of the SCI. TheÐrst dental cement with chemical adhesion to dental hardtissue was based on zinc oxide and polyacrylic acidÈthis waslater extended to aesthetic Ðlling materials using alumino-silicate glasses, and originally known as glass ionomer cements :these are now known as polyalkanoate cements and are stillbeing further developed. Their application as alternatives tosilicate cements is now a major industry because of theirsuperior strength and resistance to oral Ñuids, compared withdental amalgams.

There has been a proliferation in both the number andchemical sophistication of polymeric dental materials : thesemay be considered as a speciÐc part of the wider study of theproperties and applications of polymeric materials. This smallbook consists of only three chapters : “Polyelectrolyte resto-rative materialsÏ by J. W. Nicholson ; “Glassy polymersÏ byR. L. Clarke, and “Elastomeric MaterialsÏ by M. Braden andS. ParkerÈall are excellent examples of the application ofpolymer science to improving the Human Condition.

For the very modest size of this book, this volume is expen-sive : however, as a reviewer can only rarely say, “it is worth itÏ.

A.C. Finch

POLYMER INTERNATIONAL VOL. 45, NO. 4, 1998