Chemistry is centered on the study of the structure and composition of substances, their production, transformation and interactions, and of the natural laws which control such processes. We, chemists, wish to be able to produce substances at will, and to predict how a substance or a mixture of substances would behave under certain conditions. Such challenges are still nowadays the main driving force of chemical research, as reflected by the three articles included in this first volume of the Annals of the MCFA.
J.M. Lassaletta reports on a general synthetic strategy to obtain globosides, which present interesting biological properties but are difficult to obtain from natural sources in reasonable quantities. This paper is an interesting example of how the chemical synthesis of natural products can make pharmacologically interesting substances more easily available.
Chemical synthesis is also the subject of the article written by G. Tsivgoulis. However, in this case the targets are new materials with specific physical properties. These physical properties are due to the presence in the molecules of certain functional components, which must be correctly assembled in order to obtain molecules of the desired characteristics. As the author himself points out, this has been a central area of research in the field of supramolecular chemistry in the last few years, due to the technological importance acquired by molecular electronic devices, i.e., molecules that could act as rectifiers, transistors, switches, photodiodes or molecular wires.
The interdisciplinary article by A.C.T. van Duin exemplifies the links between chemistry and other sciences, in this case Earth Sciences. A computational technique is used to simulate the partitioning of organic compounds in the soil subsurface during its migration through sediments. The article shows the capability of this computational simulation to predict changes in the composition of mixtures due to physical and chemical processes, even when dealing with systems as complex as petroleum.
Finally we would like to thank all those Marie Curie fellows who submitted an abstract for this volume of the Annals of the MCFA. In spite of the exceptional quality of them all, space constrictions obliged us to select only a few. We hope that the highly positive response of the fellows to this first volume will continue for the following volumes. If such is the case, the Annals of the MCFA will soon become a solid reality, accomplishing its objectives of reflecting and spreading the high quality of the scientific research carried out by MC fellows with the financial support of various EU programmes throughout the years.