High-Sensitivity, Large-Format CCD Camera -Enable Multidimensional Characterization of Soil-Grown Root Systems
Recently, a team of scientists working in North America and Europe developed an innovative growth and imaging platform, known as GLO-Roots, that allows root architecture and gene expression to be studied in soil-grown plants.
GLO-Roots (Growth and Luminescence Observatory for Roots; U.S. patent application: 13/970,960) is a collaborative effort between…Read Full Article
Advanced CCD Cameras and Imaging Spectrographs Facilitate Acquisition of Novel Femtosecond Stimulated Raman Spectroscopy
Accurate characterization of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) biosensors, fluorescent dye molecules that hold great promise for in vivo bioanalyte detection, can often be quite difficult as the overwhelming isoenergetic fluorescence signal typically makes it challenging to measure…Read Full Article
Microscopy and Raman Imaging: Open-System Raman Microscopy
Imagine accepting a new position to start up and manage a lab. Your modest budget for research equipment doesn’t allow you to purchase what you really need, a Raman microscope—but you’ve inherited a fluorescence microscope from the previous scientist. What do you do?
Faced with this scenario…Read Full Article
NIR Spectroscopy Aids in the Diagnosis of Neonatal Brain Injury
Over the past several years, biomedical researchers and engineers working in labs, hospitals, and universities around the world have developed an extensive set of spectroscopy-based methods — including a new class of noninvasive in vivo techniques utilizing near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) — to facilitate the rapid and accurate detection and…Read Full Article
Low-Frequency Raman Spectra of Amino Acids: Discovery of a Second Fingerprint Region
A novel astigmatism-free spectrograph design, the Princeton Instruments SCT 320 IsoPlane Schmidt-Czerny-Turner (SCT) spectrograph, is shown to give Raman spectra with better resolution and signal-to-noise ratios than traditional Czerny-Turner (CT) spectrographs. A single-stage SCT spectrograph has been interfaced to a new low-frequency Raman spectroscopy module that…Read Full Article
Using Raman Spectroscopy to Detect Malignant Changes in Tissues
Accurate, rapid and non-invasive detection and diagnosis of malignant disease in tissues is an important goal of biomedical research. Optical methods, such as diffuse reflectance, fluorescence spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy, have all been investigated as ways to attain this goal. Diffuse reflectance utilizes…Read Full Article
Tip-Enhanced Raman Scattering (TERS)
The ability to identify small quantities of adsorbed analyte or structural features down to the few-molecule level is a key challenge in nanotechnology. Optical spectroscopy provides an attractive means to achieve such identification via non-invasive implementations and the potential for chemical sensitivity. Raman scattering has emerged as a particularly powerful technique due to its…Read Full Article
Is There Really Cool Gas in the Middle of the Sun?
Yes, if you ask a team of researchers from University Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy who returned from an expedition to the blistering Sahara desert, where they found an unexpected source of cool gas-in the outer regions of the Sun. The group headed by…Read Full Article