Spectroscopy-02-01-2009

The staff of Spectroscopy, then, is looking forward to this year's conference more than ever.

In this article, columnist Fran Adar will review the important features of the Raman spectra of these materials and indicate why the extracted information is important for material development and engineering.

SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing 2009 will be held at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort & Convention Center, Orlando, Florida, from April 13 through April 17, 2009. Attendees will have access to more than 500 exhibiting companies, 2,100 technical presentations, and 57 professional development courses and workshops in such areas as technologies for defense, industrial, and commercial applications; sensing and systems; and sensor and data analysis.

This column is a continuation of the set we have been working on to explain and derive the equations behind principal components (1–5). As we usually do, when we continue the discussion of a topic through more than one column, we continue the numbering of equations from where we left off.

Mass spectrometry (MS) is a broadly used analytical technique that is often combined with some form of chromatography to provide a second dimension of separation. However, vendors recently have begun incorporating ion mobility separation (IMS) into high-end LC–MS instruments, thus providing an additional level of ion separation.

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In the second installment of this tutorial, the authors explain the instrumentation for measuring naturally occurring stable isotopes, specifically the magnetic sector mass spectrometer.

Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) and horizontal attenuated total reflectance (HATR) techniques are used to obtain the FT-IR spectra of the yellow foxtail seed, the giant foxtail seed, and the green foxtail seed.

The authors discuss the use of near-infrared spectroscopy to determine the age of a bloodstain, which can be critical in helping establish when a crime was committed.