If asked by a young scientist considering career options, would you recommend your career? Over half of respondents to this survey said they would. This year's annual salary survey took a look at current salaries and working conditions for spectroscopists to find out why.

Spectroscopy magazine is seeking contributed manuscripts for its August 2013 supplement on Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy.

The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy has announced the awardees of the 2013 Pittsburgh Conference Memorial National College Grant.

Techcomp Group Ltd. (Kowloon, Hong Kong), has acquired the majority holding of shares in Edinburgh Instruments Ltd. (EI) (Livingston, Scotland).

The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) will present the 2013 Pittcon Heritage Award in honor of Gunther Laukien (1924?1997), the founder of the Bruker group of companies.

The Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy (FACSS) has named Volker Deckert as the winner of the 2013 Charles Mann Award.

Spectroscopy is pleased to announce the addition of Rachael R. Ogorzalek Loo to its editorial advisory board.

The Coblentz Society has named Rohit Bhargava as the recipient of the 2013 Craver Award.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has awarded Xylem Inc., (White Plains, New York) a $300,000 contract to provide special mass spectrometry technology with a goal of detecting water on the moon.

The Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) has announced the presentation of the 2012 FACSS Innovation Award, given for the most innovative, original, and creative research, to Rohit Bhargava.

At the 2012 Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS), held between the 12th and 15th of November in Somerset, New Jersey, USA, four major awards were given to distinguished scientists working within the field of spectroscopy.

The 9th Confocal Raman Imaging Symposium took place in Ulm, Germany on September 26 and 27 and featured the application possibilities of high-resolution Raman microscopy in pharmaceutical research as well as in materials, geological and life sciences.

New techniques developed by a team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) could help unlock the mysteries of exactly how electrons move and react in topological insulators–materials that hold promise for new kinds of electronic devices.

Spectroscopy invites researchers to submit their work for publication.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released preliminary data on arsenic levels in certain rice and rice products.

The Council for Near Infrared Spectroscopy (CNIRS) has awarded Michael (Micky) Myrick with the Gerald Birth Award for best work in diffuse spectroscopy published in 2010 to 2011.

WITec GmbH (Ulm, Germany), a manufacturer of optical and scanning probe microscopy systems, has opened new regional offices in Japan and Spain. Both

The International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD) (Newtown Square, Pennsylvania) is accepting applications for the 2013 Ludo Frevel Crystallography Awards, established to encourage promising graduate students to pursue crystallography-oriented research.

The Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) has accepted three new member organizations—the AES Electrophoresis Society, the Spectroscopial Society of Japan (SpSJ), and the North American Society for Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (NASLIBS)—as full member organizations.

The North Carolina State University Plants for Human Health Institute (PHHI) and the Dole Nutrition Research Laboratory (Kannapolis, North Carolina) have collaborated to form a joint industry-academic postdoctoral fellowship, the first of its kind at the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC).

SciX Program Overview and Events

Chris McKay of the NASA Ames Laboratory will give the keynote presentation at the SciX 2012 conference with a talk titled, “The Search for Life on Other Worlds.â€

A new imaging technique developed at the University of California, Berkeley, for the first time reveals the structure of the bacterial biofilms that are responsible for many infectious diseases.

The Wallace H. Coulter Foundation (Miami, Florida) has awarded a grant to the Pittcon Conference committee (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) that will enable the conference to provide educational training and development in laboratory services with a special emphasis on resource-limited countries.

The winners of the 2012 R&D Awards, which salute the 100 most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace over the past year, have been announced.

Photonis USA (Sturbridge, Massachusetts) has signed a sponsored research agreement with the Georgia Tech Research Corporation (Atlanta, Georgia) to design and develop a prototype of a new ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) analyzer, using patented technology from Photonis.

The first of seven beamlines at the ALBA synchrotron light facility (Catalonia, Spain) has been put to work.

The University of Dundee (Dundee City, Scotland) has updated its X-ray crystallopgraphy facility with an advanced automated protein crystallography system from Rigaku Americas Corporation (The Woodlands, Texas).