American Physicist Earns Swedish Honor
Charles Fadley, a physics professor at UC Davis (Davis, California) has been elected as a foreign member of the Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala, Sweden.
Charles Fadley, a distinguished professor of physics at UC Davis (Davis, California), has been elected into the Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala. Founded in 1710, this prestigious Swedish institution has counted as members some of the world’s most renowned scientists, including Anders Celsius, Michael Faraday, and Charles Darwin.
Fadley is widely regarded as one of the foremost practitioners of photoelectron spectroscopy, a technique used for studying the composition and electronic state of a material using X-ray beams to excite electrons and a spectrometer to measure their energies. In recent years he has been a leader in the development of methods for studying very thin “nanolayers” of materials buried below surfaces, work that is integral to the development of next-generation computers, memory storage devices and other applications in the emerging field of nanotechnology.
The Uppsala society limits its membership to some 130 Swedish and 100 foreign members, who are elected for life. Fadley’s election brings to 14 the number of U.S.-based scientists in the society.
Applications of Micro X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy in Food and Agricultural Products
January 25th 2025In recent years, advances in X-ray optics and detectors have enabled the commercialization of laboratory μXRF spectrometers with spot sizes of ~3 to 30 μm that are suitable for routine imaging of element localization, which was previously only available with scanning electron microscopy (SEM-EDS). This new technique opens a variety of new μXRF applications in the food and agricultural sciences, which have the potential to provide researchers with valuable data that can enhance food safety, improve product consistency, and refine our understanding of the mechanisms of elemental uptake and homeostasis in agricultural crops. This month’s column takes a more detailed look at some of those application areas.
The Big Review IV: Hydrocarbons
January 25th 2025In the fourth installment of our review of infrared spectral interpretation, we will discuss the spectroscopy of hydrocarbons. We will look at the stretching and bending vibrations of methyl (CH3) and methylene (CH2) groups, how to distinguish them, and how to know whether one or both of these functional groups are present in a sample. We will also discuss aromatic hydrocarbons, specifically the C-H stretching and bending peaks of mono- and disubstituted benzene rings, and how to distinguish them.
The Essentials of Analytical Spectroscopy: Theory and Applications
January 23rd 2025This excerpt from The Concise Handbook of Analytical Spectroscopy, which spans five volumes, serves as a comprehensive reference, detailing the theory, instrumentation, sampling methods, experimental design, and data analysis techniques for each spectroscopic region.
