Articles

Do you remember magnetic tape-to-tape recorders and players? In any case, I am sure you will be interested in this article looking at the use of FT-IR spectroscopy to help the conservation of tapes in the collection of the National Museums Berlin. In “ATR/FT-IR spectroscopy for the characterisation of magnetic tape materials”, Elena Gómez-Sánchez, Simon Kunz and Stefan Simon describe how by investigating the state of the base layer of the tape, conservation efforts can be prioritised to those tapes in most immediate danger.

With the threat of climate change, understanding the workings of our atmosphere is of crucial importance. Ozone is the most important trace gas in the stratosphere and troposphere and it is monitored by both satellite-borne and ground-based instruments. Accurate knowledge of ozone absorption cross-sections is vital for this work and described in this article.

Tea is harvested from the bud, the first leaf and the first three leaves up to a maximum of four leaves. Quality decreases from the bud down as the parts become older. This study looks at the use of NIR spectroscopy to determine optimal production using the harvested material.

This article shows that NIR spectroscopy offers the potential for bioprocess manufacturing companies to limit the variability in the biological production process, thereby increasing the yield and reducing the number of errors.

​Tony (A.M.C.) Davies stresses the importance of always looking at the spectrum, even if you [think you] know there’s nothing to learn. He relates his experience with noise in NIR spectra and what he has learnt from it. He would like us all to examine spectra for abnormality before relying on automated methods.

This article describes the analysis of cells from the pulp of the feather by IR spectroscopy and the possibility of using infrared imaging of intact eggs to determine bird gender.

Nati Salvadó, Salvador Butí and Trinitat Pradell have used a number of techniques to investigate changes in pictorial techniques in Catalan paintings in the 15^th century. The combination of different techniques is of particular value. The use of synchtrotron radiation as a light source is also an advantage.

The counterfeiting of medicines is an increasing world wide problem as a great danger to public health. Counterfeit medicines are imitations of their authentic counterparts so that both physical characterisation and chemical analysis are required to discriminate between them. In this respect, near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is ideally suited to screening for counterfeit medicines because it is non-destructive, fast, requires no sample preparation, and provides a fingerprint of the physical and chemical composition of a product.

I recently “discovered” a very interesting radio programme on BBC Radio 4. It is “devoted to the powerful, sometimes beautiful, often abused but ever ubiquitous world of numbers”. A few weeks ago we were asked to say what we were doing while listening to the programme. The next week we were told that nearly 2000 e-mails had been received and this data had been given to information designer David McCandless to turn into a graphic. When this was trailed I got the impression that something new and exciting was going to be displayed and I thought that the graphic would include sound. The graphic is good but rather “ordinary” and I was disappointed. This got me thinking about how we display information. Have we made any advance in the last 25 years? Could sound be used!