Articles

This is Tony’s last column for Spectroscopy Europe. It is explores an idea that he has been developing for over 30 years, although as Tony points out the story starts around 3500 years ago.

In the Tony Davies Column, Tony (A.N.) Davies and Mohan Cashyap introduce us to the potential for Cloud Computing in the lab. This is the first of a two-part contribution, and, for the second part, they need your help with your experiences of Cloud Computing in your lab or organisation.

Tony (A.M.C.) continues down the last furlong of his series of Tony Davies Column articles. This issue, he considers principal component analysis (PCA). Using research recently published in the Journal of Near Infrared Spectroscopy, he explains that PCA is a very useful tool but it will not solve all our problems. Two old articles on PCA, including Tony’s concept of the “Data Cake” have been added to the website, are referenced in Tony’s article and can be freely downloaded by readers.

Now that Tony understands wavelets, he is in the perfect position to explain them to the rest of us! Whilst wavelet compression is an interesting and popular method, it is worth confirming that there is a real benefit in using them compared to FT compression, especially for near infrared spectra where there are few regions of flat baseline.

Chemical modification of wood by methods such as acetylation is required to improve characteristics such as photosensitivity and combustibility, and to provide harmonisation of wood properties in order to avoid swelling and shrinking and to improve biodegradability. The authors describe the use of mid and near infrared spectroscopies to monitor chemical changes due to acetylation is described. 

Tony (A.N.) Davies and Robert Lancashire remember Bob McDonald who co-authored the first JCAMP-DX standard for infrared spectroscopy.

The Tony Davies Column once again contains a contribution from Karl Norris, who is widely regarded as the “father of NIR spectroscopy”. Karl continues to produce innovative ideas about the field and this article is no different. Building on the previous article concerning fourth derivatives, Karl has investigated the effect of varying gap sizes with some remarkable results.

Tony (A.M.C.) Davies is again telling us to “Always look at the spectrum”. This time he uses an example from the development of a NIR spectrometer to demonstrate that one doesn’t really know what’s going on until one has “looked at the spectrum”.

¹H NMR spectra are usually interpreted by hand, which is very time consuming, and can become a process bottleneck in fields such as high-throughput NMR. Greater automation of the spectral analysis process has become essential if NMR is to be of value as a high-throughput analytical method in the future.