Spectroscopy news 48

David Bradley Science Writer writes the monthly news column for three sections of the SpectroscopyNOW.com site - Spectral Lines, Resonants and X-factors.

Spectral Lines - spectroscopy news by David Bradley<p>

The latest issue of X-factors is now online

Lighting up nanowires

One-dimensional nanoscopic structures such as nanowires will be important building blocks for future optoelectronic components. Swiss researchers have now developed a new method for the production of nanowires and used electron diffraction to study their products. The team exploited lipid membranes as “molds” and obtained high yields of cadmium chloride nanowires, which they say behave as light conductors.

  

Cellular moves

US and UK researchers have used crystallography to reveal how a moving cell creates grasping molecular fingers that stabilise its skeleton as the physical stresses of movement pull and push it.

  



Asbestos bioremedy

Various strains of soil fungi can remove iron from crocidolite asbestos and so potentially render it harmless. The phenomenon could offer a relatively simple solution to the bioremediation of asbestos-polluted soils. Now, an Italian team has used different crystal varieties of asbestos to gain new insights into the chemical basis of the fibre and fungi interaction.

 

Look, no magnets!

German researchers have demonstrated that the earth's magnetic field is perfectly adequate for carrying out NMR studies. Their discovery could lead to a highly sensitive way to measure the magnetic fields around living creatures, sample the Earth's magnetic field, or test the composition of mineral oils in wells.
 
A primary approach to chirality

Determining the absolute configuration of small molecules is critical to the drug and agrichemicals industry where one chiral form of a compound may be active and the other not, or one safe and the other potentially hazardous. Now, Japanese agricultural scientists have exploited the power of NMR to reveal the handedness of beta-chiral primary alcohols, an important group of synthetic precursor compounds. With such molecules' chirality in hand, drug and pesticide development might proceed more effectively allowing novel compounds of known chirality to be synthesised.
 
Crystallography by NMR

While developments in crystallography previously outstripped NMR to some degree in structural studies, researchers in France have now demonstrated what NMR experts have always known - that NMR is no second choice when it comes to crystal structures!
Singular transistor 

A Canadian and UK researchers have worked together to create the world's first single-molecule transistor. Their device allows a single molecule to control electrical charge in much the same way as does a microscopic silicon transistor but at the atomic level. This discovery might offer a first big step on the path to molecular electronics and computational devices.

Martian aurora

An aurora, distantly akin to the Northern and Southern lights seen close to the poles on earth has for the first time been observed on Mars by the SPICAM instrument (SPectroscopy for the Investigations and the Characteristics of the Atmosphere on Mars) aboard European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft. Unlike the Northern Lights, however, the Martian aurora is of a type never previously observed in the Solar System.

A molecular bunker for chromophores

Rhodamines are important fluorescent dyes, chromophores, for spectral calibration in fluorometers, single-molecule detection, as imaging agents for biomolecules, for scanning confocal microscopy, in fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), and in high-throughput screening. However, extending their stability further could improve all of these techniques and perhaps lead to novel applications.

Hurricanes touch base with ozone

US researchers have followed the variations of ozone levels from the surface to the upper atmosphere using NASA's satellite Earth Probe/TOMS (total ozone mapping spectrometer). The data show a close correlation between ozone levels and the formation, intensification, and movement of a hurricane. With this new information, forecasters will be able to predict the emergence of a hurricane ahead of standard methods and to pinpoint the eye of the storm much more accurately when the data are combined with other available observations.

 

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