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

Issue 49 of Spectral Lines is now available online

X-ray Tempel 

UK and US scientists observing the Deep Impact collision using NASA's Swift satellite report that comet Tempel 1 got brighter and brighter in X-ray light over the weekend of July 9-10 2005.

IR protein probe

German researchers have demonstrated that introducing a carbon-13 atom into a specific position on the amino acid tyrosine shifts the infra-red band of this residue to lower frequencies. This allows the researchers to probe conformational changes in proteins across different regions simultaneously using IR spectroscopy.

Microreactors for new, improved QD 

Absorbance and photoluminescence spectroscopy have been used to help US researchers develop and monitor the workings of a novel microfluidic reactor.

Combined light harvester 

An efficient light collector, capable of capturing light over the whole visible spectral range and ultimately transferring it to the core TDI (terylenedi-imide) and finally releasing it as red fluorescence has been designed by researchers in Belgium, German, and the US. The researchers probed the intramolecular Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) in their dendrimer molecule using ensemble and single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy.