Researchers used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a cousin of magnetic resonance imaging, to detect metabolite concentrations and combinations that could herald the onset of disease. The technique highlights markers for some genetically caused metabolic disorders, which eases testing requirements for infants and children. The team enhanced the visibility of amino acids by chemically tagging the molecules of interest.

A modified form of time-domain capacitance spectroscopy can measure the single-particle density of the states of a two-dimensional electron system with resolution that is three orders of magnitude higher than photoemission methods. Some interesting effects can be found in these odd systems that confine electron movement to a plane — with the new system, it is possible to measure the single-particle exchange-enhanced spin gap, single-particle lifetimes in the quantum Hall system, and exchange splitting of Landau levels not at the Fermi surface.

Relax, sit back, and sniff the sweet bouquet of hops before sipping a cold one. In an effort to analyze the complex aroma of great beer, researchers skipped the sipping. Instead, they coupled human noses and gas chromatographs to isolate the most enjoyable (to human noses) compounds in beer and their concentrations.

Drug doping doesn't just grab the headlines in newspapers and sports magazines. To celebrate its twentieth birthday, the journal Biomedical Chromatography published a special anniversary issue on Metabolic and Drug Profiling and is offering a free paper online at Wiley Interscience.

Most of our knowledge about DNA, the molecule that contains instructions for building every living thing, is based on biological or chemical tests. Now the physicists have gotten into the act, measuring the force required to tug apart bases in DNA. They used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to capture the "mechanical fingerprint" of the attraction between bases within DNA strands, measuring forces as small as one pico-Newton.

Ultrasound is used for medicine, but the method is also a relatively inexpensive method for imaging a variety of objects for industrial and research applications. The Time-domain Optimized Near-field Estimator (TONE) algorithm makes for clearer images from ultrasound, by (among other things) reducing the noise from sound-waves reflected away from the area of interest.

A spectrograph on a chip may be possible, but the sample chamber would have to be tiny. An academic group has used hollow waveguides that can contain a sample of gas or liquid to be analyzed as well as channel light for probing the sample — and built them into silicon chips that can contain electronics for analysis. Their fingernail-sized prototype performed atomic spectroscopy that shows promise for gas sensors, secure quantum communications, and atomic clocks.

Laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy can interrogate remote areas for chemical or biological agents without requiring anyone to go into that area. A team at Sandia National Labs used simple and relatively cheap adaptive optics with an incorporated deformable mirror to change the focal distance of the laser used.

You may have watched robots play soccer — the game is a popular way to challenge students to design and build agile robots. But now consider the possibilities of nanorobots? The RoboCup nanosoccer competition pits teams of tiny robots, each smaller than a millimeter, against each other. Viewers, not surprisingly, watch via optical microscope.