How old are bones? Law-enforcement has cause to wonder. One method of determining the age of skeletal remains uses chemometric techniques to determine how long ago a person died. Because bones lose water and proteins decomposed into amino acids after death, the new technique follows these changes spectroscopically.

Catalysts work fast — and researchers understood them by comparing results to initial state. Watching interactions in real-time would be better, and aid development of better catalysts to reduce pollution, increase fuel cell efficiency, and improve green chemistry. Photoelectron spectroscopy lets researchers watch nanoscale catalysts in action.

An extraordinarily powerful electron microscope at McMaster University offers resolution that has led to comparisons with the Hubble Telescope, but at the atomic level. Titan 80-300 Cubed microscope can provide resolution well below 1 nm. It may aid development and commercialization of biomedical devices, water quality monitoring, and energy storage.

A 3D optical imaging method for anisotropic fluids (like liquid crystals and ordered polymers), offers volumetric resolution 1,000x smaller than existing techniques. Based on near-field scanning microscopy, this could be a boon for designing better liquid-crystal displays. A paper in Nature Physics is expected soon.

Get your gas chromatograph out of the lab, with a portable battery-operated device. The 15 lb. instrument has a built-in, three-column configuration with isothermal oven for fast GC analysis for 40 factory-programmed EPA-listed volatile organocarbons. Depending on the compound monitored, detection limits can be as low as 5 ppb.

Need columns for low-pressure chromatography? GE Healthcare's AxiChrom columns range from 50 to 1000 mm in diameter, a novel swing-out design for maintenance, and more importantly, they support the company's Intelligent Packing technology, which saves time and ensures accurate and reproducible packing results.

Most metrology services provide ISO and other accreditation standards. But what if you need to certify biological safety cabinets, laminar flow units, chemical fume hoods, HEPA filters, and Clean Rooms? Makers of pharmaceuticals, foods, biotech, and medical instruments — who do you call when analytical instruments need calibration?

Silicon drift affects scanning electron microscopy, reducing accuracy and precision. Keeping track of silicon drift is difficult because electron detectors have traditionally been small, with limited input angles. A newly introduced Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) silicon drift detector comes in sizes up to 80mm²!

The huge Materials Research Society Fall Meeting includes 45 symposia grouped into five clusters. The clusters include electronics, photonics, and magnetism, energy and the environment, engineered materials and modeling, nanoscience, and synthesis and characterization. A special symposium X will discuss the Frontiers of Materials Research. If you can't make the meeting in Boston on December 1-5, there will be daily summaries of technical presentations at the MRS Meeting Scene.

Curators feared that a codex by Leonardo da Vinci had been attacked by mold, when stains were detected on paper around it. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan commissioned a microbiological analysis of the collection of drawings and writings called the Codex Atlanticus. Testing showed that it wasn't mold, but mercury salts that were added earlier to ward off the formation of mold and mildew.

Science in Tough Times

Amid global economic uncertainty and budget-slashing, what strategies help you on the job? If your job evaporates with the drop in the company's stock price, where do you turn first?