The illumination of neural stem cells using MRI spectroscopy was big news late last year. Only a few years ago, we believed that no stem cells existed to make new neurons for adult brains. A Newsday article presents scientists explaining how collaboration across specialties and institutions made the breakthrough possible.

Frequency combs might change the way spectroscopy is done. NIST Researchers provide the full spectrum of a gas over a broad spectral region and with frequency accuracy reaching 1 Hz. That is about equal to simultaneously passing 155,000 individual single frequency lasers through the sample and measuring the amplitude and phase shift of each.

A transmission electron microscope — claiming 'world's best' status — at the Berkeley National Laboratory, has a resolution down to half an angstrom. That's about one quarter of the diameter of a carbon atom. Do you want to analyze chemicals simply by looking at the atoms — this microscope can do that.

Arming an atomic force microscope with custom hardware and software allows researchers to quickly image the mechanical properties of materials. They can learn how stiff or stretchy materials are at scales on the order of billionths of a meter. The new tool transforms standard topological maps into precise 2D representations of mechanical properties.

Researchers at MIT built a gas sensor that incorporates analytical techniques into a device the size of a computer mouse — with plans to shrink it to the size of a matchbox. It uses gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to identify gas molecules by their telltale electronic signatures. In addition to being smaller, the new device uses orders of magnitude less energy than portable GC-MS machines and produces results in about 4 seconds rather than 15 minutes.

Need a fully automated, computer controlled high performance liquid chromatography system that comes already configured and with the plumbing already installed? One HPLC system provides flow rates as high as liters-per-minute. It includes a pump, autosampler, and one or more detectors, and is designed for pharmaceutical, environmental, and industrial labs.

No matter what industry and country you operate a molecular spectroscopy process in, you'll need to comply with regulations concerning the process. Regulations may be mandated by a government agency or a third party such as the ASTM. Instrument makers can help reduce the burden of compliance, writes one product manager. How do you keep your process in compliance?

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Quantum dots are useful as fluorescent tags for imaging and spectroscopy — but they tend to blink on and off. A new treatment, developed by researchers at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), solves the blinking problem by inducing the quantum dots to emit light faster and more consistently.

Scientific Instruments Rock

Development of the polymerase chain reaction was revolutionary, and it's become a standard biotech tool. However, scientific instrumentation and chemical reactions haven't been glamorous — until now. Using the style of celebrity-laden charity videos, Bio-Rad made a music video that celebrates the glory of PCR. (The video is a flash file.)

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Microsized Marvels: Miracle or Menace?

Are smaller instruments necessarily better? Or is the movement towards microtechnology, microfluidics, and Nanotech part exploration and part hype? What do you think — marvelous miracle or menace?