With the rising cost of artificial fertilizers, many farmers are getting serious about using fertilizers already on the farm. For livestock owners, this includes manure. But can you measure the nitrogen that is in a batch of muck? One British company is researching the use of near infrared reflectance spectroscopy to provide fast results.

Detecting explosives is vital in a number of applications, but getting close enough to sense them can be hazardous. Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory are testing Raman spectroscopy with a UV source. They think it is feasible to detect traces of explosives from tens of meters away using a single pulse of eye-safe radiation.

The first commercial unit of what the makers call the world's highest resolution wide-field light microscope, the OMX, has been installed at UC Davis. It uses structured illumination to create moire patterns that provide enough information to produce 3D images of fluorescent structures with 100 nm in-plane resolution and 200 nm depth resolution.

Another group of researchers published impressive results of their sub-diffraction-limit microscope in a recent issue of Science. Their system also uses structured illumination, and provides multicolor 3D images. They used a 3D structured illumination (3D-SIM) method to explore the mammalian nucleus at about 100 nm resolution.

A universal detector for liquid chromatography and electrophoresis is made by a tiny strip of silicon with a groove through which liquid flows. The resonant frequency of the suspended microchannel resonator (SMR) changes when a particle lands on it. The SMR could weigh cells, proteins, and Nanoparticles with masses as low as one femtogram.

Recently a gas chromatography/atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (GC-APCI) interface was introduced for a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Shown at the American Society for Mass Spectroscopy meeting, the micrOTOF II is the first universal bench-top accurate mass tool for gas and liquid chromatography chemical analysis and metabolic profiling.

Apparently, pig manure can be refined into fuel oil. But, according to a new instrument and method, there are 83 compounds in pig biofuel. A new NIST test method and apparatus, called the advanced distillation curve, refines older methods and provides much higher detail and accuracy. One researcher describes the method via video.

Less smelly but more illegal, bootleggers in Japan are selling untaxed heating oil as taxed diesel fuel. But how do you distinguish fuels? Bootleggers learned how to remove additives — and dump them as toxic waste. Using gas chromatography with atomic emission detection, untaxed fuels can be distinguished from taxed ones by their sulfur content.

"As a smaller number of larger, more sophisticated instruments are built, collaboration communities are growing and sharing more data" claims William Jackson in Government Computer News. Therefore, data-sharing infrastructure becomes more important for scientific research. While his article mostly focuses on the 100 gigabits/sec optical Energy Sciences Network run by the U.S. Department of Energy, one has to wonder about his (and presumably the DoE's) premise of fewer instruments.

In the Lap of Luxor-y

Precision instruments and a lot of elbow grease go into modern archeology, as seen on the Web site, Hopkins in Egypt Today, that aims to provide the viewer with the elements of archaeological work, including the progress of excavation. The excavation expands this summer. So far the excavation has identified industrial and food processing installations of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1479-1300 B.C.). Granaries and bakeries of the Eighteenth Dynasty and slightly earlier have been identified.

Join a Conversation About This Month's Topic...

What Fuels the Debate?

Will science save us in a post-peak-oil world? (Or is the problem more gross profiteering and politics?) Are biofuels an answer or a variation of the problem? How can science can help?