Research
ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.
Read more: Herschel-HIFI unveils precursors of life-enabling molecules in Orion Nebula
Researchers Sebastian Busch, Christoph Smuda, Luis Carlos Pardo and Tobias Unruh from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) have discovered, using neutron spectroscopy techniques, that the molecules of a cell membrane do not move at random as previously believed, but rather in a flowing motion as suggested by various computer simulations.
Read more: Neutron spectroscopy techniques unveil the motion of molecules in cell membranes
Researchers from
Read more: Personalised medicine in warfarin therapy using SELDI-ToF MS
A European research project has shown how to build optical sensors directly into the structure of labs-on-chips. The breakthrough paves the way for on-the-spot medical diagnostics.
Scientists from the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technische Universität München (TUM) under the direction of Professor Michael Sattler have developed a new strategy allowing them to determine the spatial structure of biomolecules in solution based around NMR spectroscopy. The method is flexible and generally applicable to obtaining structural information for signal forwarding pathways in the cell or in the regulation of gene expression. Their work is reported in Angewandte Chemie.
Read more: NMR allows structure determination of biomolecules in their natural environment
Scientists in the research group of Professor Dr Alfred Meixner and Dr Dai Zhang from the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Tübingen, Germany, have developed a near-field microscope that can measure the optical properties of, for instance, semiconductor thin films with a spatial resolution and sensitivity long thought unachievable due to fundamental physical laws (the diffraction limit). Both the optical spectrum and the topography of a surface can be mapped simultaneously with nanometre precision.
Chemical studies of exoplanets—planets that orbit not the Sun, but distant stars—rely on spectroscopy. Such studies used to be the domain of space observatories and of the world's largest ground-based telescopes. Now, a new data analysis technique successfully pioneered by a group of astronomers from the US, the UK and Germany has brought exoplanet spectroscopy to a much smaller (and more wide-spread) class of ground-based telescopes.
Magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy may in the future be able both to pinpoint the precise location of prostate cancer and to determine the tumour's aggressiveness, information that could help guide treatment planning. In Science Translational Medicine (doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3000513), Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report how spectroscopic analysis of the biochemical makeup of prostate glands accurately identified the location of tissue confirmed to be malignant by conventional pathology.
Read more: MR spectroscopy may help diagnose, determine aggressiveness of prostate cancer
Children as young as five months old will follow the gaze of an adult towards an object and engage in joint attention, according to research at Birkbeck, University of London, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. The findings, published in Biology Letters (doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.1069), suggest that the human brain develops this important social skill surprisingly early in infancy.
Read more: NIR shows babies' brains tuned to sharing attention with others
Researchers at the University of St Andrews have developed a powerful technique that could allow earlier cancer detection. In a joint venture between the Schools of Physics & Astronomy and the Bute Medical School, the St Andrews researchers have advanced new technology that relies on Raman spectroscopy.
Page 1 of 14
