Field Instruments
Looking at the latest portable offerings in soil and water testing, plant health and identification, sample management, and testing of raw materials, components, and finished products.
3D printer technology and glass beads—a powerful combination.
Rigaku Raman Technologies, a leading pioneer of handheld and portable Raman spectrometers, will be showcasing its new generation handheld Raman analyzer for raw material identification (RMID) in booth 1C82 at CPhI Worldwide 2014 (7-9th October 2014. Paris Nord Villepinte, France). Progeny™ (http://www.rigakuprogeny.com) delivers improved performance, ease of use and confidence to ensure the industry’s most accurate and comprehensive range of material identification in a handheld form.
A forensics investigator dusts a crime scene for fingerprints. When she finds one, she reaches to her holster, pulls out a handheld device, and aims it at the fingerprint. The device captures the image and also the chemical composition. That chemical analysis reveals that the person who left the print had touched ephedrine—an illegal drug, which is a stimulant that goes by many street names, including meow. With this information, the investigators can use biometrics—the fingerprint— to identify the person and the chemical analysis to start piecing together the crime.
From the sun, a solution: Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have remodeled an energy-intensive medical test – designed to detect a deadly skin cancer related to HIV infections – to create a quick diagnostic assay perfect for remote regions of the world, according to Scientific Reports (Feb. 20), an online publication of Nature.
Matthew Sullivan, an environmental specialist in the Field Operations section of the Bureau of Environmental Services for the city of Portland, Oregon, talks to contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, Ph.D., about how field testing, particularly for water analysis, has changed over the years. The testing equipment is now better suited for field analysis, in terms of its size, compactness, and robustness. The newer instruments have also allowed for sampling and testing to be done remotely and in an automated fashion. Overall, field instrumentation is striving to provide faster, cheaper, more robust, and more real-time measurements for routine analysis.
Increasingly, analysts perform routine analysis where the action islocations of environmental interest, manufacturing suites, crime scenes, loading docks, and packaging facilities through transportable instruments.
