Research

Researchers at several different locations of the National Institute of Health (Bethesda, Maryland) have combined to perform a neuroimaging study of brain development in healthy, normally developing children from birth to young adulthood. The latest data released by the group include longitudinal imaging and clinical/behavioral data for children ages seven days to four years old.

Here, MRI scan data are accompanied by corresponding data from physical neurological examinations, behavioral ratings, neuropsychological testing, structured psychiatric interviews, and hormonal measures from urine and saliva samples. This is the first release to include data from a technique called MR spectroscopy, a type of MRI scan that measures the levels of certain by-products of metabolism that can be used to gauge the health of brain tissues.

It is hoped that raw data sharing such as this will help to optimize the burgeoning knowledge of conditions such as autism, among others. Accordingly, databases are being created in certain rapidly growing fields. Judith Rumsey, National Institute of Mental Health, explained: "These data-sharing efforts reflect a new approach to science. The database can be used to chart normal developmental trajectories in order to identify deviations in milestones associated with disease."

• Scientists with the Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research (Trondheim, Norway) have developed a solution to sorting waste for recycling based upon infrared spectroscopy. Using halogen lamps as light sources, an instrument has been developed that can distinguish between plastic-coated cardboard, ordinary cardboard, and different kinds of plastics by small variations in the color of the reflected infrared light. In the selected range of infrared wavelengths, objects have different reflection properties than for ordinary visible light.

Industry

HORIBA (Edison, New Jersey) has received an order from the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, Washington, DC) to supply water quality sensors to be used in their medical intravenous (IV) fluid production device.

IV fluid is essential for medical treatment and surgical procedures, and must be available at the International Space Station (ISS) for future long-duration exploration missions. It is impossible to deliver enough fresh IV fluid from the earth to the ISS. Therefore, NASA is developing an IVGEN (Intra Venous GENeration) system, which reuses the feedstock water in ISS to a purity level of pharmaceutical standards. The system will be carried to space via the space shuttle launching in March 2010, and will be tested at the International Space Station (ISS).

• Neutron spectroscopy has been used to help cast doubt on the origins of the planet Mercury. During a recent flyby of the planet by the Messenger spacecraft, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (Laurel, Maryland) found evidence of an unnamed volcanic crater, 180 miles wide with a double ring around it. Its interior is surprisingly smooth and free of subsequent meteor impact craters, suggesting there were lava flows into the center as recently as a billion years ago.

Previously, scientists believed Mercury's vulcanism, like that on Earth's moon, was among the first in the solar system to cease, at least 3 billion years ago. Neutron spectroscopy from the latest flyby found signs of higher concentrations of iron and titanium on the surface than had been thought. Previous observations have shown that Mercury is the densest planet in the solar system, with a large iron core. Surface measurements, however, had found a surface rich in rocky silcates but poor in iron. So theoreticians constructed models, some including huge impacts that stripped away large volumes of iron, to explain how that contrast could have evolved from the planet's formation 4.5 billion years ago.

• According to a team of researchers with the Laboratory of Enology (wine studies) and Applied Chemistry, University of Reims Champagne–Ardenne, France, the bubbles present in champagne serve a greater purpose than merely popping corks. The team's findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that the bubbles drag compounds that activate smell receptors to the surface of the sparkling wine and then shoot them upward, where a taster can easily encounter them.

Using MS, the chemical makeup of the wine itself was parsed, along with the tiny droplets in the headspace, or the area above the liquid's surface. Those droplets, or aerosols, spray upward in a fountain and bubbles of dissolved carbon dioxide rise to the surface of the champagne and then burst. The researchers estimate that the typical 0.75-L bottle of champagne contains roughly 5 L of CO₂ gas, enough to form tens of millions of bubbles.

Surface-active molecules are then drawn to the gas–liquid interface of the champagne bubbles, which are simply pockets of CO₂ gas surrounded by liquid, and are then pulled upward to the surface of the beverage when the bubble rises, where they can meet a taster's nostrils, enhancing and magnifying the taste and smell of the beverage.