NIR Spectroscopy Highlights February 2015

February 2015

A monthly selection of NIR spectroscopy publications

	Biomarkers in preterm infants

Red blood cell transfusions (RBCTs) have been associated with necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) in preterm infants. This JNIRS paper evaluates the use of regional cerebral (cRSO₂) and splanchnic (sRSO₂) tissue oximetry, measured using NIR spectroscopy, as biomarkers to evaluate the association between RBCT and NEC. more...

	NIR assures chocolate quality

The quality of chocolate is a function of crystal size and crystalline form, which are dependent on the tempering (pre-crystallisation) process creating the largest number of the smallest crystals of the correct form. An article in NIR news describes the development and evaluation of a system using a portable NIR device to measure the tempering index of white, milk and dark chocolates in-flow. more...

	NIR improving your cup of coffee

NIR spectroscopy is being used to develop models for predicting the major coffee constituents related to quality beverage (proteins, caffeine, lipids, chlorogenic acids, phenolic compounds, total sugars and sucrose) to identify coffee lines with more desirable traits in breeding programmes. more...

	Imaging mould growth on wood

NIR hyperspectral imaging is helping to develop models to predict mould growth on outdoor wood exposed to different weather. As well as a number of different fungal species causing mould growth, photodegration of lignin occurs complicating the overall picture. more...

	Glucose in cell culture

Mammalian cell cultivation is a rapidly developing field of biopharmaceutical production where one of these key process variables is the glucose concentration. However, calibrations for the NIR-based monitoring of glucose are usually not available in the early phase of process development owing to the lack of sufficient NIR data from small-scale experiments. This JNIRS paper demonstrates the development of calibrations based on NIR spectroscopy for the determination of glucose concentration in a novel shake flask model system for mammalian cell cultivation. more...

	Monitoring seedlings in the field

Leaf water status regulates biochemical processes in plants. NIR spectra obtained from leaf surfaces of seedlings were calibrated against physiological measurements of plant water stress: relative water content, leaf water potential and stomatal conductance. The use of a portable NIR instrument enabled the rapid assessment of physiological status of seedlings and would enable in situ, non-destructive, high-throughput monitoring of drought and recovery in the field. more...

	M-PLS superior to global PLS

Freezing points in diesel fuels, clay in soil samples, protein content in single kernels and ammonium in spiked anaerobic digestion samples all demonstrated 20–50% improvements in the measurement accuracy when using multilayer PLS (ML-PLS) compared with global PLS models. more...

	Verification of Chinese woods

Red sanders (Pterocarpus santalinus L.F.) is one of the most expensive woods in the Chinese market, with its price rising every year. Some similar rare woods are traded fraudently as red sanders. This JNIRS article shows that various discrimination models could detect such attempts. more...

	Representative sampling

The Theory of Sampling is the only fully comprehensive approach to representative sampling, allowing a complete analysis of representativity for all sampling methods, procedures and equipment. The freely available Sampling Column in Spectroscopy Europe has reached its second edition. more...