This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 6755, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction (if any), and the Conference Committee listing.

We report on novel distributed feedback laser diodes with emission wavelengths as long as 2.9 µm. Single mode laser emission is realized by making use of metal Bragg gratings patterned laterally to the laser ridge. The laser diodes work at room temperature in cw mode and deliver output powers of a few mW. The high side mode suppression ratio of < 35 dB ensures high spectral selectivity within a broad wavelength tuning range of up to 10 nm. These devices promise to be key enablers for a new generation of laser based gas sensing systems featuring previously unreached detection limits.

We report the development of absorption-based waveguide sensors for the toxic industrial chemicals hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulfide, and chlorine. Polymeric materials formulated as colorimetric sensors have been engineered into miniature waveguide channels. The channels have dimensions 30x0.6x0.05 mm (LxWxH) and are patterned on glass substrates using a photolithography process. Subsequent light coupling was achieved using optical fibers. Enhanced sensitivity is observed owing to the increased path length as described by the Beer-Lambert law. When the individual sensors are challenged with the IDLH concentrations of their target gases they react instantaneously with response times (T90) less than 20 seconds. When tested simultaneously as an array, a predictable level of cross interference was observed. The cross interference indicates that the inclusion of a signal processing algorithm is required to selectively resolve the analytes and reduce or eliminate false alarms.

We outline a system for monitoring methane over the internet using a simple wireless sensor network. The system was developed for use at a capped landfill site which contains municipal solid waste. The sensor nodes use commercially available metal oxide semiconductor gas sensors to monitor and allow for a near real-time monitoring of gas emissions. This system is intended to complement the work of personnel who have to physically take the measurement using hand-held infrared instrument. We also outline preliminary testing of this system.

Protein concentrations are traditionally analyzed in the ultraviolet at 280nm using laboratory spectrophotometers. Recently, AlGaN/GaN deep ultraviolet Light Emitting Diodes (LED) became available in the 250 nm to 350 nm wavelength region. An inexpensive fiber optic detection system based on these UV LEDs and photodiodes has been developed. Measurement stability, noise and drift will be discussed. To improve sensitivity of the detection system, microliter volume liquid core waveguide sampling cells with 10 cm and 50 cm pathlength were evaluated. With a continuous flow setup, protein concentrations as low as 1 μg/mL and 0.2 μg/mL were detectable in a 10 cm and a 50 cm pathlength cell respectively, based on a 10 mAU absorbance signal and a signal to noise ratio greater than 10.

A new fiber optic sensor for simultaneous measurement of temperature and saccharinity with multiplexed polymer-coated fiber Bragg gratings is proposed and demonstrated. It has been found that the polyimide-coated fibre Bragg gratings respond to variations of both temperature and saccharinity while the acrylate-coated fiber Bragg grating is only sensitive to the environmental temperature. The experimental results showed that temperature and saccharinity sensitivities of the multiplexed FBG sensor are 0.0102 nm/°C and 0.0012 nm/°Bx, respectively.

Global Dynamic Monitoring and Security Network (GDMSN) for real-time monitoring of (1) environmental and atmospheric conditions: chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear hazards, climate/man-induced catastrophe areas and terrorism threats; (2) water, soil, food chain quantifiers, and public health care; (3) large government/public/ industrial/ military areas is proposed. Each GDMSN branch contains stationary or mobile terminals (ground, sea, air, or space manned/unmanned vehicles) equipped with portable sensors. The sensory data are transferred via telephone, Internet, TV, security camera and other wire/wireless or optical communication lines. Each sensor is a self-registering, self-reporting, plug-and-play, portable unit that uses unified electrical and/or optical connectors and operates with IP communication protocol. The variant of the system based just on optical technologies cannot be disabled by artificial high-power radio- or gamma-pulses or sunbursts. Each sensor, being supplied with a battery and monitoring means, can be used as a separate portable unit. Military personnel, police officers, firefighters, miners, rescue teams, and nuclear power plant personnel may individually use these sensors. Terminals may be supplied with sensors essential for that specific location. A miniature "universal" optical gas sensor for specific applications in life support and monitoring systems was designed and tested. The sensor is based on the physics of absorption and/or luminescence spectroscopy. It can operate at high pressures and elevated temperatures, such as in professional and military diving equipment, submarines, underground shelters, mines, command stations, aircraft, space shuttles, etc. To enable this capability, the multiple light emitters, detectors and data processing electronics are located within a specially protected chamber.

Excited rare-earth ions relax radiatively and non-radiatively. The non-radiative relaxation rate and hence the lifetime of the excited level exhibit temperature dependence. These materials can be used to sense temperature below the melting point of the crystal. We have developed calibration standards using rare-earth ion doped crystals. The sensitivity of the technique and the applicable temperature range depends on the ionic energy levels and the type of crystal. We will discuss some of the results obtained in rare-earth ion doped fluoride and oxide crystals.

Bottom ash from Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators (MSWIs) is mainly land filled or used as material for the foundation of road in European countries. Bottom ash is usually first crushed to below 40 mm and separated magnetically to recover the steel scrap. The remaining material contains predominantly sand, sinters and pieces of stone, glass and ceramics, which could be used as building material if strict technical and environmental requirements are respected. The main problem is the presence of residual organic matter in the ash and the large surface area presented by the fine fraction that creates leaching values, for elements such as copper, that are above the accepted levels for standard building materials. Main aim of the study was to evaluate the possibility offered by hyperspectral imaging to identify organic matter inside the residues in order to develop control/selection strategies to be implemented inside the bottom ash recycling plant. Reflectance spectra of selected bottom ash samples have been acquired in the VIS-NIR field (400- 1000 nm). Results showed as the organic content of the different samples influences the spectral signatures, in particular an inverse correlation between reflectance level and organic matter content was found.

After our first demonstration of the early alteration of the chloroplast morphology with the use of both Confocal Microscopy and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and the discussion of the biological mechanisms, we develop here the optical part of this work and underline the merits of full field OCT for plant studies.

A critical aspect of the use of nanoprobes for intracellular studies in chemical and biological sensing involves a fundamental understanding of their uptake and trajectory in cells. In this study, we describe experiments using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy and mapping to track cellular uptake of plasmonics-active labeled nanoparticles. Three different Raman-active labels with positive, negative, and neutral charges were conjugated to silver colloidal nanoparticles with the aim of spatially and temporally profiling intracellular delivery and tracking of nanoprobes during uptake in single mammalian cells. 1-D Raman spectra and 2-D Raman mapping are used to identify and locate the probes via their SERS signal intensities. Because Raman spectroscopy is very specific for identification of chemical and molecular signatures, the development of functionalized plasmonics-active nanoprobes capable of exploring intracellular spaces and processes has the ability to provide specific information on the effects of biological and chemical pollutants in the intracellular environment. The results indicate that this technique will allow study of when, where, and how these substances affect cells and living organisms.

A prototype for an active backscattering probe for continuous backscattering spectrum measurement in sea water was designed and tested in both lab and field experiments. For the laboratory experiments, at various algae concentrations, the impact of overlapping chlorophyll fluorescence was effectively eliminated by using a long pass filter on the excitation light source. In the field tests with an active light source, and under the conditions of strong algal scattering (eg bloom conditions) it was shown that the impact of ambient background day light can be accounted for by successive measurements with the lamp illumination periodically on-off. The results show that the spectral shape of backscattering of algae cells is highly structured and consistent with Mie calculations which take into account the anomalous dispersion due to the strong absorption features of chlorophyll. The backscatter ratio, however, is found to be stable (within 10%) throughout the entire spectral region outside the chlorophyll fluorescence band, even when scattering is dominated by that from algae cells.

This work describes the ongoing development of an autonomous platform for the measurement of phosphate levels in river water. This device is designed to operate unassisted for one year, taking a measurement every hour and relaying the result to a laptop computer. A first generation prototype has already been developed and successfully field tested. The system contains the sampling, chemical storage, fluid handling, colorimetric data acquisition and waste storage capabilities necessary to perform the phosphate measurement. In addition to this, the device has the embedded control, GSM communications system and power supply to allow independent operation. The entire system is placed inside a compact and rugged enclosure. Further work discussed here builds on the successes of the prototype design to deliver a system capable of one full year of operation. The second generation system has been built from the ground up. Although identical in operation to the prototype its design has a greater emphasis on power efficient components and power management to allow for a longer lifetime. Other improvements include an automated two-point calibration to compensate for drift and a more rugged design to further increase the lifetime of the device.

An inexpensive flow injection analysis system for determining low concentration levels of nitrite employing the Griess reagent spectrophotometric method is reported. The novel photometric detector applied within this manifold is a highly sensitive, low cost, miniaturized light emitting diode (LED) based flow detector. This colorimetric detector employs two LEDs, operating one as a light source and the other as a light detector. The emitter LED is forward biased and the detector reverse biased. The emitter and detector LED had a λmax of 530 nm and 623 nm respectively. The emission spectrum of the emitter LED efficiently overlapped with the absorbance spectrum of 9 µM NO2 and Griess reagent complex. A simple timer circuit measures the time taken for the photocurrent generated by the emitter LED to discharge the detector LED from 5 V (logic 1) to 1.7 V (logic 0). The Griess reagent method employed for nitrite determination is based on the formation of an azo dye, the intensity of which is directly related to nitrite concentration. The linear range, reproducibility and limit of detection were investigated. Detection limits in the nanomolar range were achieved using the Paired Emitter-Detector Diode (PEDD) flow analysis device. For a comparative study the linear range and limit of detection were also investigated using a platewell reader. Higher sensitivity and improved precision were obtained from the PEDD compared to the commercially available plate well reader.

Most culture-based microbiology tasks utilize a petri plate during processing, but rarely do the scientists capture the full information available from the plate. In particular, visual analysis of plates is an under-developed rich source of data that can be rapid and non-invasive. However, collecting this data has been limited by the difficulties of standardizing and quantifying human observations, by the limits of a scientists' fatigue, and by the cost of automating the process. The availability of specialized counting equipment and intelligent camera systems has not changed this - they are prohibitively expensive for many laboratories, only process a limited number of plate types, are often destructive to the sample, and have limited accuracy. This paper describes an automated visual inspection solution, VAPI, that employs inexpensive consumer computing hardware and digital cameras along with custom cross-platform open-source software written in C++, combining Trolltech's Qt GUI toolkit with Intel's OpenCV computer vision library. The system is more accurate than common commercial systems costing many times as much, while being flexible in use and offering comparable responsiveness. VAPI not only counts colonies but also sorts and enumerates colonies by morphology, tracks colony growth by time series analysis, and provides other analytical resources. Output to XML files or directly to a database provides data that can be easily maintained and manipulated by the end user, offering ready access for system enhancement, interaction with other software systems, and rapid development of advanced analysis applications.

The design and experimental setup of a smart cap are presented. It is capable of sniffing the vapors of extra virgin olive oil, thus alerting the consumer or the retailer of any rancid flavor. The cap is made of an array of metalloporphyrin-based optochemical sensors, the colors of which are modulated by the concentration of aldehydes, the main responsible for rancid off-flavors. A micro-optic device, implemented to simulate a cap prototype, is presented. The spectral response of the chromophore-array is processed by means of multivariate data analysis so as to achieve an artificial olfactory perception of oil aroma and, consequently, an indication of oil ageing and rancidity. In practice, the cap prototype proved to be a device for non-destructive testing of bottled oil quality.

Biochemical analysis and clinical tests like glucose, hemoglobin, cholesterol, iron, etc. are crucial for early illness diagnosis like diabetes, anemia and coronary deceases. These tests usually are done in state of the art instruments in well equipped laboratories in health centers. In some cases, these instruments are not portable, so they are not recommended for clinical field studies in remote areas. The present work shows a portable low-cost prototype of multi-well plates reader designed for clinical analysis. A Light Emission Diodes (LEDs) array is used as excitation source and an inexpensive webcam as detector. The light source illuminates the 96 well plates and the webcam take the image with 640x480 pixels. The data is acquired and processed by using a portable computer. 96 samples can be read including blanks and calibration standards simultaneously. Light absorption data are processed using a MatLab software designed in our laboratory to obtain calibration curves, standards lectures and samples concentration. The system was evaluated using different analytes series solutions: Neutral Red, Cooper (II) Ammonia Complex and Methyl Orange. The results shows that it is possible to measure few micro liters of solutions with adequate exactitude and precision of less than 3%. As possible analytical clinical application, iron determination was performed using Fe(III) Thiocyanate complex. This method is usually applied in serum samples analysis. The sensibility achieved with the proposed instrumentation configurations allows the analysis of iron in serum samples in the references values normal range (0.75 - 1.5 mg/L) in human.

Novel plasmonic sensor chips are prepared by generating sub-micrometer periodic patterns in the interfacial layers of bimetal-polymer films via master-grating based interference method. Poly-carbonate films spin-coated onto vacuum evaporated silver-gold bimetallic layers are irradiated by the two interfering UV beams of a Nd:YAG laser. It is proven by pulsed force mode AFM that periodic adhesion pattern corresponds to the surface relief gratings, consisting of sub-micrometer droplet arrays and continuous polymer stripes, induced by p- and s-polarized beams, respectively. The characteristic periods are the same, but more complex and larger amplitude adhesion modulation is detectable on the droplet arrays. The polar and azimuthal angle dependence of the resonance characteristic of plasmons is studied by combining the prism- and grating-coupling methods in a modified Kretschmann arrangement, illuminating the structured metal-polymer interface by a frequency doubled Nd:YAG laser through a semi-cylinder. It is proven that the grating-coupling results in double-peaked plasmon resonance curves on both of the droplet arrays and line gratings, when the grooves are rotated to an appropriate azimuthal angle, and the modulation amplitude of the structure is sufficiently large. Streptavidin seeding is performed to demonstrate that small amount of protein can be detected monitoring the shift of the secondary resonance minima. The available high concentration sensitivity is explained by the promotion of protein adherence in the structure's valleys due to the enhanced adhesion. The line-shaped polymer gratings resulting in narrow resonance peaks are utilized to demonstrate the effect of therapeutic molecules on Amyloid-&Bgr; peptide, a pathogenic factor in Alzheimer disease.