Nondestructive measurement of fruit and vegetable quality by means of NIR spectroscopy: A review

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a noninvasive neuroimaging tool for studying evoked hemodynamic changes within the brain. By this technique, changes in the optical absorption of light are recorded over time and are used to estimate the functionally evoked changes in cerebral oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin concentrations that result from local cerebral vascular and oxygen metabolic effects during brain activity. Over the past three decades this technology has continued to grow, and today NIRS studies have found many niche applications in the fields of psychology, physiology, and cerebral pathology. The growing popularity of this technique is in part associated with a lower cost and increased portability of NIRS equipment when compared with other imaging modalities, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography. With this increasing number of applications, new techniques for the processing, analysis, and interpretation of NIRS data are continually being developed. We review some of the time-series and functional analysis techniques that are currently used in NIRS studies, we describe the practical implementation of various signal processing techniques for removing physiological, instrumental, and motion-artifact noise from optical data, and we discuss the unique aspects of NIRS analysis in comparison with other brain imaging modalities. These methods are described within the context of the MATLAB-based graphical user interface program, HomER, which we have developed and distributed to facilitate the processing of optical functional brain data.

/pdf/homer-a-review-of-time-series-analysis-methods-for-near-4ln9n7d315.pdf

HomER: a review of time-series analysis methods for near-infrared spectroscopy of the brain.

The ability to silence the activity of genetically specified neurons in a temporally precise fashion would provide the opportunity to investigate the causal role of specific cell classes in neural computations, behaviours and pathologies. Here we show that members of the class of light-driven outward proton pumps can mediate powerful, safe, multiple-colour silencing of neural activity. The gene archaerhodopsin-3 (Arch) from Halorubrum sodomense enables near-100% silencing of neurons in the awake brain when virally expressed in the mouse cortex and illuminated with yellow light. Arch mediates currents of several hundred picoamps at low light powers, and supports neural silencing currents approaching 900 pA at light powers easily achievable in vivo. Furthermore, Arch spontaneously recovers from light-dependent inactivation, unlike light-driven chloride pumps that enter long-lasting inactive states in response to light. These properties of Arch are appropriate to mediate the optical silencing of significant brain volumes over behaviourally relevant timescales. Arch function in neurons is well tolerated because pH excursions created by Arch illumination are minimized by self-limiting mechanisms to levels comparable to those mediated by channelrhodopsins or natural spike firing. To highlight how proton pump ecological and genomic diversity may support new innovation, we show that the blue-green light-drivable proton pump from the fungus Leptosphaeria maculans (Mac) can, when expressed in neurons, enable neural silencing by blue light, thus enabling alongside other developed reagents the potential for independent silencing of two neural populations by blue versus red light. Light-driven proton pumps thus represent a high-performance and extremely versatile class of 'optogenetic' voltage and ion modulator, which will broadly enable new neuroscientific, biological, neurological and psychiatric investigations.

High-performance genetically targetable optical neural silencing by light-driven proton pumps

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) uses light-activated drugs to treat diseases ranging from cancer to age-related macular degeneration and antibiotic-resistant infections. This paper reviews the current status of PDT with an emphasis on the contributions of physics, biophysics and technology, and the challenges remaining in the optimization and adoption of this treatment modality. A theme of the review is the complexity of PDT dosimetry due to the dynamic nature of the three essential components—light, photosensitizer and oxygen. Considerable progress has been made in understanding the problem and in developing instruments to measure all three, so that optimization of individual PDT treatments is becoming a feasible target. The final section of the review introduces some new frontiers of research including low dose rate (metronomic) PDT, two-photon PDT, activatable PDT molecular beacons and nanoparticle-based PDT.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9155/53/9/R01/pdf

The physics, biophysics and technology of photodynamic therapy

Underwater wireless information transfer is of great interest to the military, industry, and the scientific community, as it plays an important role in tactical surveillance, pollution monitoring, oil control and maintenance, offshore explorations, climate change monitoring, and oceanography research. In order to facilitate all these activities, there is an increase in the number of unmanned vehicles or devices deployed underwater, which require high bandwidth and high capacity for information transfer underwater. Although tremendous progress has been made in the field of acoustic communication underwater, however, it is limited by bandwidth. All this has led to the proliferation of underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC), as it provides higher data rates than the traditional acoustic communication systems with significantly lower power consumption and simpler computational complexities for short-range wireless links. UOWC has many potential applications ranging from deep oceans to coastal waters. However, the biggest challenge for underwater wireless communication originates from the fundamental characteristics of ocean or sea water; addressing these challenges requires a thorough understanding of complex physio-chemical biological systems. In this paper, the main focus is to understand the feasibility and the reliability of high data rate underwater optical links due to various propagation phenomena that impact the performance of the system. This paper provides an exhaustive overview of recent advances in UOWC. Channel characterization, modulation schemes, coding techniques, and various sources of noise which are specific to UOWC are discussed. This paper not only provides exhaustive research in underwater optical communication but also aims to provide the development of new ideas that would help in the growth of future underwater communication. A hybrid approach to an acousto-optic communication system is presented that complements the existing acoustic system, resulting in high data rates, low latency, and an energy-efficient system.

Underwater Optical Wireless Communication

A Monte Carlo model of steady-state light transport in multi-layered tissues (MCML) has been coded in ANSI Standard C; therefore, the program can be used on various computers. Dynamic data allocation is used for MCML, hence the number of tissue layers and grid elements of the grid system can be varied by users at run time. The coordinates of the simulated data for each grid element in the radial and angular directions are optimized. Some of the MCML computational results have been verified with those of other theories or other investigators. The program, including the source code, has been in the public domain since 1992.

Wang

Papers

MCML-Monte Carlo modeling of light transport in multi-layered tissues