Hydrothermal synthesis of dioctahedral smectites: The Al-Fe3+chemical series. Part II: crystal-chemistry

The crystal-chemistry of a series of synthetic Al-Fe3+ smectites was studied in detail using near and mid infrared spectroscopy. Chemical and NIR data indicated a quite complete range of octahedral Al for Fe3+ substitution, and therefore, the solid-solution between beidellite and nontronite end-members was continuous and complete. The wavenumbers of several infrared absorption bands were correlated with the chemistry of the synthetic smectites, providing a useful tool to constrain their structural formulae and also for assisting in assignments of similar bands in natural smectites. The Al and Fe3+ cations were shown to be randomly distributed in the octahedral sheet of synthesized smectites. Despite the high availability of iron during synthesis, generally only a small amount of tetrahedral Fe3+ was observed.

Characterization of supported cylinder-planar germanium waveguide sensors with synchrotron Infrared radiation

Cylinder-planar Ge waveguides are being developed as evanescent-wave sensors for chemical microanalysis. The only non-planar surface is a cylinder section having a 300-mm radius of curvature. This confers a symmetric taper, allowing for direct coupling into and out of the waveguide's 1-mm² end faces while obtaining multiple reflections at the central <30-μm-thick sensing region. Ray-optic calculations indicate that the propagation angle at the central minimum has a strong nonlinear dependence on both angle and vertical position of the input ray. This results in rather inefficient coupling of input light into the off-axis modes that are most useful for evanescent-wave absorption spectroscopy. Mode-specific performance of the cylinder-planar waveguides has also been investigated experimentally. As compared to a blackbody source, the much greater brightness of synchrotron-generated infrared (IR) radiation allows a similar total energy throughput, but restricted to a smaller fraction of the allowed waveguide modes. However, such angle-selective excitation results in a strong oscillatory interference pattern in the transmission spectra. These spectral oscillations are the principal technical limitation on using synchrotron radiation to measure evanescent-wave absorption spectra with the thin waveguides.

Low cost multimodal facial recognition via kinect sensors

This paper presents a novel low cost 3D facial recognition using gaming sensors such as Kinect™. The paper describes the hardware, calibration and infrared noise and pattern interference challenges of integrating multiple Kinect sensors. The preliminary results show a promising trend for low cost solutions that can be populated in crowded facilities such as malls and airports.