Synchrotron-Based FTIR Micro-spectroscopy of Martian Meteorites

Dust from collisions: mid-infrared absorbance spectroscopy of Martian meteorites

MICRO RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY OF AMPHIBOLES AND Al-Ti-RICH PYROXENES IN THE MARTIAN METEORITES ZAGAMI AND LEW88516. T. Mikouchi

Introduction: Amphibole has been reported from a few groups of Martian meteorites (basaltic, lherzolitic and dunitic groups) [1-4]. They are always present within a magmatic inclusion trapped in pyroxene and olivine in spite of the large difference of the host petrology. Their mineral compositions are almost identical to one another and are kaersutitic. So far, only observations by optical micr...

Characterization of semiconductor materials using synchrotron radiation-based near-field infrared microscopy and nano-FTIR spectroscopy.

We describe the application of scattering-type near-field optical microscopy to characterize various semiconducting materials using the electron storage ring Metrology Light Source (MLS) as a broadband synchrotron radiation source. For verifying high-resolution imaging and nano-FTIR spectroscopy we performed scans across nanoscale Si-based surface structures. The obtained results demonstrate th...

Identification (or Otherwise) of Martian Carbon in Martian Meteorites

Introduction: One of the goals of current martian exploration is to search for evidence of extinct (or even extant) life. In recent years, this goal has been interpreted as a search for evidence of water on Mars’ surface. The success of instrumentation (high resolution cameras and infrared spectrometers) on orbiting spacecraft, coupled with in situ data from the MER rovers have revolutionized o...

Synchrotron FTIR micro-spectroscopy for structural analysis of Lewy bodies in the brain of Parkinson’s disease patients

Lewy bodies (LBs), which mainly consist of α-synuclein (α-syn), are neuropathological hallmarks of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The fine structure of LBs is unknown, and LBs cannot be made artificially. Nevertheless, many studies have described fibrillisation using recombinant α-syn purified from E. coli. An extremely fundamental problem is whether the structure of LBs is the same as...