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Demand for food-bearing labels like ‘organic’ or ‘sustainable’ is soaring, but some growers question whether the name is really worth the pain. While some industry groups say that labels help consumers make choices, and getting the right credentials can offer manufacturers a valuable point of difference, others worry that the labels present a barrier to those wishing to adopt some of the practices associated with them. Consumers push the urge, but when they buy organic, natural, regenerative or conventional agricultural products, do they really know what that means? Stay out of the label box Labels such as “certified organic” require farmers to meet certain production standards, which can limit chemical use and regulate farm management. Herders Peter and Nikki Thompson use mostly natural practices such as multi-species planting and reduced input use on their 4,000 hectare Echo Hills property, 80 kilometers northeast of Rome in Queensland. But they haven’t found a label that reflects th

Raman spectroscopy, an optical microscopy technique, is a non-destructive chemical analysis technique that provides rich molecular fingerprint information about chemical structure, phase, crystallinity and molecular interactions. This technique relies on the interaction of light with chemical bonds in a material. However, because light is a wave, optical microscopy cannot resolve distances of less than half the wavelength from the light incident on the sample. This is known as the “diffraction limit,” which prevents Raman spectroscopy and other optical microscopy techniques from achieving nanoscale resolution. To increase the spatial resolution, another technique called “tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy” (TERS) was invented, which can achieve a spatial resolution below the diffraction limit. In TERS, a nano-sized metal tip confines light in a nano-sized volume just above the sample. The light interacts with the sample molecules on the surface and imaging is done by analyzing the sc

Conventional nanoscale imaging is usually difficult to perform for large micron-scale samples due to aberrations caused by thermal effects and vibrations. Now, researchers from Japan are tackling this problem with a newly developed imaging system that compensates for the aberration. Credit: Professor Prabhat Verma of Osaka University Raman spectroscopy, an optical microscopy technique, is a non-destructive chemical analysis technique that provides rich molecular fingerprint information about chemical structure, phase, crystallinity and molecular interactions. This technique relies on the interaction of light with chemical bonds in a material. However, because light is a wave, optical microscopy cannot resolve distances of less than half the wavelength from the light incident on the sample. This is known as the “diffraction limit,” which prevents Raman spectroscopy and other optical microscopy techniques from achieving nanoscale resolution.