Video of Fluorescence Spectra Analysis of Minerals

This YouTube video (8:26 minutes) by the Antwerp Mineralogical Society (MKA)of Belgium showing how they use the Ocean Optics USB4000 Fiber Optic Spectrometer. The host Axel Emmermann gives an overview of their society and then introduces the spectrometer. A review of the LED lighting system, the fiber optic cable/lens, and the test chamber. The software is then demonstrated analyzing scheelite that contains disulfide iron fluorescencing. Other examples shown are apatite from Jumilla, Spain and sheelite from China.

I find this research very interesting and a device like that would be great to analysis the Louisville collection with. It could be of great help determining the origins of the fluorescent specimens that lost their labels long ago.  The USB4000 appears to cost about $2500 + $200 for software.

Ocean Optics founded in 1989 by a researcher at the University of South Florida.  Its equipment is used for medical diagnostics, environmental sciences, consumer electronics, and life sciences.  In addition, their equipment was used for the Mars Rover and Mir space station.  The company is headquartered in Dunedin, Florida but also has offices in The Netherlands, Germany, and China.  Over 100,000 spectrometers have been sold worldwide.

Help the Polar Bears

Yikes!  This bear looks ready for Thanksgiving.

UPDATE (12/22/2010): The Zoo raised the money according to Courier Journal article ("Zoo raises money to secure Kresge grant for Glacier Run" by Sheldon S. Shafer) and obtained the matching grant after the Ogle Foundation ($100,000), Humana, Inc. ($100,000), The Friends of the Zoo ($150,000), and an anonymous donor ($100,000) made donations.  These donations along with over 500 donors in the last two months were able to raise the final amount of the $.7.7 million.  The article stated: "Of the $25.6 million in the total campaign, gifts of $1 million or more have come from: Louisville Metro Government, the James Graham Brown Foundation, Brown-Forman Corp., the Friends of the Louisville Zoo, the Harry S. Frazier family, Annette and John Schnatter, and Betty and David Jones."

The Louisville Zoo of Kentucky is building a section called Glacier Run that provides habitat for the seals and sea lions plus the polar and grizzly bears.   If all the money is raised it will also house snowy owls, Steller's sea eagles, and arctic foxes. [Note: No photographers were hurt or eaten in the taking of these polar bear pictures!]

The zoo has till January 1, 2011 to raise the final $820,000 of $7,700,000 in order to receive a $900,000 challenge grant from the non-profit Kresge Foundation of Troy, Michigan.  The entire project overall has raised approximately $23.9 million.  Parts of the Glacier Run exhibit are already open (the living area for the seals and sea lions).

Help these living polar bears so future generations won't have to only see them in museum exhibits like one in the following picture.

Display at Carnegie Museum of Natural History - Pittsburgh, PA

Allowable matching funds are tax-deductible and can be in the form of cash or pledges from corporations, foundations and individuals.  Donations can be mailed to:

Jill Kaplan, Director of Development

c/o Louisville Zoo

1100 Trevilian Way

Louisville Ky. 40213

For information call 502-459-2181 or read the full story at the Courier Journal web site.

These polar bears are not fossils... yet.  Let us hope their habitat does not melt away and them along with it.

Polar bear pictures were taken at the Louisville Science Center Discovery Gallery of stuffed bears donated back in the early 1970s.

Devonian Pseudoatrypa Lophophore

Another Pseudoatrypa brachiopod with a silicified lophophore.  It is more vertical than the one found on the Orthospirifer brachiopod found in the Jeffersonville Limestone as well.  Animal existed in the Middle Devonian Period. Found in Jefferson County, Kentucky.

The fossil appears to have been sheared in half.