Looks like another cloud-dependent app.
I'm imagining it would have to be. A raw near-IR spectra isn't going to be much use unless you can try and match it up with a database of near-IR spectra of known materials.
SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
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Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#62Some thoughts from an organic chemist who has a decent amount of experience using IR spectroscopy. - IR spectroscopy is one of several methods used together to determine the structure of a molecule. It's certainly not definitive by itself. - Some functional groups in molecules will give very specific signals (1700 cm^-1 for carbonyl functional groups, C=O), but for a lot of other functional groups, you get very weak…
If your only exposure is analytical lab work (where by definition the work is difficult), you may not be familiar with the breadth of field utility of near-IR.
Some application examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7699186
> And how the hell does it determine the ripeness of a avocado through the skin?
eg: http://ucanr.edu/datastoreFiles/234-347.pdf and http://www.aseanfood.info/Articles/13004404.pdf
[edit: removed LMGTFY link - sorry, that was rude. But please don't pull the expert card outside your area of expertise: NIR has been used to assess fruit ripeness for decades]
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#63I'm not sure how it's a "sixth" sense. I already have a nose, so at most this is just an augmentation of a sense I already have.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#64Some thoughts from an organic chemist who has a decent amount of experience using IR spectroscopy. - IR spectroscopy is one of several methods used together to determine the structure of a molecule. It's certainly not definitive by itself. - Some functional groups in molecules will give very specific signals (1700 cm^-1 for carbonyl functional groups, C=O), but for a lot of other functional groups, you get very weak…
One of the proposed use cases of the SCiO is pharmaceutical identification. Consumer Physics needs to be EXTREMELY careful with marketing this use. I would actually discourage this type of application if I were them.
I was interested to see them use a Bayer Aspirin in their demo. Aspirin is -- or was (my pharmaceutical formulation training is nearly three decades out of date) almost unique in being one of the few drugs that has the perfect powder flow, binding, and dispersal characteristics to pressure-form into tablets using a tablet punch machine without any other binders, lubricants, bursting agents, or other ingredients. Back when I was studying the topic, an aspirin tablet was generally just that -- powdered acetyl salicylate compressed into a tablet shape.
If this thing can correctly identify an enteric-coated or other sustained-release pharmaceutical formulation other than by checking a muddy absorption curve against a database of known samples I'll eat my hat.
Also: the app they used purported to identify tablets by their manufacturer brand? Ahem: WTF? This does indeed look like it's just throwing a spectrum at a database of samples and looking for the closest match. Which is hardly going to weed out some of the better counterfeits on the [black] market ...
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#65Could be good for drugdealers. What pills are these? Do I need to water my plants? Is this avocado "just right" for me...
Could be very very good for drug users. Being able to find out 'what pills are these' would dramatically change the nature of that marketplace, I think.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the proposed use cases of the SCiO is pharmaceutical identification. Consumer Physics needs to be EXTREMELY careful with marketing this use. I would actually discourage this type of application if I were them.
I was interested to see them use a Bayer Aspirin in their demo. Aspirin is -- or was (my pharmaceutical formulation training is nearly three decades out of date) almost unique in being one of the few drugs that has the perfect powder flow, binding, and dispersal characteristics to pressure-form into tablets using a tablet punch machine without any other binders, lubricants, bursting agents, or other ingredients. Back…
Not to mention that it supposedly can tell you how many grams of sugar are in something, or what "percentage of water" is in an apple? No, there's no way you could do that with spectroscopy. Say you have an apricot, you measure it with the device, and it indeed says it's an apricot. Apricots are not all the same, the "CandyCot" apricot has about 2x to 3x the sugar content of other apricots. There's no way they could check the DNA of the plant and determine specifically what kind of apricot it was, unless perhaps you were to isolate the dna and change the setting on the device to 'DNA' and you had a database of the characteristics of different Apricot DNA.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#67Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7668156
That discussion wasn't very extensive, and there have been several substantive comments in this thread, so we won't bury it as a dupe.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#68Hm, this is at best utterly misleading and at worst a scam.
This is a bad HN comment, not because it's skeptical, but because it has no substance.
An example of a much better comment expressing skepticism is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7697876.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#69Some thoughts from an organic chemist who has a decent amount of experience using IR spectroscopy. - IR spectroscopy is one of several methods used together to determine the structure of a molecule. It's certainly not definitive by itself. - Some functional groups in molecules will give very specific signals (1700 cm^-1 for carbonyl functional groups, C=O), but for a lot of other functional groups, you get very weak…
If your only exposure is analytical lab work (where by definition the work is difficult), you may not be familiar with the breadth of field utility of near-IR. Some application examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7699186 > And how the hell does it determine the ripeness of a avocado through the skin? eg: http://ucanr.edu/datastoreFiles/234-347.pdf and http://www.aseanfood.info/Articles/13004404.pdf [edit:…
The optical and internal quality data were then merged and a PLS regression analysis was conducted using the NSAS software package (NSAS, 1990).
My comment wasn't that you couldn't test the ripeness of fruit using near-IR, it was that you could reliably doing it using a handheld consumer product.
There is a BIG difference between running a lab analysis using near-IR and making a consumer friendly product that can accurately produce the same data.
Re: SCiO: A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was interested to see them use a Bayer Aspirin in their demo. Aspirin is -- or was (my pharmaceutical formulation training is nearly three decades out of date) almost unique in being one of the few drugs that has the perfect powder flow, binding, and dispersal characteristics to pressure-form into tablets using a tablet punch machine without any other binders, lubricants, bursting agents, or other ingredients. Back…
Not to mention that it supposedly can tell you how many grams of sugar are in something, or what "percentage of water" is in an apple? No, there's no way you could do that with spectroscopy. Say you have an apricot, you measure it with the device, and it indeed says it's an apricot. Apricots are not all the same, the "CandyCot" apricot has about 2x to 3x the sugar content of other apricots. There's no way they could…
This is inaccurate; water content is one of the easiest things to measure with near-infrared spectroscopy, and NIR has enough penetrance to be useful even for fruits with fairly tough skins (eg avocados, see last link below)
There are multiple commercial manufacturers selling NIR sensors for fruit quality control:
http://www.ndc.com/en/Products/On-Line-NIR-Gauges.aspx
Research articles: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3673116/ http://www.cropj.com/miraee_4_3_2010_175_179.pdf http://www.brimrose.com/pdfandwordfiles/I_GRASA-CSIC.pdf http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs-wm/36050.pdf (avocados)