The development of a disposable pH sensor for the point of care monitoring of wound pH is described. The system exploits the pH dependence of an endogenous biomarker (urate) to yield an unambiguous signal. The sensor responses have been characterised and the responses validated in whole blood.

We introduce a new hyperspectral microwave remote sensing modality for atmospheric sounding, driven by recent advances in microwave device technology that now permit receiver arrays that can multiplex multiple broad frequency bands into more than 100 spectral channels, thus improving both the vertical and horizontal resolutions of the retrieved atmospheric profile. Global simulation studies over ocean and land in clear and cloudy atmospheres using three different atmospheric profile databases are presented that assess the temperature, moisture, and precipitation sounding capability of several notional hyperspectral systems with channels sampled near the 50-60-, 118.75-, and 183.31-GHz absorption lines. These analyses demonstrate that hyperspectral microwave operation using frequency multiplexing techniques substantially improves temperature and moisture profiling accuracy, particularly in atmospheres that challenge conventional nonhyperspectral microwave sounding systems because of high water vapor and cloud liquid water content. Retrieval performance studies are also included that compare hyperspectral microwave sounding performance to conventional microwave and hyperspectral infrared approaches, both in a geostationary and a low-Earth-orbit context, and a path forward to a new generation of high-performance all-weather sounding is discussed.

The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission was selected by NASA as part of the Earth Venture-Instrument (EVI-3) program. The overarching goal for TROP-ICS is to provide nearly all-weather observations of 3D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones. TROPICS will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements (median refresh rate better than 60 min for the baseline mission) which can be used to observe the thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm life cycle. TROPICS comprises six CubeSats in three low-Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat will host a high-performance radiometer to provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapour profiles using three channels near the 183 GHz water vapour absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation measurements (when combined with higher-resolution water vapour channels), and a single channel near 205 GHz which is more sensitive to precipitation-sized ice particles. This observing system offers an unprecedented combination of horizontal and temporal resolution to measure environmental and inner-core conditions for tropical cyclones on a nearly global scale and is a major leap forward in the temporal resolution of several key parameters needed for assimilation into advanced data assimilation systems capable of utilizing rapid-update radiance or retrieval data. Launch readiness is currently projected for late 2019.