Dedication This work is dedicated to my mother and father, Frank and Gladys Alexander and my sisters Kimberly and Jalexia Alexander. Thank you for your love and support over the past five years. I'd also like to dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my late grandmother Climmie Rodell Young, who helped to show me the meaning of perserverance.

The mission of CARA, the Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica, is to explore and exploit the unique conditions at the geographic South Pole and to lay the foundation for an ongoing national observatory. A small prototype user-facility instrument has demonstrated that very sensitive imaging in the thermal infrared can be routinely performed at the South Pole. The site should be furthe...

The use of the spectral derivative method in visible and near-infrared optical spectroscopy is presented, whereby instead of using discrete measurements around several wavelengths, the difference between nearest neighbouring spectral measurements is utilized. The proposed technique is shown to be insensitive to the unknown tissue and fibre contact coupling coefficients providing substantially i...

A general overview of the field of single-molecule (SM) surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) as it stands today is provided. After years of debates on the basic aspects of SM-SERS, the technique is emerging as a well-established subfield of spectroscopy and SERS. SM-SERS is allowing the observation of subtle spectroscopic phenomena that were not hitherto accessible. Examples of the latter...

Raman spectroscopy is a potentially important clinical tool for real-time diagnosis of disease and in situ evaluation of living tissue. The purpose of this article is to review the biological and physical basis of Raman spectroscopy of tissue, to assess the current status of the field and to explore future directions. The principles of Raman spectroscopy and the molecular level information it p...