Examination of Spectral Properties of Medicinal Plant Leaves Grown in Different Lighting Conditions Based on Mint Cultivation.

Cultivation in controlled environmental conditions can provide good quality medicinal herbs with consistent properties. A sensing system that can determine the contents of medicinal substances in plants using spectral characteristics of leaves would be a valuable tool. Viability of such sensing approach for mint had to be confirmed experimentally, as no data correlating contents of medicinal substances with spectral characteristics of leaves are available, to the best of authors' knowledge.

Formation of the hollow nanopillar arrays through the laser-induced transformation of TiO nanotubes.

In the following article, we present a simple, two-step method of creating spaced, hollow nanopillars, from the titania nanotube arrays via pulsed laser-treatment. Due to the high ordering of the structure, the prepared material exhibits photonic properties, which has been shown to increase the overall photoefficiency. The optical and morphological changes in the titania nanotubes after pulsed laser-treatment with 532, 355, and 266 nm wavelengths in the 10-50 mJ/cm fluence range are studied.