As information takes on new physical forms in the environment around us, there is a need for new types of instrumentation to detect and to interrogate the smart materials used to embody the information, and to sense the environment. We are currently working on low-cost, ultra-wideband methods of probing physical structures and decoding the information they contain. In addition, we are exploring further applications of such instrumentation, with particular interest in the frequency-dependent dielectric constant analysis of materials. Preliminary studies have been done in analyzing mail content, with applications in postal mail security, as well as in analyzing milk-fat content, with applications in the collection and distribution of milk in rural India. This project builds on work done by Richard Fletcher, Joe Paradiso, Olufemi Omojola and Matthew Reynolds.