Kevin A. Schug

Disinfection by-products (DBP) are an ever-present nuisance in the efforts to purify drinking water, wastewater, and municipal waters from various sources.

The literature on reversed-phase liquid chromatography (LC) of proteins is reasonably well developed, but not taught in the college classroom much. Kevin Schug therefore wants to focus on a stoichiometric displacement model for reversed-phase LC of proteins and why it is particularly insightful from a practical perspective.

Here, I will attempt to convey a few basic but critical concepts when getting started in the development of a new LCxLC method.

The literature on reversed-phase liquid chromatography of proteins is reasonably well developed, but not taught in the college classroom to a significant degree. So I would like to focus on a stoichiometric displacement model for reversed-phase LC of proteins that I found to be particularly insightful from a practical standpoint.

Food analysis provides a rich sample matrix with many compounds of interest for analysis to contemplate-but one must always take care that the right tool is chosen for the desired task.

Column overload is a very commonly encountered issue in gas chromatography (GC) for beginners. Changes in peak symmetry, generally observed as peak fronting, can be subtle in the sharp peaks generated by GC, but the result can be significant shifts in retention times, loss of resolution, and error in peak integration. LCGC Blogger Kevin Schug explains more.

After 10 years at U.T. Arlington, I have decided it is time to take one of the best opportunities afforded to researchers in an academic faculty position-to travel abroad and assimilate new techniques into my repertoire to enhance future research activities.

It is much more efficient to screen column chemistries to achieve optimum separations for a set of target analytes, than it is to play with different mobile-phase conditions on a single column. Kevin Schug explains more.

Column overload is a very commonly encountered issue in GC for beginners. Changes in peak symmetry, generally observed as peak fronting, can be subtle in the sharp peaks generated by GC, but the result can be significant shifts in retention times, loss of resolution, and error in peak integration.

Kevin Schug discusses why we need a comprehensive study of unconventional oil and natural gas (UOG) extraction processes.

If you want to improve analytical methods to make them better, the sample preparation step is probably one of the best steps to target.

Gas chromatography, ICP-MS, ICP-OES, and other bulk analysis methods applied to groundwater in proximity to unconventional oil and natural gas extraction activities.

A brief introduction to the articles presented in this supplement.

There is a shortcoming in our current educational system. There is too much rote learning, and not enough time given to let science-minded students explore a topic. Overall, when students ask their own questions (not ones given to them by instructors), they become more invested in finding the answers.

We recently published a study of water quality from 550 water wells in the Barnett Shale of North Texas. Using a suite of analytical techniques, we were able to find new evidence of the potential impact of unconventional natural gas extraction on environmental quality.

Professor Wolfgang Lindner spoke to LCGC Editorial Advisory Board member Kevin A. Schug about his inspiring and influential career in chromatography.  

LCGC Blogger Kevin Schug has uncovered some surprising knowledge gaps in method validation and forensic analysis.

Using ESI-MS to perform quantitative binding analyses and determine association constants depends on the ability of the ionization process to preserve the system equilibrium.

Disinfection by-products (DBP) are an ever-present nuisance in the efforts to purify drinking water, wastewater, and municipal waters from various sources. An emerging class of DBP compounds with health effects is nitrosamines which result from chloramination or chlorination if the water is nitrogen-rich. Five of these nitrosamines have been listed on the US EPA’s new Contaminant Candidate List (CCL-3). Of the nitrosamines, the most common and problematic is N-nitrosdimethylamine (NDMA). The maximum admissible levels set by the US EPA are 7 ng/L for NDMA and 2 ng/L for N-nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA).

For the analytical community, method validation in some form or another is a natural extension of best practice in the analytical laboratory. However, the notion of method validation, and many aspects of detailed forensics analysis, are not well understood by most lawyers and judges.

Now that I have been at UT Arlington for 10 years, I have had many opportunities to refine my own approaches to teaching, in hopes that the learning curve to achieve meaningful learning for students is not as steep as the one I had to manage.

CLEAR is an endeavor to create a consortium of experts interested in building and propagating activities related to the assessment of the potential impact of industrial activities on the environment, as well as the creation of new solutions to mitigate problems associated with these activities.

In this blog installment, I would like to share a little advice with those of you who are attending your first major conference.

I have been at The University of Texas at Arlington for almost 10 years, and I have taught approximately seven different classes in my time here. Yet, the one that I have had the most opportunities to teach, and the most time to reform, is our junior/senior-level Instrumental Analysis (IA) course.

LCGC Blogger Kevin Schug offers his insights into superficially porous particles (SPPs) versus fully porous particles (FPPs).

I have had enough conversations with experts in the field of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) stationary-phase supports to know that there is more to the increased efficiency provided by the use of superficially porous particles (SPP) compared to fully porous particles (FPP) than simply mass transfer effects. Yet, I would argue that this is still one of the biggest misconceptions propagated by some members of the chromatography community.

Some might consider gas chromatography (GC) a mature technique. However, several substantial advances in GC technology in the past few years have proven that there is still room for innovation.

A brief history of GC detectors is presented.

A program was formulated to help educate public opinion leaders on the fundamentals of unconventional natural gas and oil extraction, to convey the current state of research on the topic, and to disseminate and discuss prospective regulations that have been formulated over the past two to three years.

A review highlighting the recent development on flow-injection analysis (FIA)–mass spectrometry (MS) to bring more attention to this effort.