Michael P. Balogh

Put yourself in their spot: How would you tackle analyzing a bag of gummy bears that showed up on your lab bench? Here, we offer some insights from the very capable finalists at The Conference on Small Molecule Science (CoSMoS), which was held in August 2015 in San Diego, California.

How does one decipher and tabulate thousands of chemical formulaes and relative abundance without losing the important details.

Coping with extractables and leachables testing is easier when you have a good understanding of the issues involved. Information from public databases and industry consortia also is invaluable.

This month's column looks at some of the problems that the practising mass spectrometrist encounters in the chemical industry today.

Identifying unknown compounds continues to challenge analysts.

The concluding part of the series on the role of system suitability tests in the pharmaceutical industry.

On the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser, Michael Balogh examines its importance in MS practice.

In mass spectrometry, the electrospray ionization technique quickly earned its place among the primary analytical tools. Yet it is not always the best tool for the job.

With the advances in LC-MS in recent years, is there another practical option on the horizon for those who need the specificity of MS and can justify the narrow definition of a purpose-built system?

This month's column addresses some elementary aspects of the mass spectrum, the tools used and some advances in the science

This month's installment addresses some elementary aspects of the mass spectrum, the tools employed by the experienced practitioner, and advances being made into identifying unknowns.

Michael Balogh uses examples such as the recent acetonitrile shortage to examine the topic of "the unknowable" as it pertains to separation science.

"In retrospect, we sometimes see the successful return of an earlier idea on the back of great advances in technology."

"In retrospect, we sometimes see the successful return of an earlier idea on the back of great advances in technology."

Columnist Michael Balogh looks back on a 1997 LCGC article he wrote, and examines how many technological advances the field of MS has witnessed in the decade since.

The use of mass spectrometry to study biofuels is examined and the advantages and disadvantages are explored.

"...We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise healthcare's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories...." - President Barack Obama, 44th President of the US, Inaugural address, 20 January 2009, Washington, DC.

This column completes the multipart MS primer with a list of terms derived from common usage throughout various industries.

Part 2 of this three-part series focuses on comparing operation and performance of the most well known mass spectrometers.

Technological changes affecting how we access information - both in the depth of knowledge we can access and the speed - leads to some observations about electronic versus print media. First, anything committed to public view must be of high scholarly order, often serving as a prime resource for equations and things we can't or won't remember. Second, once words have been printed, the value of the meaning they impart decreases as new understanding takes shape.

Part III concludes the print version of our three-part series, "A Mass Spectrometry Primer," with the glossary to follow in a fourth and final installment.

Two decades ago, MS was the preserve of experts and skilled technicians as the instrumentation required constant attention and adjustment. At that time, liquid chromatography (LC)–MS was in its infancy and atmospheric pressure ionization (API) source interfacing was just beginning. Samples requiring analysis were passed from the requesting scientist to these "experts for analysis." The samples would be analyzed, processed, and interpreted, and the results returned via a written report. Two decades later, the users and capabilities of LC–MS have changed significantly. Now mass spectrometers and LC–MS systems are ubiquitous in the analytical laboratory, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. These instruments are used by a wide variety of scientists for a diverse range of tasks, from purity screening in medicinal chemistry, to the quantification of drugs in blood and the identification of proteins for biomarker discovery. The usability of the current MS platforms has improved..

Part II of this three-part series focuses on comparing operation and performance of the most well known mass spectrometers.

Michael Balogh begins a three-part overview series, answering questions about mass spectrometers, their use and capabilities, and including links to more detailed further reading in readily available articles written for the nonspecialist.

A decade or two ago, the primary users of mass spectrometers were probably graduates of doctoral programmes specializing in mass spectrometry (MS). But as the science evolved and merged with the analytical mainstream, manufacturers redoubled their efforts to make their instruments and operating software user-friendly. These days, specialists in various disciplines use MS as an analytical tool, a development that demands that instrument and software engineers pay close attention to ease-of-use issues and better understand how - and for what purposes - their instruments are used.

The matter of perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) came to focus at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) some eight years ago.

Recent work suggests that the practical value of hyphenated techniques is limited by difficulties inherent in achieving definitive compositional answers in general MS. This article argues that it is not impossible in certain cases.

This month's column discusses the practicalities of detecting substitutions in counterfeit pharmaceuticals. The approaches used are practical "take home" lessons readers can apply to analyse unknowns in any mixture.

This month, guest columnists Kind and Fiehn discuss small-molecule structure elucidation (excluding peptides) using hyphenated chromatographic techniques, mass spectrometers, and other spectroscopic detectors.

Nearly a dozen incipient technologies have appeared in recent years. Which will survive? Which will find extensive, robust usage as did electrospray ionization? Which are fated to become footnotes in mass spectrometry practice?