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Water is the most common reagent in the laboratory but it is the most misunderstood and is often taken for granted. Learn how specific contaminants can affect your chromatography system and results and understand how to optimize water purification technologies to meet your experimental needs.

As part of a wider project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop sustainable next-generation toilets for lower-income countries (the “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge”), researchers have applied gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) to profile the malodour compounds in the headspace of latrines in Africa and India.

Profiling amino acids in scalp hair could aid the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, according to a new study. Researchers performed gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) on hair samples taken from diagnosed patients and healthy patients to show that type 2 diabetes alters the amino acid composition of hair’s main building block, keratin, and that this biomarker could aid diagnosis in the clinic.

Click the title above to open The Column July 24, 2015 Europe & Asia issue, Volume 11, Number 13, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open The Column July 24, 2015 North American issue, Volume 11, Number 13, in an interactive PDF format.

The application of high resolution, accurate mass (HRAM) mass spectrometry coupled with multidimensional chromatographic separations, bioaffinity isolation techniques, and online sample preparation methods to detect, identify, and quantify emerging contaminants (including endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals, and surfactants) in wastewater and drinking water. The overarching goal of Lee’s research is to gain an increased understanding of how emerging contaminants are transported, transformed and induce deleterious effects within aquatic ecosystems.

A team of researchers in Spain has examined the use of commercial yeast products in the production of white and rosé sparkling wines. Using a range of analytical techniques, including gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), the team examined four yeast autolysates to find out how they affect the chemical composition, foam, and sensory properties of sparkling wines aged on lees for nine months.

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.

The application of high resolution, accurate mass (HRAM) mass spectrometry coupled with multidimensional chromatographic separations, bioaffinity isolation techniques, and online sample preparation methods to detect, identify, and quantify emerging contaminants (including endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals, and surfactants) in wastewater and drinking water. The overarching goal of Lee’s research is to gain an increased understanding of how emerging contaminants are transported, transformed and induce deleterious effects within aquatic ecosystems.

The application of high resolution, accurate mass (HRAM) mass spectrometry coupled with multidimensional chromatographic separations, bioaffinity isolation techniques, and online sample preparation methods to detect, identify, and quantify emerging contaminants (including endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals, and surfactants) in wastewater and drinking water.The overarching goal of Lee’s research is to gain an increased understanding of how emerging contaminants are transported, transformed and induce deleterious effects within aquatic ecosystems.

A Spotlight on SFC

Explaining Silyl Ether Formation (SEF) in Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC)

How to Get a Job in Analytical Science

Researchers at the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic have developed a high-throughput ultrahigh-performance supercritical fluid chromatography–mass spectrometry (UHPSFC–MS) method that can analyze lipidomic samples in as little as 6 min.

Click the title above to open The Column July 09, 2015 Europe & Asia issue, Volume 11, Number 12, in an interactive PDF format.

Click the title above to open The Column July 09, 2015 North American issue, Volume 11, Number 12, in an interactive PDF format.

The Taipei’s Chang Gung University (CGU) Healthy Aging Research Center has joined the Waters Centers of Innovation (COI) Program as a partner, making it the first in Taiwan to do so.

High fat content of foods has been a problem when analyzing samples for nonpolar contaminants such as pesticides, PCBs, and PAHs. Extraction methods for these compounds tend to generate samples that are highly contaminated with fatty matrix, causing a number of problems with the subsequent chromatographic analysis. Traditional cleanup techniques, such as gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and normal phase column chromatography can be very effective, but are often expensive and time consuming. In this seminar, we will present an alternative approach to the cleanup of fats using a novel zirconia-based family of sorbents, for both QuEChERS (dispersive SPE) and traditional cartridge SPE.

If you use SPE in your work, then most likely it’s very important to the success of your applications and it’s proper implementation will be key to the performance of your analyses. However, SPE protocols are “variable in quality” (I’ve been as I kind as I can there!) and this variability appears to come from some common issues, misunderstandings and, frankly, ignorance of the mechanisms which are in play.

LCGC Blogger Tony Taylor presents his eight steps for improving your solid-phase extraction (SPE) results.

LC Determination of Residual Primary Amine Content in Epoxy-Amine Adducts

What are possible causes for distortion of the first two peaks in a chromatogram?

As flame ionization detection (FID) approaches its 60th anniversary in 2017, this instalment examines the crucial role that it has played and continues to play for all types of gas chromatography (GC). Without FID, the early development of GC would have proceeded more slowly, especially in the petroleum industry and related hydrocarbon application areas.

The 10th Balaton Symposium on High‑Performance Separation Methods will be held on 2–4 September 2015 at the Hotel Azúr in Siófok, Hungary. The biannual Balaton Symposium has grown to be one of the most important events of the separation science field in central Europe, bringing together separation scientists and friends from all over the world. The symposium is designed to discuss the latest issues, current requirements, and technological challenges faced in the present and the future. Twenty years after the first Balaton Symposium, the Hungarian Society for Separation Sciences continues the tradition.