All News

SFC

Joining us for a discussion of SFC this month are Allan Heckenberg of Aurora SFC Systems; David Wetherell of Waters Corporation; DJ Tognarelli of JASCO, USA; and Pat Sandra of Research Institute for Chromatography, Kortrijk, Belgium.

12fly-679049-1408630608048.jpg

Shoo fly

When wheat becomes infested with Hessian fly larvae the plant is forced to undergo a variety of physical and biochemical changes. The larvae?s saliva thins the surface of the leaf to allow the larvae to get to the liquid in the plant?s cells. A study funded by the US Department of Agriculture and published in The Plant Journal has investigated how this happens, which researchers hope will allow them to make plants more resistant.

A Brazilian pharmaceutical supply group has implemented an integrated informatics solution from Thermo Fisher Scieintifc, consisting of a laboratory information management system and a chromatography data system.

jeol-676872-1408632055404.jpg

DANI SpA and JEOL BV have announced that they will be entering into an exclusive distribution agreement involving high-level GC systems and attachments.

Core Values

We spoke to Terrell Mathews from Phenomenex about the rationale behind the development of their Kinetex core-shell particle columns.

The Merck Young Scientist award will return for a third year to honour Malaysian post-graduate students in the fields of bioscience and chromatography.

i1-677417-1408631619878.jpg

LCGC and Spectroscopy review some of the highlights and award recipients from this year's ASMS conference, held May 23–27, 2010, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

i9_t-677419-1408631612259.gif

Many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in a variety of consumer products are potentially harmful to human health and the environment. Within industry, to regulate product safety and quality, methods for measuring specific VOCs in a product, typically by thermal desorption gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (TD-GC–MS), are implemented. Such analysis provides a comprehensive VOC profile. However, the nature of some products, such as food, can be chemically complex. Within this complexity, trace-level or coeluting compounds can be difficult or time-consuming to identify. As a potential solution, new software tools are being developed to automate interpretation of the data.

Waters and the University of Maryland are establishing an international training laboratory to teach scientists from foreign governments and manufacturers the state-of-the-art analytical methods used to meet US food safety standards.

i2-677421-1408631605493.gif

With May's ASMS Conference now receding in the collective rearview mirror of the industry, the summer is as good a time as any to take stock of the analytical chemistry marketplace. This year's show, held in Salt Lake City, Utah, demonstrated once again the vitality and robustness of the field of mass spectrometry, as innovation and technological advancement were in evidence everywhere you looked.

i4-677415-1408631623771.gif

The increasing use of pesticide testing coupled with reductions in maximum permissible residue levels of pesticides in food have driven demand for fast, sensitive, and cost-effective analytical methods for high-throughput screening of multiclass pesticides in food. Detection of 510 pesticides at low parts-per-billion levels can be achieved within minutes using orbital trap technology. The high resolving power of these systems enables accurate mass confirmation of all compounds, including isobaric pesticides. This article will provide an overview of current legislation and illustrate how mass spectrometry instrumentation can enable fast and accurate pesticide screening.

i4-677416-1408631621511.jpg

Fast turnaround time is critical in the clinical testing environment. Here, fast liquid chromatography (LC) technologies were utilized for the comprehensive assay of commonly prescribed pain management drugs in under 2 min. The use of fast LC also provided significantly improved sensitivity. A mini-validation for these analytes in human urine was performed and acceptable values for accuracy, precision, linearity, lot-to-lot variability, and matrix effects were demonstrated for each analyte.

11butt-678992-1408630733145.jpg

Used butt not wasted

It is estimated that up to 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are stubbed, flicked and dropped every year. With few practical uses, any attempt at recycling the remains has been difficult; however a study published in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research proposes using them to prevent steel corrosion and could turn this trash into a tiny treasure.

Dionex honoured

Dionex has received a pair of awards, the Frost & Sullivan 2010 Best Practices Award for Global Process Chromatograph New Product Innovation, and the NorthFace Scoreboard Award from the Omega Management Group in recognition of world class customer service.