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GE Healthcare recently announced its completion of the acquisition of Whatman, which is a global supplier of filtration technologies and products.

Merck KGaA (Darmstadt, Germany), a privately-held pharmaceutical and specialist chemicals company, has acquired the assets of chromatographic column developer SeQuant AB (Umea, Sweden). "[The aquisition] offers Merck superb opportunities for the future expansion of the chromatography business," said Klaus Bischoff, head of the Performance and Life Science Chemicals division at Merck.

Q: The current advent of sub-2-?m particles has made ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) available for routine laboratory use. What are the size limitations for particles? How small can they get before the advantages are lost? Would smaller particles require even greater pressures?"

The application of UHPLC-MS for the analysis of schedule 1 drugs of abuse in candied and chocolate matrices Chris Loran and Jason R. Stenzel A small molecule HPLC-chip for the high-sensitivity quantification of pharmaceuticals using triple quadrupole MS. Stephan Buckenmaier, Martin Vollmer, Lukas Trojer and Corinne Emotte Evaluation of extraction methods and bias correction by EPA method 6800 protocol for mercury species in tuna fish tissue using an ion chromatograph coupled to an ICP-MS L.H. Reyes, G.M. Mizanur Rahmun, T. Fahrenholz, L. Tucker and H.M. "Skip" Kingston. Meeting preview 25th Montreux symposium on LC-MS. News All the news for May 2008. Incognito Incognito asks whether continuing professional development should be mandatory for analytical chemists and if so, how could a recognized standard be implemented for assessing basic competencies? Market trends & analysis Glenn Cudiamat provides a report on laboratory gas generators.

Research Group: Dr Sc. Alexander Kurganov and Prof. Dr Sc. Victor Berezkin, Research Laboratory of Chromatography: Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.

These mini Light Bulb Phone Charms are the perfect accessory for today's mobile phones. Simply put your phone on silent and save the world from hearing your ring tone. Instead, every time you receive a call or text, the mini Light Bulb will flash away.

International Symposium for High Performance TLC

In this article, the authors evaluate the use of multiple mass defect filters on metabolite identification data from a hybrid mass spectrometer. The study also investigates the use of higher energy collisional dissociation for structural elucidation in metabolite identification experiments.

Scientists Jorn Chi Chung Yu, Garrett Lee Burleson, and colleagues in the Department of Forensic Science at Sam Houston State University in Texas have developed a new method for identifying gunshot residue without the presence of lead.

PerkinElmer (Waltham, Massachusetts) announced the "Ettre Award" to honor a young scientist in the field of gas chromatography.

With electron ionization (EI) used in most gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) applications, the molecular ion typically is broken apart into multiple fragment ions during the EI process.

Thar Instruments (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) has expanded their European team by four new members since the company's acquisition of Berger SFC in 2007.

In drug discovery, determining information about the extent of metabolism and the elucidation of metabolite structures is a vital step for lead optimization and drug scaffold refinement. The identification and characterization of metabolites plays an important role in both the drug discovery and development phases, as unsuitable pharmacokinetics (bioavailability and drug distribution), toxicity, and adverse drug reactions might be linked to metabolic instability. Historically, metabolite identification was carried out after a compound had been chosen for drug development. However, to reduce candidate failures attributed to toxicity effects, many pharmaceutical companies now conduct these experiments in the earliest phases of candidate drug selection.

Detrimental health effects of a group of brominated flame retardants, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), have been recognized recently, but only after their wide usage and consequently, global dispersal. Of the possible 209 PBDE congeners, 39 (varying in degree of bromination from mono to deca) have been identified previously in the three common technical mixtures. Additional congeners, presumably debromination products of the fully brominated decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209), also have been reported in biotic and abiotic environments. However, costly analytical standards are needed to confirm their identification. In addition, the most widely used identification approach, electron ionization (EI) mass spectrometry (MS), primarily produces spectra indicating only homologue grouping (for example, hepta-BDE). Without specific compound identification, full assessment of toxicological consequences of PBDE burdens is impeded. It has been reported previously that electron-capture negative ionization (ECNI),..

Thar Instruments (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) has expanded their European team by four new members since the company's acquisition of Berger SFC in 2007.

PerkinElmer (Waltham, Massachusetts) announced the "Ettre Award" to honor a young scientist in the field of gas chromatography.

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What are some examples of preparative GC applications? According to R.P.W. Scott in Gas Chromatography (1), ?[t]here are a number of unique problems associated with preparative gas chromatography. Firstly, it is difficult to recycle the mobile phase and thus large volume of gas are necessary. Secondly, the sample must be fully vaporized onto the column to ensure radial distribution of the sample across the column. Thirdly, the materials of interest are eluted largely in a very dilute form from the column and therefore must be extracted or condensed from the gas stream which is also difficult to achieve efficiently.?

On-site sample preparation using MEPS for wastewater analysis Paul Wynne, Roy Hibbert, Dan DiFeo and Peter Dawes. A simple, optimized approach to automated SPE Yanick Bouchard, Shahana Huq and Michael Campognone. Tips & tricks: BEWARE of mismatch Thorsten Hofe, PSS Polymer Standards Service. Seeing green Hian Kee Lee from the National University of Singapore speaks to Alasdair Matheson about his cutting-edge development of an array of simple and "environmentally friendly" sample preparation techniques for environmental analysis. News All the news for April 2008. Incognito Zosimus' successor airs his controversial views on how stale GC has become as a separation technique. Market trends & analysis Glenn Cudiamat provides a report on laboratory spray dryers and comments on the expected market growth in coming years.

It has often been stated (or maybe overstated) that the column is the heart of the chromatograph. Without the proper choice of column and appropriate operating conditions, method development and optimization of the high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) separation can be frustrating and unrewarding experiences. Since the beginning of modern liquid chromatography, column technology has been a driving force in moving separations forward. Today, the driving forces for new column configurations and phases are the increased need for high throughput applications, for high sensitivity assays and to characterize complex samples such as peptide digests and natural products.

This month's installment of "Column Watch" is the second part of a two-part series in which columnist Ron Majors examines the trends and highlights in columns and consumables at Pittcon 2008.

This article details the principles of hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) and its complementary selectivity to reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Advantages of the technique that result from the use of low-viscosity, high-organic concentration mobile phases will be demonstrated. For example, LC–mass spectrometry (MS) sensitivity is enhanced and higher flow rates and longer columns can be used effectively with such mobile phases in HILIC. Common stationary phases employed in HILIC are reviewed.

The never-ending quest for separation media that enable efficient high speed/high throughput chromatography has led to the design of stationary phases in monolithic formats with both vastly improved mass transfer properties and reduced discontinuity. Historically, porous polymer monoliths have first emerged in the late 1980s/early 1990s followed by their silica-based counterparts in the mid 1990s. The common denominator for both organic and inorganic monoliths was originally their use in HPLC columns. However, the range of applications of monolithic materials grew significantly since their early times. This short review summarizes information about monoliths produced in different shapes such as discs, tubes, columns, polymer layer open tubes (PLOT capillaries), and microfluidic devices, and presents selected applications including chromatographic separations, sample preparation, and enzyme immobilization.

This article presents an overview of high performance liquid chromatography stationary phases with enhanced stability at high pH, focusing on the methods by which they were prepared. Among the many alternatives, the authors introduce reversed phases based upon metallized silica supports that show superior performance during stability testing at high pH, when compared with conventional C18 phases based upon bare silica.

After nearly 10 years of writing "Milestones in Chromatography," resident historian Leslie Ettre will step down from his position as an LCGC columnist.

The use of high temperature is playing an increasingly important role in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method development and optimization. Major advantages of high-temperature LC (HTLC) include shortened separation time, increased efficiency, and reduction in the use of organic solvent, but the accompanying decrease in mobile phase viscosity provides a lowering of column back pressure, allowing even faster separations, use of longer columns, and use of smaller particles. Here the author summarizes some of the latest findings in HTLC and addresses issues raised when columns and analytes are heated beyond the "normal" operating conditions.

An ever-increasing need for chiral separations has led to a more generic approach for screening a variety of chiral stationary phases. These new screening methodologies have been supported by new instrument development, new chiral product performance, and a new level of user knowledge. Supercritical fluid chromatography has continued to grow, supported by published applications from the separations industry. An expanded field of polysaccharide phases has been made available from a variety of sources with some unique variants of the most common cellulose and amylose derivatives.