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John Dolan’s final LCGC column will appear in October. We are sad to see him go! Fortunately, we have just the person to follow in his footsteps: Dwight Stoll.

For the most part, we are still instructing undergraduate students in the same way as when I went to school, and I think this is a disservice to the students and to the nature of chemistry. No wonder chemistry programs have trouble attracting students compared to other science disciplines, like biology and psychology. Students will take general chemistry, but they cannot see where it may lead. I want to change that.

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A glimpse of what’s on offer for chromatographers at Pittcon 2017, which will be held from 5–9 March 2017 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

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Separation scientists may seek an optimum spot between chromatographic performance required to obtain sufficient results quality, and the time and resources needed to do so. This instalment of “GC Connections” examines the factors that control peak resolution - one of the main drivers of separation quality - and how chromatographers can use this information to find an optimum between time, cost, and performance.

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This instalment describes several commonly used microextraction sample preparation techniques and their applications to forensic toxicology analysis. Solid-phase microextraction (SPME), microextraction by packed sorbent (MEPS), and different types of liquid-based microextraction (LPME), including single‑drop microextraction (SDME), hollow-fibre supported LPME, three-phase LPME, and dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME), are discussed. Examples of application of these techniques to determine illicit drugs and drugs of abuse from various biological specimens are provided as well.

Agilent Technologies has announced that Shane Snyder, Ph.D., has received an Agilent Thought Leader Award in recognition of his research in water analysis, and the exploration of new approaches to determine the quality and safety of drinking water.

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Researchers investigating paper mill effluents and their impact on surface waters in Slovenia have identified endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) and their mutagenic and genotoxic properties using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS).

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As I wrote the title of this LCGC Blog instalment, I could not help but wonder where the cliché “more than one way to skin a cat” came from. Turns out it is from Mark Twain in his 1889 work, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. I have never read that book, but I certainly have heard this saying used more than once - even if it might offend some cat lovers. Of course, it means simply that there is more than one way to do something.

A group of researchers from India have chemically characterized food waste using gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and GC with flame ionization detection (GC–FID) and identified possible reuse and disposal techniques.

Multidimensional liquid chromatography strategies are the most widely used method for increasing the number of spatially resolved components and reducing stress on mass spectrometric detection. However, the stress placed on a secondary dimension in a comprehensive on-line methodology is very high. An increasingly attractive approach is the coupling of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ion mobility spectrometry hyphenated to mass spectrometry (IMS-MS). Tim Causon and Stephan Hann of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, Austria, spoke to The Column about their work evaluating this approach and exploring its possibilities for metabolomics.