Peaks of Interest

Applied Biosystems, MDS Sciex, and Dionex Corporation form alliance

Applied Biosystems (Foster City, California), MDS Sciex (South San Francisco, California), and Dionex Corporation (Sunnyvale, California) recently announced an alliance to develop IC–MS-MS and LC–MS-MS solutions. The solution from the alliance focuses on the analysis of perchlorate.

Analytical Instrumentation in the Food Industr

Perchlorate, a contaminant that has been used in industrial and military applications, is a powerful thyroid toxin that has been monitored in water supplies and found in foods and beverages globally.

The work of the alliance has been incorporated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the development of EPA Method 332.0, "Determination of Perchlorate in Drinking Water by Ion Chromatography with Suppressed Conductivity and Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry."

Agilent announces agreement to acquire Scientific Software

Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, California) announced an agreement to acquire Scientific Software Inc. (SSI, Pleasanton, California), a provider of laboratory information management solutions.

The acquisition would bring together Agilent's analytical instrumentation, data systems, and services with SSI's chromatographic data systems and informatics. At closing, Agilent would have one of the industry's largest installed bases of chromatographic data systems and offer a broad portfolio of laboratory informatics software to the life sciences and chemical industries.

Waters holds food safety summit

Waters Corporation (Milford, Massachusetts) recently held a food safety summit in Mexico City, Mexico. An audience of exporters, government regulators, and private laboratories listened to executives from the company and leading experts from Latin America discuss analytical solutions to safeguard food, livestock, and crops.

Because food exports are important to the economies of Latin American countries, government agencies and export businesses are interested in residues from pesticides and veterinary drugs that require sensitive LC–MS-MS technology to be detected.

Nanostream announces new vice president of engineering

Nanostream (Pasadena, California) has announced that Hau H. Duong has been promoted to vice president of engineering. Duong has 18 years of experience in instrumentation development and customer support for analytical systems.

In his new position, Duong will oversee the development and manufacturing of the company's micro-parallel LC system. Duong's team of engineers and scientists is responsible for enhancing the system for broader utility throughout drug discovery and for the development of new products. In addition, Duong will manage the company's customer service and support organization.

Duong's background spans the entire product development process. He joined Nanostream in 2002.