Sciex has developed the first non-derivatised method using LC-MS/MS for quick and simple detection and quantitation of glyphosate and other polar pesticides in food, feed and water commodities.

Subjects, such as resource optimization or better energy usage, have arrived in the laboratory. What does this mean for the most important separation method, chromatography? An inventory shows the amount of optimization potential in the technology that is more than 100 years old.

Tattoo removal using laser radiation can carry health risks depending on the breakdown products formed. Scientists have now shown that pyrolysis GC/MS can be used to simulate the breakdown process and determine the compounds formed from a given ink during laser treatment. Phthalocyanine blue (B15:3), for example, was shown to form a cell poison in the process.

Extremely sensitive analytical instruments capable of assaying analytes in the femtogram range have meanwhile become standard equipment in many laboratories. But their accuracy in analysis of drinking water is decisively influenced by the right choice of syringe filter unit, as described in this article.

To clarify whether and when a handgun was fired, forensic scientists search for and analyze Gunshot Residue (GSR) deposits. One highly interesting aspect of GSR is the presence of volatile organic chemical residues, which can offer clues as to when a weapon was fired. An innovative extraction technique based on Headspace Sorptive Extraction (HSSE) and Gerstel Twister has now been shown to extract additional information from spent cartridges.

In freshwater lakes, large amounts of the greenhouse gas methane are oxidized by bacteria before it can be emitted into the atmosphere. A study in Lakes Rotsee and Zug has now shown that the bulk of this work is done, not by “classical” methane consumers, but by filamentous bacteria previously known only as contaminants of water supplies.

A Norwegian-German collaboration has developed a new, rapid monitoring system for checking indoor air quality in the space station, 400 km above the Earth.

Thermo Fisher Scientific and Symphogen, a clinical-stage antibody oncology-focused company, have entered into a two-year collaborative partnership to deliver validated, platform workflows for simplified characterization and quality monitoring of complex therapeutic proteins.

Pharmaceutical scientists are now able to overcome challenges associated with the identification and characterization of small molecules and their fragments with Thermo Scientific Mass Frontier 8.0 software, which quickly translates complex data into actionable, sharable knowledge.

Waters Corporation has introduced the Bio Accord System. This purposefully designed liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) solution is to expand access to high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry capabilities to more scientists.