Base Peak / Ezine
Resins from wrecks
Date: Jul 15, 2009
Author: Steve Down
Three resinous samples collected from a wrecked 16th Century European ship in the Straights of Malacca have been characterised by GC/MS. They were all found to contain dammar resin but two were associated with other resins.
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Assessment of acetone as an alternative to acetonitrile in peptide analysis by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry
Date: Jul 13, 2009
Author:
The performances of acetonitrile, methanol and acetone were compared for the LC/MS analysis of peptides derived from model proteins. Comparison of the chromatograms using commercial software showed that acetone was superior.
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Solvent abuse in medical devices
Date: Jul 1, 2009
Author: Steve Down
Residual cyclohexanone in PVC plastic bags from commercial medical infusion sets has been detected and measured by a combination of proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry and ion/molecule reaction mass spectrometry. The techniques are fast and sensitive and could be set up for quality control of plastic medical devices.
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Consumer exposure to perfluorinated acids
Date: Jun 15, 2009
Author: Steve Down
Perfluorinated carboxylic acids have been determined in various consumer products that had been treated with fluoropolymers or fluorotelomers. The LC-tandem-MS method was optimised at every stage to give low ppb detection limits.
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Extraction and analysis of colourful eggshell pigments using HPLC and HPLC/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry
Date: Jun 8, 2009
Author:
The literature on the pigments of avian eggshells is critically reviewed and new extraction methods are described and implemented for eggshells of the common nighthawk and another six bird species for characterization by HPLC/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry.
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Hot stuff for MIMS of semivolatiles
Date: Jun 1, 2009
Author: Steve Down
Membrane inlet mass spectrometry with a heated cell has been demonstrated for solutions of semivolatile drugs and pollutants without special modifications to the equipment. The simple technique will be suitable for field portable systems.
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Mummies used to smoke, probably
Date: May 15, 2009
Author: Steve Down
The hair from some pre-Columbian mummies from South America contains traces of nicotine, implying that the ancient people might have been smokers. However, the absence of the metabolite cotinine throws some doubt on this conclusion, raising the possibility of external contamination.
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Evidence of old carbon used to grow new fine roots in a tropical forest
Date: May 11, 2009
Author:
The effects of hurricane disturbance on carbon allocation for the production of new fine roots were studied by measuring the age of carbon (time since fixation from the atmosphere) in fine root structural tissues using accelerator mass spectrometry.
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Rapid flu typing
Date: May 1, 2009
Author: Steve Down
Influenza viruses can be typed and sub-typed in a few minutes by high resolution mass spectrometry, which recognises signature peptides in the enzymatic digests of antigens or the whole virus. The accelerated technique will be of critical value during future epidemics or pandemics.
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Aerosol resolution
Date: Apr 15, 2009
Author: Steve Down
Organic aerosols produced from burning trash, cooking meat and vehicle exhaust have been analysed by high resolution mass spectrometry. Their compositions suggest that they are not direct sources of ambient oxygenated organic aerosols.
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