Endangered analytical chemists face myriad obstacles today – lower than average job forecasts 1, costly and timely training, demand for more versatile knowledge, tighter regulations, and massive data management requirements. Perhaps most significantly, mass spectrometry market forecasts predict a lack of skilled users as a key market constraint2. Senior analytical chemists are presented with a…
Global trading of herbs and spices can be traced back for thousands of years. Historically they were considered a rare and precious commodity, but methods to determine their authenticity were only very basic, creating a compelling incentive to substitute with lower-value products with a low risk of the adulteration being discovered. This is clearly not…
NASA made history again recently as the spacecraft New Horizons successfully flew by Pluto, the last of the nine ‘classical’ planets, to gather valuable data about an area of our solar system that we know very little about. The spacecraft managed to successfully gather the most detailed images of Pluto ever seen whilst hurtling past…
For many years, the prevailing wisdom has been that in the event of chromatographic coelution, caused by complex samples, what is needed is a high-resolution mass spectrometer that can accurately identify different species contained within that single peak. However, even with the highest levels of resolution some ionisation patterns can be obscured by other species…
Sitting in the Waters’ John Dalton Suite in Wilmslow, England two weeks ago felt somewhat duplicitous. Here we were, in the part of the world considered the birthplace of Mass Spectrometry (MS), about to embark on a two-day workshop with 20 key collaborators and thought leaders to discuss Ion Mobility Spectroscopy (IMS), its use in contemporary structural…
The spatial distribution of molecules throughout a sample can provide a wealth of information regarding biological, physiological, and chemical phenomena and processes. One of the most recent and exciting developments in the study of molecular distributions has been the use of mass spectrometry (MS) to specifically measure molecular targets in order to determine their distribution…
Increasing Size, Complexity and Potency: The Bioanalytical Challenge of the Next Decade, was the theme for the 3-day APA India held in Mumbai, India from February 23-25, 2015. Close to 300 attendees gathered to discuss current trends and to offer strategies for overcoming these challenges moving forward. The second session of the morning was Bioanalysis:…
Is DNA barcoding the best technique to test product authenticity or adulteration of herbal or dietary supplements? Or chromatography and mass spectrometry?