Sample Preparation

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, announced that they have been presented with two 2008 Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards for Market Leadership and Competitive Strategy Leadership in Informatics.

In the first reported study of skeletal muscles in hibernating creatures by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE), scientists from Korea have attempted to shed some light on the molecular processes behind atrophy prevention.

Scientists in China have devised a GC-ECD procedure that involves bromination of acrylamide to give a derivative that is more easily detected at low levels than acrylamide itself. Their research comes in response to the discovery of acrylamide in many types of cooked food in 2002. This discovery made news due to the link between acrylamide and cancer. From a scientific point of view, the acrylamide discovery ensured the creation of a new generation of research grants, many of which involve mass spectrometry, using GC?MS or LC?MS.

Advion Biosciences Inc. (Ithaca, New York), a developer of microfluidic sampling technology for mass spectrometry (MS) has bought almost all assets of its production supplier, Washburn Manufacturing Technologies Inc. (Trumansburg, New York) for an undisclosed amount.

Agilent Technologies has announced the presentation of the 2008 Manfred Donike Award for scientific excellence in sports doping testing to the German research scientist Ulrich Flenker, of the Institute of biochemistry, German Sport University, Cologne, Germany.

Labtronics has been pleased to announce that a leading food and beverage manufacturer has selected its Nexxis sample tracker to upgrade their existing in-house sample tests and result tracking system.

GE Healthcare recently announced its completion of the acquisition of Whatman, which is a global supplier of filtration technologies and products.

Merck KGaA (Darmstadt, Germany), a privately-held pharmaceutical and specialist chemicals company, has acquired the assets of chromatographic column developer SeQuant AB (Umea, Sweden). "[The aquisition] offers Merck superb opportunities for the future expansion of the chromatography business," said Klaus Bischoff, head of the Performance and Life Science Chemicals division at Merck.

Hian Kee Lee speaks with Alasdair Matheson about "environmentally friendly" sample preparation techniques.

To obtain a better understanding of the challenges faced during method development and validation, the authors - in cooperation with LCGC - conducted a survey earlier this year. This column summarizes the results.

PerkinElmer (Waltham, Massachusetts) announced the "Ettre Award" to honor a young scientist in the field of gas chromatography.

The authors discuss a preparative process using the principles of countercurrent chromatography. This process is faster, capable of loadings from milligrams to hundreds of grams, and uses robust equipment.

Thar Instruments (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) has expanded their European team by four new members since the company's acquisition of Berger SFC in 2007.

A simple and inexpensive sample preparation method followed by reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) was developed to quantify oxytetracycline (OTC), chlortetracycline (CTC), and tetracycline (TC) residues in prawns. The total analytical time, including sample preparation, was 15 min for each sample and no organic solvents were used in the sample preparation or chromatography stages.

Sample diluent ionic strength, pH, organic solvent composition and viscosity can all have a significant impact on the performance of CE separation. It is, therefore, essential that the choice of solvent is optimized during method development. The optimized diluent should be fully specified in the method and used consistently in method validation and all subsequent applications of the method.

This Tuesday afternoon session, titled "Current Status and Trends in the Application of Liquid Chromatography (LC and UHPLC) Hyphenated with Tandem Mass Spectrometry for Pharmaceutical Analysis" was presided over by Arindam Roy of Covidien.

"A bitter pill to swallow" may be an old adage, but it actually has meaning to today's pharmaceutical industry and to chemists using modern chromatographic techniques.

Being here in New Orleans, which is one of the busiest port cities in the U.S., the topic of Homeland Security seems particularly relevant. So I attended Session 1490, "Homeland Security and Forensic Analysis." It proved to be very interesting.

Pittcon has seen a lot of new products launched this year, all of which innovative in design and concept. A few new products were highlighted in Tuesday morning's session 1173: "New Product Forum: Chromatography Columns," presided over by Robert W. Baudoux from RWB Convention Management.

It seems as though Pittcon 2008 has gone by in the blink of an eye as we reach this, our final day of coverage from New Orleans. And although the long lineup of press conferences may be winding down at this point, the roster of technical sessions continues onward and will even continue into the end of the week.

A professor from the University of Pittsburgh received one of the most distinguished awards at the Pittsburgh Conference on the third day of Pittcon 2008 from New Orleans.

Well, it's Pittcon Day 2, and I followed the suggestion of LCGC Columnist John Hinshaw and attended session 410, "Food Science: UV-Vis, NIR, AA, LC, GC, and Electric Nose."

Monday's "General Interest: LC/GC" session delved into a wide array of new techniques and discoveries in the scientific and academic LC/GC communities.

The 2008 Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley Dal Nogare Award was presented Monday morning to John G. Dorsey, the Katherine Blood Hoffman Professor of Chemistry at Florida State University, by Mike Koenigbauer, President of the Chromatography Forum of Delaware Valley.

Four years ago, problems were slightly different for HPLC users. However, one main problem remains the same and will continue to remain the same.

Good Morning and welcome to Day 2 of LCGC's coverage of Pittcon 2008 from New Orleans, Louisiana. We have already seen many informative and innovative press conferences and technical sessions, as the rate of technical development in the field of analytical chemistry continues to advance at a staggering pace.

The city of New Orleans has a rich history of merging French and American art, from the iconic fleur-de-lis to the works of Edgar Degas. Unfortunately, sometimes art, whether it's a painting, book, or some other medium, gets damaged due to unforeseen disasters. It is the job of the scientist to pursue the restoration of such precious objet d'art. These types of art recovery efforts were described in the session "Science for Art" at Pittcon 2008.

I attended session 220, "Sample Preparation: General," on Sunday afternoon. As Frank Dorman of Restek Corporation, who presided over the session noted, the weather here is much nicer than it was last year in Chicago, and he was happy to see a good crowd gathered for this session.

Given the historic and crucial relationship between New Orleans and the sea, it was appropriate to kick off the Pittcon week with a nautical-based session.

A proud student filling in for his esteemed teacher highlighted the first day of technical sessions as Pittcon returned to the Crescent City.