June 2013

Train for Success

You can still find formal training that provides quality, impact, and relevance in a world dominated by free content. Here’s how.

Play Fair

The governing body’s all-out war against athletes guilty of doping fails to uphold the ideals of sport – or of basic justice.

Wound Healing in Diabetes

Applying an inclusive analysis that requires minimal sample manipulation to generate robust biomolecular signatures from diabetic wound fluid

Immune System Chat Room

How hundreds of extracellular signaling proteins secreted during immune responses were discovered – and what it tells us about the whisperered conversations between cells

Imaging Below 100 nm — without Fluorescence

Saturated transient absorption microscopy (STAM) opens a new door into the nanoscopic world of biomedical and nanomaterials research.

Know Your Onions

Researchers tackle elucidation of sulfur-containing metabolites in plant extracts with Fourier transform mass spectrometry.

New Generation

In May, emerging analytical professionals gathered at a UK conference of the same name to present and network – and to compete for The Analytical Scientist’s first ever prize.

Hallway Talk

Casual conversations with colleagues from a different field can spark ideas, and even new areas. Here’s how interdisciplinary research on the form and function of silk got its start.

How to Beat Cheat Meat

Unscrupulous traders are substituting meat from undesired species. We have the tools to stop them, but do we have the political will?

Structural Proteomics Takes Aim at Disease

A combination of HDX-MS and IMS will help to explore the basis of functional failures in proteins linked to medical conditions.

Rising Above the Helium Shortage

Worldwide helium demand far exceeds current production levels. For many gas chromatography applications, the switch to hydrogen is painless. What’s stopping you?

Toying with Athletes

WADA is on a mission to rid sports of substances that impart an unfair advantage. Many observers, however, feel that their approach is deeply flawed and potentially harmful, both to sport and to individual athletes. Here, a group of four analytical scientists set out their opposition to WADA’s strategy and provide recommendations for a better way forward.

Breath Analysis for Disease Diagnosis

Jumping on the breath biomarker bandwagon is tempting, but a number of failures to observe the fundamental rules of good science have cast doubt over the technique. Here, the authors describe best practice, from collection to clinical evaluation.

Three Gurus of Nano and Micro Analysis

Robert Kennedy, Albert van den Berg, and Juan Santiago describe significant breakthroughs in micro and nanoscale analytical techniques and envisage where they might take us next.

Juicing Up Food Fraud Detection

Direct sampling coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry points to a fraud-free food future for the consumer.

Pursuing the Preparative

Sitting Down With Georges Guiochon, Professor and Distinguished Scientist of Analytical Chemistry at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Fast Extraction of Metanephrine and Normetanephrine from Urine