Strawberries under the high-tech magnifying glass

05-Jul-2024 - Sweet notes and healthy ingredients make strawberries one of the most popular fruits worldwide. The complex biochemical compounds that determine the taste and nutritional value of a strawberry - so-called biomarkers - can only be determined in detail by experts using modern analyses. Now, a team ...

Four-legged, dog-like robot ‘sniffs’ hazardous gases in inaccessible environments

Portable mass spectrometry for on-site detection of hazardous volatile organic compounds via robotic extractive sampling

12-Jun-2024 - Nightmare material or truly man’s best friend? A team of researchers equipped a dog-like quadruped robot with a mechanized arm that takes air samples from potentially treacherous situations, such as an abandoned building or fire. The robot dog walks samples to a person who screens them for ...

Researchers 3D print key components for a point-of-care mass spectrometer

The low-cost hardware outperforms state-of-the-art versions and could someday enable an affordable, in-home device for health monitoring

09-Apr-2024 - Mass spectrometry, a technique that can precisely identify the chemical components of a sample, could be used to monitor the health of people who suffer from chronic illnesses. For instance, a mass spectrometer can measure hormone levels in the blood of someone with hypothyroidism. But mass ...

Detect 'forever chemicals' in under 3 minutes

New lab-based method to detect traces of PFAS from food packaging material, water and soil samples

12-Feb-2024 - PFAS have earned the name “forever chemicals” with good reason — the man-made compounds, which can take thousands of years to degrade and are found in everything from grease-resistant food packaging to water-repellent clothing, have made their way into nearlyhalf the U.S. tap water supply. Now, ...

Researchers 3D print components for a portable mass spectrometer

Lightweight and inexpensive, miniaturized mass filters are a key step toward portable mass spectrometers that could identify unknown chemicals in remote settings

08-Jan-2024 - Mass spectrometers, devices that identify chemical substances, are widely used in applications like crime scene analysis, toxicology testing, and geological surveying. But these machines are bulky, expensive, and easy to damage, which limits where they can be effectively deployed. Using additive ...

New ion trap to create the world's most accurate mass spectrometer

Higher accuracy for biological samples and complex mixtures

01-Feb-2021 - Mass spectrometers are widely used to analyze highly complex chemical and biological mixtures. Skoltech scientists have developed a new version of a mass spectrometer that uses rotation frequencies of ionized molecules in strong magnetic fields to measure masses with higher accuracy (FT ICR). The ...

A massive advance in spectrometry

Study results may lead to more accurate medical, biological, and chemical tests

21-Jan-2021 - Mass spectrometers (MS) have become essential tools in chemistry and biology laboratories. The ability to quickly identify the chemical components in a sample allows them to take part in a diverse array of experiments, including radiocarbon dating, protein analysis, and monitoring drug ...

Waters Collaborates with Dr. Sunghwan Kim of Kyungpook National University to Advance Precision Analysis of Complex Chemical Compounds

10-Dec-2020 - Waters Corporation has formally expanded its long-standing, collaborative relationship with Dr. Sunghwan Kim of Kyungpook National University to further explore the use of Waters’ cutting-edge ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) in the investigation of compounds in complex mixtures. Identifying ...

Triboelectric nanogenerators boost mass spectrometry performance

01-Mar-2017 - Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) convert mechanical energy harvested from the environment to electricity for powering small devices such as sensors or for recharging consumer electronics. Now, researchers have harnessed these devices to improve the charging of molecules in a way that ...

'Corrective glass' for mass spectrometry imaging

Visualizing the distribution of chemical substances on non-flat samples

10-Feb-2017 - The chemical analysis of biological tissues with three-dimensional shapes has been a major problem so far. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now improved mass spectrometry imaging in such a way that the distribution of molecules can also be ...