The Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) has announced the winners of the 2011 FACSS Innovations Awards. The FACSS Innovation Awards showcase the newest and most creative science debuted orally at a FACSS-organised conference. Shortlisted finalists competed in front of expert panels at the 2011 FACSS conference in Reno, NV, USA (2–7 October 2011). The panel commended the high quality of entries and selected four equal awardees.

Monitoring drinking water quality poses many challenges and the authors describe their approach that combines instrumental developments with new software.

Waters has introduced an addition to its vials product line. The TruView LC/MS certified vials include the stringent dimensional tolerances, UV and MS cleanliness tests required for the company's LC/GC and LC/MS certified vial lines. An additional feature of TruView vials is that the glass surface exhibits low polar analyte adsorption. The vials are manufactured under tightly controlled process conditions that limit the concentration of free ions on the surface of glass. Low levels of free ions on the surface of glass result in low analyte adsorption. Applications involving sensitive MS/MS spectrometers operate at analyte concentrations of ng mL–1 to pg mL–1 levels. At these concentrations, analyte adsorption can compromise analytical results. The TruView certified vials are tested for high recovery of analyte at 1 ng mL–1 concentration using UPLC/MS/MS (MRM) and yield little adsorption.

Applications of mass spectrometry in the clinical area have increased significantly in recent years and continue to expand. The complexity of analyses has also increased, with work being undertaken in clinical labs that would have been the reserve of research labs a few years ago.

BBCEAS is a new cavity-based absorption technique that uses broadband sources rather than lasers. This offers potential improvements in signal-to-noise but often lower spectral resolution compared to techniques where the laser wavelength is scanned. The article concentrates on liquid-phase applications, an interesting new area since most cavity-based absorption studies have been performed on gas-phase species up to now.

The new TLC-MS interface from CAMAG is a versatile instrument which is capable of isolating unknown compounds from a TLC/HPTLC plate and introducing them into a mass spectrometer for substance identification or structure elucidation. It can be connected to any brand of LC-coupled mass spectrometer and is compatible with all common HPLC-MS systems. Features include rapid and convenient extraction directly into your MS, identification of unknown substances, confirmation of target compounds, offering semi-automatic performance, reproducible results and detectability similar to HPLC-MS, compatibility with most common TLC/HPTLC layers and enables extraction into vials for NMR or (ATR) FT-IR, static nanospray, direct inlet EI-MS and MALDI.

Peak Scientific has introduced the Fusion 1010, a generator that provides both zero nitrogen and zero air in a single system. The new generator supports both GC-ECD and GC-FID applications and may also be used for THA applications. It essentially combines two technologies to produce zero nitrogen (ultra-high purity nitrogen with no hydrocarbons as methane) and zero air (air with no hydrocarbons as methane) from two separate outlets. The system produces high purity results, even in highly polluted environments and hydrocarbons will not cause any higher baselines. Other features include a “Rapid Start” function that allows the system to be operational again soon after a power cut and there is no need to recalibrate applications, giving consistent and reliable analysis results.

Thermo Fisher Scientific has published an application note entitled Confirmation and Quantitation of an Expanded Panel of Sympathomimetric Amines in Urine Using Single Quadrupole GC/MS which describes a method for the confirmation of amphetamines in urine in accordance with recently updated US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programmes.

Thermo Fisher Scientific has developed a new method for sensitive, accurate and reproducible quantitation of low levels of PFCs in human breast milk. Using selected reaction monitoring and highly-selective reaction monitoring on a UHPLC/MS platform enables reliable and robust detection of PFCs at ppt concentrations. The new method is detailed in an application note entitled Sensitive and Accurate Quantitation of Perfluorinated Compounds in Human Breast Milk using Selected Reaction Monitoring Assays by LC/MS/MS. Using the integrated UHPLC/MS platform, separation of the six PFC analytes in a spiked human breast milk matrix was achieved within nine minutes. As the majority of interferences from matrices elute early at void volume, elution of the first compound at 3.64 minutes ensured a robust quantitation method.

Almsco International has announced a solution for the characterisation of crude oils over traditional GC/MS techniques. The BenchTOF-dx uses two-dimensional GC combined with time-of-flight spectrometry and is capable of producing classic EI ionisation spectra. The company has produced a poster which details this application. The BenchTOF-dx extends the range over which ToF mass detectors for GC are able to record molecular ions making it ideal for analysing compounds such as crude oil. Compound spectra are produced in the classic format used in commercial spectral libraries, enabling the use of proprietrary petrochemical spectral libraries.

Almsco has launched its TargetView software package, which has been designed to automate and improve the detection and measurement of multiple target chemicals in complex GC/MS datasets, benefitting users in the fields of environmental monitoring, food/flavour/fragrance profiling, forensic science and testing chemical emmisions from consumer goods. The software package compares deconvoluted mass spectral data against EI mass spectra in existing libraries, can automatically detect many target compounds in one run and immediately generates a simple customiseable report which includes retention times, quantification ions, peak area values and match coefficients as required.

Spectra Analysis Instruments has announced the commercial availability of the DiscovIR-LC, an FT-IR detector technology providing solid-phase analysis of HPLC and SEC separations. It is a fully-automated, high-performance detection system capable of achieving rigorous, repeatable qualitative analyses that pharmaceutical, polymer chemists and other-industry customers require. It provides a wide range of chemical structure and troubleshooting capabilities in support of development and scale-up for small molecule and polymer formulations.

Agilent Technologies Inc. has opened a new life sciences instruments manufacturing facility in Singapore. The facility will produce the company’s LC/MS instruments for the global market.

Shimadzu has developed the LCMS-8030 which combines the power of triple quadrupole mass spectrometry with the speed to complement its UHPLC systems. The instrument features ultra-fast multiple reaction monitoring transitions, enabling data acquisition with up to 500 different channels per second.

NLG Analytical has announced the release of its latest v-kit qualification system for LC-MS systems, suitable for single and triple quadrupole mass spectrometers. The package consists of software-driven protocols, standard operating procedures and traceable reference standards. Written on the v-kit Pro platform, the software features report creation, summary reporting and audit trail and user/manager access rights. The electronic logbook function allows the data from the entire qualification exercise to be quickly and easily assembled into a single document for storage or distribution. The kits can be provided for qualification by the user or as part of service delivery by approved v-kit service partners.

Agilent Technologies has introduced two Triple Quadrupole GC-MS Pesticide Analysers that are complete, factory-configured, highly sensitive and chemically tested systems which can quickly identify a broad range of commonly analysed pesticide residues. Version one of the analysers is designed for maximum flexibility, permitting users to add GC detectors. The system is easily scaled to shorten run times. The analyser includes a method based on Agilent's Retention Time Locked GC-MS-MS MRM database containing spectra for more than 500 pesticides. Version two delivers higher performance and shorter cycle times while consuming less carrier gas. The analysis is based on the USA Targeted Pesticide List GC/MS/MS MRM database with more than 200 pesticides. Included in each analyser is a full set of pesticide checkout samples, a promotional QuEChERS sample preparation kit and Retention Time Locked HP-5MS Ultra Inert column for reliable database matching. Also provided are a quick start guide and application note that show users how to run the analyser's screening method and a CD-ROM with examples of screening methods, data files and reports.

The potential impact of lipid research has been increasingly realised both in disease treatment and prevention. Recent advances in soft ionisation mass spectrometry (MS) such as electrospray ionisation (ESI) have permitted parallel monitoring of several hundreds of lipids in a single experiment and thus facilitated lipidomics level studies. These advances, however, pose a greater challenge for bioinformaticians to handle massive amounts of information-rich MS data from modern analytical instruments in order to understand complex functions of lipids.