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Bruker Corporation and Agilent Technologies have announced that they have entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement. Pursuant to this agreement, Bruker will acquire certain product lines of Varian Inc., which Agilent has committed to divest in connection with obtaining regulatory approval for Agilent's previously announced acquisition of Varian.

Read more: Bruker and Agilent Technologies agree to Bruker acquiring certain Varian product lines

AB Sciex has acquired the liquid chromatography business of Eksigent Technologies. This acquisition provides the company with a significant entry into the liquid chromatography market through the ability to provide instrumentation and consumables and to couple them with mass spectrometry instruments to form complete workflow solutions.

Read more: AB Sciex acquires Eksigent LC business

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Using a novel hybrid sensor system, based on Shamrock spectrometers and high performance intensified CCD detectors supplied by Andor Technology, Spanish scientists have been able to use both Raman and Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) simultaneously for the instant, remote standoff analysis of explosive materials.

Read more: Simultaneous Raman-LIBS for the mobile standoff analysis of explosive materials

ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.

Read more: Herschel-HIFI unveils precursors of life-enabling molecules in Orion Nebula

Researchers Sebastian Busch, Christoph Smuda, Luis Carlos Pardo and Tobias Unruh from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) have discovered, using neutron spectroscopy techniques, that the molecules of a cell membrane do not move at random as previously believed, but rather in a flowing motion as suggested by various computer simulations.

Read more: Neutron spectroscopy techniques unveil the motion of molecules in cell membranes

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There has been a renewed interest in instrumental qualification and standardisation by the fluorescence community over the last 10 years, driven by the increasing number of quantitative chemical assays that use fluorescence detection and the presence of regulations in some of these areas.

Read more: ASTM molecular spectroscopy standard

Ahura Scientific, Inc., has announced the close of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.’s acquisition of the company. The acquisition expands Thermo Fisher’s technology portfolio with a suite ofportable spectrometers.

Read more: Thermo's acquisition of Ahura finalised

Researchers from Ohio State University, USA, have developed a rapid, multiplexed genotyping method to identify the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that affect warfarin dose. Their work is reported in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics (doi: 10.2353/jmoldx.2010.090084).

Read more: Personalised medicine in warfarin therapy using SELDI-ToF MS

PerkinElmer, Inc. has agreed to purchase the remaining interest of its joint venture in ICP-MS and related assets from Danaher Corporation. Danaher acquired this joint venture stake and these assets as part of its acquisition of MDS Inc.'s Analytical Technologies business.

The purchase of the remaining 50% of the joint venture and related assets will provide PerkinElmer with full ownership of the joint venture and its ICP-MS product line.

John Roush, president, Environmental Health, PerkinElmer, said, "The global population is increasingly vulnerable to safety threats from toxic elements such as lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic affecting the quality of our water and food supplies. Our continued commitment and innovation in ICP-MS will provide our customers with solutions that support the analysis of component elements, trace elements or contaminants in samples of interest, leading to improved products and applications for their end markets - and ultimately to better outcomes for human and environmental health."

He added, "The consolidation of the joint venture will reinforce our market leadership position while further demonstrating our commitment to the ICP-MS product line and the sustained development of this critical technology. Customers will benefit from our ability to get products to market faster, as well as to better align our offering with market needs."

A European research project has shown how to build optical sensors directly into the structure of labs-on-chips. The breakthrough paves the way for on-the-spot medical diagnostics.

Read more: Optical waveguides within microfluidic chips