It's not every day that clues about the origin of our solar system fall from the sky, but one Victoria University of Wellington researcher has found just that—in a meteorite that collided with Earth 50 years ago.
Space Exploration
Sep 11, 2019
0
12
A new study using mass spectrometry is helping piece together what happens when DNA that has been sensitized by the oncology drug 5-fluorouracil is subjected to the ionising radiation used in radiotherapy.
General Physics
Sep 03, 2019
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9
Until recently, the analysis and identification of nuclear fuel pellets in nuclear forensics investigations have been mainly focused on macroscopic characteristics, such as fuel pellet dimensions, uranium enrichment and other ...
Analytical Chemistry
Aug 30, 2019
0
69
Could chemists be ready to ditch the venerable test tube, the very symbol of chemistry in the minds of many people? Maybe not quite yet, but Caltech's Jack Beauchamp is working on it.
Biochemistry
Jul 29, 2019
1
41
Advanced technologies allow scientists to decipher information about genes faster and more accurately than ever before. But bridging the gap between the genome and how it will be expressed has proven challenging. Scientists ...
Evolution
Jul 25, 2019
0
52
Archaeologists from the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), Institute of Archeology and Ethnography SB RAS (Russia); Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL, Ecuador); and Tohoku University (Japan) found shards ...
Archaeology & Fossils
Jul 24, 2019
0
148
Photos taken by the Mars Curiosity rover may show a desolate rocky landscape to some, but to Penn State researcher Christopher House, the photos show potential for ancient life.
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2019
1
48
For the first time, researchers at the University of Michigan have detected bromine atoms in the atmosphere, and in doing so, have confirmed the reaction pathway through which mercury is removed from the atmosphere and enters ...
Environment
Jul 02, 2019
2
0
A pair of researchers with the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry dust from a supernova have found evidence that suggests it is more abundant than thought. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, Jan Leitner ...
From books to floppy disks to magnetic memory, technologies to store information continue to improve. Yet threats as simple as water and as complex as cyberattacks can still corrupt our records.
Analytical Chemistry
Jun 07, 2019
1
124
Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique for the determination of the elemental composition of a sample or molecule. It is also used for elucidating the chemical structures of molecules, such as peptides and other chemical compounds. The MS principle consists of ionizing chemical compounds to generate charged molecules or molecule fragments and measurement of their mass-to-charge ratios. In a typical MS procedure:
MS instruments consist of three modules: an ion source, which can convert gas phase sample molecules into ions (or, in the case of electrospray ionization, move ions that exist in solution into the gas phase); a mass analyzer, which sorts the ions by their masses by applying electromagnetic fields; and a detector, which measures the value of an indicator quantity and thus provides data for calculating the abundances of each ion present. The technique has both qualitative and quantitative uses. These include identifying unknown compounds, determining the isotopic composition of elements in a molecule, and determining the structure of a compound by observing its fragmentation. Other uses include quantifying the amount of a compound in a sample or studying the fundamentals of gas phase ion chemistry (the chemistry of ions and neutrals in a vacuum). MS is now in very common use in analytical laboratories that study physical, chemical, or biological properties of a great variety of compounds.
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