Category: In the News

Thursday, July 9, 2020
1p EDT / 6p BST / 7p CEST

Environmental monitoring is vital to understanding the world around us. Air quality, water, and soil testing all provide valuable information about an environment’s status. Tools and technologies for environmental monitoring can be used to evaluate the sanitation of a food and beverage lab or to monitor an ecosystem’s recovery after an oil spill. Join Lab Manager and our panel of experts as we review the tools available for environmental testing and monitoring.

As an attendee, you will learn more about:

• Developments in technology for environmental testing and monitoring
• Considerations when purchasing technology for environmental testing and monitoring
• Applications for environmental testing and monitoring across industries

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Thursday, June 25, 2020
1p EDT / 6p BST / 7p CEST

 

Food and beverage labs use techniques from other disciplines such as microbiology, environmental monitoring, and analytical chemistry to test for food and beverage contaminants. Unlike these disciplines, the food and beverage industry is highly regulated and therefore food and beverage labs have very specific needs. Join Lab Manager and our panel of experts as we discuss tools for food and beverage testing.

As an attendee, you will learn more about:

• The latest technology for testing in the food and beverage lab
• Applications for tools and technologies in the food and beverage lab
• Considerations when purchasing instruments for food and beverage testing

Register Now

Authentic historic manuscripts fetch high sums, but establishing their authenticity is challenging, relies on a host of stylistic clues and requires expert knowledge. High resolution mass spectrometry has not, until now, been applied to guide the authentication of historic manuscripts. Robert Burns is a well-known Scottish poet, whose fame, and the eponymous ‘Burns Night’ are celebrated world-wide. Authenticity of his works is complicated by the ‘industrial’ production of fakes by Alexander Smith in the 1890s, many of which were of good quality and capable of fooling experts. This study represents the first analysis of the inks and paper used in Burns poetry, in a minimally destructive manner that could find application in many areas. Applying direct infusion mass spectrometry to a panel of selected authenticated Burns and Smith manuscripts, we have produced a Support Vector Machine classifier that distinguishes Burns from Smith with a 0.77 AUC. Using contemporary recipes for inks, we were also able to match features of each to the inks used to produce some of Burns’ original manuscripts. We anticipate the method and classifier having broad application in authentication of manuscripts, and our analysis of contemporary inks to provide insights into the production of written works of art.

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