Articles by Miles Weiss

Recent technological advances have vastly improved the mass range and resolution capabilities of mass spectrometers, while making these instruments more versatile and easier to use. “We can work with smaller and smaller amounts of material because the instrumentation sensitivities have improved so drastically over the last few years,” says J. Carter Cook, director of VG Instruments’ laboratory in Savannah, Georgia. Other improvements include advances in computerization t

Employed in fields ranging from forensics to astrophysics to industrial chemistry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) systems vary considerably in price, performance, and flexibility. Before investing in one of these instruments, scientists should define how they plan to use the technology and which materials they will examine with the equipment. Manufacturers say that basic infrared spectroscopy technology has neared maturity; as a result, most standard units produced by differ