Converting from petroleum to hydrogen or fuel cells will require a lot of analytical chemistry that hasn't been entirely worked out yet. A symposium at Pittcon, organized by the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory, focused on analytical tools that support fuel cell and hydrogen process development.

Ants navigate by both sight and smell, researchers recently discovered. The microhabitats through which the desert ants travelled do indeed have their own distinctive smells. Lacking the ants' sense of smell, researchers made do with careful use of a gas chromatograph. Now, if only we could keep them out of the cupboards...

How can you tell whether a cancer treatment is working? Measure the viscosity within the cancerous cells. A paper recently published in Nature Chemistry details how the viscosity increases dramatically when the cells are blasted with light-activated cancer drugs. It also is one way that these cancer cells die.

You can get a better image by throwing away data — confocal microscopy has done that for years. But a new method, interferometric synthetic aperture microscopy (ISAM), goes one better. It makes use of the out-of-focus data to increase both the signal and resolution. An article in R&D covers ISAM basics.

Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy is a method often used for remote chemical detection. For example, LIBS can be used to analyze the make-up of a suspected bomb. Chemists are hoping to improve the "stand-off" detection technique by canceling interference signals with polarizing filters. Their work will be presented at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in late May.

Ready-to-use right out of the box, the Spectro Genesis ICP spectrometer is good for a wide range of environmental and industrial applications. Key features include new software for added functionality and a relatively high sample throughput. Introduced at Pittcon 2009, the CCD-based ICP-OES spectrometer offers an economic alternative to sequential ICP and Atomic Absorption spectrometers.

An open standard for chromatography instrument control software could be a boon to the industry. To "measure interest" in developing such a standard, Agilent Technologies organized a meeting at Pittcon 2009. Prospects for launching an industry-wide initiative were discussed.

Leaks in your chromatography system waste gas. They can also result in detector noise or baseline data instability, and may lead to shorter column life. A hand held leak detector identifies minute leaks of the most commonly used gases — including helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, argon, and carbon dioxide.

ACHEMA is said to be the largest international meeting for the process industries, encompassing everything from oil and gas processing through power generation, base chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, to biotechnology. Analytical instruments used in industrial applications will be discussed in the hundreds of presentations and shown on the exhibit floor in Frankfurt, Germany from May 11 to 15.

What happens when the manufacturer of a mild mannered piece of lab equipment resorts to over-the-top advertising strategies popular today? Killer robots guaranteed to transform your research.

Can We Really Catch Drug Users?

Better law-breaking by chemistry, or a sucker born every minute? Do you think drug-detection-blocking drinks work?