In May, I announced that CASSS organizes a discussion group about consulting.

Today, I would like to mention next discussion group focused on New directions/developments in Separation Science.

The meeting is taking place on September 15th, 2010 in Woodfin Suites in Emeryville, CA at 6 pm.

Personally, I am looking forward to attending this meeting. The topic as well as a list of panelist (see below) are very interesting. It will be nice to hear opinions about new directions in separation science from people with different background and experience.

I have to admit that my knowledge, interest, and predictions focus mainly on liquid chromatography (and monoliths, of course;)  so I am very curious about other topics, such as sample preparation, miniaturization and/or new materials in separations, which are possibly going to be part of the discussion too (I don’t know, just guessing;)

The information from CASSS website

Today’s sophisticated separation and analytical instruments and techniques bear scant resemblance to the “absorption analysis” technique reported by M.S. Tswett in 1903.  But that same drive for innovation and improvement is alive and well in 2010.

Join us for a lively discussion on the latest trends and technical innovations presented at the Pittcon, ASMS and HPLC conferences this year.  Question our expert panelists on where the trends might be taking the industry - and what to watch out for.

One thing is constant in this field … change.  From mergers and acquisitions to plenty of new products – stay abreast of the trends that will affect you most.

Invited panlists

• Tom Jupille, LC Resources
• O. David Sparkman, University of the Pacific, Stockton
• Robert Stevenson, R. Stevenson Consulting

Registration starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 6:00 p.m., and Panel discussion at 7:00 p.m.

The prize for registration before Wednesday, September 8 is $35 for Discussion only and $49 for Discussion and Dinner. On-site registration are not eligible for dinner. More info on CASSS website.

Future post

I will try to remember (ie. make notes of;) discussed topics and possible conclusions and bring them to you here on chromatographer.com soon after the meeting. Keep in touch.

PS: if you would like to be informed about new posts, you might consider subscribtion to RSS chanel or email newsletter in the right sidebar.

As I mentioned several weeks ago, there was an international symposium on the separation science – HPLC 2010 – held in Boston last week. It was my second North American conference (together with San Francisco 2006) and third in total (plus Stockholm 2005).

Allow me to summarize my remarks I made during the lectures I have attended. Fortunately, I have the opportunity to see majority of my pre-selected talks as a volunteer with the microphone in presentation halls.

This post is quite long. However, I didn’t want to chop it in several different posts rather to place all the information together. One more note: your selection (and conclusions) of talks can be completely different, I was mainly visiting sessions focusing on the new columns material, columns characterization and multidimensional techniques as well as monolithic stationary phases.

Sunday

Peter Carr in his plenary lecture awarded with a Martin Gold Medal of The Chromatographic Society described the advantages of the fast second dimension in two-dimensional comprehensive liquid chromatography (2D-LC). He compared time of 2D-LC analysis in 1990 (6 hours) with the current analysis time of twenty-thirty minutes with very fast second dimension (20 seconds!). The combination of perfluorated column together with zirconia type of the stationary phase seems to be satisfactory for several different applications of real samples from corn extract to Starbucks coffee or Minnesota’s red wine.

Short time travel: Peter’s lecture was next day followed by a 2D-LC tutorial led by Dwight R. Stoll. He focused on the necessity of the 2D-LC (is it really necessary and/or better?), column selection for multidimensional techniques and the biggest problem in the field of 2D-LC: lack of 2D instruments with very low gradient delay volume. He also focused on the fraction transfer and second dimension analysis time (why the 20 s looks like good compromise).

In the second plenary lecture, George M. Whitesides describes his efforts in preparation of no or low cost diagnostic tools. Nice talk. Why are we developing separation methods with the highest selectivity, capacity, retention, efficiency … when we are not able to provide their results for majority of people? I am sure symposium such as HPLC (2010) can significantly attribute to discussion like this.

Monday

Nobuo Tanaka introduced next generation of silica-based monolithic columns. Connecting several columns together (1 – 2 m) it is possible to achieve efficiency of several hundreds to million of plates. Moreover, the separation can be done at linear velocity as high as 11mm/s.

My colleague Stuart Chambers talked about the modification of the methacrylate-based monolithic columns with carbon nanotubes or methacrylate modified fullerenes. Surface modification significantly enhanced the column efficiency and values such as 80 000 tp/m for small molecule (benzene) can be achieved using this type of modification.

Ulrich Tallarek described mathematical approach towards the characterization of 3D structure of stationary phases. From my point of view, I am really looking forward to seeing such a model for organic polymer-based monoliths (taking into account their heterogeneity).

Fabrice Gritti discussed why the shell particles are so good and if there is still space for improvement? He described the mass transfer in these particles and compared several different types of the core-shell particles.

Tuesday

Wolfgang Lindner introduced new zwitterionic type of chiral stationary phase which can be used for both weak anion and strong cation exchange chromatography only by tuning the composition of the mobile phase.

Paola Dugo mentioned recent progress in comprehensive LC in the separation of small molecules (flavonoids) as well as larger ones (peptides).

My former boss from Pardubice, Czech Republic Pavel Jandera showed how to optimize gradients in 2D-LC. The gradients in the second dimension can be described as full in fraction (0 – 100%), segment in fraction (x – y%) and continuous shifting with separate run of gradient in second dimension. Optimization of the gradient in second dimension can be described as optimization of three separated steps – isocratic (dwell volume) – gradient – and isocratic again.

Matthew Lindford presented nanodiamond modified stationary phases. The diamond (nanoparticles) was attached to the impervious core using layer by layer addition using polyaminoallyl. These column show enhanced stability, as well as decent efficiency (55 000 tp/m).

Mary Wirth described submicron colloidal crystals nanoparticles packed in capillary format with submicron plate heights. This can be one of the new/next steps in the future of liquid chromatography – packing with ultra small particles and achieving ultrahigh column efficiency. However, the whole process has to be studied more deeply.

Gert Desmed asked where is ultrahigh pressure needed and if. The first part of his talk focused on the application of several connected column to provide the desired efficiency, whereas second one discussed the possibility of the gradients at constant pressure, which significantly speed up the separations (roughly about 10 – 20%).

Susan Olesik presented probably only one talk about the thin layer separations. She described the application of electrospinned polymer as stationary phase in TLC.

Peter Schoenmakers in his first talk (substituing his student Elena) introduced application of regular HPLC column for fast size-exclusion separation of polymers in UPLC mode in less than 1 min. In this case, the extracolumn volumes play very significant role and has to be minimize as much as possible.

Wednesday

Georges Guiochon has begun his talk with historical summary of core-shell type of the particles. Their superior performance is due to the reduced heat effect, short diffusion path and subsequently low contribution of A and C terms of van Deemter equation. The columns are getting smaller and smaller and therefore the role of the instrument is more and more important (why are you using highly efficient column if you are loosing all its performance in the extracolumn connections?). On the end of his talk Georges Guiochon pointed out the importance of column packing method and its quality.

Magdalena Titrici showed the possibility of the surface modification with either NIPAM or PEG-methacrylate based monomer to achieve a thermoresponsive stationary phase. With this kind of polymers the surface can be changed from highly hydrophilic to hydrophobic one.

I missed the beginning of talk of Marja-Liisa Riekkola, however on the very end of her talk she spoke about the capillary packed with very low density lipoproteins (VLDL) “particles”. I have to check this idea again because it looks very originally.

Jesse Omamogho described the new types of core-shell particles prepared using the seeded growth method. Using this technique they are able to control both the diameter of inner core as well as the thickness of the porous layer independently. The pore size of the particles is about 90 A with surface area from 80 to 200 m2/g. On the very end of the HPLC symposium, this talk won a first prize of the Csaba Horvath Award.

Charles Lucy discussed the influence of the stationary phase hydrophilicity on the retention and selectivity of the inorganic ions.

Uwe Neue described the selectivity of the new type of the stationary phases with controlled surface charge. He introduced plots/ways how to characterize column selectivity and how to compare it with other types of the columns.

James Jorgenson, father of ultra high pressure chromatography, spoke about the columns packed with 1 – 1.5 porous and non porous particles used at very high pressure. He studied the influence of the packing slurry solvent on the quality of the column. In the following discussion, Georges Guiochon compared chromatographic particle to the city: there are cities with a lot of gates and streets which make them very easy to enter. On the other hand, there are towns with only one gate and main street. Those are difficult to enter. The particles inside the column have a same “behavior” – either it is easy to enter them (core-shell) or it is difficult (e.g. fully porous).

Anthony Edge described the usage of graphitic column at high temperature with water as mobile phase.

David McCalley focused on the relationship between the applied pressure and compound retention together with molecular structure. Main influence of the analysis pressure on the retention can be observed for ionizable compounds.

Tivadar Farkas compared the influence of the extracolumn volume on the chromatographic behavior of core-shell highly efficient columns. He claimed that with current instrumentation we are not able to fully exploit potential of such columns.

Thursday

Kazuki Nakanishi described the preparation of silica-based monoliths with improved homogeneity of stationary phases enabling high efficient separations at low back pressure. Columns prepared according a new protocol contain only 5% of solid material. However, the disadvantage is their mechanical stability. Such column can be applied either in solid phase extraction or bioreactors.

Emily Hilder presented monoliths in planar format for dried blood spot sampling.

Brett Paul introduced the organic polymer monoliths prepared inside a 1 mm ID titan tubing. He described optimization of preparation together with first results. The column provide efficiency of 50 000 tp/m. Such column can be used at high analysis temperature, e.g. 180 °C.

Peter Schoenmakers continued with the ultra pressure size-exclusion chromatography topic. He focused on the degradation of very large polystyrene standards (> 7 MDa) at ultra high pressure. Further, he described separation of branched polymers using molecular topology fraction inside the monolithic stationary phases with very narrow flow-through pores. Peter correctly pointed out selectivity is one of the main property we should focus on. With very high and specific selectivity it is not necessary to require high efficiency, especially in case of very specific and tailored separations.

Robert Kennedy described in his plenary lecture segmented flow methods for hyphenation of LC and detection techniques, as well as their application in sample handling and tailored injection.

My current boss Frantisek Svec summarized the work of our group. He mentioned hypercrosslinking modification of organic polymer-based monoliths suitable for separation of small molecules (my work), as well as results of my colleagues with modification of the monolithic surface with carbon nanotubes (Stuart Chambers), gold (Yan Xu) and hydroxyapatite (Jana Krenkova) nanoparticles.

Atilla Felinger focused on the description of the thernodynamics and kinetics of solute transfer in HPLC. His very last talk at HPLC 2010 was “spiced” with the sudden technical problem with microphone. Fortunately, the organization team worked quickly and efficiently. As a very good chromatographic column ;-)

Conclusions

So, there are my HPLC 2010 flashbacks. In summary, my feelings are that the future of HPLC separation lies between superficially porous core-shell particles for fast and highly efficient separations and multidimensional techniques for complex samples. The monolithic stationary phases can still play significant role, especially 2nd generation of monoliths with tailored surface modification providing high selectivity for compound(s) of interest. Due to their thermal stability they can be also used at very high temperatures.

I would be more than happy to read your opinion either about HPLC 2010 or my notes.

Thanks for reading.

PS: and as a very last note: the poster of my wife about pressurized electrochromatography and electrophoresis on the thin layer monolithic plates for separation of peptides and oligonucleotides was awarded with the first prize in poster competition.

I am flying tomorrow to the Czech Republic. Two weeks of holiday. So, although I wasn’t updating this website frequently, I will have even less time now.  Shortly after my holiday starts the most important chromatographic conference of a year – HPLC 2010 in Boston.

Let’s meet at the HPLC 2010 in Boston

I have the nice opportunity to be part of the volunteers team at this conference and I would be more than happy to meet you, my readers. If you are attending the conference and willing to meet me – just do it. Tug on my sleeve and stop me. Use secret password: chromatographer.com ;-)

Attending HPLC 2010? Tug on my sleeve and stop me

We can discuss the beauty of our chromatographic life or just chat about your or mine latest results.

Anyway, number of my poster is P-1501-M and I have been assigned to the Poster Session on Monday (June 21st) from 2:45 to 4:30pm.

I will be showing results of fast and efficient separation of small molecules on hypercrosslinked monolithic stationary phases.

Looking forward to meeting you in Boston ;-)

I have to admit that this information is mainly interested for chromatographers located in California (especially Bay Area). The CASSS (An International Separation Science Society) organizes the Discussion group focused on the Keys to Successful Consulting.

Maybe you dont know it yet. Maybe your future job is a consulting.

Following information are from a Discussion group website:

If you’re serious about becoming a consultant (or even if you daydream about telling your boss to “take this job and shove it”), this course is a required investment in your future. While most scientists and engineers have traditionally sought full-time, long-term employment in industry, academia and government, many have found rewarding, flexible and dynamic careers as full- or part-time consultants.

This Workshop will be taught by Bob Stevenson, a successful consultant with a 20-year track record, “Keys to Consulting Success” takes you through the entire start up process. Consulting is a business – and successful businesses require serious commitment and planning. If you’re considering a consulting career or want to improve your existing business, join us for Keys to Consulting Success.

For complete meeting details and registration please visit: Discussion group website at www.casss.org

PS: Registration does close this Friday (May 28th).

Before the last CASSS Discussion group debate on difference between high temperature and high pressure liquid chromatography started, there was a welcome slide projected on the wall. There was only one sentece (paraphrase):

Meet other people who like and understand what you do

I highlighted the most important part (for me), because I have always problems to explain what I am doing. I would like to ask you all for your thoughts.

• How do you define chromatography?
• Do you have problems to interpret chromatography to other people who don’t understand the chemistry at all?

How do you define chromatography?

In my case, I am always trying to use words as analysing what is inside a sample, separation of complex mixtures, etc. On the very end (when I see that the listener has no clue at all), I am always using examples such as “when you are visiting doctors, they can determine the level of your cholesterol in a blood with chromatography” or “it can be used for a quality control of gasoline in your car”.

Usually, people just answer “ahaa”. And I know, that they still don’t know what I am talking about.

Once I have read the definition of the chromatography as a running race. On the beginning there is a group of a runners and as time flows (mobile phase?;) the group is separated to a groups of the runners with a same speed (retention). On the end of the run, the winner is a non retained compound and the others are individual parts of the mixture. I am not using this expression often, though. But maybe I will.

On the end of the day – as the saying goes – if I am not able to explain what I am doing to my grandparents, then I dont know what I do.

What are your experience and expressions how to define chromatographic separations?

Your comments and suggestions are more than welcome.

Writing scientific paper

Berkeley Lab organized yesterday short workshop focusing on writing for scientific journals. The workshop took 2 hours and it was mainly focused on the “schedule” we should follow during the publication preparation.

The first part summarized the journal selection. I will not go to much details here, because we probably already know in which journals we want publish (Anal. Chem, J. Chromatogr. A and B, J. Sep. Sci., Talanta, Anal. Chim. Acta, Electrophoresis, Chromatographia, Trends in Anal. Chem., to name few of them).

Journal selection is very important, in some cases 95 % of manuscripts is rejected where 50 % are rejected because of wrong journal selection. I have already mentioned it previously in the post from the other side: what editors want.

Very important part of the manuscript preparation is reading the journal’s guidelines. Usually, you can find there a lot of useful information about the content and focus of the journal, format of manuscript, subsections and heading, and references and graphics arrangement.

Next part – the abstract writing – was the most important for me. We have discussed the structure of the freely accessible Nature summary paragraph example.

After one to four general sentences with theoretical background follows section describing general problem of our work together with our results summarized in two three sentences. On the end of the abstract we can put the results into a more general context and (if possible) provide a broader perspective of our work.

Finally, we have focused on the revision and corrections. The better you revise before submission, the less you will revise later. Few simple things usually helps:

1. ask someone to read it for you
2. read it aloud (not always helping, sometimes you read what you want to read)
3. use the computer reading program (can have problems with technical stuff, but will clearly show you problems with your sentences)
4. with writing software, you can also easily find repeating words such as prepositions, be forms, empty qualifiers such as quite, very, really and so on)

Further reading: How to write a scientific paper at Nature website.

Working on the review

Recently, there was a post about the role of the referees in the science on a The Sceptical Chymist. The post described Nature Physics editorial which focuses on the demands Nature Physics has on the reviewers.

I think, it is not only source of the information for (current and future) reviewers but also for us – scientists trying to publish their work throughout scientific community. No matter if it is Nature Physics, Chemistry, Whatever, …

Therefore, I have chosen seven tips from the editorial and listed them below.

1. First of all, the editor reads the submitted paper with related literature to decide if the paper is good enough to be publish in Nature Physics. Only about one fifth of the submitted papers is chosen for further consideration.
2. The paper should fits into a wider context. Theoretical paper is often assessed by experimentalists and vice versa. As states in the editorial: Science at its best happens where experiment and theory meet.
3. Because of the first selection, they are not primary interested in your opinion whether the paper should or shouldn’t be publish. However, they need to know the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, and in particular contribution of the paper to the field.
4. Does the paper make you think to yourself “Wow! I didn’t expect that!” or “Wow! That could be really useful!” They are looking forward to hearing this kind reaction.
5. Even among paper that do report major results, very few are so perfectly formed in the hands of their authors as to be suitable for publication with little or no revision.
6. Ideally, the significance of every published paper should be clear and accessible to any (physics, chemistry, math, …) graduate. This is one of the main points in the editorial! If even a specialist can’t make sense of it, where is the reason for publication?
7. Finally, as a general rule, keep things collegial and stick to the facts. These are, after all, your peers, who could quite possible soon be reviewing your work.

Even though, this list was written for the reviewers, I think there are several important and interesting ideas, which can help us to write better papers with small or even no problems with their publication.

Happy New Chromatographic Year

Not only from the chromatographic point of view, I wish you in the year 2010:

• low pressure
• high efficiency
• sharp resolution
• large capacity
• and satisfactory results

… or (in case you dont want to use chromatographic expressions) you can use any of the translations.

My favorite forum: Chromatography Forum

Chromatography Forum is a public discussion group where you can post questions, news, or messages of interest to chromatographers everywhere.

I have asked Tom Jupile (founder and moderator) for some factual data about the Chromatography Forum. The forum was started in May 1999 as an adjunct to the LC Resources web site, and was updated to its present format in September 2004. Nowadays, it is probably the busiest chromatography site in the world with about 250 new messages every week. The database has over 57 000 messages (plus another 14 000 or so in the pre-2005 archives), all of which can be searched by keyword.

It is truly an international site: in the past month, it had 15 000 visits from 116 countries, of which almost 2/3 were from outside the US (btw. 69 of them from the Czech Republic;).

Chromatographers: nice community

One thing has to be pointed out. More then half of the Tom’s answer is devoted to the mentality of the chromatographic community. It is nice to hear, that the group of people surrounding the 100 years old separation idea is willing to help and share the ideas, advices and thoughts.

I have been the administrator and moderator since the beginning, but apart from occasional issues with the software (and the internet service!) the amount of effort involved has been minor. Unlike other discussion groups with which I am familiar, the Forum is a remarkably civilized place, with a negligible level of sarcasm, rudeness, and “flames”.

I think this is quite a tribute to the professionalism and generosity of the “chromatography community”: as a group they show a remarkable willingness to share their expertise and knowledge. Over the ten years of the Forum’s existence, I have only ever had to “warn” perhaps a half-dozen people about inappropriate posts, and only ever banned one person. (

Tom Jupille, ChromForum.org moderator

Exactly, chromatographers are nice people!

How to write world class manuscript?

Do you know how to write the scientific paper? Are you looking for step by step procedure you should follow? Download Editor’s Presentation on “How to write a world class paper” prepared by the Elsevier.

The presentation covers each step of preparing manuscripts and submitting them to scientific journals for publication, and is delivered by Guowang Xu, Editor of Journal of Chromatography B.

I wanted to prepare outline of the presentation. However, it is full of the very interesting and comprehensive information and I didn’t want to omit any important one. Therefore I have chosen only one slide, which summarize all in one:

What gets you accepted?

• Attention to details
• Check and double check your work
• Consider the reviews
• English must be as good as possible
• Presentation is important
• Take your time with revision
• Acknowledge those who have helped you
• New, original and previously unpublished
• Critically evaluate your own manuscript
• Ethical rules must be obeyed

Nigel John Cook, Editor-in-Chief, Ore Geology Reviews

If you are interested in more information, visit the website with the presentation.