Maternal diet and lifestyle choices may affect placental transfer of cobalamin (Cbl) to the fetus. Fetal liver concentration of Cbl reflects nutritional status with regards to vitamin B12, but at these low concentration current Cbl measurement methods lack robustness. An analytical method based on enzymatic extraction with subsequent reversed-phase-high-pressure liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) separation and parallel ICPMS and electrospray ionization (ESI)-Orbitrap-MS to determine specifically Cbl species in liver samples of only 10-50 mg was developed using 14 pig livers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study presents a novel method for the analysis of low molecular weight (LMW) fatty acids in cave drip water and speleothems. The method development included optimization of sample preparation procedures, e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHere we present a new application of a time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (TOF-AMS) for the measurement of atmospheric trace gases in real-time. Usually, TOF-AMS instruments are not sensitive to gas-phase species due to the aerodynamic particle focusing inlet system which reduces the gas phase species by a factor of about 10(7) relative to the particle phase. This efficient removal of the gas phase and the resulting high relative enrichment of particles is one reason for the very high sensitivity of TOF-AMS instruments for particle phase compounds (detection limits in the sub-μg/m(3)-range for online measurements with 1 min integration time), which allows application of the instruments even under clean atmospheric conditions.
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