In August 2019, Brazil experienced its largest large oil spill, which impacted extensive areas and significantly affected the northeastern region, particularly Pernambuco. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), major oil components, are critical for assessing fish contamination risks. This study presents two sample pretreatment methods for fish samples - ultrasound-enhanced air-assisted liquid-liquid microextraction (UE-AA-LLME) for low molar mass PAHs, and matrix solid-phase dispersion for high molar mass PAHs - followed by a Gas-Chromatography coupled to Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe dating of documents is crucial in forensic chemistry, particularly for verifying their authenticity. This study aimed to develop a rapid and direct method for the dating of pen ink in documents, using a combination of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in attenuated reflectance mode (FTIR-ATR), desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (DESI-MS) and multiple ensemble data modeling. Two sets of paper document samples containing writing in blue pen ink were investigated: (I) artificially aged documents and (II) real documents dating from 1960 to 2022.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEssential oils are appreciated worldwide for their pleasant aroma, in addition to their therapeutic, pharmacological, and cosmetic functions. For these reasons, adulteration is a common practice that decreases product quality causing economic and health issues. In this study, we present for the first time the application of a simple, inexpensive and disposable paper-based optoelectronic nose ( colorimetric sensor array) to (i) discriminate sixteen different types of essential oils and (ii) detect adulterated samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFColletotrichum has been identified as responsible for the "dried fruit" disease in açaí (Euterpe oleracea). Besides concern for açaí pulp quality control, the characterization of Colletotrichum has been difficult, which has motivated the search for chemical markers in the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) profile for use as a tool in the identification of açaí pulp contaminated by the fungus. Extracted VOCs by Headspace - Solid Phase Micro Extraction (HS-SPME) were identified through gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn pharmaceutical development, forced degradation studies are mandatory before the commercialization of any drug product. They aim at identifying the possible degradation routes and the potential products that may be formed during drug product shelf life. The most widely used techniques for monitoring this in the pharmaceutical industry are hyphenated techniques such as Liquid Chromatography coupled to ultraviolet diode array detector (LC-DAD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: "Omics" techniques have been used to understand and to identify biomarkers of male infertility. We report on the first metabonomics models created to diagnose varicocele and infertility among men with varicocele.
Methods: We recruited 35 infertile men with varicocele (VI group), 21 fertile men with varicocele (VF group) and 24 fertile men without varicocele (C group).
A study regarding the acquisition and analytical utilization of four-way data acquired by monitoring excitation-emission fluorescence matrices at different elution time points in a fast HPLC procedure is presented. The data were modeled with three well-known algorithms: PARAFAC, U-PLS/RTL and MCR-ALS, the latter conveniently adapted to model third-order data. The second-order advantage was exploited when analyzing samples containing uncalibrated components.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiogenic amines (BAs) are used for identifying spoilage in food. The most common are tryptamine (TRY), 2-phenylethylamine (PHE), putrescine (PUT), cadaverine (CAD) and histamine (HIS). Due to lack of chromophores, chemical derivatization with dansyl was employed to analyze these BAs using high performance liquid chromatography with a diode array detector (HPLC-DAD).
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