MS Terms and Definitions Workshop at ASMS

Self-referential (but important) lift from STMS:

I am organizing a workshop at the ASMS Meeting in San Antonio on
Tuesday June 7 from 5:30 to 7:00. The topic is revising the standard terms and definitions related to mass spectrometry.

The main item that I will be presenting is a draft list of revised terms that has been assembled by the IUPAC Task Group  (see http://www.iupac.org/projects/ 2003/2003-056-2-500.html) that will be available at the workshop and also at a poster that will be up all week at the conference. If you would like to make a brief presentation or make a suggestion on a topic for discussion, please let me know (see above link for contact info).

The working materials for the IUPAC project can be found on-line at the webpage for the project:  http://www.msterms.com/ . Be sure to check the current events page (http://www.msterms.com/wiki/in dex.php?title=Current_events), which has a poster from the San Diego Spring ACS Meeting (http://www.msterms.com/present ations/ACS_Sp_2005/) and other presentations. If you have comments or suggestions, you can leave comments on the website or feel free to contact me or any of the task group members directly (see the IUPAC link above for contact information).

See you in San Antonio!
—-
Kermit K. Murray
Department of Chemistry
Louisiana State University
http://ch309c.chem.lsu.edu/

del.icio.us Tag for Mass Sectrometry

There is now a “mass spectrometry” tag at the del.icio.us “social bookmarks” site. Since a del.icio.us tag can only be a single word, the tag is “mass_spectrometry“.

Using the del.icio.us site, anyone can tag a web page with any number of tags. The tags can be sorted in various ways and displayed as web pages or newsfeeds. Here is an example of tagged mass spectrometry resource pages taken from a del.icio.us RSS feed using MagpieRSS and Feed2JS.

eTBlast MEDLINE Search Interface

eTBlast is a MEDLINE search front-end developed by the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center in Dallas. It will chew through a Texas-sized paragraph of text and return (after a few minutes) a scored list of related articles found on MEDLINE. For example, the abstract of Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom 2004 ;18;1095 returned this page of hits as output (note that the search result page has a limited lifetime).

Mass Spectrometry of Tears

From Sciencedaily.com (ACS Press Release):

“Researchers in Japan are developing a faster, more accurate diagnostic test for Sj√ɬ∂gren’s syndrome, an incurable autoimmune disorder characterized by chronically dry eyes and dry mouth. The noninvasive test, which analyzes multiple protein biomarkers in the tears using highly sensitive mass spectrometry, shows promise in early clinical studies as the first simple test for identifying the disease, scientists say.”

Bruker/Agilent Extend Trap Collaboration

“The amended ITMS collaboration agreement extends the ion trap development cooperation, the continued supply of mass spectrometry parts and components from Agilent to Bruker Daltonics, and the end-product manufacturing by Bruker Daltonics of each company’s respective ITMS product lines. The agreement facilitates the introduction of each company’s ion trap HCT Ultra and XCT Ultra mass spectrometers. This ITMS agreement also extends other existing terms, enabling Bruker Daltonics to continue incorporating Agilent’s atmospheric pressure ionization sources into its line of MS products.”

ACS to Allow Free Access to Journal Articles One Year After Publication

See press releases “American Chemical Society broadens access to its articles: Conditions set for free availability one year after publication“, “American Chemical Society broadens author-directed article access” and “American Chemical Society policy will offer service to authors of NIH-funded research articles” in response to “Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research“.