The Desorption Ionization Interest Group Meetingat ASMS, organized by John Allison, is tentatively scheduled Monday June 3 during the lunch break. The focus will be “Analysis of Non-covalent Complexes by ESI and MALDI: Why are these experiments so hard to do?” See the ASMS Interest Group page for more information.

The ASMS Conference Registration deadline is April 19th. Overflow hotels are the Courtyard Marriott Village at Lake Buena Vista, the Fairfield Inn at Lake Buena Vista, and the Spring Hill Suites at Lake Buena Vista. You could also try your luck at other nearby hotels if you are so inclined.

The Web site for the Orlando World Center Marriott, site of the 50th Annual ASMS Conference, has a large set of panoramic views. You’ll need a plug-in for ipix format and a reasonably fast internet connection.

This just in from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry: 50th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry June 2 – 6, 2002 Orlando, Florida CONFERENCE HOTEL Marriott World Center, Rate: $146. Rooms at the Marriott are SOLD OUT. OVERFLOW HOTELS – shuttle buses will be provided. These hotels are new and surround a common plaza. There …

I’m still amazed by the Babel Fish translator, especially for pages that don’t even display properly on a standard US browser. Japanese to English translation is quite good, for example the Yokohama City University Mass Spectrometry Laboratory. Chinese to English does not appear to be as good, but the ideas come across as in this …

The Gyros Microfluidic CD is a sort of spinning microextraction disk for MALDI. It comes with its own sample prep juke box, but as yet no slot loading MALDI to play your biomolecular greatest hits.

Babel Fish translation of this site is now possible by clicking on the appropriate flag icon on the left side of the page. To get an idea of the power of this tool, take a look at the Spanish Mass Spectrometry Society, the Mass Spectrometry Society of Japan, or the German Mass Spectrometry Society Web …

Don’t forget to submit your Analytical Division abstract for the fall ACS meeting in Boston (April 8) before heading off to the spring ACS meeting in Orlando (April 7). Yes, it is on-line abstract submission, but the long lead-time from paper abstract days is still in place.

GenomeWeb is reporting that Applied Biosystems and MDS won their patent suit against Micromass to the tune of $47.5M. The patent in question is US4963736: Mass spectrometer and method and improved ion transmission, which ABI and MDS call technology for “triple quadrupole mass spectrometers.” Also see CNNMoney and Reuters financial news stories.

iMass 1.0 is a molecular mass and isotope distribution calculator for Mac OS X. It also computes molecular weights of peptides based on amino acid codes. A nice piece of software.