From the Editor
No Slowdown in Scientific Innovation
In the midst of 2009's market upheaval and economic turbulence, one thing has remained consistent, and more to the point, consistently positive: the rapid advancement of mass spectrometry technology and techniques. While the overall spectroscopy market has been predicted by many to show continued decline and by many others to have a major rally by year's end, the debate over the science behind the marketplace has never been in doubt.
David Walsh
Rapid advancements in MS instrumentation, the development of novel techniques, and even quantum leaps in software and data handling have all marked a year of great progress for practitioners of mass spectrometry and its numerous and varied hyphenated techniques.
Even a cursory glance at this issue's table of contents illustrates that there has been no slowdown in scientific innovation. An updated and expanded glossary of MS terms and acronyms leads off the issue, and even though Spectroscopy columnist Ken Busch last published this invaluable resource only three years ago, there have been so many changes in terminology in the interim that he needed an additional four pages to include them all. In addition, you'll find articles covering all of the hottest techniques and application areas, with research on food safety, pesticide analysis, and metabolite identification in pharmaceutical research, as well as research involving MS-based techniques from ICP-MS to LC–MS-IT-TOF.
If there is a hot technique or application area in the field of mass spectrometry, chances are you will find it covered here or in a future issue in the Current Trends in Mass Spectrometry series. And as always, we value not only your feedback but your contributions as well. As this series has grown, the amount of unsolicited content from the scientific community has also grown by leaps and bounds, so feel free to contact us with not only your opinions but with your own research ideas as well.
We look forward to hearing from you soon — enjoy the issue.
David Walsh
Editor-in-Chief
Advanced Spectroscopy Unlocks Secrets of Disordered Materials
June 18th 2025Researchers in Brazil have developed new optical techniques—SLIM, IC-scan, and RICO-scan—to probe the complex nonlinear properties of scattering and disordered materials, expanding potential applications in photonics, biomedicine, and thermometry.
Pet Food in the United Arab Emirates: An Interview with Lucy Semerjian
June 18th 2025A recent study conducted in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis examined the concentrations of ten metals in 52 commercially available wet and dry cat food samples, assessing their compliance with U.S. and European pet food safety standards. The lead author of this study, Lucy Semerjian, recently sat down with Spectroscopy to discuss the findings of her study.
