Jiafa Zeng, Zhujun Yu, Majda Mekic, Jiangping Liu, Sheng Li, Gwendal Loisel, Wei Gao, Adrien Gandolfo, Zhen Zhou, Xinming Wang, Hartmut Herrmann, Sasho Gligorovski, and Xue Li.

Cooking emissions represent a major source of air pollution in the indoor environment and exhibit adverse health effects caused by particulate matter together with volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Ta-Hsuan Ong*, Ted Mendum, Geoff Geurtsen, Jude Kelley, Alla Ostrinskaya, Roderick Kunz

Canines remain the gold standard for explosives detection in many situations, and there is an ongoing desire for them to perform at the highest level. This goal requires canine training to be approached similarly to scientific sensor design. A sensitive, real-time (∼1 s) vapor analysis mass spectrometer was developed to provide tools, techniques, and knowledge to better understand, train, and utilize canines.

R. R. Farrell, J. Fahrentrapp, D. Garcia Gomez, P. M-L Sinues, and R. Zenobi

Even though sugar and acidity measurements are the most common indices of grape maturity, it is well recognized that they provide only basic information related to wine quality. In this preliminary study te authors use SESI-MS to analyze VOCs directly from intact grapes without sample concentration.

D. Garcia-Gomez, T. Gaisl, C. Barrios-Collado, Guillermo Vidal-de-Miguel, M. Kohler and R. Zenobi

Chemical analysis of aerosols collected from electronic cigarettes (ECs) has shown that these devices produce vapors that contain harmful and potentially harmful compounds. Conventional analytical methods used for the analysis of electronic cigarettes do not reflect the actual composition of the aerosols generated because they usually neglect the changes in the chemical composition that occur during the aerosol generation process and after collection.

Matthew J. Aernecke, Ted Mendum, Geoff Geurtsen, Alla Ostrinskaya, Roderick R. Kunz*

A rapid method for vapor pressure measurement was developed and used to derive the vapor pressure curve of the thermally labile peroxide-based explosive.

J-C Wolf, M. Schaer, P. Siegenthaler, R. Zenobi

A novel active capillary dielectric barrier discharge plasma ionization (DBDI) technique for mass spectrometry is applied to the direct detection of thirteen chemical warfare related compounds, including sarin, and compared to secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) in terms of selectivity and sensitivity. The investigated compounds include an intact chemical warfare agent and structurally related molecules, hydrolysis products and/or precursors of highly toxic nerve (G-series, V-series and "new" nerve agents), blistering and incapacitating warfare agents. …

C. Berchtold, L. Meier, R. Steinhoff, R. Zenobi

Breath is considered to be an easily accessible matrix, whose chemical composition relates to compounds present in blood. Therefore many metabolites are expected in exhaled breath, which may be used in the future for the development of diagnostic methods. In this article, a new strategy to discriminate between exhaled endogenous metabolites and exhaled exogenous contaminants by direct high-resolution mass spectrometry is introduced.

Christian Berchtold; Stefan Schmid; Lukas Meiera and Renato Zenobi.

γ-Hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and γ-butyrolactone (GBL) are used as “date rape drugs” since they cause catalepsy and memory loss. A new application of secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) mass spectrometry for in situ detection of GHB and GBL in drinks and body fluids is introduced.