Search results for " ionization"

Measurement of low-ppm mixing ratios of water vapor in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere using chemical ionization mass spectrometry

2018

A chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS) instrument has been developed for the fast, precise, and accurate measurement of water vapor (H2O) at low mixing ratios in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UT/LS). A low-pressure flow of sample air passes through an ionization volume containing an α-particle radiation source, resulting in a cascade of ion-molecule reactions that produce hydronium ions (H3O+) from ambient H2O. The production of H3O+ ions from ambient H2O depends on pressure and flow through the ion source, which were tightly controlled in order to maintain the measurement sensitivity independent of changes in the airborne sampling environment. The instrument w…

2011

Abstract. The detection of primary biological material in submicron aerosol by means of thermal desorption/electron impact ionization aerosol mass spectrometry was investigated. Mass spectra of amino acids, carbohydrates, small peptides, and proteins, all of which are key building blocks of biological particles, were recorded in laboratory experiments. Several characteristic marker fragments were identified. The intensity of the marker signals relative to the total organic mass spectrum allows for an estimation of the content of primary biological material in ambient organic aerosol. The developed method was applied to mass spectra recorded during AMAZE-08, a field campaign conducted in the…

Urban organic aerosol composition in eastern China differs from north to south:Molecular insight from a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (Orbi…

2021

Air pollution by particulate matter in China affects human health, the ecosystem and the climate. However, the chemical composition of particulate aerosol, especially of the organic fraction, is still not well understood. In this study, particulate aerosol samples with a diameter of ≤2.5 µm (PM2.5) were collected in January 2014 in three cities located in northeast, east and southeast China, namely Changchun, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Organic aerosol (OA) in the PM2.5 samples was analyzed by an ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatograph (UHPLC) coupled to a high-resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometer in both negative mode (ESI-) and positive mode electrospray ionization (ESI+). After non-targe…

Ab initio angle- and energy-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy with time-dependent density-functional theory

2012

We present a time-dependent density-functional method able to describe the photoelectron spectrum of atoms and molecules when excited by laser pulses. This computationally feasible scheme is based on a geometrical partitioning that efficiently gives access to photoelectron spectroscopy in time-dependent density-functional calculations. By using a geometrical approach, we provide a simple description of momentum-resolved photoemission including multiphoton effects. The approach is validated by comparison with results in the literature and exact calculations. Furthermore, we present numerical photoelectron angular distributions for randomly oriented nitrogen molecules in a short near-infrared…

Importance of Propionibacterium acnes hemolytic activity in human intervertebral discs: A microbiological study

2018

Most patients with chronic lower back pain (CLBP) exhibit degenerative disc disease. Disc specimens obtained during initial therapeutic discectomies are often infected/colonized with Propionibacterium acnes, a Gram-positive commensal of the human skin. Although pain associated with infection is typically ascribed to the body's inflammatory response, the Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus was recently observed to directly activate nociceptors by secreting pore-forming α-hemolysins that disrupt neuronal cell membranes. The hemolytic activity of P. acnes in cultured disc specimens obtained during routine therapeutic discectomies was assessed through incubation on sheep-blood agar. T…

Studies in organic mass spectrometry.VIII. The electron impact mass spectra of 2,4-substituted-3-diazo-5-phenylpyrroles

1990

The electron impact mass spectra (75 eV) of the β-diazopyrroles always show the molecular ions and undergo as the main fragmentation process the elimination of nitrogen followed by ring opening reactions leading to benzonitrile either as neutral or charged species. The peaks at 26 amu below the molecular ions, which are a general feature of these spectra, are due to the presence of the corresponding pyrroles which are formed by reductive reactions during the vaporization process of the samples.

Reactivity of anticancer metallodrugs with serum proteins: New insights from size exclusion chromatography-ICP-MS and ESI-MS

2010

International audience; A method based on the coupling of high resolution size-exclusion liquid chromatography using a polymer stationary phase with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was developed to study the interactions of two metallodrugs - cisplatin and RAPTA-T - with the serum proteins albumin and transferrin. In contrast to previous approaches, the technique allowed the total recovery of the metals from the column and was able to discriminate between the different species of the metallodrugs and their complexes with the proteins at femtomolar detection levels. Metal binding was found to be dependent on the protein concentration and on the incubation time of the sample. Cis…

The complex formation of tetracyclohexylammonium C1-resorcinarene with various guests - an electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron re…

2008

The complex formation of a tetraammonium C1-resorcinarene (R+4HCl) was studied using electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (ESI-FTICR) mass spectrometry. Although R+4HCl easily loses its counter ions in the ESI process, a neutral self-assembled structure with an intramolecular circular hydrogen-bonded 16-membered -N(+)-H ... X(-) ... H-N(+)- array with ammonium ion as the charge-giving species was observed in the gas phase. In addition to chloride, several other counter ions were also studied. The size and basicity of the counter ion as well as the size of the charge-giving cation strongly affected the gas-phase stability of the self-assembled system. H/D exchang…

Sulfated Lupane Triterpene Derivatives and a Flavone C-Glycoside from Gypsophila repens

2007

A new sulfated lupane triterpene, Gypsophilin (1), and its glucosyl ester, Gypsophilinoside (2) were isolated from the roots of Gypsophila repens whereas a new flavone C-glycoside (3) was obtained from the aerial parts. Their structures were established as (3beta)-3-O-(sulfo)lup-20(29)-en-23,28-dioic acid (1), (3beta)-3-O-(sulfo)lup-20(29)-en-23,28-dioic acid -28-O-beta-D-glucopyranosyl ester (2) and luteolin-7-O-alpha-L-arabinopyranosyl-6-C-beta-glucopyranoside (3) by spectroscopic methods such as 1D and 2D NMR, HR-ESI-MS and FAB-MS.

Evidence of a sudden increase in the nuclear size of proton-rich silver-96

2021

Understanding the evolution of the nuclear charge radius is one of the long-standing challenges for nuclear theory. Recently, density functional theory calculations utilizing Fayans functionals have successfully reproduced the charge radii of a variety of exotic isotopes. However, difficulties in the isotope production have hindered testing these models in the immediate region of the nuclear chart below the heaviest self-conjugate doubly-magic nucleus 100Sn, where the near-equal number of protons (Z) and neutrons (N) lead to enhanced neutron-proton pairing. Here, we present an optical excursion into this region by crossing the N = 50 magic neutron number in the silver isotopic chain with th…