Search results for "SAMPLE"
showing 10 items of 2270 documents
Toward adjustment profiles for lower secondary student-athletes in the Finnish dual career context: A mixed-methods approach
2022
Engagement, burnout, and experiences are central concepts for understanding student-athlete adjustment in a dual career (DC) environment. As part of a larger 3-year, lower secondary sports schools pilot project, the aim of this study was to examine student-athletes’ DC adjustment in Finnish lower secondary sports schools at the end of the second academic year. By combining quantitative and qualitative methods, we sought to (a) identify adjustment profiles among student-athletes based on measures of engagement and burnout in school and sport and (b) to extract experiences that describe the distribution of student-athletes in the profiles. A latent profile analysis using questionnaire data fr…
Audit and Earnings Management in Spanish SMEs
2016
Abstract Evidence about the relation between earnings management and voluntary audits is scarce, and there is no research about the effectiveness of mandatory audits to improve earnings quality. Using a sample of Spanish SMEs, where some companies are mandatorily audited and some are exempt from audit, we examine if audits, either mandatory or voluntary, help to improve accounting quality by constraining earnings management. We also examine differences between voluntary and mandatory audits, as well as the role of Big 4 and Middle-Tier auditors. After controlling for other characteristics that affect earnings management, we find that audited companies have lower absolute discretionary accru…
A comparative study on sample preparation procedures for supplementary foods by ICP-OES: Green chemistry considerations
2015
An inductively coupled plasma optical emission (ICP-OES) method was developed for the simultaneous determination of major, minor and trace elements in food. Preliminary studies focused on selecting suitable operational conditions in order to provide the highest sensitivity and to maximize the number of analytes to be determined without spectral or matrix interference. Ruthenium and rhenium were evaluated as internal standards and samples were analyzed at different dilution levels. Furthermore, a comparative study was carried out by using three sample digestion methods, microwave-assisted digestion with HNO3/H2O2, dry ashing and dry ashing with Mg(NO3)2/MgO as an ashing aid. Adequate precisi…
Sample size in the monitoring of benthic macrofauna in the profundal of lakes: evaluation of the precision of estimates
1996
We discuss here the influence of sample size (number of replicates) on the accuracy and precision of the results when sampling profundal benthos with an Ekman grab according to the Finnish standard, SFS 5076, which is equivalent to the Swedish and Norwegian standards. The aim was to find criteria for choosing a sample size which would avoid any powerful influence of chance on the results without entailing an unreasonable amount of work for monitoring purposes.
Development of microextraction techniques in combination with GC-MS/MS for the determination of mycotoxins and metabolites in human urine.
2017
Simple and highly efficient sample preparation procedures, namely, dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction and salting-out liquid–liquid extraction for the analysis of ten Fusarium mycotoxins and metabolites in human urine were compared. Various parameters affecting extraction efficiency were carefully evaluated. Under optimal extraction conditions, salting-out liquid–liquid extraction showed a better accuracy (84–96%) and precision (<14%) than dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction. Hence, a multibiomarker method based on salting-out liquid–liquid extraction followed by gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was proposed. Satisfactory results in terms of validation were achiev…
Development of a GC–MS/MS strategy to determine 15 mycotoxins and metabolites in human urine
2014
The widespread mycotoxins contamination of food commodities has made the monitoring of their levels essential. To overcome the disadvantages of the indirect approach by food analysis, detection of mycotoxin as biomarkers in urine provides a useful and specific data for exposure assessment to these food contaminants. In this work, a sensitive, rapid and accurate method based on gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry procedure to determine 15 mycotoxins and metabolites in human urine was optimized and validated taking into consideration the guidelines specified in Commission Decision 2002/657/EC and 401/2006/EC. A salting-out assisted acetonitrile-based extraction was used for sample pre…
Use of the modified quick easy cheap effective rugged and safe sample preparation approach for the simultaneous analysis of type A- and B-trichothece…
2010
A suitable extraction and purification method for the simultaneous liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) determination of five mycotoxins, three type A, diacetoxyscirpenol (DAS), T-2 toxin (T-2) and HT-2 toxin (HT-2), and two type B-trichothecenes, deoxynivalenol (DON) and nivalenol (NIV), has been optimised using a modified "Quick Easy Cheap Effective Rugged and Safe" (QuEChERS) method. Different solvents were studied in the extraction procedure to obtain better recoveries, which ranged from 86 to 108%, using a 85/15 (v/v) mixture of methanol/acetonitrile. The values obtained for recovery, repeatability and reproducibility of the optimized method are in agreement with Commission …
Assisted baseline subtraction in complex chromatograms using the BEADS algorithm.
2017
The data processing step of complex signals in high-performance liquid chromatography may constitute a bottleneck to obtain significant information from chromatograms. Data pre-processing should be preferably done with little (or no) user supervision, for a maximal benefit and highest speed. In this work, a tool for the configuration of a state-of-the-art baseline subtraction algorithm, called BEADS (Baseline Estimation And Denoising using Sparsity) is developed and verified. A quality criterion based on the measurement of the autocorrelation level was designed to select the most suitable working parameters to obtain the best baseline. The use of a log transformation of the signal attenuate…
Sample Preparation Improvement in Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Determination in Olive Oils by Gel Permeation Chromatography and Liquid Chromatogr…
2005
Abstract The determination of 15 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in olive oil samples has been improved in order to obtain a fast methodology with a low limit of detection through the combination of liquid–liquid extraction with acetonitrile and preparative gel permeation chromatography (GPC) prior to the injection of purified extracts into a C18 column. Acetonitrile–water was used as the mobile phase with a gradient from 50 to 95%, w/w, acetonitrile in 30 min. The oven temperature was maintained at 15°C, and fluorometric detection was made at a fixed excitation wavelength of 264 nm and variable, optimal emission wavelength for each analyte ranging from 352 nm for 11-H-benzo(b)fluor…
Flame atomic absorption analysis of gold in jewelry samples
1990
A new procedure is proposed for the determination of gold by flame atomic absorption in jewelry samples. The method is based on the acid digestion of 10 mg of sample in a microwave oven and on the on-line dilution, using a three-way valve. The dynamic range of the technique is extended to 100 mg/l gold solutions and using a weighted bracketing method for the treatment of the results, accuracy errors lower than 2% can be found in the analysis of real samples as compared with those obtained by fire assay. The method is very fast and implies only little damage to the jewelry samples.