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GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY Scanning airline tickets for explosives When you check in for an airline flight, you pass through a metal detector, and your carry-on bag is x-rayed. If the controllers see something suspicious, they might swab you or your bag to check for residues from explosives—a rather tedious exercise that often yields false positives and backs up traffic at the security checkpoint. Soon, however, an MS-based technique developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and U.K.-based Mass Spec Analytical, Ltd., could scan
to ORNL’s Gary Van Berkel. “The nice thing about explosives is that they’re quite ‘sticky’,” Van Berkel says, “so it’s very difficult to remove them once you’ve got them on you, and they’re easily transferred to other materials [such as a boarding pass].” So, in effect, the system samples not only what’s on people’s hands, but their whole bodies and anything they may have with them, he adds. Mass Spec, which currently uses the device to examine materials such as bank-
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every passenger for explosives without delays or false positives. The instrument works by sampling the air that flows over a boarding pass as it’s fed through a scanner, such as the reader that processes your pass before you step onto a plane. The detection limit is 10–100 pg, depending on the compound, according
notes for drugs of abuse (Anal. Chem. 2000, 72, 397 A–403 A), has conducted tests on some 20,000 boarding passes from different airlines in different countries, says Richard Sleeman, the company’s scientific director. “The only difficulty we experienced was with thermally printed passes, because the heat [used in the
process] obviously makes them go black.” Although that’s not a problem for the analysis, he adds, passengers can no longer see what seat they’ve been assigned. Moreover, any false alarms are likely to be “nuisance” alarms—for example, detecting people who use heart medications containing nitroglycerine or legitimately handle explosives for mining, demolition work, or military applications, Sleeman notes. Would the technique have caught Richard Reid, who boarded a U.S.bound plane in December 2001 with explosives in his shoes? “We’d have been disappointed if he’d gotten through,” Sleeman says. However, detection depends on how an explosive is handled and packaged. Mass Spec has conducted analyses on suitcases after one person prepared a dummy bomb, someone else placed it in the suitcase, and a third person picked up the suitcase and carried it onto an aircraft. “In the vast majority of cases, we’ve been able to detect it on the boarding pass of the person twice removed from handling the explosive— in some cases even after they’ve thoroughly washed their hands,” Sleeman says. The company is now gearing up to conduct field trials at airports in Europe and the United States, he adds. a —Kris Christen
Interactive website aims to solve industry’s problems A new interactive website for industrial scientists who need help with analytical problems has been launched by LGC, a U.K. analytical laboratory. The Analytical Route Map (Anamap; www.anamap. co.uk) also offers advice and information on less common techniques, such as active ultrasound spectroscopy. Anamap is geared toward specialists using analytical tests to meet urgent deadlines—perhaps researchers working in small companies or alone, explains LGC’s Peter Lyne. It provides a framework for tackling analytical chemistry problems 366 A
and presents analytical techniques in a user-friendly format. The site, which is supported by the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry, is free to all users. First, a user is asked a series of multiple-choice questions to define the problem. Then, a series of possible solutions is generated. Finally, chromatographic methods and any relevant definitions can be printed in a table or a flow chart. Experts definitely see the need for such a tool. “Analytical chemistry is [very] broad, and the problems posed to analytical chemists can sometimes be
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beyond one person’s experience,” says John Green of BP Chemicals. “In the past, [chemists] have approached the local university or gone down to the library, but smaller companies may not have a library.” Martin Warman of Pfizer, Ltd., agrees that this resource is needed but would prefer to have it aimed at higher-level users. “The website is very comprehensive but starts at such a low level that it takes a good while to get to the solution,” he says. The recommendations are not really conclusive, he adds. They simply suggest a technique but do
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GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY not indicate how to do the analysis. Laurie Ritchie of Cranfield University’s Centre for Analytical Science thinks this resource would be especially useful when beginning a new analysis. “It is a great knowledge base on the traditional techniques and extremely enlightening on the more novel, more specialized stuff,” he says. However, Martin Day at Reading Scientific Services, Ltd. (RSSL), is more critical. “From a content point of view, we considered it simplistic for the experienced user and yet inadequate and unhelpful for the novice,” he says. “It presupposes you have access to the most sophisticated equipment and yet that you don’t know what it’s for or how to use it.” A team from RSSL—which performs
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analysis and consultancy services for the pharmaceutical, natural products, and
food industries—tested the site by inquiring about CE, a method the company doesn’t use. “We felt that it didn’t give sufficient [information] to be able to decide which of the three modes suggested would be most appropriate,” says Day. “The thumbnails were far too brief to be useful, and it presupposed a certain amount of knowledge specific to the technique that was being suggested.” Day is also concerned that LGC might use the e-mail addresses garnered from the log-in process for marketing purposes. A privacy statement on the website says that unspecified information could be used by the LGC Group for marketing, but Lyne says that e-mail addresses won’t be used that way. a —Maria Burke
Helping industry master chemical data The new Virtual Institute for Chemometrics and Industrial Metrology (VICIM; www.quimica.urv.es/quimio/VICIM/) is to be set up with € 2.2 million from the European Union (EU). The network of 13 centers spanning 12 European countries will offer consultancy and training services and undertake commissioned research relating to chemical measurement practices, data quality assessments, and standards. Its founders hope it will be operational by October and self-financing after four years. VICIM will bring together specialists working in chemometrics, which focuses on extracting meaningful information from large quantities of data, and metrology, which establishes data uncertainty, traceability, and validity. It was the brainchild of Luc Massart, director of the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis at Vrije Universiteit (Belgium). “To interpret chemical data, one needs knowledge of chemometrics and chemical metrology, but they are huge fields,” says Massart. “VICIM will provide expertise in both areas to users from industry, chemical and related research institutes, and service labs.” He also
hopes VICIM will participate in scientific projects, such as those funded by the EU. Industry needs VICIM because it doesn’t necessarily have the expertise, time, or money to investigate emerging new technologies in chemometrics, says Bernard Vandeginste at Unilever Research and Development–Vlaardingen (The Netherlands), who heads VICIM’s scientific advisory board. The ability to scout and evaluate chemometric techniques in collaboration with universities and to share the costs with other industries is very attractive, he says. And because the scope of any single academic group is limited, “the exploitation of the synergy here by having access to all expertise in Europe is a big advantage for us,” he adds. One chemometrician who preferred to be anonymous agrees that industry has a pressing need for chemometrics expertise. “It is very hard to hire expert chemometricians, and many industries do not have the work for permanent employees, so outsourcing is popular,” he says. However, he is uncertain that VICIM offers the best solution. “I am not sure that a big consortium of hand-picked
academics is the best approach,” he says. “The most successful consultancy organizations are tightly knit and often have divorced themselves from the founding academic groups.” He cites Infometrix in Seattle, which, he says, has very little to do with the University of Washington. He also points out that many industrial customers want custom software packages rather than consultancy, yet VICIM seems to involve more analytical chemists than programmers. John Tyrer at Loughborough University, who advises the U.K. government on metrology, doubts that industry will use VICIM’s services or be willing to share research results with other industrial partners. “In my experience, industry demands local resources,” he says. “It is not willing to pay for sending staff even relatively short distances. And remote learning just doesn’t work.” He also believes that national differences will be a further barrier. “The pressures on industry in Spain, for example, will be different from those in Denmark,” he explains, “so a Spaniard won’t be able to respond usefully to a request from Denmark.” a —Maria Burke
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