Recent Advances in Analytical Techniques

Investigation of the water samples for content of bulk, trace and heavy metals is of great importance for the humanity. For this purpose, a large number of analytical techniques have been developed. Beside analytical techniques, there are systems and methods for pretreatment and preparation of the samples for analysis. There are also procedures for sampling and sample preservation which are essential for the final result. There are several available instrumental techniques for the analysis of metals in water samples (AAS, GFAAS, ICP-OES, ICP-MS, etc.), which can be divided into several groups such as volumetric, spectrophotometric, electrochemical, chromatographic, etc. All these techniques may be coupled among themselves and with techniques for sample preparation such as preconcentration techniques. This improves the performance of the applied techniques and decrease the possibility of the contamination of samples. This chapter provides an insight into all these processes and issues from sampling, sample conservation, pretreatment and preparation to the application of different analytical techniques for analysis of water samples. 

Due to the chemical complexity and wide concentration range of lipids in biological samples, it is necessary to apply different analytical strategies to identify and quantify lipid species and amounts. In this book chapter, we mainly introduced the techniques, workflow, and applications of lipidomics in food nutrition and health. First, we mainly introduced the common lipidomics techniques, such as direct infusion mass spectrometry-based techniques, chromatographic separation mass spectrometry-based techniques, mass spectrometry imaging, and nuclear magnetic resonance. Second, we described the common lipidomics workflow, including sample preparation, MS data acquisition, and data processing. Third, we mainly discussed the application of lipidomics in food nutrition and health. Finally, we briefly summarized and discussed the future perspectives of lipidomics. All these discussions suggested that lipidomics could ensure food quality, examine dietary lipid nutrition, and prevent and detect diseases.

Herbicide residues in crop, soil and contamination of groundwater have become a worldwide concern in recent decades as their presence at low concentrations entails an unacceptable risk to human health and non-target organism. The magnitude of exposure and concentration at a particular time may trigger bioaccumulation and bio magnifications of herbicide residues and their degraded products, causing mutagenic, carcinogenic and teratogenic effects on humans, flora and fauna and microbiological living system. These atrocious circumstances have raised concern about their presence in environmental compartments and necessitate the continuous monitoring of herbicide residues in various matrices. However, determining the herbicide residues in the soil and crop is challenging because of the very low concentration of analyte, complicated sample matrices and low maximum residue limit (MRL) imposed by the regulatory agencies. The detection limits imposed by environment quality legislation can only be achieved by using appropriate sample preparation techniques, which comprise isolation and concentration of the analytes with nominal matrix interference, thus allowing its facile detection and quantification through instrumental analysis. In recent years, the requirements for separation and pre-concentration procedures have undergone numerous changes, and various sample preparation methods have been used. The final step in the analytical process involves the identification and quantification of the herbicide residues using suitable instrumentation, and over the years, herbicides have been determined by spectrophotometric, chromatographic, electrochemical, electrophoretic, hyphenated and biosensors. This book chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the novelties and the advantages of different techniques employed for the detection of herbicides and their transformation products in environmental samples.

The quick development in nanotechnology has raised the status of this modern technology owing to the decrease in the sizes of structures and devices. There has been considerable dispute concerning the future consequences of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has the probable ability to design many new and novel materials and devices in smaller dimensions with broad-range applications in medicine, electronics and sustainable energy production. Nano porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) films consisting of self-organized hexagonal arrays of invariable parallel nanochannels have been widely applied as the building block to fabricate various functional nanostructures of different morphologies such as nanoparticles, nanowires and nanotubes. These functional nanostructures can be potentially utilized in various applications like magnetic storage media, optoelectronics, bio/chemical sensors, photonics and plasmonics. This chapter describes the different fabrication processes of AAO films in detail along with citation of a few interesting applications.

Reliable scientific answers to questions posed by social sciences, like archeology, to exact sciences, like physics or chemistry, depend not only on meaningfully posed questions, well-selected and pretreated samples and accurate and precise measurements, but also on an area of interpretation that exists between the two fields. This interdisciplinary area consists of many representations of measurement data, notions, and concepts that evolve through solving particular problems. However, this set of concepts is not always determinate, clear and consistent, obscuring the problem and obstructing the interpretation of results. The chapter explains this starting with a concrete example of measurements of archaeological glass using simultaneous PIXE/PIGE measurements, explaining general and technical details of measurements, and proceeds to show how the measurements are treated, processed, and displayed in ways to comply with the concepts, interpret the results, and provide adequate answers to the questions posed by archeology. The chapter also offers some possible improvements through a few novel concepts and ways of interpretation.