Teledyne CETAC Blog

Imagine going on a safari 17,000 years in the past. An international team of researchers was able to do just that by reconstructing the lifetime movement patterns of an ancient woolly mammoth. Mammoths went extinct at the end of the last ice age, so little is known about how these prehistoric giants lived—and died. But thanks to modern analytical techniques, we can begin to understand the habits of these long-gone creatures and compare them to animals still alive today.

Climate scientists hoping to unlock the secrets of a 1.5-million-year-old ice core soon to be recovered from Antarctica have a new tool at their disposal. The Department of Environmental Sciences at Ca’Foscari University of Venice has recently assembled a new state-of-the-art LA-ICP-MS setup dedicated to ice core analysis.

Ice core science is one of the cornerstones of climate research that aims to gain a fuller picture of what our planet looked like from decades to hundreds of millennia ago. Due to the flow of glacier ice, the oldest, deepest layers of ice are also often the thinnest. Unlocking the data contained in these thin layers is a challenge requiring new high-resolution techniques.

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A team of world-renowned scientists from Boston University School of Medicine have found that a potentially harmful chemical used in MRI scans can get left behind in sensitive areas of the brain. Contrast media (sometimes called 'dyes') are chemicals injected into the body to enhance the quality of MRI images. One of the biggest concerns in radiology in recent years is the safety of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

This past week saw the publication of yet another exceptional academic paper from Prof Vanhaecke’s A&MS research group at Ghent University.

The paper in Analytical Chemistry is titled “Sub-µm nanosecond LA-ICP-MS imaging at pixel acquisition rates above 250 Hz via a low-dispersion setup” and is authored by Dr. Stijn van Malderen, Dr. Thibaut Van Acker and Prof. Frank Vanhaecke. It provides an in-depth characterization of the Cobalt ablation chamber now released by Teledyne Photon Machines as an integral part of the Iridia laser ablation system.

After more than 18 months of extensive field testing there is a wealth of data presented, clearly demonstrating the importance of scientific collaborations when developing analytical laser ablation capabilities and giving real credibility to the commercial specifications highlighted in Teledyne’s marketing literature. This system is truly engineered by science.

Teledyne CETAC and Arkansas State University completed a study to determine the concentration and normalized profiles of elements in the organs of a beach harbor porpoise (Phocaena phocaena). The carcass was stranded off the coast of Cape Cod, Ma, in 2003. Multiple elements (including Hg, Se, Cd, Zn, Cu, and Na) were detected and measured in liver and kidney samples. A thermoelectrically cooled sub-zero laser ablation sample cell (Hyphenated Solutions, Jonesboro, AR) was created for the analysis of porpoise liver and kidney tissues. The temperature-controlled cooling cell has a user programmable operational range between 0 and -30 degrees Celsius. The cooling cell was used to preserve the integrity of the sample during ablation and to evaluate the affect of sub-zero temperatures on reproducibility.

Scientists from the University of Queensland and Trinity College Dublin studied the most active volcano in Europe, Sicily’s Mount Etna, to better understand its eruption history. Currently, there is no way to predict volcanic eruptions, but tiny crystals formed prior to an eruption, may provide valuable evidence of the process that leads up to and the timing of volcanic activity, information that may help in building an early warning system.

Teledyne CETAC and TOFWERK AG (Switzerland) recently announced the installation of the world’s first combination of an Analyte Excite excimer laser ablation system with HelEx II sample chamber and ARIS rapid aerosol introduction system coupled to an icpTOF 2R mass spectrometer at the University of Vienna. The system will be used for imaging element concentration distribution in biological samples, and will enable transmission of aerosol generated from laser pulses to the mass spectrometer in less than 30 milliseconds.

Trace element maps give unique insight to homogeneity, enrichment, and spatial distribution of elements in solid samples. Depending on the sample type, we can gain a wealth of information from sample maps beyond what is available from single or multiple spot analyses or single lines/rasters.  

Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) provides high spatial lateral resolution and can be used to construct trace element maps with minimal destruction of the sample. A study using LA-ICP-MS completed by Teledyne CETAC, Arkansas Biosciences Institute and Arkansas State University compiled and interpreted elemental maps for three distinct sample types: banded iron formation (BIF), human teeth and fish otolith.