Word: chromatographer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Turning space technology into a clinical tool took some ingenuity. Starting in the 1990s, Pillinger, Morgan and other researchers from the institute have worked to shrink a sophisticated piece of lab equipment used to identify and analyze matter: a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (GCMS). Their challenge was to make the device - sometimes the size of a small car - light enough and sturdy enough to be sent into space. Pillinger always planned to look for terrestrial applications of the mini GCMS once their space research was done, and at Wellcome's request, Morgan began in 2005 to design a version that...
Just how you choose which foods you burn in your chromatograph can make a difference too. A small strawberry may taste different from a plump strawberry; a just-ripe one will taste different from one that has gone pulpier and sweeter. For subtler flavorings, technologists may not want to touch the fruit at all, instead simply sampling the volatile gases it gives off. IFF scientists sometimes place a glass shroud around a carefully cultivated plant in a field or greenhouse, draw off the sweet, rich air with a syringe and use that as their flavor template. "It gives...
Equally impressive are the new gas chromatography and mass spectrometry machines. To test a bit of evidence whose chemical composition is unknown, investigators place it in a gas chromatograph--essentially a high-intensity oven--where it's vaporized. The resulting gas is funneled into a coil-shaped structure lined with chemicals that cause the components in the gas to exit at different rates. These components are then sorted by atomic weight and converted into a graph. Investigators then compare the readout with a reference library, determining what the evidence is made...