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Welcome to the December issue of EVISA's Speciation Newsletter !
Mercury is a toxic heavy metal being in the focus of EVISA's Speciation Newsletter nearly permanently. The reason is very simple: Mercury species belong to the most toxic chemical species and a very significant part of their release to our environment is man-made. Because of its special characteristics, being an element with a significant vapor pressure, it is part of our atmosphere and can travel long distances before being deposited. When discussing that atmospheric pollution is even reaching the oceans contaminating the fish and other marine organisms, we often heard the argument, that the "low" amount of mercury release to the atmosphere could not made responsible for contaminating the water masses of the oceans being thousands of meters deep. Researchers during the last decades have shown how mercury is entering the food web being present in the upper layers of the oceans, contaminating the whole system with high levels being reached depending on the trophic level of the organism. A University of Michigan-led research team now has shown that man-made mercury pollution is even reaching deep ocean organisms (see the news below).
Another group of metallic species solely released to the environment by human activity are gadolinium-based contrast agents used for medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In order not to be metabolized in the human body these compounds are designed to be very stable, and therefore reach our aquatic environment to a big part unchanged. To follow the fate of these compounds through waste water treatment into the aquatic environment, highly sensitive and selective speciation analysis is required. A group of Japanese researchers now have developed a HILIC separation of Gadolinium-based contrast agents using an aqueous mobile phase that can easily be introduced into the ICP-MS for gadolinium detection (see the news below).
The next bigger conference, where normally such topics would have been discussed, is the European Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry, originally scheduled for January 2021. Unfortunately, due to worldwide Coronavirus situation the EWCPS2021 has been postponed to 2023. We will keep you informed via our Diary of Events about the scheduling of conferences discussing topics related to speciation.
We thank you all for your interest and your fidelity and we hope that we can meet your expectation also during
the next year.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous Year 2021
Your EVISA team |
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NEWS
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EVISA is keeping you updated with what is going on in speciation analysis. In this section you will find news about the most current research results, about trends, legal issues and information from manufacturers in the field of speciation analysis.
With all the links to further information and publications the News archive is a valuable collection of "hot topics" in speciation analysis. We continuously update even former news with new links and information so that all news are actual all the time.
Speciation analysis of Gadolinium-based contrast agents using hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography hyphenated with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry by avoiding organic solvents
A group of Japanese researchers have developed a HILIC separation of Gadolinium-based contrast agents using an aqueous mobile phase.
 more
Man made mercury pollution is reaching even deep ocean organisms
The sinking carcasses of fish from near-surface waters deliver toxic mercury pollution to the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world’s oceans, including the deepest spot of them all: the 36,000-foot-deep Mariana Trench in the northwest Pacific.
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VACANCIES
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EVISA provides information about open positions for Ph.D. students, PostDocs and permanent staff in the field of speciation. Looking to fill a vacancy or needing a new career challenge? Either way this service is FREE. Many laboratories and research facilities (from Greenland to Crete) have already found their highly educated stuff through this service by EVISA. If you would like to post an open position here, please contact us at info@speciation.net !
Doctorates
University of Bern: Environmental Biogeochemistry/Soil Science to study the release and fate of antimony in soils upon flooding.
The Soil Science Group, Institute of Geography, University of Bern is looking for a motivated candidate who is interested in being part of our new project titled “Release, biomethylation and biovolatilization of antimony in soils. Drivers, mechanisms and global environmental implications.” This project is financed through an SNSF Project funding awarded to Prof. Dr. Adrien Mestrot and will take place at the Institute of Geography. It will take full advantage of the state-of-the-art analytical facilities present at our Institute (e.g. clean room, HPLC-ICP-MS, HPLC-ESI-MS, incubation facilities).
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Montanuniversität Leoben, Austria: TecEUS – Technology-critical Elements in Urban Spheres
Montanuniversität Leoben is offering a PhD position with the topic: Technology-critical elements in urban spheres’ in the field of analytical chemistry with a strong focus on mass spectrometry in a young
team within a highly transdisciplinary FWF-funded project.
more
Europe: Mercury Biogeochemistry
The EU H2020 programme is financing a Marie-Curie training network on 'mercury biogeochemistry' over the next four years (2020-2023). A total of 15 PhD positions are open throughout Europe on a variety of topics, some including ICPMS or mass spectrometry.
more
Postdoctoral
National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana: Laser ablation- ICP-MS
A Postdoctoral Position is open in the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia.
more
Other
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DIRECTORY
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EVISA's directory of scientist is a versatile tool to facilitate contact with scientists in the field of speciation and related sciences. The directory is fully searchable for names, addresses, research topics etc. You should bookmark this directory as an always up-to-date address book. (In order to hinder SPAM robots for collecting the E-mail accounts, we hide them in a special format).
More than 290 active scientists in the field of speciation analysis already joined the directory. Join this great directory that is extensively linked to all type of other information on this site, such as homepages, conferences and literature.
If your entry is still missing in this directory, please contact us at info@speciation.net.
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LINKS
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EVISA provides an easy access to external information. Our database contains more than 2800 links to relevant information from numerous top scientific resources spread over the whole Web. The database is searchable both via full-text and categories such as elements, type of species and type of information. We are permanently updating our links section.
If your web site is missing here, please e-mail your link information to info@speciation.net.
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This issue of evisa's Speciation Newsletter has been sent to you by EVISA, because you have registered for this service. If you would like to modify your user account, please log-in on EVISA's web portal at http://www.speciation.net with your username and password and edit your user account.
Please feel free to pass this Speciation Newsletter to others who may benefit from EVISA. If you have any contributions or suggestions, please send these to editors@speciation.net.
This is a post-only e-mail. Please do not reply to this message. For all inquiries, problems or suggestions regarding this service, please visit http://www.speciation.net or contact info@speciation.net
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Copyright 2020 EVISA
All rights reserved. Any unauthorized use, reproduction, or transfer of this message or its contents, in any medium, is strictly prohibited. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of EVISA.
Disclaimer
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. The Newsletter represents only the opinion of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Community. The European Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of the information provided.
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