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This article presents information on a conference Jornadas de Análisis Instrumental (JAI), held in November 2002, at Barcelona, Spain. The meeting of JAI describes a very interesting approach to the extraction, purification and characterization of synthetic crudes of peptide hormones of therapeutical interest. The rigorous and useful methodology proposed is characteristic of analytical proteomics and it is being imported to trace element speciation investigations. It could be said that nowadays the JAI in Spain is playing a role which is reminiscent of that played in the U.S. by the well known Pittsburgh Conference: it is a great occasion for manufacturers to show the latest instruments and methodologies of modern analytical science in the instrument exhibition to scientists and users attending the JAI scientific meeting.

Reports on bioanalytical chemistry in Spain. Information on papers presented at the 11th meeting of Jornadas de Análisis Instrumental in Barcelona in November 2005; Complexity of real biological samples.

In the present work, the analysis of seven fullerenes (C and C fullerenes and five functionalised fullerenes) has been performed in river samples collected in the vicinities of Barcelona (Catalonia, NE of Spain). The results of 48 samples (25 river waters, 12 river sediments and 11 wastewater effluents) are presented. Extracts of river water, river sediments and wastewater effluents were analysed by liquid chromatography (LC), using a pyrenylpropyl group bonded silica based column, coupled to a high-resolution mass spectrometer (HRMS), using a dual ion source, atmospheric pressure photoionisation/atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation source (APPI/APCI). The novel methodology presents good chromatographic separation, excellent selectivity and instrumental limits of quantification (ILOQ) in the femtogram order. Method limits of quantification (MLOQ) ranged from 2.9 to 17 pg/l and from 3.2 to 31 pg/l in surface waters and wastewaters, respectively. In wastewater effluents, the sums of C and C ranged from 0.5 to 9.3 ng/l. In surface waters, C fullerene was the most ubiquitous compound, being detected in 100 % of the samples in concentrations from 31 pg/l to 4.5 ng/l, while C concentrations ranged from less than the method limits of detection (MLOD) to 1.5 ng/l. The presence of fullerenes in both the large particulate (diameter Ø > 450 nm) and the colloidal ( Ø < 450 nm) fractions of surface waters should be noticed. In sediments, the concentrations of fullerenes were between the MLOD and 34.4 pg/g. In addition, nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) was used for the characterisation of water samples in terms of nanoparticle number concentration and size distribution. As far as our knowledge is concerned, this is the first time that NTA has been used for the characterisation of complex river waters with an environmental focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiway and multiset data analysis extensions of the multivariate curve resolution alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) method are proposed for the investigation of the temporal distribution of the pollution by nitric oxide (NO) and ozone (O) in one sampling station in the urban centre of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain), during the years 2000-2006. Different specific studies were performed considering the annual and pluriannual contamination by these two contaminants, individually or in combination using different data matrix augmentation strategies and multiway and multiset data analysis models. Daily, hourly and annual profiles were estimated describing different patterns and summarising the main contamination processes. The daily and night trends found were mainly attributed to traffic and photochemical processes favoured by light radiation. Moreover, winter-summer seasonal trends were also clearly detected and their changes over different years assessed. The extension MCR-ALS method to multiset data analysis using different constraints like non-negativity, trilinearity and interaction among components is confirmed to be a powerful method to improve the interpretability of the different contamination patterns in atmospheric contamination studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]