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This review attempts to present a broad view of the technique laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), since its origin, fundamentals, sample preparation strategies, use of chemometric tools for data processing, the advantages and limitations with regard to qualitative and quantitative analysis, aplications and future trends as an analytical technique that is in consolidation in analytical chemistry. LIBS is a rapid and versatile, which is able of providing qualitative and quantitative analytical information for practically any sample, in a virtually non-destructive way, without any substantial sample preparation. The instrumentation is simple, robust, compact, and enables remote analysis. The advancement of the LIBS applications in the areas of agriculture, environmental, food, biological/pharmaceutical, forensic, metallurgy and electronic waste were discussed in detail in this review. We consider that this review will be an important tool concerning dissemination of the LIBS, mainly for audience of undergraduate courses, and disciplines related to instrumental analysis.

MIXTURE DESIGN AND OPTIMUM REGION VISUALIZATION WITH SPREADSHEETS AT EXCEL: A TUTORIAL. This tutorial shows how to perform the data treatment for mixture design with two and multiple responses. Two data sets from the literature were used to exemplify the calculations. A template in Excel was proposed to prepare contour plot and response surface to visualize the optimum region of the mixture, which usually is made with commercial computational programs. The desirability function was used in example 2 (optimization of 5 responses simultaneously), and a code also available for download was proposed. Besides, 21 videos were prepared to show all the details for the readers and, it is available on YouTube. With this tutorial, it is possible to learn in a practical fashion how to handle the data from mixture design and, the authors hope to contribute with the researchers in this area.