Description
Your final project will involve you choosing one of the following articles provided:
- Analysis of Drugs of Abuse
- Rapid Detection and Validated Quantification of Psychoactive CompoundsOnce you have chosen your article, you will write at least 1200 words (and up to a maximum of approximately 2500) about the principles of mass spectrometry, the analyte from the paper, and the plant from which that analyte is derived for an introduction. Your introduction will be written in full and complete sentences, with proper spelling and grammar, in paragraph style like any other lab report. A bullet-point report will be severely penalized. Some questions to consider while writing this portion of the introduction:
- What is the active ingredient being analyzed and quantified? What are the uses of this ingredient?
- What is the source for this ingredient? What plant does it come from? Where is this plant found?
- Is this analyte legal? Does it have differing legal statuses in different countries and regions? What is the legal status of the plant from which it is derived?
- How available is this ingredient? How common and easy to purchase is it? How common and easy to purchase is the plant it comes from?
- What are the medicinal applications of the ingredient? What about the plant?
- Are there ceremonial applications of the ingredient itself? Are there ceremonial applications forthe plant?
- What is the history of this ingredient and its use? What is the history of the plant?The other part of the discussion will focus on traditional mass spectrometry featuring an electron- ionization (EI) source. This should mostly take the form of an overview of the function of a mass spectrometer with an EI source and the applications for such a device. Some guiding questions for this section of the introduction might be:
- How does an EI create ions?
- What is the electron beam used for?
- How are charged particles accelerated into the quadrupole?
- What is the purpose of the quadrupole? Are there variants of this (hexapole, octupole)?
- How are the ions guided to the detector?
- How are the ions detected, in terms of the photoelectric effect?
- Why does fragmentation occur?
- List two forensic or industrial applications of mass spectrometry using EI as an ion sourceNext, since the paper specifically discusses the use of Direct Analysis in Real Time mass spectrometry (DART-MS), you will write 200-300 words focused specifically on DART-MS. This is separate from the 1200-2500 word intro discussed above. Compare and contrast this technique with traditional EI mass spectrometry. What are the advantages over traditional mass spectrometers? The disadvantages?Finally, you will discuss the paper’s technique. Consider the following:
- What was quantified?
- How was this quantified?
- Why is quantification with DART difficult?
- How was this quantification done to work around those difficulties?
- What was on the calibration curve, and how was it used to calculate the concentration of theunknown?
- What application does this method have?
- Was there a notable difference of active ingredient in the different samples?
- What, if any reason is given, is the reason for those differences?This section should be 300-500 words. You will then write a conclusion where you summarize the findings of the paper, focusing on how mass spectrometry was used to find the concentration of the active ingredient in the unknowns. Please remember that these questions are a guide, and are not there to limit what you discuss, nor do they each need to all be answered explicitly. This work is to be done independently, and will be submitted to Blackboard. Please note that Blackboard uses SafeAssign to check for plagiarism. SafeAssign checks both your paper against other submitted papers and your paper against web sources. Plagiarism is essentially the only way to receive a poor grade on this project.You will submit your rough draft to your TA on Blackboard, who will return it with corrections and feedback.
Please choose one of the attached papers to write your project report on.
https://blackboard.albany.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-41288…
https://blackboard.albany.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-41288…
Additional info: