Pittsburgh Conference Research Articles

UPBEAT OUTLOOK AT PITTCON

SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT company executives at the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon) last week in Orlando, Fla., said the business outlook is much more promising now than at this time last year during the depths of the recession. Customer uncertainty that pervaded last year’s Pittcon has ebbed, observed John A. Roush, president of PerkinElmer’s environmental health business. “We are now seeing the beginning of a recovery,” he said. Still, to capture customers on the fence about buying instruments, firms are promoting what Bruker Corp., for instance, described as “affordable, rock-solid” equipment. Many executives are disappointed that government stimulus spending hasn’t had as big an impact on their bottom lines as they’d originally hoped. But they anticipate stimulus dollars will continue to be spent on scientific instruments in 2010. Waters Corp. received “limited” stimulus money last year, said Rohit Khanna, vice president of marketing, but he hopes for more th...

PITTCON 2010 IN ORLANDO

PITTCON 2010 will be held on Feb. 28 through March 5 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. Organized annually by more than 100 volunteers and nine staff members, the conference is sponsored by the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh. The first Pittsburgh Conference, which included an exposition of lab equipment, opened on Feb. 15, 1950, and featured 14 exhibitors, 25 booths, and 56 technical papers; it drew 800 attendees. Pittcon has come a long way. At C&EN’s press time, this year’s conference has 904 exhibitors registered to make presentations in 1,940 booths. Nearly 300 technical sessions and 100 short courses are planned. All conference information, including registration and housing, is on the Web at www.pittcon.org . Registration for the entire conference costs $190, or $25 for students with a valid ID. One-day registration is $95. The ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry is again programming at Pittcon. ...

An Important Function of the Pittsburgh Conference is to Recognize and Honor Scientists Who Have Made Outstanding Contributions to Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy

An Important Function of the Pittsburgh Conference is to Recognize and Honor Scientists Who Have Made Outstanding Contributions to Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy

PITTCON RETURNS TO THE ‘BIG EASY’

THE PITTSBURGH CONFERENCE on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon), one of the world’s largest scientific meetings, rolled into town in its usual big way early this month. For 2008, that town was New Orleans, and the visit was belated. Pittcon was originally scheduled to be there in 2007, but it moved to Chicago when conference organizers decided that New Orleans needed an extra year to recover from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when most of the city was flooded. The storm that all but drowned the “Big Easy” three years ago was little evident to meeting attendees staying near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where Pittcon 2008 was held, largely because that area is high enough in elevation to have been spared from flooding. Thousands of people, however, sought shelter at the convention center during the storm, and some died there. “Damage inside was extensive,” said Pittcon 2008 President John A. Varine. ...

PITTCON’S RETURN TO THE CRESCENT CITY

THIS YEAR’S PITTSBURGH Conference & Exposition on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy (Pittcon 2008) will be held from Sunday, March 2, through Thursday, March 6, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. The meeting brings together scientific and technical professionals to share the latest information about analytical science and instrumentation. Pittcon 2008 will open the technical program on Sunday afternoon, starting at 1 PM. The afternoon will feature symposia, poster presentations, and contributed technical sessions, followed by an award presentation, plenary lecture, and a poster mixer. The American Chemical Society Division of Analytical Chemistry (ANYL) will once again cosponsor a portion of the Pittcon 2008 technical program. ANYL will host seven invited symposia, six contributed sessions, and a poster session. Conferee networking sessions are back for Pittcon 2008. Each two-hour session will provide an opportunity for conferees to meet and discuss topics of mutual intere...

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 2008 Pittsburgh Conference

George Gallatig and John Petrakis Introducing a standardized enterprise-wide solution can lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) for laboratory information management systems (LIMSs). Electronic notebooks (ELNs) can improve the personal productivity of analysts working in research and quality-control laboratories. Data management and data warehouse systems provide ready access to information, and can help reduce search time and duplication of effort by knowledge workers. Providing integrated analytical tool kits and training for scientists can reduce some of the chaos, support costs for research, and provide new opportunities for sharing and building on innovative ideas. We intuitively know that there is value in implementing these laboratory informatics solutions. These solutions help companies in all industries to produce better products with shorter development cycle times and at lower cost. However, business decisions to acquire them have to be based on the review of a business case including a cost justification. This presentation will present ideas and a model for calculating the benefits for laboratory informatics solutions. The model will include rules of thumb based on industry experience for projecting productivity improvements resulting from the introduction of technology to replace functions typically performed manually like data entry, data access, or compilation of reports. However, projections of productivity improvement are only part of the story. These need to be translated into actual benefits that are measurable by the corporation in terms of speed, productivity, or cost. The author will describe strategies for accomplishing this. These will be supported by examples. This will be a valuable presentation for anyone involved in looking at the impact of the introduction of laboratory informatics technology, whether developing a business case or looking at benefits being captured by systems that have been implemented.

PITTCON AWARDS 2007

AN IMPORTANT FUNCTION of the annual Pittsburgh Conference & Exhibition on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy, held this year on Feb. 25-March 2, is to honor scientists who have made outsta...

Pittsburgh conference and exhibition: A drop of interest

Pittsburgh conference and exhibition: A drop of interest

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 2007 Pittsburgh Conference

This article has no abstract.

BETTER THAN EVER AT PITTCON 2006

PITTCON, THE PITTSBURGH CONFERENCE ON ANALYtical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy, was first held in Pittsburgh in 1950. This year, Pittcon held its 57th meeting in Orlando, Fla., where it delivered on its annual promise provide a wide range of edifying presentations on analytical chemistry and introduce a plethora of the latest analytical instruments for research and industry. The 2006 meeting saw the use of innovative technologies develop instruments that, at least in some cases, are smaller and cheaper, offer higher performance, and are overall just better than ever before. Not be completely outshone by the novelty of some of the instruments at this year's Pittcon exposition, conference organizers introduced several firsts of their own. For the first time this year, Pittcon's technical program began on Sunday afternoon to reduce overlap with concurrent sessions and with the expo later in the week, said Pittcon 2006 President Kevin J. McKaveney at an opening ...

New Instruments at the 2005 Pittsburgh Conference

New Instruments at the 2005 Pittsburgh Conference

PITTCON 2005 TAKES ORLANDO BY STORM

OVER 21,000 CONFEREES, EXHIBITORS, AND MEDIA took sunny and mild Orlando, Fla., by storm for Pittcon 2005 earlier this month—while another storm, snowy kind, simultaneously hit mid-Atlantic and Northeast. At this year's Pittcon, Pittsburgh Conference & Exposition on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy, 1,132 companies showed thousands of analytical instruments and laboratory products in 2,474 exhibit booths, and technical program featured 2,433 scientific presentations. The number of exhibitors fell 5% from 2004, and number of booths was down 9%. At about 21,200, total registration was down 15% from last year Nevertheless, the meeting is going well, with a lot of activity on exhibit floor and in hallways and program rooms, Pittcon 2005 President Daniel A. Wilson, managing director of Clark Laboratories,Monroeville, Pa., said in an interview during conference. Wilson believed that this year's lower numbers were due ...

NO-PREP MASS SPEC

ROBERT B. CODY, THE MASS SPEO trometry product manager at JEOL USA in Peabody, Mass., has had lots of fun the past year seeing just what kinds of samples he can obtain a mass spectrum from. Just by sticking samples in front of a mass spectrometer, he's analyzed paper money, chocolate, hot peppers, and even a necktie laced with a trace of nitroglycerin. He is able to do this no-sample-preparation- needed analysis through a new ionization method that he and James A. Laramee of EAI Corp., Abingdon, Md., invented. They call the method DART, for direct analysis in real time. DART, which is currently being coupled withJEOL's AccuTOF time-of-flight mass spectrometer, debuted at the Pittsburgh Conference in Orlando, Fla., last week. Members of the press had gotten a sneak peek at the technology in early February at JEOL's headquarters. DART can analyze liquids and gases. Solvents with a high vapor pressure can be detected from ...

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 2005 Pittsburgh Conference

To attend or not to attend, that is the question. The Pittsburgh Conference continues to pose this conundrum to conferees and exhibitors alike. This year's conference was the first to be presented without a set of paper abstracts—a good thing some would say but this old codger always used the paper abstracts to select papers of interest to our readership and to seek a full publication. The exhibit took its usual format but it seemed that there were less manufacturers present. The information presented to the attendees was also lacking and many companies' details were missing from the final program book, an omission no doubt on their behalf—my company was one of these—however I feel sure that past Pittcon organizers would have been more persistent in getting the required details for the audience. As is now the norm, many of the presentations take the form of posters displayed within the exhibition area. Without a driver to get the audience there, the traffic was slow, to say the least. Lecture presentations were also attended in a mixed fashion. So the Pittsburgh Conference show moves on, and again next year it will be held in Orlando from 12 March to 17 March 2006. No doubt I will be there making it a straight 31 in a row; in Pittsburgh Conference terms I am just a beginner with many of the attendees making more shows in a run than that. Selected abstracts dealing with topics of interest to the readers of this journal follow—hopefully many of these groups will be willing to publish their work either within this journal or elsewhere.

PITTCON AWARDS PRESENTED

AN IMPORTANT FUNCTION OF the annual Pittsburgh Conference & Exhibition on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy is to recognize and honor scientists who havemade outstanding contributions to analytical chemistry and applied spectroscopy. The following awards were presented at Pittcon in Orlando, Fla. (See page 27 for C&EN's coverage of the conference.) Gary Horlick , professor of chemistry at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, received the 2003 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award from the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the development and characterization of new methods and systems for elemental analysis. Horlick has pioneered the application of linear image sensors (photodiode arrays) to atomic spectrochemical measurements, work that predated the commercial developments in this area by two decades. Horlick received a B.S. degree from the University of Alberta in 1965 and a Ph.D. degree in 1970 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He join...

2003 Pittsburgh Conference Memorial National College Grant Program Eligibility Criteria

2003 Pittsburgh Conference Memorial National College Grant Program Eligibility Criteria

Abstracts of papers presented at the 2002 Pittsburgh Conference

Abstracts of papers presented at the 2002 Pittsburgh Conference

Abstracts of papers presented at the 2002 Pittsburgh Conference

Abstracts of papers presented at the 2002 Pittsburgh Conference

Pittsburgh Conference 2002

Pittsburgh Conference 2002

THE TIMES, THEY AREA A-CHANGIN'

DOES PITTCON HAVE THE BLAHS? Or is it the blues? Or maybe it's just a change of life? It's hard to know for sure. But consider this: Pittcon 2002—the 53rd annual Pittsburgh Conference & Exposition on Analytical Chemistry & Applied Spectroscopy—lumbered into New Orleans three weeks ago and attracted only 23,319 attendees. That's down 6.6% from last year and a whopping 31.6% below the peak-attendance year of 1996, when 34,079 people crowded into the conference in Chicago. Attendance figures have fallen almost every year since 1996, and they haven't been this low since 1985. Hidden within this year's attendance figure is another troubling trend: Slightly more than half of the attendees were exhibitors. The number of exhibiting companies—1,144—was down 7.7% from last year and down 10.6% from 2000, when a record 1,280 companies exhibited their wares. On the exhibition floor, Pittcon 2002 seemed to some observers to be more subdued and blander than in ...