Amino acids are the building blocks of life. Every living thing uses amino acids to build the proteins needed to do various functions within the organism. Where do amino acids come from and how many are needed to function? For humans, there are a total of 20 amino acids that are necessary for your body…
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This video walks you through System Suitability, which tests your Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC) or Gas Chromatograph (GC) to help you ensure that your system is functioning properly and giving good results.
Vitamin C is a water soluble, key nutrient found in fruits, vegetables and berries. Unlike many animals, humans cannot synthesize their own vitamin C and must get it from their diets. One way to supplement the intake of vitamin C would be to take a vitamin. I decided to test 3 different vitamins for vitamin…
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Now that spring is here and all things pollen are happening it’s time to get the allergy medicine ready. In honor of this wondrous time of year, we thought we would test some allergy meds! While not the usual way to test these medications, I decided to see if I could test using the Lucidity…
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Folic Acid, Folate, or Vitamin B9 is a key vitamin used by the human body to generate new healthy red blood cells, form DNA and RNA, and break down a certain amino acid, homocysteine, that can be harmful in high amounts. The need for Folic Acid is especially important during pregnancy, which is why there…
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Whether you drink a beer from a major manufacturer, the local brewer down the street, or even brew the beer yourself, knowing the ethanol content of that beer is an important piece of information. Up until 1995 the alcohol content wasn’t allowed to be on beer labels at all until the Coors Brewing Company successfully…
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Continuing on from last week with the gummy bear sample preparations, I decided to take a look at the different things in that gummy bear. The gummy bear in question is a multivitamin that contains a multitude of different vitamins, so I decided to first focus on Vitamin C or Ascorbic Acid. Preparing the sample…
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With gummy candies becoming more common as a matrix for things like cannabinoids and multivitamins, it’s important to have a simple, fast, and repeatable sample preparation in order to obtain reliable values for analytes of interest in these gummies. I started with a multivitamin fiber gummy, and I thought to myself, how do I get…
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Last week I set out to test the myth that there was cocaine on US currency, specifically dollar bills. After testing several dollar bills, I came up empty handed on any of the bills testing positive for cocaine, other than the bill that I purposely spiked with cocaine. Speaking with colleagues, I learned that I…
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I decided to put a long standing rumor to rest that I heard when I was in middle school, and everyone I know believes. That rumor is that all US dollars have trace amounts of cocaine on them. To test this I went around and collected dollar bills from various stores in the area. These…
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