"air"

[beige_alert]

I have just read what is an excellent paper overall (so I won't name it or the authors, since I'm making fun of a tiny part of it here), and noticed in the methods section their list of the settings used for collision-induced dissociation in their mass spectrometer. The list includes the notation "atmospheric gases." Atmospheric gases? Perhaps that's more commonly known as "air." There is nothing wrong with using air as your collision gas, I've done so in related work and it's as good as anything else you might use, not to mention inexpensive. No, what I have a problem with is using sixteen letters in two words to say "air."

Comments

[jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com]

*grins* Yeah, that seems posh. It could make a difference though. They could mean nitrogen and/or oxygen and/or CO2 or a mix thereof, taken from a tank, which would still qualify as "atmospheric gases" but not as "the dirty, dusty air we happened to have around in the lab". :)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Or, as they don't say which atmosphere, it could be methane. After all, the gas giants have a lot more atmosphere than we do *g*...