preparative

The research team produced a new substance from an aggressive fragment and unreactive nitrogen and collected it with preparative mass spectrometers in sufficient quantities so that it could be seen with the naked eye, handled and further experimented with.

These preparative mass spectrometers can be used to produce chemical compounds in a new way.

However, preparative mass spectrometry could soon open up completely new possibilities for these applications, for example, in the production of microchips, solar cells or biologically active coatings.

And they came as Russia announced that its forces were taking a “theater-wide operational pause,” with units “regrouping to rest, refit and reconstitute” — though it made clear that its definition of a pause did “not mean a complete cessation of hostilities,” but rather that attacks were “more preparative” for later offensives.

In the context of her research, an “artifact” is a particular result of the preparative or investigative part of a scientific procedure — i.e., an unnatural one.