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Find comprehensive laboratory equipment resources including articles, surveys, and purchasing guides.
Problem: In today’s laboratories, safe, efficient sample processing is essential to getting research answers faster. The centrifuge is a staple of these laboratories and critical to this sample processing. Often a shared resource in busy research facilities, the lab centrifuge can be a revolving door of multiple users with varying levels of experience and a range of applications, all requiring a variety of rotors. Yet, the centrifuge is technically complex and can be the source of lab mishaps if used improperly. These everyday challenges can keep lab managers up at night: Are all researchers trained on centrifuge use? Are they using the right rotors for their applications and is the centrifuge programmed with the correct application parameters? Are they ensuring the rotors are properly and safely secured in the centrifuge chamber to avoid any potential rotor accidents?
While titration is a basic analytical method,
titrators are specialized instruments that
perform titrations with minimal operator
intervention. They can thus minimize
errors, improve throughput, and facilitate
documentation. There are two major titrator
types: potentiometric acid-based designs and
Karl Fischer titrators.
Many labs or their parent organizations
maintain dedicated plants to transform
municipal water into a product labs can trust
for routine jobs. To take water to the next
level requires a separate, additional process.
Successful water system designs begin with
clear, precise definitions of user needs.
Automated liquid handling (ALH) systems
span the range from semi automated
multichannel pipettors to room-sized systems.
The industry is trending toward versatile,
modular ALH systems—seemingly for every
budget. Likewise, instrumentation, software
& methods have followed the trend toward
greater user accessibility.
Problem: The University of Rochester was
looking to rebrand itself and increase student
enrollment, particularly in the Science and
Engineering Department. The university’s president
understood that in order to achieve this goal, they
needed to improve the school’s attractiveness
to undergraduate science majors. Although the
university had been gaining well-deserved respect
for their graduates, the lack of innovative and
updated lab facilities was a serious factor in
hindering undergraduate enrollment. The current
chemistry lab had been regularly upgrading its
equipment, but it failed to update the physical
workspace. Long counters filled small rooms with
drab-colored walls. The design was functional but
it was far from a state-of the-art laboratory.
Laboratory gases serve a variety of purposes, from inert barriers for lab operations and instruments to consumption in analytical processes. On-demand gas generators have been around for decades, but the high cost of helium—the one-time gas of choice for gas chromatography mobile phases—has caused many laboratories to reconsider how all their gases are acquired, stored, and used.
The history of microplate readers— now on the market for more than 30 years—explains the ongoing increase in applying this technology. Plate readers are used in many applications, including bioassay development, diagnostics, drug discovery, food testing, and quality control. The expanding range of applications parallels the large number of detection modes, including absorbance, AlphaScreen, fluorescence polarization, time-resolved fluorescence (TRF), time-resolved fluorescence energy transfer (TR-FRET), luminescence, and spectrophotometry. In a survey by Lab Manager, 90 percent of the respondents used absorbance detection and roughly threequarters also used AlphaScreen and fluorescence polarization.
To measure the rotation of linearly polarized light going through an optically active or chiral molecule, researchers use a polarimeter. As Alex White, product specialist at Anton Paar USA (Ashland, VA), says, “There is now more demand for polarimeters in all industries that use or need to measure optically active samples, as polarimeters have the capability of being very accurate, precise, robust, and user-friendly.” He adds, “Anton Paar has seen significant growth in polarimeter sales, particularly in the pharmaceutical, food, and flavor and fragrance industries. This demand has in turn led to more requests from universities to use our polarimeters for research.”
Many industries measure viscosity. “The use of viscometers runs the gamut,” says Robert McGregor, general manager of marketing and sales for high-end lab instruments at Brookfield Engineering (Middleboro, MA). “The biggest user is the quality control department using single-point measurement.” Research scientists also use viscometers to see how a material reacts to being sheared.
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The Multi-Prep Laboratory Homogenizing System is one product that can simplify the labor and time of the typical homogenization process and to make it easier for the end-user.
One product that can solve this sample quality issue is BiOS, a new, third-generation biobanking system from Hamilton Storage Technologies. The BiOS system can store, retrieve, and manipulate samples at ultra-low temperatures (-85ºC)5.
How can you add automation to your laboratory workflows in a way that is effective, efficient, and future proof? Researchers automate their workflows with the intention of increasing efficiency, throughput, data reproducibility, and walkaway time. However, simply inserting automation into the workflow does not always guarantee the intended results. For example, a researcher may add a liquid handler in order to remove a specific bottleneck, such as low throughput due to existing manual serial dilution methods. However, it is important to keep in mind that while automation may remove a bottleneck in one stage of the process, it can create a new bottleneck at a different point in the process. For instance, as you automate sample preparation steps upstream, you may unintentionally introduce a bottleneck downstream where plates begin to accumulate as they wait to be analyzed by other laboratory researchers.
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The latest equipment, instrument, and system introductions to the laboratory market.
The equipment, instruments, and systems introduced to the laboratory market at Pittcon 2013
• Designed to be added to many different types of optical microscopes
• Offers very high sensitivity, high resolution, a broad spectral range and rapid sampling times
• Enables scientists and engineers to measure the Raman spectra from microscopic samples or microscope sampling areas of large samples, such as semiconductors
Most Recent
Find comprehensive laboratory equipment resources including articles, surveys, and purchasing guides.
Problem: In today’s laboratories, safe, efficient sample processing is essential to getting research answers faster. The centrifuge is a staple of these laboratories and critical to this sample processing. Often a shared resource in busy research facilities, the lab centrifuge can be a revolving door of multiple users with varying levels of experience and a range of applications, all requiring a variety of rotors. Yet, the centrifuge is technically complex and can be the source of lab mishaps if used improperly. These everyday challenges can keep lab managers up at night: Are all researchers trained on centrifuge use? Are they using the right rotors for their applications and is the centrifuge programmed with the correct application parameters? Are they ensuring the rotors are properly and safely secured in the centrifuge chamber to avoid any potential rotor accidents?
While titration is a basic analytical method,
titrators are specialized instruments that
perform titrations with minimal operator
intervention. They can thus minimize
errors, improve throughput, and facilitate
documentation. There are two major titrator
types: potentiometric acid-based designs and
Karl Fischer titrators.
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The oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) assay is an analytical method to determine the antioxidant potential of nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and food ingredients. The ORAC assay relies on the fluorescent probe to monitor antioxidant activity, which can be read in 96-well microplates using a fluorescence-capable reader.
Effective Cleaning of Pipettes Chemical, water or other analysis requiring exact measurement and dispensing of liquid reagents relies on the use of pipettes. Some pipettes are disposable, however, reusable glass pipettes are preferred because they are typically of higher quality and are calibrated more exactly. The main disadvantage of using glass pipettes is the difficulty of cleaning them between users.
The answer is simple: if you use your balance at all, regular calibration is critical. The question frequently comes up when a balance is initially purchased. A new balance operator’s manual almost always recommends calibration before use.
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ANALYTICAL
Raman Microspectrometer
Apollo™
Fits to most of the major brands of optical microscopes
Allows users to collect Raman spectra from microscopic samples or microscopic sampling areas of larger samples
With
Read Lab Manager Magazine's independent guide to purchasing a CO2 Incubator and find the latest instruments on LabWrench.
What application are you using the water for? This is the first question you must answer when choosing a water purification system for your lab.
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While nobody gets excited about lab ovens, they are definitely essential lab components— drying glassware, controlling crucial temperature experiments, drying reagents and desiccants, annealing and curing materials and much more. The past couple of decades have brought big changes in lab ovens.
While the technology & fundamental operation behind visible light microscopes has not changed much in 200 years, the wider field of microscopy has continued to greatly evolve. The confluence of advances in imaging, computing, microscopy, and reagent technologies mean live cell imaging has become one of the most exciting subcategories of biological microscopy.
High-performance/pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) is, for many scientists, an essential chromatographic technique. HPLC systems used for the separation, identification, purification and quantification of various chemical and biochemical solutions are composed of a pump, a sample injector, a separation column, a detection unit, and a data-processor.
