Go, Go Gadgets

Volume 6 Issue 6 | July 2011

Cover Story

Continuous advances in mobile technology have been changing the way the modern world works. Make last-minute changes to a presentation on your way to a meeting, send reports back to the office while you’re at a conference or trade show, or even input data from an experiment into the LIMS directly at the bench.

Sections

Laboratory Technology

Choosing the Right LC Column

At the end of March, Lab Manager held a “Product Showcase” webinar on “New Chemistries and Improvements in Liquid Chromatography (LC) Columns” featuring a panel of experts from leading providers of LC columns and equipment.

Lab Product

Evolution of UV-Vis Spectrophotometers

Learn the history of UV-Vis spectrophotometers

Leadership and Staffing

Systems Thinking

The only thing that changed was the title. The job, the responsibilities, even the pay were exactly the same, but when the title was changed to director, the relationships, levels of trust, gossip and impediments to getting things done were all out of whack for a couple of months. This is a situation that takes more than simple explanations to fix.

The Five Keys to Systems Thinking

Structure drives behavior. The way your organization is structured—flat, crossfunctional, hierarchical or “siloed”—will drive the way your staff behaves. Think operationally, not correlationally.....

Lab Manager Academy: Why Do They Keep Changing Everything?

Change has always been an issue for every generation and it often makes people feel extremely uncomfortable. I find that people don’t mind change if it was their idea, but when faced with a change someone else has made, it can cause a major dis

Business Management

Science Matters: Networking in Today’s Scientific Workplace

We all know the form of classic networking, and people in sales or supply chain management pioneered it for business purposes. It’s where they meet casually with colleagues. Maybe the individuals involved don’t work for the same company.

Laboratory Technology

Cell Culture Contamination – Part 3

The third entry in our three-part series on CO2 incubation discusses how to prevent contamination of cell cultures by bacteria (including mycoplasmas), viruses, and fungi, or even cross-contamination by other cell lines.

Lab Product

MindMap: Improving Biological Safety Cabinet and Fume Hood Safety

Indispensible equipment for laboratories, fume hoods and biological safety cabinets (BSCs) protect personnel from exposure to chemicals and pathogens handled during experiments.

Research-Specific Labs

Perspective On: A Drug Discovery Lab

The privilege of conducting research dedicated to finding cures for human diseases is one reason Paul Diaz starts his workday with enthusiasm. “The life of a scientist can be stressful, but in what other profession does it seem like someone is is paying you to indulge in a guilty pleasure?”

Product Focus

Product Focus: Freeze Dryers

Demand for reliable methods of preparing and storing high-value samples has rejuvenated the market for freeze dryers, also known as lyophilizers.

Product Focus: Milling & Grinding

Milling and grinding are ancient techniques that are working their way into high-tech markets.

Product Focus: Microwave Sample Prep

Microwave digestion is the preparation method of choice for analyzing metals in complex mixtures. Food and environmental industries favor this technique, which is also applicable to testing materials, soil, agricultural waste products, engine oils, and biological samples.

Product Focus: Homogenizers

Homogenization seeks to create samples in which analytes of interest are dispersed uniformly throughout. Numerous technologies can achieve this, including pressure, mechanical (rotorstator or blade-type), and bead-beating.

Product Focus: HPLC Systems

As HPLC systems become faster and employ increasingly exotic stationary phases, sample preparation becomes essential for reliable, reproducible analyses.

Surveys

Are You in the Market for Chromatography Sample Prep?

Sample preparation is an essential step in many analyses and the importance of accurate sample preparation techniques cannot be overstated. Get the sample prep survey results here.

Product Focus

Product Focus: Electronic Lab Notebooks

“Informatics convergence” has become a buzzword among ELN vendors and their customers.

Surveys

2011 ELN Survey Results

Electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) are not the hub for capturing every piece of laboratory data. They are, however, leading the way into a new era of converging functionalities. Read on to find out the ELN survey results.

Surveys

2011 Baths and Chillers Survey Results

Water Baths are used in industrial and clinical laboratories, academic facilities, government research laboratories, environmental applications, as well as food technology and wastewater plants. Check out the water bath survey results here. Brought to you by:

2011 Vacuum Pumps Survey Results

Vacuum pumps are an essential piece of equipment and used in a wide variety of processes in most laboratories. Read the results of our vacuum pumps survey right here.

Ask the Expert

Ask the Expert: Keeping Up With LIMS Upgrades

David Dooling, Ph.D., assistant director of informatics at the Genome Institute at Washington University, discusses the challenges associated with tackling vast amounts of data in large sequencing labs and shares his experiences in building and utilizing an advanced LIMS for data tracking and storage.

Lab Health and Safety

Can You Hear Me Now?

Recognize this mobile phone commercial cliché? Well, you might be hearing it in your lab as this phrase is repeated more and more—not relating to poor cell phone service, but the insides of buildings and laboratories.

Lab Health and Safety Tips

Allocate a Portion of the Departmental Budget to Safety

The establishment of a separate accounting line for environmental, health and safety related purchases is essential. This allows you to clearly track monies expended for this purpose.

Business Management

The Globalization of R&D

There are several forces driving globalization of R&D. The first is to better target the R&D needs and markets of other nations. A second is to spread the costs of large projects between two partners or more to reduce the risks and costs incurred by each partner. A third is to promote the sale of the R&D results to the countries in which the R&D took place.

A Product Co-development Cautionary Tale

In many ways, the development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet plane serves as an object lesson about the hazards of globalization of new product codevelopment and manufacturing. Over many years, Boeing had built its own aircraft design facilities, aircraft manufacturing plants and suppliers in Everett, Washington, near Seattle. That changed with the Dreamliner.

Investigating for Failures

The FDA and other regulatory agencies consider the integrity of laboratory data to be an integral part of the drug manufacturing process. Deficiencies of out-of-specification (OOS) investigations continue to be the major cause of warning letters in the pharmaceutical industry.

How it Works

How Mechanical and Ultrasonic (Sonication) Homogenizing Works

A critical component of any sample preparation is making the sample homogeneous. However, when working with a large number of samples, this is often a time-consuming and labor-intensive task.

Lab Product

The Right Choice For Homogenization

The goal of homogenization is to process samples quickly and efficiently while maintaining the quality of the end product. A major factor in successful homogenization is the reproducibility of samples.

How it Works

How it Works: A Single-Source Workflow Support Program

Today’s laboratories are under ever-increasing pressure to reduce costs and improve the efficiency, productivity and quality of their workflows.

How Folded Flight Path™ Technology for TOF-MS Works

Accurate, high resolution mass spectrometry has grown ever more important in qualitative and quantitative analyses.

How it Works: Effectively Analyzing Interactions Between Fluid Components

The scientific community requires improved methods for performing and analyzing reactions and interactions between fluid components.

News

July/August 2011 Technology News

The latest equipment, instruments and system introductions to the laboratory market.

White Papers and Application Notes

PW Analytical Balances

PW analytical balances provide users with an accurate and consistent tool for density determination of different materials.

Improving Performance and Sensitivity of LC/MS Instruments Using Optimized LC/MS Solvents

Increasing the sensitivity and resolution of LC/MS instruments has been an ongoing focus for instrument manufacturers.

Low Volume Nucleic Acid Quantification using a Multi - Volume Spectrophotometer System

Micro-volume quantification allows for rapid assessment of concentrations of nucleic acid. The Epoch™ Multi-Volume Spectrophotometer System provides the ability to measure a wide range of samples from 2 µL to mL volumes.

White Papers and Application Notes

Microwave Digestion of Food Materials

CEM has developed a method for the simultaneous and rapid preparation of vastly different food sample types for trace metal analysis.

Dionex Automated Solid-Phase Extraction Solutions for EPA Methods 1664A, 608, and 625

Dionex Application Notes 817 and 818 describe using automated solid-phase extraction (SPE) versus liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) for the determination of oil and grease from liquid (typically water) samples to meet the requirements of EPA Method 1664.

Eppendorf MixMate ® - Superior Mixing Technology Proven for Small Volumes

Today’s laboratory environment is very different than it was several years ago. Advancements in science make everyday routines quicker and put a higher focus on accuracy and reproducibility

Optimizing the Purification of a Chiral Compound Utilizing a Benchtop Semi-Preparative to Preparative HPLC System

There are often significant differences in the effectiveness and toxicity of drug enantiomers in biological systems. This has led to the need for the separation of chiral drug candidates into their respective enantiomers.

A Vacuum Pump System with Bluetooth Enabled Remote Control

Must-have features of the SC 920 system are 2 mbar end vacuum, excellent flow at end vacuum, efficient solvent recovery, and automatic boiling point detection.

LabWare LIMS Solutions: LabWare Enterprise Laboratory Platform

LabWare is recognized worldwide as a leading supplier of laboratory automation solutions. The company's Enterprise Laboratory Platform, which combines the functionality of LIMS and Electronic Laboratory Notebook into a single integrated solution, is unique in the industry.

Quality Assurance of Weighing Processes

The biggest challenge for weighing instruments is weighing small samples with reliable accuracy. Knowing the minimum weight of the instrument solves this issue.

Use of Natural Gas/Bunsen Burner within a Biological Safety Cabinet

The use of natural gas for Bunsen Burners in a microbiological laboratory has long been an accepted practice over the years. This practice has also carried over to use within a Biological Safety Cabinet (BSC).

Tough Tissue Homogenization with a Bead Mill

The quality of sample preparation often determines the quality of the results and the conclusions drawn from experiments.

Helium to Hydrogen GC Carrier Conversion in the Lab

As U.S. supplies dwindle, prices of crude helium have risen 50 percent in the last decade, according to the Bureau of Land Management. As a result, many laboratories are replacing traditional helium carrier gas supply for their Gas Chromatography systems with hydrogen.

Sample Preparation for NIR Analysis

A much discussed issue related to Near Infrared Analysis (NIR) is the necessity of sample preparation. Ground and unground samples of wheat were analyzed to determine how truly necessary it to homogenize samples before NIR analysis.

Sciency® ELN – A Step Closer to a Paperless Laboratory

In a modern society, various means of electronic communications have become a norm of everyday life. In recent years, numerous laboratories in academia and industry have started to adopt Electronic Laboratory Notebook(ELN) software.

Development of the Industry’s Fastest Cell Culture CO2 Incubator Decontamination Process Using H2O2

The value of the laboratory cell culture incubator used in highly regulated research and clinical protocols is directly related to the proportion of incubator uptime vs. downtime.

Purification of Alkaloids with RediSep® Rf SCX Columns

Abstract: The purification of alkaloids using RediSep Strong Cation Exchange (SCX) columns is described. Several alkaloids are used as models for those extracted from plant species. The alkaloids are separated from neutral and acidic compounds, and a

Vacuum Control – Why & How?

The simplest lab vacuum applications require little or no control; vacuum filtration and aspiration require only the simple application of modest suction.

Products in Action

Automation and Cost Savings Using Photometric Analysis for Food and Beverage Testing

Thermo Scientific Gallery and Gallery Plus are discrete photometric analyzers with a broad menu of industrial and environmental system applications.

The Future of Race Way…

STARLINE Plug-In Raceway, has revolutionized the power distribution industry! Universal Electric Corporation created STARLINE Plug-In Raceway to meet the ever-changing power distribution and datacom needs of research, pharmaceutical, university, hospital and data labs.