Cell-based assays have become the go-to technology for pharmaceutical, environmental, and toxicology labs. Cells are far less costly to maintain than test animals and don’t involve the ethical considerations. But the complexity of cell-based assays compared with chemical or biochemical assays presents distinct challenges to laboratory managers.

Brownfield sites—mainly abandoned or soon-to-be abandoned industrial facilities—pose huge challenges to governments, communities, and engineering firms charged with restoring them to common uses. At issue are contaminants—chemicals and metals—that if not remediated pose public health concerns.

When implementing laboratory informatics systems, managers should consider both current and anticipated workflows, says Trish Meek, director of product strategy at Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, MA). “They need complete agreement and buy-in from business owners and IT. Managers should consider the agility their business requires, for example, when bringing in a new product or instrument.”

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration promulgated its good laboratory practices  (GLPs) for animal toxicology labs in 1979, the regulations were considered a breakthrough in compliance assurance.

With chillers, the solution is the same for achieving temperature control, cost-effective cooling protocols, energy savings, and long operating life: mechanical and operational efficiency.

Water testing laboratories hold a unique position among analytical facilities in their interaction with broadly diverse government and private entities

Sports is big business, which is why leagues and federations are desperate to keep their franchises honest. In the US, Major League Baseball (MLB) received a record $9 billion in revenues in 2014, while the National Football League took in close to $10 billion. 

Advances in computer hardware and software, data storage and processing, optics, systems and instrumentation, labeling agents, and reagents have all contributed to the current surge in imaging in the life sciences.

Microwave digestion in concentrated acid reliably eliminates sample matrix while rendering metals to species appropriate for analysis by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry or atomic absorption.

Like great athletes and musicians, cells employed in cell-based assays or as expression systems for biopharmaceutical production are not born, but made. Cell lines that perform specifically and predictably arise from a population of cells that have undergone one or more genetic transformations (transfection) and are subsequently selected for desirable properties such as viability, protein or virus production; high culture density; or binding to drugs or antigens.

Laboratory shakers come in a variety of configurations, including orbital, horizontal, incubator, tumbling, roller, overhead, rotator, and the subject of this article, rocking shakers. Within these categories, numerous
variables are possible: physical size and sample capacity, speed adjustment, shaking direction, sample pitch, direct temperature control through heating or cooling coils, and environment control through enclosures or use within incubators.

Refractometer manufacturers quote accuracy and reproducibility to the fourth, fifth, and sometimes even the sixth decimal places. A good manufacturer will only advertise this level of accuracy after carefully running standards.

Clinical laboratories have among the most stringent requirements for purity of input materials (reagents, solvents, assay kits, gases, etc.). Yet the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA), officially promulgated in 1992, leave to clinical and diagnostic laboratory managers the task of assuring the quality and performance of chemicals and gases used to calibrate instruments and conduct general lab operations.

The first question facing lab managers looking for an incubator is whether a dry or humidified incubator will serve their needs. Both designs have their pluses and minuses. Humidified CO2 incubators provide tighter control over cell culture conditions such as temperature, gas mix, and of course humidity.

Portable gas chromatography (pGC) is all about tradeoffs. Users demand value, reliability, ease of use, ergonomics, and measurement quality but with analysis limited to gases.