Microplate handlers are specialized robotic devices that transfer microtiter plates in three dimensional space from one location within a workflow to another. The “locations” are actually operations such as solvent addition (through liquid handling), aspiration, heating, shaking, incubation, washing, reading, and storage.

SLAS2015 is fast-approaching, taking place February 7-11 in Washington, DC.

Problem: Research, QA/QC, and other laboratories ranging from large enterprise facilities to small analytical service centers are under increasing pressure to reduce costs and increase efficiency, productivity, and  quality. To reduce operating costs, lab managers know they must find ways to speed turn-around and maximize throughput. To improve productivity and quality, it’s essential for them to easily access information that will allow them to efficiently staff the laboratory, allocate assets, and optimize workflows while adhering to strict quality standards and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Although the electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) market is mature, it has undergone several cycles during the past three decades. This existential back-and-forth has centered on whether ELNs should primarily serve as direct replacements for paper notebooks or something more.

Every year, we see research facilities moving toward more automation, and recent issues of Lab Manager highlight some of the newest equipment on the market. Many laboratory tasks are labor-intensive and the sheer number of tasks performed, such as washing and sterilizing containers and installing and disposing samples and wastes, are becoming too time-consuming. Thus, complex equipment, such as sonicators, washers, autoclaves, and autosamplers, is becoming a necessity and is much more prevalent.

Registration for SLAS2015 is now live. Be sure to join the Society and 5,000 of your peer researchers, scientists, engineers and academic professionals in Washington, DC for this fourth annual conference and exhibition dedicated to scientific technology and automation.

With an ever-increasing number of multimode microplate readers on the market, it is more important than ever to choose the right solution for your laboratory and workflow.

Problem: There has been an explosion in the growth of information. So much growth, that traditional informatics solutions are no longer sufficient. The labs of today, and most certainly the labs of tomorrow, need new tools to gather the data generated, make sense of it and turn it into actionable knowledge.

Transform your business before it’s transformed for you. This sentence speaks to the hard realities businesses face today. From geopolitical and economic macro trends to global threats to health and
the environment, businesses now face unprecedented—and increasingly more unpredictable—challenges. Without preemptive strategies to combat these headwinds, some businesses risk slowing growth or, even worse, failure.

A search of Google Trends for “big data” in news headlines reveals almost no interest until 2011, and 
then the numbers soar. 

Through commands, autonomous devices arrange selves into vast, complex shapes.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) and Shimadzu Corp. today Aug. 20) announced the release of each other’s GC instrument control for their respective chromatography data systems. The move provides customers in analytical laboratories with more freedom of choice when selecting a chromatography data system.