While technical ability is essential to becoming a successful laboratory manager, it is not sufficient. Many outstanding scientists or engineers have failed as lab managers. It takes more than just technical ability. What is this more that outstanding lab managers have?

Done well and consistently, performance appraisals can be one of your most important tools in becoming an excellent manager. Accuracy, truthfulness, objectivity and courage are the keys to effective performance management through performance appraisals.

Success ultimately depends on the “something” that we do, not a flurry of misguided activity.

A 2004 USA Today article said that the professional science masters (PSM) degree promised to be the hot degree no one seems to have heard ofyet. Six years later, 96 institutions now offer recognized PSM programs and approximately 2,700 students have earned this degree.

In reviewing this year's survey results, it is not surprising to discern a noticeable belt-tightening on the part of management and a rise in the subsequent stress felt by lab employees.

For the fourth consecutive year, the annual Lab Manager Magazine - Kelly Scientific Resources® Salary & Employee Satisfaction Survey revealed valuable and interesting findings that can assist managers and their employees in improving efficiency and morale.

Mind maps are used as an aid in organizing ideas and tasks, problem solving, and decision making. Lab managers can use mind mapping to design R&D projects to develop new products or process innovations and track progress of the work.

Using a MIND MAP to provide mental prompts when running specific HPLC processes can be more effective and efficient.

Provides a complete laboratory data management capability that combines features that would be expected in either a LIMS or an ELN.

High-sensitivity analysis allows a wide variety of measurement modes, including MRM, scan, combination scan/MRM, and neutral loss scan

New ergonomic pipette.

Monochromator-based reader for UV-Vis absorbance, top/ bottom fluorescence and luminescence assays can be upgraded to a “hybrid” reader with the addition of a highperformance filter module.

Available in 3 different surface chemistries, covering range from hydrophobic peptides to hydrophilic.

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

No shortage of methods; the choice depends on the sample.

“Nobody gets excited about lab ovens,” comments one vendor, “but ovens are definitely essential lab components.”

It is not much of a stretch to say that the 1961 introduction of the plunger-operated pipette revolutionized laboratory work.

It would be difficult to imagine a chemistry laboratory without at least one fume hood. Despite their ubiquity and the notion that they are not “sexy” lab products, a great deal of innovation has occurred in fume hoods during the last decade.

Chromatographers who learned their craft twenty years ago may not have been familiar with autosamplers then, but today nearly every high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) instrument includes an autosampler as standard equipment.

Delivering interfering RNA into whole organisms (vs. cells) presents even greater challenges, but the potential rewards are also high.

The Centrifan PE is a portable, easy-to-use centrifugal evaporation system that provides safe, rapid drying of purified fractions and lab scale reaction mixtures.

With the PG 8536 from Miele, temperatures can be raised step-by-step, then held for a specific time interval and reduced.

In order to address the need for a quick and easy-to-use method of oligo optimization, Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) offers the SciTools suite of free, online oligo analysis and design tools.

The Baker Company's FlexAIR canopy exhaust connection saves energy and improves overall safety performance.