Do you have a titrator or are you planning to purchase a titrator for your lab? Check out the results of our recent reader survey on the titrators in their labs.

Freezers and refrigerators are an integral part of any laboratory that requires temperature controlled storage.

A fume hood is an essential piece of equipment found in almost all laboratories, from teaching labs to research labs to industrial labs.  Learn the history of this important part of the lab.

Lab water, purified by any of a number of means, is a vital resource in most laboratories. Purified lab water ranges from Type I, which is suitable for analytical tests requiring minimal interference and maximum precision and accuracy, through Type II for analytical tests in which the presence of bacteria can be tolerated, to Type III, which is suitable for general washing and for use as feedwater for producing higher grade water, as well as bacteriological media preparation.

Rotary evaporators have been around for quite some time now, having been developed over 50 years ago to deal with problems faced with standard chemical distillation devices.

Translational science is a relatively simple concept. By taking a targeted point of view, the biomedical community can translate what it has learned in the laboratory into the diagnosis and treatment of patients.

Crystallization is the most common method used for final purification and isolation of the active pharmaceutical ingredient, or API, when synthesizing a drug at commercial scale. Molecules can and do adopt more than one type of crystal structure upon precipitation.

Problem: Contamination in cell culture is a time-consuming, costly and ongoing problem. Research can be invalidated, valuable cell lines lost and weeks and even months of work ruined.

James Gibson, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S), and Nancy Wayne, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology and Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), discuss the recently formed UC Center for Laboratory Safety, its mission and its goals.

Thermal analysis, or calorimetry, correlates temperature-dependent events to physical characteristics of a sample, such as mass, structure, strength, brittleness, elongation, decomposition, evolved gases, oxidation, reduction, or physicochemical structure.

Lab refrigerators and freezers must be versatile enough to serve diverse markets because a great deal of feature overlap exists within the lab refrigeration market. Yet significant differentiation exists as well.

Those whose only brush with titration came in a freshman chemistry lab may be surprised to learn the significance of titration in companies that manufacture materials, drugs, foods, and beverages.

This column over the last year has dealt with many lab-related workforce issues, but one constant running through them has been the need for versatilability™—not just when it comes to the people managers hire, but in every aspect of a lab's business.

Patents are more than just boring legal documents. “A patent is the link between R&D and the legal processes,” notes Pierre Buffet, executive vice president of intellectual property information firm Questel. “Patents can be used for various interesting business purposes outside of simply protecting a new invention,” adds Director Ronald Kaminecki with Dialog LLC.

First try to understand why they do what they do.

It’s a common refrain heard within nearly every business circle today, but only because it’s true: The world of work has changed. Nowhere is this more evident than in the use of contingent workers, or “free agents,” across nearly every global industry.

Learn the main benefits of integrated systems here.

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

Consolidation, collaboration and configurability seem to be the three C’s driving the need for more tightly integrated lab workflows and systems, especially in the life science market. The challenge now is integrating data coming from many different sources and to decipher patterns that lead to insight and innovation.

The application of instruments and strategies to reduce the sample prep blank is often called the application of Clean Chemistry techniques. Learn the factors impacting blank quality, in particular when microwave digestion is used, and about some Clean Chemistry products and technologies designed to help the analyst generate superior analytical data.

When you walked into your lab today, did you notice your environment? Or did you take for granted the open, airy spaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, fabulous views of the outdoors, art work and potted plants?

The National Safety Council reports that about 1000 people are electrocuted each year in the United States. That means grounded plugs on all electrical equipment in the lab are very important.

We have written previously on LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) certification program for green buildings. In this column, the Safety Guys will look at some of the potential health and safety issues involved when building green.

Keeping track of the maintenance and safety of lab equipment used in performing laboratory tasks can be a challenge for lab managers. One piece of equipment deserving special attention when it comes to ensuring the safety of laboratory employees is the centrifuge.

Want to build a lab? Think you don't have the space or the funds to do so? Think again! You can place high-technology research space in your current office building. All it takes is a good plan up front and creative thinking from an integrated team.

Over the last decade, traditional office and R&D designs have failed to serve new business models and employment arrangements; the results have been visible at the bottom line of balance sheets. The real bottom line is this: Better workplaces make for better business.

Developers of analytical instrumentation for food laboratories are constantly being kept on their toes—foremost by the competing technical advancements and expanding market demands inherent in their business, and also by the need to help customers comply with changing and more stringent regulatory requirements worldwide.