It’s the week before Easter, but outside my window there are still patches of snow on the ground. To which I say, enough already! Bring on Spring and make it snappy.

Equipment vendors continue making strides to reduce energy use and consumables.

The acquisition of equipment is a strategic business and operational decision that balances technology, durability, reliability, active running time, purchase price, maintenance, service, and running costs with the value the acquisition could potentially deliver for a laboratory enterprise.

Business partnerships are about learning to leverage the best of what others can bring to the table for mutual benefit and growth.

In the age of the “human capital” economy, we are experiencing incredible shifts in the way people work.

The slogan of the micromanager may well be “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” However, “Micromanagement stifles initiative and kills motivation,” according to a very successful manager, World War II General George S. Patton. Despite this, many of us have worked for micromanagers and some of us (this author included) have even been micromanagers. Why do people micromanage? How can micromanagers change their ways?

From task lighting to zone systems, solutions abound for improving your lab's energy usage

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

Scott Martin, Ph.D., team leader for RNA interference (RNAi) screening at the National Institutes of Health, Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, talks to contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, Ph.D., about recent trends in the use of different types of cells and reagents for screening drug targets and cellular pathways.

Creating the best slip, trip, and fall prevention program for your lab

 All new employees, students, faculty, and staff should receive a specially designed introduction to your safety program.

Enhanced simplicity leads to expanding applications

Critical components of lab automation

Automated capabilities make platforms more efficient

Front end to metals analysis

Essential pre-analysis cleanup

New challenges are what make working at this lab fun

One of the primary safety devices in laboratories where chemicals are used is the laboratory fume hood. It allows a researcher to work with—but not be exposed to— materials that create toxic fumes or particles when it is properly installed and maintained.

The wide spectrum of columns available makes selecting this most important component of an LC system extremely difficult.

When it comes to common technology in a laboratory, centrifuges rise toward the top of the list. Centrifuges separate particles and structures suspended in liquid by applying thousands of gravitational force equivalents to the sample through spinning and play a role in a wide range of workflows and applications.

One trend evident in science generally, and for laboratories in particular, is the desire to do things faster, more reliably and economically, at a higher level of hardware and method robustness, and all with a less-specialized workforce. This is especially true of mass spectrometry, where users no longer need a Ph.D. to operate MS systems.

According to one expert, the top service-related issue today is an unintended consequence of instrument sensitivity and stability

Sample preparation reduces sample complexity and renders samples into a format amenable to downstream analysis. Sample prep is most necessary for complex, multicomponent samples containing substances that interfere either with the MS (e.g., through ion suppression) or, in GC/LC-MS, the chromatography.

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have become leading MS customers. Because they work with human and test animal biological fluids and low-dose drugs, sample preparation takes center stage. Many of these workflows are automated for both sample and standards preparation.

MS originated as a stand-alone technique for volatile compounds. Next came the ability to volatilize high molecular weight materials through heating. The emergence of electron-impact ionization MS was a natural, as GC analysis requires volatilization. Find out what the future of MS holds.

In this month’s edition of INSIGHTS, our panel of four experts discusses the types of MS analyses and experiments they run and the top factors they consider when buying MS instrumentation. We also explore the trend of the shrinking mass spectrometer in a Q&A sidebar with 1st Detect president and CTO Dave Rafferty.

Precision, range, and stability are main considerations

One product that can solve a key sample quality issue is BiOS, a new, third-generation biobanking system from Hamilton Storage Technologies

The Multi-Prep Laboratory Homogenizing System is one product that can simplify the labor and time of the typical homogenization process and make it easier for the end-user.

How can you add automation to your laboratory workflows in a way that is effective, efficient, and future proof?

The measurement of polydisperse nanoparticles in the region from 10 nm to 1000 nm in liquid is a challenge. Traditional light scattering methods such as dynamic light scattering (DLS), while being excellent for monodisperse samples, tend to skew results to larger sizes (and numbers).