Lab Manager | Run Your Lab Like a Business

Cover Story |  Volume 8 - Issue 4  |  May 2013

Is Your Message Getting Lost in the Sauce?

Choosing and using the best communication channels for your team

Sections

Leadership and Staffing

Is Your Message Getting Lost in the Sauce?

Choosing and using the best communication channels for your team.

Nurturing Talent

In the science world, as in all technical fields these days, there’s a strong emphasis on the need to find the best talent. 

Organizational Disrupters

Organizational Disrupters

Tips for handling once-peers and others who seek to undermine your authority

Independence Day

Dawn is arriving. The crisp aroma of meadow flowers fills the air and the crowd inhales deeply to capture the scent, if only for a moment. They wait. Backlit by the rising sun, the anointed leader surges into view and a mighty cheer erupts from the crowd, deafening in the celebration of their chosen leader. Raising a hand, asking for quiet attention, the leader guides the prancing steed, resplendent in silver and highly polished leather, up and down the front lines, looking deeply into the eyes of those who have chosen to follow.

Business Management

Continuous Improvement

Continuous Improvement

How an electronic document management system created efficiencies beyond the lab

Laboratory Technology

Managing R&D Data in a Virtual World

Success depends upon technology to ensure that context and provenance is captured along with data

Technology News May 2013

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

Ask the Expert

Optimizing Lab Services: Evaluating the Single-Vendor Option

Angelo Filosa, PhD, associate director in chemistry and head of Analytical Chemistry and Compound Management at Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd., discusses the pros and cons of consolidating the servicing of all his laboratory equipment with one vendor.

Lab Health and Safety

Spine Tingling

Spine Tingling

Preventing back injury requires instruction, training, assessment, & ongoing evaluation

Lab Health and Safety Tips

Encourage Caring About One’s Health and Safety

Encourage Caring About One’s Health and Safety

Employees, faculty, staff, and students need to be encouraged to develop a genuine concern about their own health and safety. It’s too easy to care less and become careless.

Product Focus

Product Focus: Microplate Readers

Expanding assay options take center stage

Product Focus: Laboratory Gas Generators

The future of low, medium-volume gas needs

Product Focus: Viscometers

Changing environments demand most robustness

Product Focus: Mass Spectrometers

Product Focus: Mass Spectrometers

Sample prep rules, miniaturization in the news

Product Focus: Polarimeters

Increasing the accuracy of optical rotation

Time to Upgrade?

Time to Upgrade? HPLC Systems

Time to Upgrade? HPLC Systems

Increased productivity the biggest reason to purchase

Research-Specific Labs

Perspective On: A Cell Culture Lab

Perspective On: A Cell Culture Lab

Despite funding challenges, U. Iowa's tissue/cell culture lab's scientific achievement and morale go unaffected.

Surveys

2013 Water Purification Survey Results

Many labs or their parent organizations maintain dedicated plants to transform municipal water into a product labs can trust for routine jobs. To take water to the next level requires a separate, additional process. Successful water system designs begin with clear, precise definitions of user needs.

2013 Titrator Product Survey

2013 Titrator Product Survey

While titration is a basic analytical method, titrators are specialized instruments that perform titrations with minimal operator intervention. They can thus minimize errors, improve throughput, and facilitate documentation. There are two major titrator types: potentiometric acid-based designs and Karl Fischer titrators.

10584

2013 Automated Liquid Handling Survey Results

Automated liquid handling (ALH) systems span the range from semi automated multichannel pipettors to room-sized systems. The industry is trending toward versatile, modular ALH systems—seemingly for every budget. Likewise, instrumentation, software & methods have followed the trend toward greater user accessibility.

How it Works

How Green Fume Hood Technology Works

Problem: The University of Rochester was looking to rebrand itself and increase student enrollment, particularly in the Science and Engineering Department. The university’s president understood that in order to achieve this goal, they needed to improve the school’s attractiveness to undergraduate science majors. Although the university had been gaining well-deserved respect for their graduates, the lack of innovative and updated lab facilities was a serious factor in hindering undergraduate enrollment. The current chemistry lab had been regularly upgrading its equipment, but it failed to update the physical workspace. Long counters filled small rooms with drab-colored walls. The design was functional but it was far from a state-of the-art laboratory.

How a Superspeed Centrifuge Works

How a Superspeed Centrifuge Works

Problem: In today’s laboratories, safe, efficient sample processing is essential to getting research answers faster. The centrifuge is a staple of these laboratories and critical to this sample processing. Often a shared resource in busy research facilities, the lab centrifuge can be a revolving door of multiple users with varying levels of experience and a range of applications, all requiring a variety of rotors. Yet, the centrifuge is technically complex and can be the source of lab mishaps if used improperly. These everyday challenges can keep lab managers up at night: Are all researchers trained on centrifuge use? Are they using the right rotors for their applications and is the centrifuge programmed with the correct application parameters? Are they ensuring the rotors are properly and safely secured in the centrifuge chamber to avoid any potential rotor accidents?