Laboratories are at the forefront of research and analysis. But when it comes to communication, they are followers rather than leaders and can be very slow to adopt innovations.

Managing a lab is a tough job for a number of reasons, especially for those lab managers who work in regulated industries. In those industries, keeping your team members up to date on the latest safety, environmental, or process information is critical to a company’s success.

You have a wonderful staff. You have given all the assignments and now it’s time to sit back and wait for the results to roll in. Sadly, not in my world. There is a lot more to getting things done than assigning tasks.

Leadership is communication, yet too many business leaders do not understand or appreciate this very basic truth. It may not be entirely their fault, though.

Nanotechnology is still early in its commercial development, but many scientists agree it could become a part of everyone’s daily life in the not-too-distant future.

Most laboratory managers recognize that they can improve the energy efficiency of their labs by implementing commonsense tactics such as turning off equipment that’s not in use, installing lighting sensors that dim lights automatically, etc.

Laboratories have numerous weighing options, including sliding-scale mechanical balances, top loaders, and analytical balances.

Refractometers are instruments that quantify and identify chemicals and materials based on their refractive index (RI).

Fume hoods are notorious for consuming expensive resources, particularly electricity and conditioned air that is vented to the environment along with volatile chemicals and other toxins.

In response to reduced reliance on core lab services, manufacturers of flow cytometers have been busily upgrading instrument capabilities for expert and casual users.

The process of grinding and milling is essential in many laboratory situations. Certain solvent-free reactions are conducted, for example, by the fine grinding of reagents together in a vessel to ensure close contact of individual particles.

The annual energy usage in a typical U.S. life science laboratory has recently been estimated at 4.54 GJ/m2/year,1 almost three times the energy usage of a medium intensity commercial building (1.79 GJ/m2/year).

With the invention of the centrifuge came the problem of rotor balance. Specimen containers must be properly sized and properly located on the rotor to provide rotor balance each and every cycle.

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) are commonly used in diagnostic and quality-control laboratories. During an ELISA, an unknown amount of antigen is immobilized to the surface of a microplate well and an enzyme-linked antibody is subsequently bound.