Cover Story | Volume 8 - Issue 1 | January 2013
Sections
Editor's Buzz
More New Year's Resolutions
Perhaps you’ve made your usual New Year’s resolutions: Get to the gym more often, be a better friend, eat more fruits and vegetables, for which I commend you. However, if you’re looking to make resolutions that will have a direct impact on your job performance and career development, you’ve come to the right place.
Business Management
The Pathway to Management
Step one, change your mindset. There are five mental attitudes or mindsets that aspiring managers need to develop. Uses this article as a walk-through.
What's the Risk?
Strategies for reducing risk and growing your business
What it Takes to Have Successful Vendor Relationships
Nurturing good relationships in business is a lot like doing the same in our personal lives. And just like in our personal lives, a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to any type of relationship usually won’t work. However, it can be wise to take at least a page or two from the book of successful relationship strategies when you’re considering how to best manage a business relationship.
Leadership and Staffing
Mentoring Matters
An often overlooked practice critical to passing on key aspects of scientific knowledge
Management Tips
A Positive Approach to More Successful Relationships and Communications
The solution to effectively offering criticism is to seek out the positive in the other person—or in the other person’s position—before making any comments or suggestions.
Laboratory Technology
Labs are from Mars, IT Departments are from Venus
Understanding each other's needs and priorities is key to a good working relationship
Fixing the Top 8 Lab Chemical Management Errors
Jon Webb, senior technical specialist and inventory consultant at ChemSW, discusses best practices in chemical inventory.
Technology News January 2013
The latest equipment, instruments and system introductions to the laboratory market.
Lab Health and Safety
Winning with LOTO
How to design and implement a successful lockout/tag out program for your facililty.
Lab Health and Safety Tips
Have a Written Safety Policy
This is the cornerstone of a good safety program. It’s a statement endorsed and supported by the administration that speaks to the fundamental responsibilities for health and safety in the academic institution or company.
Ask the Expert
Trends in Bioinformatics
Joel Dudley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences and Director of Biomedical Informatics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, talks to contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, Ph.D. about the current changes impacting bioinformatics.
Time to Upgrade?
Time to Upgrade? - Fume Hoods
There are many different signs that it’s time to upgrade your fume hood, but vendors say safety is the number one reason.
Product Focus
Product Focus: Stirrers
Bar-based and overhead platforms make new ways to mix
Product Focus: Analytical Balances
Connectivity, compliance leading features
Product Focus: Automated Liquid Handling
Central component for lab automation
Product Focus: Filtration
Technologies even enhance samples for specialized assays
Product Focus: Refractometers
Old solution to new analysis problems.
Surveys
2013 ELN Survey Results
Electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs), one component of a lab’s information infrastructure, help laboratories capture and manage knowledge, streamline data management, protect intellectual property and foster collaboration.
2013 Evaporator Survey Results
A rotary evaporator, found in every chemistry lab, allows users to perform chemical separation or purification using heat and agitation—or stirring—under vacuum.
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Research-Specific Labs
Growing Up
A laboratory that got its start in food twenty years ago continues to expand
How it Works
How a Sample Lysis & DNA Extraction Workstation Works
Problem: Forensic labs in the US are faced with backlogs of samples waiting to be processed.
How Cell Line Authentication Works
Cross-contamination of human cell lines with other cell lines and/or misidentification of cell cultures is reported to be 18-36 percent. Find out one way to prevent contamination in your lab.
How a Pipetting System Works
Pipetting is a fundamental activity for a laboratory scientist. Almost every experiment requires small and precise volumes of liquid to be transferred from one container to another.