
CURRENT ISSUE | VOLUME 7 - ISSUE 9 | October 2012
COVER STORY
Winning The Talent War
New and multi-faceted hiring strategies lab managers need in their arsenal
Surveys
Leadership and Staffing

In this month's Science Matters column, the Kelly Global Workforce Index survey, by global workforce solutions company Kelly Services, reveals that there is a strong desire for jobs that fulfill vital psychological needs of employees—something that is fueling a global shift in workplace dynamics.
Product Focus

Mass spectrometry (MS) has not quite become a routine acquisition for every lab that might benefit from it. Nor are MS instruments yet capable of serving routine users and experimenters equally well. But the characteristics and performance of instrumentation serving high and low-end applications overlap more now than ever.

Ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometry is arguably the most common as well as one of the oldest forms of absorption-based analysis. UV and visible regions of the electromagnetic spectrum are contiguous: UV wavelengths range from 10 to 4000 angstroms; they are visible from 4000 to 7000 angstroms.

Gene sequencing is all about data—3.2 gigabytes for a single human genome, with several times that for making raw sequences relevant to real-world problems. Mining the genome for medical intelligence multiplies the data “crunch” for gene sequencers and value-added services that annotate gene sequences for their relevance to protein and metabolite concentrations, and to both diseased and healthy states.
Ask the Expert

Alexander Sherman, director of systems in the Department of Neurology and director of strategic development and systems at the Neurological Clinical Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses why the right choice and setup for data collecting, data handling, and data sharing infrastructure is important to help establish successful research collaborations.
Lab Product

Now is a good time to purchase an analytical balance if you’re in the market. Thanks to software algorithms that translate electrical signals to weight and improved user interfaces, analytical balances are now much faster in terms of measuring than they used to be. They are also much more accurate because of the efficiency of the algorithmic evaluation that turns data points into weight data and higher data acquisition speed.
Editor's Buzz
Products in Action
How it Works
Research-Specific Labs
Lab Health and Safety Tips
Lab Health and Safety
Laboratory Technology
Lab Design and Furnishings

A dynamic shift in the way researchers conduct their work has had a profound effect on the design of their facilities. Emphasis has focused on three main components: establishing large open labs, the distribution of utilities to and within the lab, and the auxiliary spaces that both support the research experiments and promote collaborative dialogue between colleagues.
Business Management
Computing and Automation

Reliably tracking samples as they make their way throughout the scientific process is difficult yet absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, transcription errors, wrong versions of files or other mistakes are all too common and can lead to delayed product rollouts—or may even result in a product never making it to market.











