As part of the laboratory services division of the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF), staff members act as gatekeepers for the safety and quality of food in the state.

The relationship between form and function in carbon dioxide incubators has led to evolutionary changes in incubator design. In addition to tried-and-true waterjacketed CO2 incubators, most vendors now offer incubators that employ direct heating.

Many studies suggest that toxins in the environment may be a cause of autism, affecting a mother’s unborn child as it develops. However, proving this for certain is difficult, as it is something that cannot be tested directly.

Each day involves something new at the McCrone Associates microanalysis lab.

If the voluminous patent filings for new compressors, refrigerants, insulation, and power management are any indication, refrigeration technology is one of the most-researched engineering topics affecting lab operations.

Aside from safety, saving energy is the trend in fume hoods these days. Hoods are energy hogs that suck thousands of cubic feet of conditioned air per hour, 24 hours per day, out of buildings; replacement air must be heated or cooled depending on the season.

One of the major benefits of working in the sciences is the ability to have a positive impact on the world through research or the development of new products. That’s certainly the case with working at Redbiotec AG, a biotechnology company located at the Bio-Technopark in Schlieren, near Zürich, Switzerland.

While fully manual operations can be built around microplate formats, doing anything substantive without a microplate reader is virtually impossible. Detection modes define the instrument’s experimental capabilities.

As lab manager at the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute (UPDDI), Celeste Reese and her team use high-content imaging strategies and work with many other labs both within the university and outside the university on a wide range of projects.

Equipment for dispensing and aspirating liquids runs the gamut from handheld pipettes that cost less than $100 to mid-range benchtop units to complex, fully robotic systems that cost $1 million or more.