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 my days in the lab, a pipette seemed about as impersonal as a lab tool could get. Today’s world of scientific equipment offers many ways to personalize your pipetting. For old-school scientists like me, though, the first question is: why personalize a pipette?
Electrophoresis relies on a basic process— particles moving in an electric field, more or less. Although known for more than 200 years, this phenomenon still drives fundamental techniques in many laboratories.
Many labs use chillers to control the cooling needed for some processes. To make the device work, a chiller uses a fluid, and the best kind of fluid depends on a range of factors. Part of the selection process depends on lab preferences. This article explores some of the thinking behind picking one chiller fluid over another.
Method transfer between HPLC and UHPLC has been a standard complaint against high-pressure, sub-two-micron technology. Despite the accumulation of application notes from UHPLC vendors, end users continue to cite method transfer difficulties for not switching to UHPLC.
Scientists use homogenizers in a long list of ways, including dispersing, emulsifying, cell lysis and extraction, milling, and more. These tools can homogenize a liquid and a solid, two different liquids, and other combinations of materials.