Biosafety cabinets (BSCs) protect lab environments and workers from potentially pathogenic organisms. Some types also protect samples from contaminants originating in labs.

Two features add efficiency, safety, and ease of use.

I’ve worked in hoods where a little piece of tissue paper attached to the bottom of the sash served as an indicator that it was exhausting the air. Somehow, that sounds like a prehistoric lab by today’s standards. Granted, it was a while ago, but I wasn’t using a dinosaur-era device.

Many labs use chromatography-based devices. Plus, different labs face different needs in handling chromatography data. Nearly any situation, though, benefits from a chromatography data system (CDS).

Particle sizing methodologies range from straightforward sieving and sedimentation analysis to advanced laser-based light scattering techniques, microscopy/imaging, nanoparticle tracking analysis, and others.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Waters’ (Milford, MA) debut of the ACQUITY UPLC®, the trademarked original on which all modern UHPLC systems, to various degrees, are modeled.

According to a report from Persistence Market Research, Mass Spectrometry Technologies Market Assessment Report—Global Size, Share, Competitive Landscape, Future Prospects and Forecast from 2013-2017, mass spectrometry (MS) is one of the few instrumentation markets that has recovered fully from the last recession.

The ease of adding ketchup from a squeeze bottle to an order of French fries, the trouble that it takes to press toothpaste out of a tube, and many other common needs depend on viscosity.

Despite being available for close to 30 years, laboratory information management systems (LIMSs) are about to undergo a metamorphosis characterized by greater utility, accessibility, and availability–at lower cost.

For David Hemmig, director of equipment sales at Matheson Tri-Gas (Basking Ridge, NJ), the key word in on-site gas generation is reliability. He explains that a major problem with gas generators that incorporate some sort of compressor is that eventually that component fails.

Life scientists started using microplates in the 1950s, with some of the first ones literally machined from solid blocks of plastic. You don’t need to wander around a molecular biology lab long today to see the progress in microplates, some now including thousands of wells.