Problem: The human genome encodes thousands of secreted proteins, each of which is an actor in
the delicate biochemical balance of diagnostics. Even a slight change in any one of these proteins can
mean the difference between sickness and health. Such a change also provides a critical window into
the body and helps to direct diagnosis and treatment, however, the vast majority of secreted proteins
are present in concentrations well below what conventional technologies can measure, and their role in
human health is poorly understood.

Problem: Laboratories are faced with challenges when it comes to storing and tracking samples. 

Dr. Anne Carpenter leads the Imaging Platform at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT—a team of biologists and computer scientists who develop image analysis and data mining methods and software that are freely available to the public through the open-source CellProfiler project.

Dr. Arvind Rao has been an assistant professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center since 2011.

Like great athletes and musicians, cells employed in cell-based assays or as expression systems for biopharmaceutical production are not born, but made. Cell lines that perform specifically and predictably arise from a population of cells that have undergone one or more genetic transformations (transfection) and are subsequently selected for desirable properties such as viability, protein or virus production; high culture density; or binding to drugs or antigens.

You are the manager of a big company and you know your business. Each day, you make important decisions regarding money, policy and strategy. You’re in total control. Without warning, you are confronted with a major crisis: an earthquake, a fire or a reputational risk. Now you find yourself uncertain and unsure. You don’t know what to do and you realize that everybody is looking to you for guidance—and the decision you are about to make will directly affect the survival of your company.

When you walk into the lab, you can feel the tension building. Even though you enjoy your work, interacting with your boss is affecting your overall job satisfaction. You are facing a dilemma: start looking for another job or endure the conflict.

For the general public, the concern over food fraud revolves around headline-grabbing examples, such as melamine—an organic compound used in plastics—appearing in infant formula from China in 2008 and beef replaced with horsemeat in the UK in 2013. 

With headlines screaming about hacking, of the latest James Bond movie Skyfall most recently, of national and nuclear weapons laboratories not so long ago, and of businesses and individuals almost on a daily basis, it’s no surprise that worldwide information technology (IT) security spending is set to hit $77 billion in 2015—almost 8 percent more than this year’s $71 billion, according to IT researcher Gartner, Inc. 

“Trust me.” What sort of image do those words conjure up? Do you picture a parent teaching a child to ride a bike? A used car salesman talking with a customer? Or does your mind perhaps turn to the workplace, thinking of the promise for a future salary increase?

In the last issue of Lab Manager, we began to explore the ergonomic risk factors associated with the use of
computers. To recap briefly, three of the fundamental ergonomic risk factors are: position/posture, repetition/duration, and force. These can all be influenced by the work area setup and the activities being performed.

When looking at best practices for running a lab, things as seemingly diverse as staff development and retention, inventory management, procurement, and efficient use of training spends, need to be looked at together. After all, equipment is only as good as the staff who uses it and your staff is only as good as their training.

Scientific equipment being used in the kitchen is not a new trend, but such equipment designed from the ground up for culinary use is a fairly recent development.