The world’s largest scientific society today issued guidelines to better ensure the safety of the tens of thousands of personnel who work in research laboratories around the country.

The business benefits of on-site hydrogen generation for gas chromatography

What is it that really works when it comes to keeping your top employees fully engaged? What is it that will keep them from looking someplace else?

Contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, PhD, talks to Sunia Trauger, PhD, director of the Small Molecule Mass Spectrometry facility at Harvard University, about the recent trends in mass spectrometry. Advances in instrumentation, automation, and remote access seem to be leading the way to improved detection, faster results, and more diverse applications. While challenges in sample prep and data analysis remain issues, access to emerging informatics tools and experience handling and analyzing samples seem to mitigate some of the problems.

Poor management leads to poor morale, which leads to lack of focus, which leads to failure

Problem: Detecting impurities in any chemical reaction has always been important to the chemist and it is becoming increasingly important to detect those present at low levels, (e.g. 0.5%).

Problem: Liquid retention in pipette tips and interaction between the materials with which the tip is made and the sample it contains are a great concern. Sample loss percentage and the subsequent cost for purchasing additional sample becomes significantly more important when expensive reagents such as antibodies and siRNA inhibitors are being pipetted.

A diversity of materials and objects keeps this lab focused as much on the chemistry as the artwork

Environmental testing had been a sleepy marketplace until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began issuing strict regulations for air, soil, and water in the 1970s. Environmental law spawned thousands of large and small laboratories, many of which had been operating in nonenvironmental industries.

As the heart of the lab and its workflow, CO2 incubators can make or break the facility’s overall productivity. Douglas Wernerspach, business manager of CO2 and constant temperature at Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, MA), says researchers depend on CO2 incubators to be reliable and provide uniform conditions for cells.

Inspections get people involved in thinking about hazards and unsafe practices in the workplace. These should be done at least four times a year (monthly is better).