We recommend the establishment of a chemical management system. This system provides for the safe procurement, storage, use and disposal of chemicals.

Allis Chien, Ph.D., director of the Vincent Coates Foundation Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at Stanford University’s mass spectrometry shared core resource facility, discusses the advances being made in the instrumentation and applications for mass spectrometry (MS).

For companies processing hundreds or thousands of plates per day, one could build a business case for switching to an automated pipetting system on throughput alone. Robots are faster and less expensive to feed and care for than humans are.

In this Q&A, five expert end-users from both academia and industry discuss the automated liquid handling systems they use in their labs, what they are used for, and how they went about choosing the systems.

Service and maintenance for liquid handling equipment are approximately the same as for a liquid chromatography system, but the type of service differs. All vendors offer typical levels of on-site service, with premium plans including preventive maintenance visits.

Automated liquid handling (ALH) grew from the high-throughput needs of medical diagnostic labs in the late 1980s through the 1990s and then received an additional boost from genomic sequencing. As it evolved from a specialized, expert-driven instrument system to a generalized laboratory workstation, ALH has become more accessible to more workers in more labs.

There are certain “guaranteed to make life easier” tips you can use that will make your day flow just a little bit better.

Some expect the mobile apps market to quadruple over the next four years, from $6.8 billion to $25 billion. Others forecast revenues at $29.5 billion by 2013, increasing from $7 billion in 2010.

Does your laboratory have “ethical muscle”? Do you feel your employees are flexing this muscle? Ethics and data integrity should be an integral part of your laboratory’s quality program.

There is a good chance you spend many hours at a computer workstation entering data and researching databases. By setting up your computer workstation optimally and paying attention to a few key elements of positioning and alignment, you can greatly reduce the chance of an ergonomic injury.

Here in my neck of the woods in Northwestern New Jersey, spring arrived weeks ago, which the early and abundant forsythia flowers outside my office window testify to. No guarantee, however, that we won’t see snow on Easter.

Standard refrigerators should not be used for storage of flammable or reactive chemicals.