Lab manager Larry Decker's TestAmerica environmental lab in Connecticut is where he and his staff analyze thousands of soil, wastewater, and monitoring well samples each month. One key to the lab's success is a management team that works on training every individual to be reactive and ready to go if the person is needed in a different department.

Its a little like the hit CBS show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation–a team of experts solving crime by examining pieces of evidence from a scene where things have gone wrong.

Academic labs attract stimulus money but funding challenges remain

Getting a new drug into the hands of patients is no easy feat. Pharmaceutical companies have to go through a myriad of tests in cell cultures, animals and humans before discovering and developing treatments for illnesses.

A series of food safety crises, including melamine contamination in pet foods; E coli-tainted spinach, peppers and green onions; and a Salmonella typhimurium outbreak in peanut products have transformed food analysts from vigilant sentries into veritable centurions stridently safeguarding the quality, regulatory compliance and safety of our food.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Research Center does everything from chemical and biochemical analyses to bioengineering to process scale-up to microbial strain development.

A new method for determining nitrate in aqueous solutions utilizes a non-hazardous reducing agent, thus eliminating hazardous waste and associated disposal costs.

An interview with Rachel Wilson, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology, Harvard Medical School. 

Traditionally, conductivity is the standard detection method for ion analysis. During the last 10 years, however, there has been increasing interest in electrochemical detection (ECD) for the analysis of anions.