LUMINEX has announced further details of its 10th annual Planet xMap congress, to be held on 10-11 October 2012 at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. Over 500 leading scientists are expected to gather at the event, sharing information and discoveries…
Category: research
Weekly news: beam me up, Geordie
IT’S ALWAYS intriguing when science fiction becomes science fact, and never more so than when an item of kit from Star Trek gets made real. Fans of the series will recall that the apparently insurmountable problem of communications with alien…
Microfluidic chips mimic human organs
A UNIVERSITY spin-off has attracted substantial funding to launch its organs-on-a-chip microfluidic devices. Mimetas, a spin-off of the University of Leiden, Netherlands, has attracted funding of 200,000 euros to puts its synthetic organs into production. The company expects the devices…
Cern video confirms ‘new boson’ has been found
IN AN apparently accidental leak on the Cern website, the discovery of a new boson has been revealed. The scientific community is widely expecting an announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson, sometimes referred to as the God particle,…
Fish balls may reduce live animal tests
A NOVEL technique involving the use of structures built out of rainbow trout liver cells could reduce the need for lab animal tests in chemical safety studies, a report published today says. Researchers led by Professor Awadhesh Jha of Plymouth…
Weekly news: lab freezer failure is reminder to us all
MODERN laboratory equipment is, on the whole, so well designed and engineered that we might take its performance for granted. Instruments have developed to the point where they offer better resolution and better reliability than ever before, provided they are…
Stable phosphoramidites for oligonucleotide synthesis
TWO NEW new modified phosphoramidites have been launched to complement Link Technologies’s oligonucleotide synthesis support portfolio. Triplex, antisense, and gene targeting research may benefit from the company’s new RNA-type phosphoramidites, which it says provide nuclease resistance and stability. New ethyl…
Weekly news: Most scientific research is wrong
SCIENCE is an iterative process, a steady march away from ignorance and towards enlightenment, a gradual unveiling of the hidden truth of why things are the way they are. There are some mistakes along the way, and a lot of…
Mittermaier scores Agilent early career award
AGILENT Technologies has named Anthony Mittermaier, associate professor of chemistry at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, as the winner of its fourth annual Early Career Professor Award. This year’s award focused on the field of structural biology using nuclear magnetic…
Weekly news: The academic spring – removing the paywall to knowledge
WE ALL love open access, don’t we? The very fact that you are reading this newsletter is testament to the power of the internet in providing free and easy access to huge volumes of information. But what about those who…