THE WORLD reference laboratory for foot and mouth disease (FMD) at Pirbright has won funding of £2million to boost its status as the global centre of expertise on the disease. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)…
Freeze drying course goes back to basics
A NEW four-part online training course to help scientists acquire a basic understanding of freeze drying – a prerequisite for those working on lyophilisation processes – has been announced by SP Scientific. The training course is presented by industry expert…
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,…
High pressure reactions in parallel
DESIGNED to be used in conjunction with a simple benchtop magnetic stirrer or stirrer/hotplate, the Asynt Parallel High Pressure Reactor is described as a cost-effective lightweight unit suitable for stirred or non-stirred applications. The reactor can be configured to suit…
Field-of-view calculations on an iPhone
A PAIR of new iPhone apps from Resolve Optics simplify lens field of view (FOV) calculations. Suitable for optics professionals and camera enthusiasts alike, the apps eliminate a lot of time consuming arithmetic. They allow users to quickly work out…
Protein crystallisation studies rely on temperature stage
TRADITIONAL methods for growing protein crystals are by microplate sitting-drop crystallisation, or hanging-drop methods based on vapour diffusion. These yield a limited number of crystals, but usually enough for biological research. At the Institute for Particle Science and Engineering at…
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: Campaign backfire may have been intentional
NOW, call me cynical if you like, but I can’t help wondering if the unmitigated disaster that was this week’s launch of a campaign to motivate young women into science might have been what was actually wanted? You’ve doubtless heard…
Drying of aqueous HPLC fractions made faster and easier
A HIGH throughput method for drying high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) fractions containing water is described in a new white paper from Genevac. Many lab workers experience difficulty in drying HPLC purification fractions. While the more volatile acetonitrile and methanol…
Methods for detection of dioxins in eggs
RESPONDING to the latest food scare in Europe, in which chicken eggs have been found to contain up to four times the permitted level of dioxins, Thermo Fisher has drawn attention to the test methods it has developed to detect…
Stirring hot plates are corrosion resistant
THE NEW EchoTherm stirring hot plates from Torrey Pines Scientific are corrosion-resistant, making them suitable for environments that would destroy less robust lab equipment, says the company. The EchoTherm HS70 can cope with aggressive chemicals, vapours, and spills, thanks to…
Mycoplasma genitalium monoclonal antibodies now available
NOTABLE for having the smallest genome of any known organism, Mycoplasma genitalium is a small bacterium which, like other Mycoplasma species, has no cell wall. Residing in the human urogenital tract, it causes urethritis in males and females as well…
Faster measurement of blood parameters
A HAEMATOLOGY and blood chemistry analyser just launched by Horiba Medical can measure both complete blood count (CBC) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in just four minutes, requiring only 18ul of sample. The Microsemi CRP is now available in Europe, having…
Surfs imaging sheds light on bacterial mobility and adhesion
NEW RESEARCH in France has shown that that both the adhesion of a bacterium to a surface, and its motion on that surface ,are driven by the same mechanism. The work, carried out by groups belonging to Inserm and CNRS…
How to determine the CHN content of soils
A NEW application note demonstrating the precise determination of the carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen (CHN) content of soil samples has been released by Exeter Analytical. This useful document includes details of the analytical methodology, used plus data demonstrating the quality…
Automatic scanning of barcodes on lab racks
IT IS now possible to scan 1D barcodes on sample tubes in the laboratory in just five seconds, using the Tracxer BC210 barcode reader as an accessory to the Micronic RS210 Tracxer Code Reader. The Tracxer RS210 provides complete tube…
Tunable blue laser is world first
THE WORLD’S first precision tunable blue laser operating at 461nm, the Vortex Plus Blue TLB-6802, has been launched by the New Focus division of Newport. This is the critical wavelength for the next generation of atomic clocks currently being built…
World’s only nephelometer to measure light scattering in a microplate
THE NEWEST addition to BMG Labtech’s range of microplate readers, the Nephelostar Plus, is said to be the world’s only laser-based nephelometer that measures light scattering in a microplate. Light scattering is an alternative to absorbance studies, measuring the turbidity…
UHPLC delivers ‘exceptional’ productivity
CLAIMING the lowest gradient delay volume and unmatched flow precision, the Thermo Scientific UltiMate 3000 XRS ultra-high performance liquid chromatograph (UHPLC) is the newest member of Thermo’s UHPLC+ range. The company says the instrument offers new sampling and detection capabilities,…
Weekly news: is this the real life?
I WAS interested to see some research published this week on the ‘Truman Show delusion’, having recently had a conversation with a teenager about this very subject. In the 1998 movie The Truman Show, the eponymous hero is adopted from…
Nanoparticle tracking analysis to characterise microvesicles
THE YIN research lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA, is working at the interface of chemistry, biology, and engineering to study structure-based drug design, and using Nanoparticle Tracking Analysis (NTA) to characterise biological nanoparticles such as microvesicles.…
Eleven laser wavelengths in a single package
AVAILABLE in free-space or fibre-coupled configurations, the new line of Excelsior One lasers from Spectra-Physics deliver eleven different wavelengths and up to 500mW of average power. These plug-and-play lasers are intended for bioinstrumentation applications including flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and…
Digging deeper into images for biomedical research
THE UPDATED version of Definiens Image Miner, just released, promises to give life sciences researchers deeper biological insights by integrating data analysis with images. The company says Image Miner 2 can reduce the time needed for image-based studies from weeks…
Centrifuge tubes can stand alone
COMBINING chemical resistance and high speed tolerance with practicality, Porvair Sciences 50ml centrifuge tubes incorporate a circular collar on the base to enable them to stand on the lab bench without external support. Made of clear polypropylene (PP), the tubes…
Autoprep boosts research into single cell genomics
THE EMERGING field of single-cell genomics is enabling scientists to study previously unavailable genomic signatures from a single cell. Fluidigm believes its C1 system will prove to be the next big advance in the field. The C1 single-cell autoprep system…
Measure viscosity at high shear with E chip
MEASURING viscosity at high shear rates is a challenge with conventional instruments, as the instigation of turbulent or unstable fluid flow makes measurements unreliable. The standard way of dealing with this problem is to make multiple measurements, but this requires…
Plate reader includes on-board camera for well imaging
DESCRIBED as an evolution of its first dynamic light scattering (DLS) plate reader, Wyatt Technology’s new DynaPro Plate Reader II includes an onboard camera to take pictures of each microplate well. The new reader has an extended temperature range, from…
HPLC columns enhance protein and peptide separations
AVAILABLE in analytical, micro, and nano formats, the new Accucore 150-C18 and 150-C4 columns from Thermo Fisher Scientific are designed to improve protein and peptide assay robustness by enhancing peak capacity and run times at moderate operating pressures. Thermo says…
Sterility testing workstation offers modular flexibility
LAUNCHED this week at Achema is a new workstation for sterility testing, the Bioquell Qube, which will help laboratories in their increasingly-important sterilisation validation processes. Qube will help ensure that an aseptic test environment is properly controlled, in order to…
Top tips for gene silencing and delivery
A RAPIDLY growing area of genomics research is the field of gene silencing, particularly through the use of short interfering RNA (siRNA). This has become a useful tool for understanding the involvement of genes in disease states and pathways, and…