Page 10 - Microbiology and Life Science News
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October 09, 2012
In 1935, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger came up with one of the most famous thought experiments in history, Schrödinger's cat. The premise of the experiment has a cat in a box, with a capsule of poison gas connected to a Geiger counter. If a radioactive atom decays and triggers the counter the capsule opens and the cat will die. Quantum mechanics, which govern radioactive decay, state that the atom is in a superposition state of both not yet decayed and having decayed. The cat, by extension, is both dead and alive in the box, a seemingly paradoxical outcome. Quantum superposition is so sensitive to interaction with the environment that any attempt at observation ends the superposition and the cat becomes either dead or alive. Today, we are happy to offer our congratulations to Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for independently devising ways to directly observe individual quantum particles in a superposition state without destroying
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October 08, 2012
Congratulations to Shinya Yamanaka and Sir John B. Gurdon for winning the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine! They kick-off this year's Nobel Prize season with their amazing discovery that mature, specialized cells can be reprogrammed to become immature stem cells. In 1962, John B. Gurdon replaced the nucleus of an egg cell of a frog with the nucleus of an intestinal cell. The modified egg cell developed into a normal tadpole, clearly demonstrating that the DNA of specialized cells still contain the information necessary to develop into tissue cell in the frog. More than 40 years later, Shinya Yamanaka introduced a few genes into the cells of mice and reprogrammed them to become pluripotent stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell in the body. The medical potential of their discoveries cannot be overstated. The ability to take tissue cells from an organism and then culture them into a different type of cell opens new avenues to treat diseases and injury that may be untreatable
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August 27, 2012
Bacteria is something of a dirty word. They’re everywhere, invisible and insidious, waiting for their chance to climb into your body and wreak havoc. But before you reach for your hand sanitizer and start counting your sick days, take a moment to consider the many uses that people have found for bacteria. Bacteria are essential in making yogurt and cheese, fixing nitrogen for our crops, and they help us digest our food. In the near future, Damian Palin would like to add mining the ocean to the list of things bacteria do for us. Damian Palin, a geomicrobiologist working in Singapore, has been developing bacteria strains that can be used to precipitate useful minerals out of the briny effluent produced by desalination plants. If he is successful, he would be killing two birds with one stone: useful minerals that would otherwise go to waste could be extracted, and the highly concentrated brine could be treated before it is pumped back into the ocean. Biomining is already used to extract gold,
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July 23, 2012
The EZgrip™ Carboy is a pioneering fluid storage and transfer system now being offered Sterlitech Corporation as part our expanding line of Microbiology and Life Sciences equipment. The EZgrip™ Carboy features an ergonomic, space-efficient rectangular shape and a line of interchangeable caps and spigots that come together to make it ideally suited to handle any task in life science, bioprocess, and pharmaceutical manufacturing laboratories. The EZgrip™ and its dizzying array of accessories comprise the most versatile and usable fluid storage and transfer system available on the market today. To learn more about this product please, visit the EZgrip™ Carboy page.
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February 24, 2012Yesterday news broke that the possible revolutionary findings of the physics experiments that detected particles traveling faster than the speed of light may have been corrupted by two mechanical errors, one of them being a loose cable. Since proof of particles breaking the speed of light would contradict Einstein’s special theory of relativity, not to mention certain principles of quantum mechanics, the initial report in September was met with a great deal of skepticism from the scientific community, and even members of the team that released the data expressed doubts at the time. Since the announcement, the research team and physicists around the world have been reviewing the results to see if they could detect any flaws in the experiment. The tests were performed by the OPERA collaboration, a research venture between CERN and the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. Initially they measured neutrinos traveling from one location to another 450 miles away and found that some arrived
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February 16, 2012
Marine biology and Oceanography organizations have long used a variety of filter media to assist with their research. While the ways in which filtration supplies can be used are as diverse as the life forms that live under the waves, here we highlight a couple of these applications that have previously been mentioned in published papers to give you an idea about some ways filters can be purposed in marine research.
In a study on mercury content of the ocean area between Antarctica and Tasmania, researchers from the Ifremer Institute used the 0.2 Micron, 47 mm polycarbonate membrane filters to filter samples of seawater and brine prior to determining their mercury content through atomic fluorescence spectroscopy. The PCTE membranes were used in conjunction with Sartorius filtration devices and a Nalgene vacuum pump to attain filtered water in volumes between 100 and 1000 mL. By applying this filtration setup the researchers were able to find patterns in how mercury travels the ocean.
Another
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February 02, 2012
In a case of good news/bad news for industrial workers, OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is getting a budget increase for 2012, but the money comes with a delay on a proposal that would further limit workers’ exposure to carcinogenic silica dust. The backstory: Last February OSHA sent a proposal to the White House Office of Management and Budget that called for a reduction in the silica PEL¹ (Permissible Exposure Limit), which would be the first change to this regulation since the 1960’s². The plan was to get the approval of the OMB and then open up the proposal to public debate after 90 days, but one year later and OSHA is still waiting. The reason for the snag is most likely because of concerns raised by the industries that would be financially affected by stricter controls. Some opponents of the new OSHA proposal argue that the government needs to do a better job of enforcing the current rules before making any changes to the exposure level. Congress seems to
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January 24, 2012There is a good article in “The Scientist” this month that covers how various labs have improved the throughput for their flow cytometry applications. The piece covers some of the problems users experience with flow cytometry, namely its time-consuming nature, as well as the steps that actual users have taken to improve the process for themselves. Flow cytometry is a commonly used technique for performing cell counts and diagnosing diseases including leukemia. The use of flow cytometry to analyze cells in the fields of immunology research and drug discovery is growing thanks to new equipment that streamlines the process. A few of these solutions can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, so some of this equipment probably won’t be a feasible option for everyone. A less intensive-option that can improve processing speed is to outfit instruments with a well-plate sipper that can accept microtiter plates, such as the Empore 96-Well Solid Phase Extraction plates. The best solution
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December 28, 2011
In the spirit of reflection we wanted to take a look at some of our favorite posts from 2011 that you may have missed, or may want to revisit for the sake of nostalgia. It’s been an amazing year for us, and we hope everyone out there has made the most of it as well! Here’s wishing you all a Happy New Year!
- Performance Improvement of Cross-flow Filtration for High Level Waste Treatment (Feb. 2011) - Tips on improving your filtration setup from the Department of Energy and Savannah River National Laboratory.
- Bean to Bar at Theo Chocolates (Mar. 2011) - Our own Kristina Shahbazian went on a tour of the only bean-to-bar, organic, fair trade chocolate factory in the USA, located right here in Seattle.
- Legionella Sampling Just Got a Whole Lot Sexier (Apr. 2011) - How the Centers for Disease Control utilized filtration sampling and social media Epidemiology to track an outbreak of legionella bacterium at Playboy mansion's infamous grotto.
- Deadliest Carch: Man-Made Pollution (Jun. 2011) - A collective
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December 19, 2011In order to catch up with the massive backlog of chemical compounds that need toxicity assessments, the NIH, EPA, and FDA are expanding their Tox21 robot screening program to start testing a compound library of 10,000 samples. The Tox21 screening program was first conceived in 2005 and is a joint development between these three agencies. The Tox21 robot, located in Rockville, MD, was introduced earlier this year as the heart of the program and has already studied about 500 chemicals. To give you an idea of what an improvement this is, the EPA has only tested 200 chemicals since 1976. By speeding up chemical toxicity analysis the government will also accelerate the drug development process, as drug toxicity is one of the primary reasons new drugs fail. The six-ton Tox21 robot system can test thousands of chemicals simultaneously using its vast network of tiny wells to perform high-throughput, cell-based assays at 15 different concentrations. The robot system is able to identify which chemicals
