Articles by Brent Johnson

Selected Companies Providing Used or Refurbished Lab Equipment Selected Companies Providing Used or Refurbished Lab Equipment (Continued) For scientists who are unfamiliar with the secondary market for lab equipment, the prospect of buying a used centrifuge or thermal cycler conjures up images of fast-talking salesmen and broken-down instrumentation strung together with duct tape and paper clips. Fearful of high-pressure tactics disguised in polyester and snake skin boots, many scientists in

The ability of cells to take up foreign DNA is one of the most relied-upon properties in molecular biology. Electroporation uses electrical field pulses to create pores in the cell membrane through which foreign material can be introduced. One of the newest and most innovative instruments for electroporation is the Cloning Gun from Tritech Research. Tritech's Cloning Gun The Cloning Gun is a cordless, rechargeable, handheld device weighing less than 1 lb. The user simply pipettes cells into th

Ever since Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1670) resolved what he described as "animalicules" with his crude single-lens microscope, the knowledge of these tiny organisms has been menacing. 

Table of Molecular Biology Services Product Tables Courtesy of Invitrogen Many of today's brightest minds find themselves competing with their peers for limited resources in crowded labs. Ingenious experiments may end up on the back burner because another researcher has already booked the instrument through the end of the month or the instrument is awaiting repairs. Increasingly, scientists have come to rely on the convenience of prepared products and contract services.1 It began gradually wit

Date: September 27, 1999Table of Specialty Microplates The story of the microplate is one of those tales of history that either has been forgotten or was never clearly understood. According to Barry Lazar of Dynex Technologies, formerly Dynatech Laboratories, the origin of what is now commonly referred to by Dynex's registered trademark of Microtiter plates began with Gyola Takatsy, a Hungarian-born scientist who was trying to scale down serology tests. His first prototype became available in 1

Whatman's Mini-UniPrep Companies are always on the lookout for that next product that will become the equivalent of the TV dinner for the lab. It usually begins with an observation: "If only I could ..." or "Wouldn't it be neat if they had ...." The prevailing psychology is that most of the simple devices have already been invented. Then along comes a product that rivals the paper clip in its simplicity and sends scientists into paroxysms of envy that they didn't think of it first. "Too trivi

Modern digital images are composed of nearly a million individual points of light that create the illusion of continuity. On a macroscopic scale, this effect is seamless. However, for demanding micro-scopy applications, the digiscape reveals pixelations--tiny distortions that may interfere with the interpretation of the scanned image. Leica Microsystems' DC 100 Imaging System Leica Microsystems' DC 200 Imaging System The effect of digitization can be roughly compared to lying on a bed of nail

Are you resigned to doing cell cultures the old-fashioned way, complacently swabbing cells onto collagen or gel platforms? Or have you always believed there must be a better way? The answer to your problems may lie within the matrix--the Cellfoam™ matrix, that is. But what is the matrix, you ask? Cellfoam is a three-dimensional, highly porous structure for the manipulation of adherent and nonadherent cells. Cytomatrix, a small biotech company in Woburn, Mass., has grown difficult cells s

ARTEL'S Pipette Calibration System Researchers walk a fine line between the real world of botched experiments and the ideal world of rigorously controlled laboratory conditions they are expected to uphold. At times, some experimentalists would be willing to admit that the real world of publication deadlines and grant proposals intrudes on the laboratory environment. The enormous pressure to publish or teach places unusual constraints on the time of researchers, who may find themselves unable

Research Information Systems' Reference Manager 9.0 If you're the odd sort of character who doesn't make a point of memorizing citations, then here's the crutch for you. Research Information Systems has developed Reference Manager 9.0. This bibliographic software allows researchers to search up to 255 Internet libraries simultaneously for journal articles, abstracts, dissertations, patents, and videos. No matter how careful you have been in collecting index cards, there always seems to be a m

Table of Specialty Pipettors Table of Specialty Pipette Tips Specialty pipette tips are like the high-performance tires on a formula-one race car. While most people would imagine that fuel injectors, turbochargers, or transmissions are the fundamental elements of an advanced racing machine, few people consider the importance of tires, when in fact, according to authorities on racing, the whole purpose behind the design of an automobile is to create an environment where the tires contact the p

improve sensitivity fivefold Schematic image of ThermoQuest's UV6000LP Photodiode Array Detector Date: April 12, 1999 (This is a slightly revised version of the article which appeared in the print edition of The Scientist) The LightPipe Flowcell from ThermoQuest is one of the critical components of the company's new UV6000LP Photodiode Array Detector. The flowcell resolves a longstanding problem in optoelectric devices: When the pathlength of a conventional flowcell is increased, both

"Buy real estate; they're not making it anymore," or so the saying goes. Indeed, few pieces of property are more valuable, in relative terms, than the bench space situated between your pipettor and that benchtop tube holder you bought last summer. With each new acquisition, the painful process of evicting longtime residents in favor of new arrivals becomes more difficult. Which device is going to occupy the prime location next to the bunsen burner, and which instrument, heaven forbid, will end

At some fundamental level, every science is reduced to counting spots. Whether it be counting the number of stars in a particular quadrant or even the number of peas in a pod, at some point you must face the dots. It is inescapable. Unlike astronomers and particle physicists who have developed sophisticated software for tabulating dots, however, biologists had yet to develop an effective time-saving system that is comparable to what their colleagues have achieved in the physical sciences--until

Americans, in general, are notoriously impatient. We have fast food, overnight mail, instant coffee, and even drive-through pharmacies. American science, in its own way, has been affected by this unrelenting dash for the finish line. However, this was not always so. When science was in its infancy, a scientist could lead what was considered to be a respected and productive career whether or not he had contributed to the latest journals, secured an exclusive patent, or won a prestigious prize. T