I have always been fascinated by technology and its ability to drive science in new directions. One of the reasons I enjoy working at a US National Laboratory is because of our abundance of new technologies, and my appetite for the newest, smartest designs is one reason I was happy to serve as a judge of this year's top 10 innovations (see Top Innovations of 2008).
I have realized, however, that using fancy devices is not always the best way to solve a problem. I learned this lesson the hard way when I was a young assistant professor 25 years ago. I had just started my laboratory and had extra start-up money, so decided to find a better way of measuring the rate of endocytosis. The typical approach to studying this process was to add radiolabeled ligands to cells and then measure the relative amount internalized over time using a ...
