The 2003 Readers' Choice Awards

"Give us the tools, and we will finish the job."--Winston Churchill Centrifuges, imaging systems, pipettes, PCR instruments, microscopes, and more--all indispensable components of the scientist's toolbox. They make science happen. Moreover, they make science compelling. Why else would television programs such as CSI and The X-Files devote so much screen time to such high-tech gadgetry? Most labs have these things, and naturally, researchers have their preferences. So, like last year, we asked readers to choose their favorites. The result: the second annual Readers' Choice Awards. We invited readers of The Scientist to choose their favorite instruments, kits, and gadgets; to click on the best Web sites, software, and book titles; and to applaud the best customer service they've seen this year. Voting took place on our Web site between Sept. 22 and Oct. 10. Tight races produced ties in two classifications, giving a grand total of 32 finalists in all 10 categories. Every winner of last year's competition returned for an encore in 2003 except one, software developer GraphPad. The list of finalists reads like a Who's Who in the life sciences industry: Ambion, Amersham Biosciences, Applied Biosystems, Eppendorf, Gilson, Invitrogen, MJ Research, Promega, QIAGEN, Rainin, Roche Diagnostics, Thomson ISI ResearchSoft, and Carl Zeiss. They are joined by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, as well as a collection of more familiar household names, including Adobe, Apple, Kodak, and Microsoft. The finalists in the Best Science Book category reflect the interest in the story of DNA on this, the 50th anniversary of the structure's discovery. Two of the titles deal directly with that account: James D. Watson's autobiographical The Double Helix and Brenda Maddox's The Dark Lady of DNA, a biography of Rosalind Franklin. The third contender is Matt Ridley's Genome. We announced the finalists in early November and will award the winners at a ceremony Dec. 15 in San Francisco, coinciding with the American Society of Cell Biology's annual meeting. Congratulations to all our finalists. BEST INSTRUMENT UNDER $25,000 WINNER: Applied Biosystems GeneAmp PCR System 9700 Applications: PCR and cycle-sequencing reactions US list price: $7,995 Employees: 4,480 Revenues: $1.68 billion in FY 2003 HQ: Foster City, Calif. NYSE symbol: ABI FINALIST: Eppendorf Centrifuge 5810R Application: Refrigerated, bench-top centrifuge US list price: $8,500, without rotor Employees: about 1,620 in 2002 Revenues: €297.3 million in FY 2002 HQ: Hamburg, Germany FINALIST: MJ Research PTC-100 Peltier Thermal Cycler Applications: PCR and cycle-sequencing reactions US list price: $3,995-$5,995 Employees: about 320 Revenues: about $50 million HQ: Waltham, Mass. "In the words of Tina Turner, the Zeiss Axioplan 2 is 'simply the best.'" Keith Davidson, Department of Signalling, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge BEST INSTRUMENT BETWEEN $25,000 AND $100,000 WINNER: Carl Zeiss Axioplan 2 imaging Application: Fluorescence microscopy US list price: $35,000-$70,000 Employees: about 14,000 Revenues: almost €2.3 billion in 2001-2002 HQ: Oberkochen, Germany FINALIST: Amersham Biosciences ÄKTA FPLC Applications: Fast-performance liquid chromatography for protein purification List price: £17,600-£23,500 Parent: Amersham Employees: 10,051 Revenues: £1.62 billion in FY 2002 HQ: Buckinghamshire, UK NYSE symbol: AHM FINALIST: Eastman Kodak Image Station 2000R Applications: Quantitative imaging of gels, plates, and membranes US list price: $36,000 Employees: about 70,000 Revenues: $12.84 billion in FY 2002 HQ: Rochester, NY NYSE symbol: EK FINALIST: Applied Biosystems ABI PRISM 7900HT Sequence Detection System Applications: High-throughput real-time PCR system, gene-expression analysis, and SNP detection US list price: $90,000-$130,000 with automation accessory BEST INSTRUMENT OVER $100,000 WINNER: Carl Zeiss LSM 510 META Laser Scanning Microscope Application: Multispectral, confocal microscopy US list price: $340,000 and up WINNER: Applied Biosystems ABI PRISM 3100 Genetic Analyzer Applications: 16-capillary electrophoresis instrument for DNA sequencing and fragment analysis US list price: $136,500 WINNER: Affymetrix GeneChip Scanner 3000 Applications: Microarray reader for gene-expression analysis, SNP detection, and DNA sequencing US list price: $190,000 Employees: 900 Revenues: $289.9 million in FY 2002 HQ: Santa Clara, Calif. NASDAQ symbol: AFFY "Scanning is excellent even on the very tiny chips (10 µm x 10 µm) and the resolution is higher than before. The size of the [GeneChip] scanner is also very convenient." Taina M. Jaatinen, Red Cross Finland, Blood Service, Helsinki, Finland BEST SOFTWARE PACKAGE WINNER: Adobe Photoshop Applications: Photo editing and figure preparation US list price: $649 Employees: 3,319 in 2002 Revenues: $1.17 billion in FY 2002 HQ: San Jose, Calif. NASDAQ symbol: ADBE FINALIST: Microsoft PowerPoint Applications: Slide preparation and presentation Employees: 55,000 Revenues: $32.19 billion in FY 2003 HQ: Redmond, Wash. NASDAQ symbol: MSFT FINALIST: EndNote by Thomson ISI ResearchSoft Application: Bibliographic management US list price: $299 for full Windows CD and manual Parent: Thomson Employees: 42,000 Revenues: $7.8 billion in FY 2002 HQ: Toronto NYSE symbol: TOC MOST HELPFUL OR RESPONSIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT WINNER: Invitrogen Service contacts per week: 2,700 calls, 330 E-mails Average customer wait-time: 28 seconds Size of customer service division: 46 Employees: 2,744 Revenues: $648.6 million HQ: Carlsbad, Calif. NASDAQ symbol: IVGN FINALIST: Amersham Biosciences Service calls per week: 5,000-6,000 Average customer wait-time: about 10 seconds Size of customer service division: 50-60 FINALIST: QIAGEN Size of customer-support team: about 120 "We have a local Invitrogen representative who has gone out of his way to help us to troubleshoot difficulties we have encountered in [optimizing Invitrogen's Gateway System]." Melissa Da Silva, Christine Butler-Cole, Monika Fazekas, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC Canada MOST USEFUL GADGET WINNER: Gilson Pipetman Application: Liquid-handling US list prices: $254-$289 for Pipetman; $285-$310 for Pipetman Ultra Employees: 450 HQ: Middleton, Wis. FINALIST: Rainin 12-Channel Pipette Application: Liquid-handling Parent: Mettler Toledo Employees: 8,500 Revenues: $1.21 billion in FY 2002 NYSE symbol: MTD FINALIST: Eppendorf Research Ergonomic Pipettes Application: Liquid-handling US list prices: $282 for single-channel; $657 for 8-channel; $763 for 12-channel BEST SCIENCE BOOK WINNER: Brenda Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers ISBN: 0060184078 WINNER: James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group ISBN: 074321630x FINALIST: Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers ISBN: 0060194979 MOST INFORMATIVE OR BEST-DESIGNED LIFE-SCIENCES WEB SITE WINNER: Invitrogen Hits: 300,000 per week Visitors: 42,000 per week Size of Web site: about 10,000 files and pages, including online catalog and configuration tools www.invitrogen.com FINALIST: Ambion Visitors: 5,000 per day Size of Web site: about 9,000 active, linked pages www.ambion.com FINALIST: The National Center for Biotechnology Information Hits: 38 million per day Visitors: 400,000 per weekday Computational muscle: 110 PubMed CPUs; 250 BLAST CPUs Searches: PubMed, 1.8 million per day; BLAST, 120,000 per day Size of GenBank: 35.6 billion bases, from about 30 million sequences (as of Oct. 15, 2003) Growth since August: 1.8 billion bases www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov BEST RESEARCH KIT MANUFACTURER WINNER: QIAGEN Best sellers include: QIAPrep Spin Mini Prep Kits, and RNEasy Mini Kits Employees: 1,651 Revenues: $298.6 million in 2002 HQ: Germany NASDAQ symbol: QGENF FINALIST: Amersham Biosciences Best sellers include: ECL Western blotting detection, and CyScribe DNA labeling kit FINALIST: Invitrogen Best sellers include: Lipofectamine™ 2000, and Platinum™ TAQ DNA Polymerase FINALIST: Promega Employees: 750 Revenues: $130 million in FY 2003 HQ: Madison, Wis. From a distance, [the LightCycler] looks awesome. Round and with a matte gray shine. Impressive high-pitched, high-speed sounds. I have referred to it ... as a portable thermonuclear device, a nuclear reactor, a music synthesizer, and the famous Monty Python piece of equipment that goes 'Ping.'" Dirk Geerts, senior staff scientist, University of Amsterdam THE "COOLEST" OR "NEATEST" INSTRUMENT WINNER: Roche Diagnostics LightCycler Application: Multicolor, high-throughput, real-time PCR US list price: $57,500 Parent: F. Hoffman-La Roche Employees: 69,659 in FY 2002 Revenues: 29.73 billion Swiss francs in FY 2002 SWX symbol: ROCZg.VX FINALIST: Eppendorf MiniSpin plus Personal Centrifuge Application: Personal minicentrifuge US list price: $1,500 FINALIST: Apple PowerMac G5 Applications: Word processing, data crunching, photo editing, and Unreal Tournament US list price: $1,999 for the 1.6 GHz PowerPC G5 Revenues: $6.21 billion for FY ending Sept. 27, 2003 HQ: Cupertino, Calif. NASDAQ symbol: AAPL function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

The 2003 Readers' Choice Awards

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