Scientific Instruments

The fall TV schedule is packed with shows in which entertaining hosts hunt ghosts and other ghoulies. The twists this year are that these are called "reality shows" and that the people use "scientific instruments" to try and detect psychic activity.

The goal is not to find evidence, of course, but to convince viewers that there is potential to believe in ghosts. Do you find this misuse of science equipment more or less annoying than fantasy shows that dabble in the supernatural?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Scientific Instruments, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Scientific Instruments today.

Everyone looks at information sources differently. I know what I like to see when I'm reading the Scientific Instruments newsletter: I'm looking for innovative new instruments, new analytical methods, and new applications with either social or commercial significance. And, I admit, I like fun stories and hero experiments and short video segments. But that's just me, and I'm a known geek. What do you find most useful in news about analytical instruments?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Scientific Instruments, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Scientific Instruments today.

In the northern hemisphere, winter is once again on its way. And with it comes flu season, and perhaps our first serious encounter with the H1N1 avian flu. The typical strategy — which focuses on inoculating the elderly and very young — may not be the best way to protect the most people. Simulations reported in a recent paper in Science show that for a disease like the H1N1 avian flu, inoculating school kids and their parents reduces the number of deaths most efficiently. This, the Clemson and Yale researchers believe, is because kids are primary spreaders of the disease. Does inoculating all school kids make sense to you? What (if anything) will you do differently this year to react to the threat of H1N1?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Scientific Instruments, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Scientific Instruments today.

Hard times are here, budgets have been cut to the bone, and it's tough to argue for a better instrument when your organization is looking at the bigger picture of survival. But society as a whole needs those instruments and the people to run them for excellent and urgent public safety reasons: to find swine flu, catch criminals, and ensure the safety of our food and drugs. Does job survival for those in labs lie in retooling our priorities away from just profit and towards the public good? Or is it time to focus more narrowly on our organization's ability to extract maximum profit from a smaller pool of customers?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Scientific Instruments, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Scientific Instruments today.

Just down-river from me, Genzyme's Allston, MA drug manufacturing plant is shut down after a virus was found in one of the reactors. The facility produces drugs to treat Gaucher disease and Fabry disease, two rare genetic disorders. The nontechnical public in the area understands that a virus was found in the reactor, and that this is bad. There's general agreement that shutting down and decontaminating the plant is the correct response. But the more reporters try to explain how the bioreactors are designed to work, the more it sounds like a scheme by a mad scientist or an old horror flick. How can we explain complicated bioscience, and risks associated with them?

The preceding article is a "sneak peek" from Scientific Instruments, a newsletter from GlobalSpec. To stay up-to-date and informed on industry trends, products, and technologies, subscribe to Scientific Instruments today.