Mason-Dixon line in the lab

Mason-Dixon line Left side: QIAamp DNA Mini Kit for 250 DNA preps ($556.00) for purification of genomic, mitochondrial, bacterial, parasite, or viral DNA Right side: RNeasy Mini Kit (50) for purification of up to 100 ug total RNA from animal cells or tissues, yeast, or bacteria ($227.00)

Petabyte Age Wiredesque lesson on what science can learn from Google

I argued many times here that biology based biotechnology is the next information technology but in order to do so, biotech should harness good IT patterns and mimic its massive computing practices to handle the enormous amount of constantly accumulating data. Often this trend could be summarized in a simple way: keep your eye on…

Meet the biogangers in the FriendFeed unconference room!

As of this moment the population of The Life Scientists Room on FriendFeed is 73. See the BioGang in motion and get an initial statistics on the distribution of wet lab/dry lab, academic/industrial people there. Here are the first 8 answerers out of the 16 so far.

The conditions of a mass biotech DIY movement

The idea of doing biological experiments with current biotechnological methods and conducting research projects at home is quite new. There are already many names in use referring to the same concept: bioDIY, home biology, biotech DIY, garage biology. We have a detailed case example which can be considered as the first registered, high profile biotech…

Last cell counting of the year 2007

We have only winners at the Laboratory Website Awards!

I hope that scientists and IT and financial managers of scientists worldwide will be able to utilize the collective lab website culture and wisdom accumulated by the first ever Laboratory Web Site Awards by The Scientist! And I personally would like to say thank you for the following editors of The Scientist (The Scientists) for…

Let’s vote now for the 10 Finalist Lab Websites at The Scientist!

Ladies and gentlemen of science! You can now rank the 10 finalist websites from 1 to 10 (1 being the best) at the Laboratory Website and Video Awards hosted by The Scientist. Please do not hesitate, judging is a lot of fun and this is a big issue: figuring out the parameters of the labsite…

It’s now judging time at The Laboratory Website Awards…

and I really like it. The nominations for the best laboratory websites are now closed at the Laboratory Website and Video Awards hosted by The Scientist. Now it’s the job of the judging panel (and I am one of them) to make our scores and review the nominees and then turn the voting back to…

The official method, the DIY solution and the science hack

Original title, let’s call it subtitle: Can we isolate human cell clone derived colonies with an inoculation loop? The following post is dedicated for scientists who ever faced with a similar problem, that is running out of cloning disks and working late. In experimental science, when people are facing with a problem need to be…

Flourishing lab site culture around the Laboratory Website Awards!

You can still nominate your favorite lab websites at the Laboratory Website and Video Awards or LaWVAs (pronounced like “lava) hosted by The Scientist. (Disclaimer: I am a consultant to The Scientist on the LaWVA project and a member of the judging panel.) I’ve just checked the candidates and they are amazingly versatile ranging from…

The Laboratory Website and Video Awards by the Scientist!

Here is a classical web story told in links: a niche blogger got an idea and tries to outsource it, it is popularized by other bloggers, then goes mainstream with the help of a science journal, grows over little blogger’s head and get realized by another powerful science institution. That’s what happened with my unofficial…

Nanodrop video ad from the Brown iGEM team

Imagine a world where grad students and postdocs are well paid by manufacturers and companies by doing ads like the following one. The Brown iGEM Team shows off the Nanodrop Spectrophotometer and compares it to regular spectrophotometers in a funny, easy to catch way. (They were not paid by this.) And how the disclaimers would…

Google as your daily lab organizer or The Google Scientist Gamma

From the Financial Times: Google’s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said: “The goal is to enable Google users to…

Stem Cell Lab Monitor: the Bernstein Laboratory at UCSF

The first lab of Pimm’s new series turned out to be the Bernstein Laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco focusing on heart muscle regeneration. Unlike other professors, Harold Bernstein is extra fast, he answered my questions within 8 hours. This web-availability, rare within academic circles, positively correlates with the design and functionality of…

Laboratory website culture and Pimm in Nature: the real digital windows

Paul Smaglik, Naturejobs editor wrote a Prospects piece in the current Nature (yeah, the big one) in his column on laboratory website culture apropos of the highly unofficial lab website competition of Pimm. Read it, think it over and build better and more professional lab websites. Oh yes, and don’t forget to allocate the resources…

Stem Cell Lab Monitor: post series on excellent stem cell labs

Research in life sciences is more a team effort than ever. If you take a look on an average peer review article, in most cases there are as many as 6 authors and usually from more than 1 lab. But the basic unit and currency of any valuable research contribution is a LAB. Not the…

Towards Universal Online Laboratory Notebooks – in theory

Maxine Clarke, Nature’s blogactive and web-oriented Publishing Executive Editor blogged on has an interesting and opinionated editorial on Share your lab notes in Nature 447, 1-2 (3 May 2007). also available at Nautilus. Her The line of argument is: The use of electronic laboratory notebooks should be supported by all concerned since they “contain data…

Who wants to host the best laboratory website competition?

We have many candidates now for good laboratory websites due to the post What does a good laboratory homepage look like? Show me at least one! All we need is an organizer, an institution (academies, universities, science publishing groups, research institutes, biotech firms, IT companies, rich science freak private people…) someone who can host this…

What does a good laboratory homepage look like? Show me at least one!

In life sciences the basic, functional unit of cooperation and research is a LAB. Now am I alone with my opinion that most academic laboratory web pages simply do not meet any advanced, current, dynamic web standards, although this would be crucial for them? What information should a good laboratory homepage offer, and what design…