Laboratory Equipment

Scientist of the Week: Richard Weller

Every Thursday, Laboratory Equipment features a Scientist of the Week, chosen from the science industry’s latest headlines. This week’s scientist is Richard Weller from Univ. of Edinburgh. He and a team found that sunlight can be beneficial to health and exposing skin to sunlight may help to reduce blood pressure and cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The original article can be found here: www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/sunshine-can-benefit-overall-health

He speaks about his work here: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/scientist-week-richard-weller

Have a question for Richard Weller? Let us know and we’ll pass it on!

Targeting ‘Powerhouses’ May Prevent Drug Resistant Cancer

Re-routing anti-cancer drugs to the “power plants” that make energy to keep cells alive is a promising but long-neglected approach to preventing emergence of the drug-resistant forms of cancer — source of a serious medical problem, scientists are reporting. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/targeting-%E2%80%98powerhouses%E2%80%99-may-prevent-drug-resistant-cancer

Footwear’s Carbon Footprint Originates in Manufacturing

A typical pair of running shoes generates 30 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to keeping a 100-watt light bulb on for one week, according to a new MIT-led lifecycle assessment. But what’s surprising to researchers isn’t the size of a shoe’s carbon footprint, but where the majority of that footprint comes from.

The researchers found that more than two-thirds of a running shoe’s carbon impact can come from manufacturing processes, with a smaller percentage arising from acquiring or extracting raw materials. This breakdown is expected for more complex products such as electronics, where the energy that goes into manufacturing fine, integrated circuits can outweigh the energy expended in processing raw materials. But for “less-advanced” products — particularly those that don’t require electronic components — the opposite is often the case.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/footwears-carbon-footprint-originates-manufacturing

Theorists Help Decide Where to Hunt Dark Matter

Now that it looks like the hunt for the Higgs boson is over, particles of dark matter are at the top of the physics “Most Wanted” list. Dozens of experiments have been searching for them, but often come up with contradictory results.

Theorists from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), a joint SLAC-Stanford institute, believe they’ve come up with an algorithm – a mathematical description of how the individual particles behave – that could help narrow the search for these elusive particles, which are thought to make up more than 25 percent of the matter and energy in the universe.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/theorists-help-decide-where-hunt-dark-matter

Today in Lab History: May 23, 1962- Successful replantation of a human limb

In 1962, a 12-year-old boy’s severed arm was reattached in the world’s first successful replantation of a human limb with microvascular repair of vessels by a team of surgeons led by Ronald Malt and J. McKhann at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/09/today-lab-history

Solar Plane Completes Second Leg of Trip

A solar-powered plane has landed in Texas, completing the second leg of a trip across the U.S.

The Solar Impulse is making the first attempt by a solar airplane capable of flying day and night without fuel to fly across the U.S.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/solar-plane-completes-second-leg-trip

First Printed Airway Saves Little Boy’s Life

In a medical first, doctors used plastic particles and a 3D laser printer to create an airway splint to save the life of a baby boy who used to stop breathing nearly every day. It’s the latest advance from the booming field of regenerative medicine, making body parts in the lab.

In the case of Kaiba Gionfriddo, doctors didn’t have a moment to spare. Because of a birth defect, the little Ohio boy’s airway kept collapsing, causing his breathing to stop and often his heart, too. Doctors in Michigan had been researching artificial airway splints but had not implanted one in a patient yet.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/first-printed-airway-saves-little-boys-life

Space Agency Drives E-Vehicle Development

An ESA business incubation start-up company is helping major car manufacturers to develop electric vehicle concepts and improve safety systems by turning ideas quickly into virtual prototypes.

“Foreseeing products by modeling and simulations can provide big jump-starts for companies,” explains Johannes Gerl, founder and CEO of German start-up company Modelon GmbH. “They reduce their development efforts by saving on the number of prototypes. In addition, they often reduce the time to market.”

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2013/05/space-agency-drives-e-vehicle-development

Transparent Electrode Key to Flexible Solar Cells

Researchers have created a new type of transparent electrode that might find uses in solar cells, flexible displays for computers and consumer electronics and future “optoelectronic” circuits for sensors and information processing.

The electrode is made of silver nanowires covered with graphene, an extremely thin layer of carbon. The hybrid material shows promise as a possible replacement for indium tin oxide, or ITO, used in transparent electrodes for touch-screen monitors, cell-phone displays and flat-screen televisions. Industry is seeking alternatives to ITO because of drawbacks: it is relatively expensive due to limited abundance of indium, and it is inflexible and degrades over time, becoming brittle and hindering performance.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/transparent-electrode-key-flexible-solar-cells

Overeating is Learned in Infancy

In the long run, encouraging a baby to finish the last ounce in their bottle might be doing more harm than good. Though the calories soon burn off, a bad habit remains.

Brigham Young Univ. sociology professors Ben Gibbs and Renata Forste found that clinical obesity at 24 months of age strongly traces back to infant feeding. “If you are overweight at age two, it puts you on a trajectory where you are likely to be overweight into middle childhood and adolescence and as an adult,” says Forste. “That’s a big concern.”

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/overeating-learned-infancy

Stronger Policies Needed on Recycling, Reusing Li-ion Batteries

The discovery of potential environmental and human health effects from disposal of millions of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries each year has led scientists to recommend stronger government policies to encourage recovery, recycling and reuse of lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery materials. That’s the conclusion of a new paper in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Oladele Ogunseitan, from Univ. of California, Irvine, and colleagues point out that Li-ion batteries have become mainstays for powering everything from smart phones to components in new jetliners, with global sales approaching $8 billion annually. They realized that the short life span (two to four years) of Li-ion batteries in portable electronic devices would make a huge contribution to the electronic waste problem, which already is the fastest growing form of solid waste. So they decided to see whether potentially toxic materials leach out and become a health and environmental threat after disposal.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/stronger-policies-needed-recycling-reusing-li-ion-batteries

Humans, Dogs Evolved in Parallel

A team of scientists from China have found that the lengthy and intimate association between dogs and humans has resulted in the genomes of both species evolving in parallel over the past 32,000 years.

To study early dog domestication, a team of researchers led by Guo-Dong Wang and Ya-Ping Zhang of the Kunming Institute of Zoology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sequenced the genomes of four grey wolves from across Eurasia, three indigenous dogs from Southwest China, and three representatives of modern dog breeds. Geneticists believe that indigenous dogs of South China represent the first stage of canine domestication – their genomes may thus hold insights into the transition from wolves to ancestral dogs.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/humans-dogs-evolved-parallel