The Broad Institute and Fluidigm Corporation have announced the launch of a new research center dedicated to accelerating the development of research methods and discoveries in mammalian single-cell genomics.

The Single-Cell Genomics Center is also expected to act as a hub for collaboration among single-cell genomics researchers in many pioneering fields, including stem cells and cancer biology.

The Center will be housed at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts and will feature a complete suite of Fluidigm single-cell tools, protocols and technologies, most notably the BioMark™ HD System.

The Center grew out of ongoing collaborations between the Broad Institute and Fluidigm that bridge multiple genomic platforms.

"With the Single-Cell Genomics Center, we will enable researchers to access the exciting new world of single-cell genomics, catalyze discoveries and advance our understanding of this important area of biology," said Wendy Winckler, Ph.D., Director of the Genetic Analysis Platform at the Broad Institute.


Read full article: 'New Research Center to Focus on Mammalian Single Cell Genomics'

(openPR) - The project team consisting of 16 members from different institutes and companies won the “Stifterverband science prize” for the development of a platform for ultra-short laser pulses. Jenoptik’s Lasers & Material Processing division has been an important partner in this joint research project.

Together with partners from economy and science, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT was awarded the “Stifterverband science prize” in Aachen on May 8, 2012. A new laser platform used to scale the power of ultra-short laser pulses received the prize during the Fraunhofer Annual Conference in Stuttgart.

The pump source JOLD-650-HSF-4L in the form of a horizontal line had been provided for that development by Jenoptik’s Lasers & Material Processing division.


Read full article: 'Science Award for Joint Laser Research Project under Participation of Jenoptik'

Daral J. Jackwood, PhD, The Center for Diagnostic Assays Lead Research Effort
New York NY, USA -- Animal health and food safety: two very important concerns in today’s world. Global commerce requires an increasingly vigilant approach to protect the food chain, especially regarding food products from animals.

Imagine a world where the scientific community collaborates on the results from their research – an open access forum with researchers from around the world.

That world is destined to become reality, thanks to the work of Daral J. Jackwood, PhD. Dr. Jackwood is the Director of The Center for Diagnostic Assays at The Ohio State University and Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster, OH.

Dr. Jackwood is leading efforts to encourage researchers to adopt open access science in the fields of animal health and food safety through the Center’s www.DiagnosticSpeak.com forum.

This unique forum is dedicated to advancing open access science within the community of infectious disease investigators. Professionals utilize these forums to share discoveries, seek insight and advance the field of animal disease diagnostics in order to ensure the safety of the world's food supply.


Read full article: 'Animal Health, Food Safety Fuel Collaboration On Open Access Science Forum'

Abingdon, UK -- AMSBIO has announced a new range of 3D proliferation assays that make downstream applications of 3D cell culture easier. The past few years have seen a boom in the number of papers published covering 3D cell culture, as researchers working in areas from cancer research to stem cells are increasingly seeing the benefits of this technique.

AMSBIO supplies the most advanced and extensive range of 3D tools to the life science community.

Cultrex® Cell Proliferation Assays from AMSBIO were created in an effort to provide more physiologically relevant assessments when using cell models in the screening process for compounds that influence toxicity, cell survival, tumorigenicity, and new tumor formation.


Read full article: 'Proliferation Assays Ease Downstream Applications of 3D Cell Culture'

Delft, The Netherlands -- In the photovoltaic (PV) sector of the solar energy industry researchers and engineers are continually striving to improve the efficiency of solar panels. However, materials and technologies perform differently under varying atmospheric conditions.

The Kipp & Zonen PGS-100 sun photometer measures the spectrum of the direct solar radiation in the range of 350 nm to 1050 nm wavelength, from the UVA to the near infrared.

The instrument is connected to a PC that runs the operating software to acquire, store and display the spectral data.


Read full article: 'The PGS-100 SunPhotometer'

Abingdon, UK -- AMSBIO has introduced the ImmunoPure™ range of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) supplied in proprietary reagents that ensure high survival and recovery rates.

ImmunoPure™ PBMCs are a variety of immune cells derived from the peripheral blood of normal healthy human adult donors collected at IRB-approved blood banks. Seven types are currently available and consist of a variety of immune cells derived from the peripheral blood of normal adults, thereby qualifying them for a diverse number of cell-based experiments.

The lymphocyte and monocyte fractions are isolated from whole blood using apheresis, a technology in which the blood of a donor is passed through an apparatus that separates out these fractions, and returns the remainder to the donor's circulation.


Read full article: 'PMBC's offer high survival and recovery rates '

{The new Precision Measurement Laboratory at the NIST facility in Boulder, Colo. -- Credit: Copyright Christina Kiffney Photography - View hi-resolution image}

Online -- Two new advanced laboratory buildings for high-precision science and measurements have officially opened in Boulder, Colo., providing upgraded facilities to support technology innovation and economic growth as well as the training of future scientists.

Federal, state and local government officials, university leaders, and Nobel laureates were among those attending the April 13, 2012, dedication ceremonies and tours at the new Precision Measurement Laboratory (PML) on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campus in Boulder and at the new X-Wing at JILA, a joint venture of NIST and the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder. JILA is located on the CU-Boulder campus.


Read full article: 'Two New Advanced Laboratories Open at NIST Boulder and JILA'

Coventry, UK -- Exeter Analytical has developed a reliable analytical method for accurately determining the percentage Carbon (C), Hydrogen (H) and Nitrogen (N) content of polyfluorinated compounds (PFCs).

Polyfluorinated compounds are extremely thermally and chemically stable and have soil, water and fat-repellent properties. They are nearly non-biodegradable and accumulate in the environment and the food chain.

Due to their specific technical characteristics - polyfluorinated compounds are used in quite a number of products such as in textiles, carpets, cosmetics, paper, packaging materials as well as in general in the chemical synthesis, metallation, photo and semi-conductor industries.


Read full article: 'Reliable method for characterising PFC's'

Coventry, UK & Chelmsford MA, USA -- An optimized technique for direct determination of organic carbon and nitrogen in marine sediment is now available from Exeter Analytical Inc. The filter based technique, using an Exeter Analytical Model 440 CHN Elemental Analyzer, provides rapid and routine analysis of marine sediment.

Results are expressed in micrograms of Carbon and Nitrogen detected simplifying the calculation process. Analytical sensitivity is less than 1 microgram.

As the Model 440 provides complete control over combustion parameters it is able to reproducibly achieve 100% combustion with the widest range of sediment samples.


Read full article: 'Determination of organic carbon & nitrogen in marine sediment'

{All-Sky mosaic of WISE 3.4, 4.6, 12 μm Atlas Images; Galactic projection}
WASHINGTON DC, USA -- NASA unveiled a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky today showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

"Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community," said Edward Wright, WISE principal investigator at UCLA, who first began working on the mission with other team members in 1998.

WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, and mapped the entire sky in 2010 with vastly better sensitivity than its predecessors. It collected more than 2.7 million images taken at four infrared wavelengths of light, capturing everything from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies.

Since then, the team has been processing more than 15 trillion bytes of returned data. A preliminary release of WISE data, covering the first half of the sky surveyed, was made last April.


Read full article: 'NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog Of Entire Infrared Sky '

Abingdon, UK & Lake Forest CA, USA -- AMSBIO has announced a new range of ready-to-use lentiviral particles that allow direct visualisation of organelles or structures in cells without manipulation.

For real time visualisation, traditionally researchers have had to use plasmids for organelle markers, but the labelling was transitory. Now using the new AMSBIO lentiviral particles, researchers have an easy way to provide long term labels on many cellular structures (stable integration inside the genome) without the need for transfection reagents.

Using lentiviral particles also allows effective direct visualisation of Nuclei, Nuclear Membrane, Mitotic Chromosomes and Interphase Chromatin, Endosome, Endoplasmic Reticulum, Microtubule, Mitochondria, Golgi, Lysosome, Plasma Membrane, Cytoplasm and Peroxisome in hard to transfect mammalian cells, stem cells and primary cells.


Read full article: 'Lentiviral particles provide labels for organelles'

"A novel method of temperature compensation for piezoresistive microcantilever-based sensors"
Review of Scientific Instruments / Volume 83 / Issue 3 / ARTICLES / Sensors and Actuators/MEMS/NEMS *

"Abstract:
Microcantilever with integrated piezoresistor has been applied to in situ surface stress measurement in the field of biochemical sensors. It is well known that piezoresistive cantilever-based sensors are sensitive to ambient temperature changing due to highly temperature-dependent piezoresistive effect and mismatch in thermal expansion of composite materials. This paper proposes a novel method of temperature drift compensation for microcantilever-based sensors with a piezoresistive full Wheatstone bridge integrated at the clamped ends by subtracting the amplified output voltage of the reference cantilever from the output voltage of the sensing cantilever through a simple temperature compensating circuit. Experiments show that the temperature drift of microcantilever sensors can be significantly reduced by the method."


Read full article: 'Temperature comp for microcantilever-based sensors'

An NPL Publication

Abstract:
This guide provides best practice in the evaluation of uncertainty within metrology, and in the support to this topic given by a treatment that is probabilistic. It is motivated by two principle considerations. The first is that although the primary guide on uncertainty evaluation, the 'Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement' (GUM), can be expected to be very widely applicable, the approach it predominantly endorses contains some limitations. The other is that on the basis of the authors' considerable contact with practitioners in the metrology community it is evident that important classes of problem are encountered that are subject to these limitations. A further consideration is that measurement models are encountered in practice that lie outside the scope of the model type (viz., a measurement function with a single (scalar) output quantity) that is the focus of the presentation given in the GUM. Central to consideration is the need to carry out uncertainty evaluation in as scientific a manner as economically possible. Although several approaches to uncertainty evaluation exist, the GUM has been very widely adopted (and is strongly supported by the authors of this guide). The emphasis of this guide is on making good use of the GUM, on aspects that yield greater generality, and especially on the provision in some cases of measurement uncertainties that are more objectively based and numerically more sustainable. The guide is also concerned with validating the current usage of the GUM in circumstances where there is doubt concerning its applicability. The relationship of this guide to the work being carried out by the Joint Committee on Guides in Metrology to prepare a new edition of the GUM and to provide supporting documents to the GUM is indicated.

Read full article: 'Software Support for Metrology Best Practice Guide No. 6. Uncertainty evaluation'

And purification of recombinant proteins has become easier
Abingdon, UK & Lake Forest CA, USA -- AMSBIO offers a family of anti-tag antibodies to optimize the detection and purification of recombinant tagged proteins. Most of AMSBIO's anti-tag antibodies are mouse monoclonal antibodies which have been screened and extensively validated for high sensitivity and specificity, in applications including Western Blot, Immunofluorescent Staining, Flow Cytometry and Immunoprecipitation.

The anti-DDK clone 4C5 antibody detects the DDK epitope which is widely used as tag in recombinant proteins and is included in the pCMV6-Entry vector that forms the backbone of the TrueORF cDNA series.

It has been used to validate the expression of over 15,000 mammalian recombinant proteins, purify more than 5,000 human recombinant proteins from HEK293 cells and purify immunogens under native conditions for the development of antibodies.


Read full article: 'Conjugated anti DDK Antibodies Detection'

{This artist's impression (Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss) shows a binary system containing a stellar-mass black hole called IGR J17091-3624, or IGR J17091 for short. The strong gravity of the black hole, on the left, is pulling gas away from a companion star on the right. This gas forms a disk of hot gas around the black hole, and the wind is driven off this disk.}

Cambridge MA, USA - This artist's impression shows a binary system containing a stellar-mass black hole called IGR J17091-3624, or IGR J17091 for short. The strong gravity of the black hole, on the left, is pulling gas away from a companion star on the right. This gas forms a disk of hot gas around the black hole, and the wind is driven off this disk.

New observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have clocked the fastest wind ever seen blowing off a disk around this stellar-mass black hole.

Stellar-mass black holes are born when extremely massive stars collapse and typically weigh between five and 10 times the mass of the Sun.

The record-breaking wind is moving about twenty million miles per hour, or about three percent the speed of light.


Read full article: 'NASA'S Chandra Finds Fastest Wind From Stellar-Mass Black Hole '