Industry News
Lomb opens service centre in Melbourne
Lomb Scientific is set to open an office and warehouse facility in the Melbourne suburb of Kensington.
[ + ]Bring on the debate
New science minister promises charters of independence for public researchers. [ + ]
Bonnett becomes Microanalytix
Bonnet Equipment, supplier of a range of high quality laboratory products and consumables to laboratories in Australia and New Zealand, has recently instituted a name change to Microanalytix.
[ + ]Heart beats in the laboratory
US scientists have engineered a bioartificial heart by perfusion decellularisation. [ + ]
Invitrogen acquires CellzDirect
Invitrogen, a provider of life science technologies for research, production and diagnostics, has announced a definitive agreement to purchase privately held American company CellzDirect for around $57 million.
[ + ]No Australian indicator for West Nile virus
Scientists at CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, Victoria, have found that birds are unlikely to be used as part of an ‘early warning’ system for the deadly West Nile virus in Australia.
[ + ]Evolution of the sexes, fungus-style
Fungi don't exactly come in boy and girl varieties, but they do have sex differences. [ + ]
A new direction for gas spectroscopy
Physicists at NIST-Boulder have carried out a powerful new spectroscopic study of a gas sample using optical frequency combs.
[ + ]Database for drug addiction
Chinese scientists have developed an online molecular database of 1500 human genes linked to drug addiction. [ + ]
Protons power the unmentionable
US scientists say protons act like neurotransmitters in nematode toilet behaviour. [ + ]
Respiratory test identifies 12 viruses at once
The US Food and Drug Administration has authorised the marketing of a test that simultaneously detects and identifies 12 specific respiratory viruses from a single throat swab.
[ + ]Raman spectrometric data cleansing
Thermo Fisher Scientific has been awarded a US Patent on Spectrometric Data Cleansing. This patent describes a method for filtering artefacts from Raman spectra and is of particular use in removing the distorted data points generated by cosmic ray interference. Elimination of spectral artefacts facilitates automated analysis by such methods as reference library searches and correlation with standard spectra.
[ + ]Computational quantum chemical methods for drug development
Natural-products chemists may be able to decrease the amount of time it takes for the development of certain types of medicinal drugs.
[ + ]Detecting sudden death in soybeans
A simple, cheap laboratory test developed at Southern Illinois University Carbondale can unerringly detect Sudden Death Syndrome, a costly fungal disease, in soybean seedlings. Once commercialised, its use will help breeders produce SDS-resistant soybean varieties much faster than they can now.
[ + ]Functional proteins from potatoes
Developer of customised industrial-scale separation services Upfront Chromatography has announced that commercial production of highly functional proteins from the side stream of potato processing has been enabled using its Rhobust processing platform. The Rhobust adsorbent is a key component of Solanic’s industrial processing plant, which was officially opened in December 2007 in Gasselternijveen, Netherlands. Solanic is the protein business unit of the potato starch giant AVEBE.
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