As a thank you to our San Diego-area customers, we threw a big Cinco de Mayo party at our headquarters and flagship showroom this past May 4th.  And since we like to do things the BioSurplus way (as well as honor the local life sciences community) we made a slight change and decided to call it Cinco de Bio!

There were free drinks and food for all, tours of our new facility, and special Cinco de Bio deals on select lab instruments in our inventory.

Next year we’ll be rolling out the event at all of our locations, including our soon-to-open showroom in the Boston/Cambridge biotech hub.  Take a moment and check out the photos below.

Cinco de Bio is back and you’re invited!

Friday May 4th, 2012. 

The BioSurplus team cordially invites you to attend this fun-filled event at our San Diego headquarters and showroom.  In order to show our appreciation to our valued customers, we’re offering free food and drinks, giveaways, and one-day-only specials on lab equipment.

The festivities will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at 10805 Vista Sorrento Pkwy, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92121.

For event information please contact Grant Goad at 858-550-0800 x217 or ggoad@biosurplus.com

RSVP Today – click here!

From Lab Manager Magazine

Eppendorf 5702 Benchtop Centrifuge

The modern research lab is filled with equipment helping researchers to harvest, chop, boil, homogenize, and crystallize materials of all types. Keeping track of the maintenance and safety of lab equipment used in performing these tasks can be a challenge for laboratory managers. One piece of equipment deserving special attention when it comes to ensuring the safety of laboratory employees is the centrifuge.

The laboratory centrifuge, an instrument designed to spin and separate liquids at high speeds, has come a long way from the days of the older models, which required the units to be spun by hand. New and updated models now allow researchers many options for spinning and separating materials. Nevertheless, without proper preventive maintenance and good laboratory procedures, the centrifuge can become a safety hazard to laboratory workers. Improper use can potentially expose lab workers to hazardous materials as well as severely damage a costly piece of equipment. The risk of your centrifuge becoming a safety hazard can be mitigated through proper preventive maintenance and strict adherence to manufacturer procedures and your internal laboratory safety procedures.

The heart and soul of any centrifuge is its rotor (the component of the centrifuge that contains and spins the material). This part will eventually wear down after continuous use. A routine visual check of your rotor is necessary to detect any type of rotor fatigue (cracks, bulges, or corrosion) that can lead to the eventual failure of the rotor and significant damage to your centrifuge. One way to ensure that all the moving parts in your unit remain at optimal performance is preventive maintenance (pm). Recommended by nearly all centrifuge manufacturers, pm may include a detailed cleaning, lubrication, and calibration of your unit.

No big deal right? Well, before you brush this recommendation off completely, keep in mind that a properly functioning centrifuge will provide your researchers with consistent and reliable performance and accurate results, and drastically reduce your chances of accident and/or costly repair. In addition to having your centrifuge units on a routine pm schedule, it’s important to have internal laboratory policies in place to help ensure that all employees are using the same procedures for centrifuge safety. These policies can include the following.

Centrifuge use log

A good practice for tracking the amount of time your centrifuge and rotors are accruing is the use of a centrifuge use log. This log can help researchers and lab managers balance the amount of time the rotors are being used as well as provide data on the wear and tear each rotor is receiving. The log can also be used to track the cleaning schedule of the equipment.

Procedure for cleaning rotors

One way to help extend the life of your rotors is to adopt policies to ensure they are cleaned and/or rinsed after a prescribed amount of time or at the end of each day. Periodic and scheduled cleaning of rotors can help to keep them free of dirt and other particles or debris that could lead to damage and future accidents. Always refer to the manufacturer’s instructions for specific information on how your centrifuge should be cleaned.

Procedure for handling biological spills in the centrifuge

Thermo Sorvall WX80 Ultracentrifuge

Even with the best policies and procedures in place, accidents can still happen on occasion. In the event of a biological spill inside the centrifuge, employees should have a standardized procedure for minimizing aerosol exposures, decontaminating the spill, cleaning the area with an approved disinfectant, and properly removing potentially contaminated waste. Lab workers, for example, should be trained on procedures to allow aerosols to settle for at least 30 minutes prior to cleaning any infectious material that has been released into the centrifuge. Ensuring that employees follow standard company procedures for a safe spill response will reduce the chance of causing another incident while trying to clean the spill.

In summary, there are many things involved in properly maintaining a laboratory centrifuge besides loading and spinning. Managing the preventive maintenance and safety of the centrifuges at your facility will help ensure the accuracy of your data, help extend the life of your centrifuges, and improve the safety culture within your lab.

Our thanks to Lab Manager Magazine for permission to re-publish this article.

_________________________________________________________________________

BioSurplus carries a variety of centrifuges inlcuding microcentrifuges, benchtop centrifuges, floor centrifuges and ultracentrifuges.  We sell pre-owned equipment from trusted brands such as Eppendorf, Beckman, Fisher Scientific, Thermo, VWR, DuPont Sorvall and many more.  Find great deals on used centrifuges now!

If you have any questions or don’t find what you’re looking for, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 858-550-0800 x201, or sales@biosurplus.com.

Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann

By Bob Fagaly, Ph.D.

One thing about roller coasters is that you go up and down and up and down, but at the finish, you are in the same place you started.

One of the more intriguing “discoveries” in science happened a little over two decades ago. In March of 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann at the University of Utah announced that they had measured what they believed to be the byproducts of a nuclear fusion reaction.

Rather than the traditional plasma physics experiments using vacuum chambers larger than your house and temperatures approaching the sun’s core (more than a hundred millions degrees), their bench top apparatus looked like your normal glass electrochemical reaction chamber. Their experiment involved electrolysis of heavy water (D₂O) on the surface of a palladium (Pd) electrode.

If Cold Fusion were real, we would have had a cheap, safe and abundant source of energy. The impact on society would have been phenomenal (not to mention the billions of dollars in royalties to the University).

I heard the announcement as I was driving to General Atomics (GA) in San Diego where I was a member of the Applied Physics Group (part of GA’s 400+ person fusion research effort). By the time I got to work, nearly a dozen members of my group were in the hall discussing what this could possibly be.

The first calculation determined that if the mechanism was the traditional deuterium/tritium (DT) reaction, Pons and Fleischmann would have received enough radiation to have killed them within 5 minutes. Since they were still alive, we started looking for another mechanism.

A friend of mine happened to be a faculty member at Utah and an expert in solid-state physics and thermodynamics. I called him up to find out what was going on. His response was that, for patent reasons, the university lawyers wouldn’t allow anyone into the lab to inspect the equipment. So, we were still in the dark as to what was going on.

The roller coaster ride was about to start.

High-Temperature Superconductivity

Muller and Bednorz

To place this in context, just three years earlier, High-Temperature Superconductivity was discovered by Georg Bednorz and Alex Muller at IBM, Zurich. This raised the transition temperature for superconductivity from above liquid helium and hydrogen (~25 K/-414°F) temperatures (~125 K/-234°F) to well above that of liquid nitrogen (77 K/-320°F).

The possibilities for power transmission, extremely high field superconducting magnets and ultrasensitive magnetic sensors seemed endless. Hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding flowed into superconductivity, and patents were being filed left and right to take financial advantage of what was perceived to be a multi-billion dollar new product area.

Apparently, Utah’s lawyers saw an even larger payoff and immediately clamped down on all information to protect their perceived intellectual property. Later on, they even hired lobbyists to get Congress to pay for additional research.

Since we (GA) had some of the brightest minds in conventional fusion research—and with the enthusiastic blessing of upper management—we got on the roller coaster and decided to duplicate Pons and Fleischmann’s experiment as best we could.

A Gram of Palladium…

For some reason I still can’t explain, I happened to have a gram of palladium at home (proving my wife’s assertion that I am a pack rat). I immediately drove home to get it while other group members were hunting up glassware, pillaging GA’s supply of heavy water and locating where any unused neutron detectors were.

The net result was that we spent (wasted?) two weeks trying to get a reaction without success. That’s not quite true. We did get one experiment where the palladium caught fire, but that was when someone allowed air and hydrogen gas to get onto the bare palladium. Impressive, but no neutrons, no gamma rays and no other fusion products such as helium.

Most other groups met with the same negative results. A few groups reported initial success, but could not repeat them. One interesting observation about the schools that reported initial success was that they also had highly successful football teams. I’m not sure what that means, but it was a source of humor within the physics community. Within a year, hopes fell with the overwhelming number of negative results and the withdrawal of the “positive” duplications.

By the end of the year, most scientists considered Pons and Fleischmann’s claims of cold fusion dead as a doornail. At this point, the roller coaster was at the bottom. One of the hardest things to do is to disprove a negative (i.e., cold fusion doesn’t exist), especially to a non-technical crowd. A few diehards continued to work, but the mainstream efforts stopped.

A few years later, some more positive results were claimed (the roller coaster was at another, albeit lower, peak), but, like earlier, those failed to be duplicated (another bottoming out of the roller coaster). Just a few years ago, cold fusion was back in the news, but as of today, no one has been able to repeatedly demonstrate anything akin to cold fusion.

Personal Thoughts

Like the roller coaster, we’ve gone up and down and up and down. Today, we are back in the same place we started. I must admit it was an exciting (and ultimately disappointing) two weeks. Getting phone calls from the local TV stations multiple times a day wanting to know what we had found soon got boring.

My personal thoughts are that Pons and Fleischmann may have stumbled across some interesting surface chemistry sufficient to generate an exothermic reaction. I don’t think that they ever initiated a fusion reaction.

The other observation is that, when there is a chance of real money being generated, lawyers appear and try to drive the (research) vehicle. At best, they can protect your intellectual property (always a wise idea). At worst, they drive you up (or into) a tree.

Be that as it may, when doing science, you have to be prepared not only for success, but for failure. Not all experiments are successful.

I sometimes wish that there was an actual Journal of Wrong Results (as opposed to the no longer in print, but very humorous Journal of Irreproducible Results) where you could list (anonymously?) things you’ve tried that didn’t work.

If for no other reason, to stop someone else from wasting their time repeating the same dumb experiment you tried and avoiding another roller coaster ride.

The winner of our $500 cash giveaway, Brandon Steelman.

BioSurplus is proud to have been a Gold Sponsor of this year’s CALBIO conference.  The two-day event, held in San Francisco on March 8th and 9th, brought together members of the biotech industry and disease foundations to talk about pressing issues such as patient access, risk and reform at the FDA, and new business models.

We’re also excited to announce the winner of our $500 cash giveaway, Brandon Steelman.  Brandon is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford, where he is working on a genetic diagnosis for breast cancer as well as making early detection more affordable.  Congratulations Brandon!  We wish you much luck in your efforts in support of a very worthy cause.

We’d also like to thank Michael Alvarez, chairman of the BayBio Institute and a director at the Stanford School of Medicine.  He kindly delivered the prize to Brandon, who had left the conference and was already back in the lab, hard at work.

Join us March 22, 2012 in celebrating the launch of the new San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Women In Bio! The event will be highlighted by our keynote speaker, Kim Popovits, the CEO of Genomic Health, a leading pioneer of personalized medicine, and one of the San Francisco Business Times’ most influential women in the Bay Area since 2006.

There will be delicious food, good company and easy-going networking. Come and learn more about our organization and our chapter’s plans for 2012 and beyond.

We want to show you the cash savings you can expect by shopping with BioSurplus, your # 1 source for high-quality used lab equipment. We’d also like to remind you that we buy used equipment as well as auction equipment from working labs.

Just to prove we are all about putting extra money into your lab, we are offering an easy opportunity to win this spinner flask filled with $500 cash.

(Yes, cash. The green kind you can spend.)

For a chance to win, just drop by Booth 309 at CALBIO 2012 with your business card or contact info to enter! It is that simple. The drawing will be held on Friday, March 9th at the end of the conference. We look forward to meeting you and showing you our online catalog of over 5,000 quality used lab instruments that will save you money.

For more information, please contact Grant Goad at 858-550-0800 x217.

Dr. Hu Chen of the National University of Singapore - $500 Cash Giveaway Winner!

BioSurplus was pleased to participate in the BioPhysical Society’s 56th Annual Meeting this year, held in San Diego, CA from February 25^th through the 29th.   It was exciting to meet and network with a wide variety of scientists, students and executives from the multi-disciplinary world of biophysics.

We’d like to congratulate Dr. Hu Chen of the National University of Singapore on winning the BioSurplus $500 cash giveaway.  The international presence at the conference was amazing – we met attendees from Armenia, Brazil, Argentina, China, Italy, France, Germany and many other countries.  A true melting pot of scientists from around the world.

Next year’s meeting will be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from Feb. 2nd – 6th, 2013.

Please take a moment to view the photos we took at our booth. We hope you enjoy them!

We’ll post an update soon with booth and giveaway information – see you there!

Qualified candidates should possess strong communication skills, demonstrate an ability to quickly learn new information, have experience with varied lab equipment and a proven track record in sales and management.  Only people with proven sales experience need apply — science degree preferred.

Interviews are being scheduled for Thursday, January 5^th and Friday, January 6^th in Fremont.  Salary commensurate with experience.  401(k) plan and health benefits. To apply, send cover letter and resume to Jackie Konstanturos at jtownsend@biosurplus.com.  No phone calls, please.