In this issue...
Russ Swan, editor, writes...
We've all heard the observation that we know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the sea floor, which was certainly valid in the late 1960s and early 1970s when a dozen people had visited the former but not even a machine had visited the latter. Four hundred or more years earlier the great Leonardo da Vinci made a similar complaint: 'We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot.'
Here at Laboratorytalk, we're all in favour of recycling and so we are pleased to see this aphorism being employed once again. Launching today (19 May) what is described modestly as 'the most important catalogue in human history', Professor Frank Bisby of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading, UK, said: 'Scientists understand better the number of stars there are in the galaxy than the species on Earth.' It's an arresting claim, but what is the evidence for it?
The evidence comes in that catalogue - the one that is so important. This is nothing less than the Catalogue of Life 2010, published to mark the International Year of Biodiversity (which, as we all know, is now). The catalogue details more than 1.25 million species known on Earth, which is a good proportion of the 1.9 million species discovered, but could be only one per cent of the total that exists. And this is precisely Bisby's point: there is little consensus about even the number of species that inhabit this planet, with estimates varying from two million to 100 million.
At this point, somebody usually chirps up with another aphorism, about losing species faster than we discover them. That may or may not be true - because we simply don't know.
What we do know is that the Catalogue of Life is packed onto a single DVD and has 77 databases compiled into an inventory of 1,257,735 species of plants, animals, fungi, and microbe. One for the statisticians now: those 1,257,735 species are known by 2,369,683 names, or an average of 1.88 names each. Is it any wonder we can't count them when we can't even call them by name?
This sounds like a terrifically worthwhile project, especially since the resource created is free to use. It is launched today at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, and the catalogue itself can be accessed at www.catalogueoflife.org
Our top new products selection
1. Lab M catalogue of culture media products
Lab M 14 May 2010
Lab M has announced the availability of its spring/summer mini-catalogue, which combines the latest industry news with updates on the company's microbiological culture media products.The publication features articles on the need to continue tracking E coli and its servovars using products such as Rhamnose MacConkey Agar, and developments in Lab M's brewing and neutralising media ranges.
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2. Isostation suits modern investigations
Newport Spectra-Physics 17 May 2010
AT the CLEO/QELS exhibition, Newport will launch the Vision Isostation vibration-isolation workstation, which has been designed for modern scientific and biological investigations.
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3. Biotest system tests pyrogens in drugs
Biotest 17 May 2010
Biotest has launched the Pyrodetect system for the robust testing of a range of pyrogens, for laboratories in the pharmaceutical, medical-device, cosmetics and food industries.
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4. Rainbow oscillator targets amplifier seeding
Femtolasers Produktions 17 May 2010
The Femtosource Rainbow suits applications such as amplifier seeding, coherent terahertz generation, optical coherence tomography, multi-photon microscopy and time-resolved spectroscopy.
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5. SFT-150 runs tests in critical fluid media
Supercritical Fluid Technologies 19 May 2010
Supercritical Fluid Technologies' new SFT-150 supercritical fluid extraction/reaction system investigates the feasibility of applying supercritical fluid techniques to analyses and processing tasks.
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6. Biomarker programme aids forensic science
Biomatrica 12 May 2010
Biomatrica Connect is a solution-centric programme established to advance technologies for ambient room temperature storage and management of nucleic acids in fields such as forensic science.
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7. Pipettes reduce RSI in microplate work
Scientific Laboratory Supplies 13 May 2010
Gilson's Pipetman Neo range of pipettes, offered in single and multichannel options, is said to be suitable for work with microplates and addresses susceptibility to repetitive strain injury (RSI).
Specially engineered springs help to reduce pipetting forces by up to 50 per cent, allowing users to pipette longer without concern for arm or wrist fatigue.
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8. Empower service provides lab analytics
Waters 12 May 2010
Waters has introduced Empower Driven Services, a service programme that provides Empower customers with the analytics needed to make enterprise-level decisions regarding laboratory utilisation.
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9. Guardian monitors spectrophotometers
Datacolor 17 May 2010
Datacolor has announced Guardian, the next-generation instrument-monitoring technology and predictive-maintenance program for Datacolor's high-end spectrophotometers.
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10. Randox kit determines lithium in serum
Randox Laboratories 17 May 2010
The updated lithium kit from Randox is intended for the quantitative in vitro determination of lithium in serum and is suitable for use on a range of clinical analysers.
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