Antibodies online

Finding the right product for an experiment or assay development often takes a lot of time. We need to compare various catalogues, or, if we are lucky, we may use companies’ web sites. However, often it is difficult to compare products from different suppliers that are shown in different formats on separate web sites. Additionally, there are many medium sized and small suppliers of interesting products that are not known to a wide audience.
An interesting approach to solving these difficulties for various biochemical and molecular biological products is offered by a web site called antibodies-online.com.
The principle behind antibodies-online is to present one common marketplace for suppliers to offer their products. One may say antibodies-online aspires to be the Amazon of biochemical products, making the world’s supply of biological research reagents available to researchers internationally. Antibodies-online.com states that they offer more than 300,000 products from more than 120 suppliers. The products are available worldwide and include antibodies, as the name suggests, as well as ELISA kits, biochemical assays, chemicals, buffers, cell-culture supplies and much more besides.

Helium – Periodic Table of Videos

Donald Duck voices and floating balloons. Helium is element number 2 on the periodic table. All the elements at http://www.periodicvideos.com/

Chemical reagent widget

I promised we’d start rolling out more useful chemistry database tools. So. here’s the Wolfram|Alpha chemical reagent table widget brought created by Adam Azman of chemical dictionary fame.

“I created it using the very user-friendly walk-through W|A provides on their site,” Azman told me. “It went through three iterations before settling on the format seen on the blog. I’m also planning on releasing the desktop gadget version for Vista/7 or OS X as requested by several users in the near future.”

This chemical tool lets you look up valid (and CAS enabled) chemistry data without having to worry that some vandal changed all the densities on Wikipedia.

To quote Adam:

“Type in the chemical name, and it returns the molecular formula and structure (just to verify you entered the right compound), and tells you the molecular mass, density, boiling point (if you need to distill that liquid first), and a few other physical properties – everything you need to fill in your reagent table. It also recognizes chemical formulas, like TiCl4, and shorthand notation, like EtOH.”

You can grab the embed code for your own site and/or share the widget with fellow chemists and others, here are the details.

Chemistry News

Host or foreign — the body’s frontline defense mechanism understood (University of Helsinki) Researchers at the University of Helsinki, Finland, have now described how the first line of defense of the human immune system distinguishes between microbes and the body’s own structures. The basis of this recognition mechanism has been unclear since the key protein components were discovered over 30 years ago — and has now finally been cracked.Sugar boost for Oxfordshire scientists who are planning ahead for future medicines (Science and Technology Facilities Council) Scientists continuing to investigate a 50 year mystery have discovered another vital clue that could help pave the way for improved medicines. The results feature in a special edition of Nature celebrating the International Year of Chemistry. The findings reveal an important insight into the way carbohydrates (sugars) bond and this will influence the way drugs are designed in the future.A loose grip provides better chemotherapy (Case Western Reserve University) Case Western Reserve University researchers find that cancer patients may get a bigger bang and fewer side effects with a new take on a drug delivery system. By using noncovalent bonds to link light-activated anti-cancer drugs to coated gold nanoparticles, they were able to activate treatment in two hours instead of two days. The scientists expect the targeted delivery system will cut dosage by a factor of 10 or more.HHMI launches documentary film unit to create science features for television (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is launching a $60 million documentary film initiative that aims to bring high quality, compelling science features to television. Sean B. Carroll, HHMI’s vice president for science education, unveiled the project today at the “Summit on Science, Entertainment and Education” in Los Angeles.Engineering at Virginia Tech to team with University of Nottingham (Virginia Tech) Virginia Tech’s Center for Power Electronics Systems and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute are partnering with the University of Nottingham’s Transportation Engineering Centre and its Power Electronics, Machines and Control Group to offer Ph.D. scholarships, exchanges, and postdoc research appointments. The groups have common research sponsors and both also have interests in aerospace engineering.Digest powered by RSS Digest