The Column - August 2007 - (Page 7)

August 2007 www.thecolumn.eu.com The Column News News Global presence increased BioTek Instruments has announced the expansion of its global operations with new offices in China and India. The company, which is headquartered in Winooski, Vermont, USA, designs, manufactures and sells microplate instrumentation and software. Its instrumentation is used within the drug discovery process, genomics and proteomics as well as life science research. The company’s office in China, BioTek Instruments Representative Office Beijing, has been opened in direct response to its expanding customer base and distribution partners within the country. BioTek Instruments India is a joint venture with Medi-Spec Instruments and will be based in Mumbai, India. For more information visit the company’s website at www.biotek.com Could life exist on Mars? Recently a spacecraft containing a combination of instruments blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA to examine whether life could really exist on Mars. The Phoenix spacecraft is expected to land in the icy region near the north polar permanent ice cap of the red planet where it will spend 90 days examining the icy water in the soil and monitoring the polar climate. This project is the first of NASA’s Mars Scout missions and will be led by the University of Arizona. Phoenix contains a variety of imaging, robotic arm and chemistry instruments that will be used to study the history of the water in the ice, monitor the weather of the polar region and investigate whether the subsurface environment in the far northern plains of Mars has ever been favourable for sustaining microbial life. On this mission samples of soil and ice will be collected by the robotic arm, which is 7.5 feet in length when fully extended, and then analysed by instruments mounted on deck. The instruments include a microscopy, electrochemistry conductivity analyser (MECA) and a thermal evolved gas analyser (TEGA). MECA’s wet chemistry lab contains four single-use beakers, which can accept one sample of martian soil. The robotic arm delivers a small amount of soil to one beaker, which is ready and waiting with a pre-warmed and calibrated soaking solution. Alternating soaking, stirring and measuring the experiment continues for 24 hours, concluding with the addition of two chemical pellets. The first pellet contains an acid to tease out carbonates and other constituents that are Links: www.biotek.com www.nasa.gov/phoenix only soluble in acidic conditions. The second contains specific reagents to test for sulphates and soil oxidants. The optical and atomic force microscopes complement MECA’s wet chemistry experiments. Using the images from these microscopes the scientists will be able to examine the fine detail structure of soil and water ice samples. Detection of hydrous and clay minerals by these microscopes may indicate past liquid water in the martian arctic. TEGA will study substances that are converted to gases by heating samples delivered to this instrument by the robotic arm. One of its tools, a differential scanning calorimeter, monitors how much power is required to increase the temperature of the sample at a constant rate. This reveals which temperatures are transition points from solid to liquid and from liquid to gas for ingredients in the sample. The gases released by this heating process then go into a mass spectrometer for identification. Additional information on this project is available on-line at www.nasa.gov/phoenix 7 http://www.thecolumn.eu.com http://www.biotek.com http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix http://www.biotek.com http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Column - August 2007

Contents
News
The Unsweet Smell of Success
Time to Rethink Outsourcing?
Market Trends and Analysis
Hyphenated Techniques in Ion Chromatography
Tips & Tricks: GPC/SEC

The Column - August 2007