Lab Fairy has returned from the first visits to labs, and reports from the field are showing up. Lab Fairy visited the laboratory of Prof. Shlomo Magdassi at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem!   ( Who is Lab Fairy? ) Lab Fairy found a bunch of chemical bottles to label and also made sure to properly catalog them with LabSuit. One lab had just transferred many chemicals from one room to another, leaving more than 500 items to be taken care of. An old proverb says: "He works best who knows his trade". First, Lab Fairy analyzed 600 research labs already using LabSuit and learnt what inventory management best practices are best suited for each type of lab. Secondly, the Lab Fairy arrived at the lab equipped with solvent-resistant labeling stickers and different sized and colored markers for making notations. Having discussed the goals with the lab manager, the decision was to give every chemical a serial number. This method is quite popular among

As someone doing orders for a whole lab, I may feel challenged when I receive order requests and details are partially missing. Sometimes I could fill up the gaps from my acquaintance with a matter, but when I'm out of context it  really   becomes a big deal. Some lab managers raise their voice and ask aloud "Ben! Did you mean 5 grams or 50 grams of Imidazole?" Other lab managers get up from their desk and go for a walk to clarify the request.  But what lab manager has time and energy for that? Emails could have worked but they are just so overwhelming. The solution LabSuit's solution is to integrate chat into Request Details Page, so  item requested  automatically becomes chat topic. As can be seen below, clicking on 'History and updates' takes me to Chat Area. I can address my clarification question to the person who submitted the request and CC (Carbon Copy) any other lab member that I want to keep in the loop. The discussion panel whi

If you look close enough at this picture you can spot two happy Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) members exiting the building. They have just generated 4 new CAS numbers for the very new organic compounds. This building is where they dwell, while we in research and particularly in LabSuit can happily use their fruitful work. CAS numbers In this blogpost I'll be talking about CAS numbers in LabSuit. Many of us use CAS numbers on the daily basis. They help us uniquely identify chemical compounds and avoid moments of frustration. Not a long time ago, in LabSuit, we prescribed CAS number fields for chemicals only. While this may be theoretically fine, for practical purposes that may not always be the case.  CAS numbers have richer context There was a trigger that helped us to drive the change in LabSuit - we talked with Yifat Abramovich from Rapport, Medicine Department of Technion. Ifat is using CAS number for antibodies! Then we analyzed a bigger sample of compounds acros