Welcome to the KentConnects blog, where we provide tips, best practices, examples, and more helpful information to improve your processes, boost your efficiency, and make your lab work smarter and safer.
Kent Scientific’s SomnoSuite Low Flow Anesthesia System not only uses a fraction of the isoflurane while maintaining stable levels of anesthesia for mice and rats, it has another, less well-known benefit: it does not require compressed gas in order to operate.
Animal models have been used in biomedical research for hundreds of years, and some of the most important breakthroughs animal research has made possible are vaccines. Research with mice, rats, and other animals has led to vaccines for polio, several types of meningitis, typhus, whooping cough, smallpox, tetanus, measles, cholera, and many more.
Every scientist that has conducted experimental research with animal subjects knows that an essential part of any experiment is determining which variables have the potential to affect the outcome. Ideally the variables not being tested are known and controlled, but in some cases unknown variables have caused skewed and unexpected results.
One of the variables that continues to pop up as an influencing factor in research is gender.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, kids’ top dream jobs include dancer, actor, musician, athlete, detective, and astronaut.
While all of these jobs are legitimate careers (wizard and superhero did not make the list, at least), most are extremely difficult to transform from a dream into a real career. But #4 on the list of kids’ dream jobs was more promising: scientist.
Laboratory animals are a valuable resource. Using mice and rats as surgical models for biomedical research represents a significant investment of time and money. Researchers who are privileged to work with live animals bear a responsibility to respect their resources and understand that it’s important to do everything possible to achieve the most accurate data, while at the same time maximizing the safety of the animals.
In 2017, James Damore, an engineer at Google, was fired for posting a memo claiming that women were biologically and psychologically less suited to working in high-tech career fields.
The memo got Damore fired from Google, but the idea that women are less capable of performing at high levels in technical fields isn’t a new one. Like Damore, those who have propagated the stereotype say it’s “backed by science,” citing questionable claims about brain structure, inherent psychological traits, or even temperament.
Researchers at Indiana University are working on a way to use the brain to suppress pain without unwanted side effects such as addiction or a marijuana high.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded annually for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine that benefit humankind.
This year, the prize was awarded jointly to three Americans—Michael Rosbash, Jeffrey C. Hall, and Michael W. Young—for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm, the internal biological clock that regulates critical functions such as behavior, hormone levels, sleep, body temperature and metabolism.
Will “find a new job” be one of your New Year’s Resolutions for 2018? Here’s what the job market looks like for the scientific fields.
When conducting surgery with anesthesia on small animals in a clinical setting, special care must be taken to maintain the animal’s body temperature at its optimum level. Adequate body temperature is important not only for the comfort of the animal and physiological well-being, but to minimize risks from anesthesia and encourage recovery from the surgery.