Kent Connects
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.
The Monument to the Laboratory Mouse: the Real MVP of Biomedical Research
The Monument to the Laboratory Mouse: the Real MVP of Biomedical Research
There are statues for generals, poets, and the occasional guy on a horse who definitely did some questionable things.
And then there’s this: a 70-cm bronze laboratory mouse in Novosibirsk, Siberia, perched on a granite pedestal, wearing pince-nez glasses…...
Continue Reading
Tail-Cuff Blood Pressure in Mice and Rats: Getting It Right So Your Data Hold Up
Tail-Cuff Blood Pressure in Mice and Rats: Do It Right So Your Data Hold Up
TL;DR Tail-cuff blood pressure can be fast, scalable, and reliable—when you treat it like physiology instead of a device demo. Most bad runs come from the same few issues: stress, poor tail perfusion, movement, and inconsistent...
Continue Reading
Small Animal Surgical Instruments: Your Checklist for Mouse & Rat Survival Surgery in Vets + Research
Small Animal Surgical Instruments Checklist
Your practical guide for mouse & rat survival surgery in vets and research
Small animal survival surgery is won in the small things: tissue handling that doesn’t crush, cutting that stays clean, hemostasis that’s controlled, and a setup that stays consistent across people and across days.
This guide...
Continue Reading
What Kind of Mouse or Rat Temperature Monitoring Do You Need?
What Kind of Mouse or Rat Temperature Monitoring Is Right for Your Work?
TL;DR Mouse temperature is one of the easiest things to “handle” while quietly losing control. The main reason is simple: core temperature and surface (skin) temperature answer different questions. If you rely on only one, you get blind...
Continue Reading
How to Choose the Right Oxygen Concentrator for Small Animals (Research Lab + Veterinary Use)
TL;DR This article explains how to choose an oxygen concentrator for small animal anesthesia and recovery. Sizing is more about flow demand and workflow, and less about animal size. It covers typical mouse/rat/rabbit flow ranges, why leaks and “spike” needs (flushes, induction, recovery) matter, and when 5 L/min vs 10...
Continue Reading
12 Amazing Scientific Discoveries From Last Year
12 Amazing Scientific Discoveries From Last Year
If you work with (or just nerd out on) mice, rats, zebrafish, flies, and the rest of the small-animal science universe, last year was a banner year for scientific discoveries. And not the “incremental pathway paper” kind of scientific discoveries—the jaw-drop kind: two-dad mice, woolly gene-edited...
Continue Reading
Better Cancer Data, Fewer Animals: How Noninvasive Imaging Strengthens Preclinical Research
In preclinical oncology, researchers face a familiar tension: how to capture reliable, longitudinal tumor data without relying on invasive procedures like biopsies or euthanasia.
These traditional methods often require larger animal cohorts, introduce variability, and provide only single-time-point insights, limiting understanding of tumor progression (Goyal et al., 2018).
The new SkinScanner, a...
Continue Reading
What Are Digital Lab Marketplaces and How Are They Impacting Equipment Procurement?
Digital marketplaces are just one of several ways a modern lab can buy gear, along with distributor catalogs and direct‐from‐manufacturer web stores like Kent’s.
A digital laboratory marketplace is an online hub—like Amazon—that aggregates listings from dozens (sometimes thousands) of sellers and lets buyers filter by spec, price, lead time, and warranty in a...
Continue Reading
Skin Imaging for Non-Dermatology Researchers: What You Need to Know
If you’re working in immunology, oncology, or wound healing, skin is more than just a surface. It can serve as a biologically meaningful read-out, revealing insights into inflammation, healing, drug responses, and more.
This shift may feel new. Many researchers weren’t trained to interpret skin-imaging data or evaluate devices, so below...
Continue Reading
Advancing Research Animal Welfare Through Smarter Oxygen Control During Anesthesia
How Smart Oxygen Blending Impact Rodent Anesthesia
Rodent research plays a critical role in driving scientific and medical breakthroughs. But along with this responsibility comes another — ensuring that research is conducted ethically, humanely, and in line with the highest standards of animal care.
At the heart of that commitment are the...
Continue Reading
What Recent Cuts to NIH Grants Mean for the Research Community
On February 7, 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a sudden policy change to cap indirect cost reimbursements at 15% for all existing and new research grants.
The decision sent shockwaves through the research community and prompted extensive and heated online discussions on the potential implications. Universities and research...
Continue Reading
The Role of Exercise in Health
If one of your New Year’s Resolutions is to exercise more, you’re on the right track. Recent research with mice has uncovered numerous benefits of exercise, including flushing out brain toxins, reversing age-related changes in the brain, preventing DNA damage, reversing fat buildup, and more. Here are some of the...
Continue Reading
New Research on Anxiety and Stress: The Harm it Does and How to Potentially Control It
The holidays can be a stressful time, but fortunately, new studies are bringing us closer to understanding all the underlying mechanisms of stress and anxiety, its effects on the body and brain, and new potential treatments.
Effects of Stress
It’s well known that stress has numerous negative physical and psychological effects, and...
Continue Reading
What Animal Research Can Tell Us About Fasting and Health
While many of us are looking forward to a Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings, new studies show that fasting, not feasting, may be better for our health. The potential health benefits of fasting have long intrigued scientists, and new animal studies have shed light on how fasting impacts the...
Continue Reading
A Special Spooky Season Report: What Mice Studies Can Teach Us About Fear
As Halloween approaches, fear takes center stage in haunted houses, scary movies, and spooky stories. But fear isn’t just a seasonal thrill—it's a deeply ingrained response that scientists have been studying for decades. Mice and rats have become key subjects in fear research, helping us understand the science of fear...
Continue Reading
Using Research with Mice to Prolong Human Life
A significant percentage of preclinical research is devoted to finding treatments or cures, but several recent studies with mice have gone beyond finding a cure for a specific disease or condition, venturing into the realm of enabling humans to age better and live longer.
While numerous studies have pointed to general...
Continue Reading
The Potential Healing Properties of Foods
In the quest for better health and wellness, the foods we consume play a pivotal role. While the benefits of a balanced diet are widely recognized, recent advancements in animal research are uncovering intriguing insights into how certain foods may offer more than just basic nutrition.
Pomegranates
More than 6 million Americans...
Continue Reading
Mice in Space: Rodent Research on the International Space Station
Scientists are taking animal research to new heights—literally. Since 2014, researchers have been conducting various experiments with rodents in outer space aboard the International Space Station.
Living organisms experience various changes in the environment of space, including to the bones, muscles, heart, and circulatory and immune systems.
Given their genetic similarities to...
Continue Reading
What Research with Animals Can Tell Us About the Senses of Sight, Hearing, and Smell
Animal studies provide invaluable insights into the senses of sight, hearing, and smell. By examining these senses in animals, researchers have made numerous important discoveries about the underlying mechanisms of sensory perception and what they reveal about human sensory experiences.
Sight
Optical Illusions
Results from experiments on mice at the University of Tokyo...
Continue Reading
Animal Research Yields New Discoveries in Immunity and Autoimmune Diseases
Immunity is a complex area of research with wide-ranging applications in human health. From the discovery of the potentially immune-boosting properties of a common vitamin to the identification of a new connection between gender and immunity, the field of animal research has generated scientific discoveries providing valuable insights into immunity.
Food...
Continue Reading
Important Note: The content on this blog is general educational material. It is not a protocol, regulatory guidance, veterinary recommendation, clinical directive, or safety instruction for any specific laboratory, study, animal model, institution, species, procedure, or equipment configuration.
Do not apply any information from this blog to your research without first independently confirming that it is appropriate for your specific protocol, species, model, equipment configuration, firmware version, institutional requirements, IACUC or ethical review approvals, safety policies, and applicable regulations. To the extent any content on this blog addresses Kent Scientific or other specific products, it does not replace, modify, or supplement the official User Manual or product labeling for those products.
Kent Scientific assumes no liability for any outcome resulting from reliance on blog content. Every research environment is different, and the suitability of any approach described here for your specific circumstances can only be determined by qualified personnel with knowledge of your particular setup, protocol, and regulatory obligations. Always consult your institutional veterinarian, IACUC, facility leadership, safety officer, and official product documentation before implementing any change to your procedures.