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.
How to Get Mainstream Press Coverage for Scientific Research
Does the general public know about the scientific research you’re conducting? If your findings aren’t getting any coverage in the mainstream news, the answer is probably not.
Why should scientists be interested in getting coverage of their research in the mainstream press? In addition to letting people know about scientific advancements...
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Mouse Studies Break New Ground in Fighting Breast Cancer
October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and while breast cancer incidence rates and death rates have both been declining for years, breast cancer is still the second-most commonly diagnosed cancer among American women, and has the second-highest death rates.
Fortunately, scientists all over the world are working to understand how it...
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Scientists Uncover Connection Between Alzheimer’s and Immunity
September is World Alzheimer’s Month, and unfortunately we need Alzheimer’s research more than ever.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 5.7 million Americans are currently living with Alzheimer’s, and that number is expected to more than double by 2050. While mortality rates for other diseases—including the number one cause of...
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What the New White House Science Advisor Means for Researchers
On August 1, meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier was nominated as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OTSP). The office plays a central role in determining research and development budgets, providing science and technology expertise for national policy, and coordinating the White House’s science agenda for...
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SomnoSuite® Low-Flow Vaporizer Offers Unique Ability to Use Either Compressed Gas or Room Air
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.
With the high-flow canister-style vaporizers traditionally used for inhalant...
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Animal Research Plays a Key Role in Developing Important Vaccines
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,...
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Gender: The Hidden Variable in Animal Research
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...
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The Importance of STEM Mentoring for Kids
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...
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The Importance of Physiological Monitoring in Preclinical Research
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...
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The Future for Women in STEM Fields
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...
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Research with Mice Leads to Potential for Non-Addictive Painkiller
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 most exciting aspect of this research is the potential to produce the same therapeutic benefits as opioid-based pain relievers without side effects like...
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Animal Research Plays a Key Role in 2017 Nobel Prize
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,...
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What the Future Holds for Jobs in Research & Science
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.
According to new employment projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall employment is expected to increase by 11.5 million (7.4%) between 2016 and 2026....
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The Importance of Maintaining the Proper Body Temperature of Lab Animals During Surgery
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...
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Protecting Your Lab Animals When Natural Disasters Strike
When the southern United States was hit by the one-two punch of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, homes and humans weren’t the only ones affected. Universities and research facilities, which house thousands of animals used in research projects along with millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, were also dealt a devastating...
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Kent Scientific Now Offers Videos for Product Setup and Use, Best Research Practices, Technology Tips and More
At Kent Scientific, our goal is to provide the best research solutions to serve our customers, and to make them as easy and efficient to use as possible.
Because it’s often much more effective to show a process or procedure visually than to describe it verbally, we’re creating videos to provide...
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Kent's Certified Calibration-Free SomnoSuite Reduces Maintenance Costs
When you’re doing research, every minute counts. Having to remove your equipment from the lab to have it serviced and calibrated means losing valuable time, plus incurring charges for certification procedures.
To solve that problem, Kent Scientific’s SomnoSuite Low-Flow Anesthesia System is Certified Maintenance-Free! Unlike traditional vaporizers, our systems have been...
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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.