For anyone who doubts the complexity of the interactions in an ecosystem, the introduction to a 2001 report from the University of Vermont and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum should be required reading.  The report describes the interaction among zebra mussels, shipwrecks, and predatory fish.  Zebra mussels are an invasive species first brought to U.S. Read More

If you’re a red-wing blackbird you can look at your cousin, the red-cockaded woodpecker, and laugh.  After all, your territories overlap, but the poor woodpecker is endangered while you’re thriving.  Hmm.  Don’t be too quick to gloat, though, because your relative abundance means that when scientists want to examine toxic effects on bird species they Read More

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reknowned for taking on projects of any scale — the larger the better. So it’s kind of refreshing to see them addressing smaller scale concerns as well, such as measuring perchlorate ions, implicated in thyroid health problems. They have developed a test protocol for measuring perchlorate concentration in Read More

Here’s an interesting application of nanotechnology: using electrospu nanofibers as a controlled release mechanism for pest insect pheremone release.  The idea is to disturb the mating cycle of pest insects by sending false breeding signals.  The problem with traditional release or application mechanisms is that they do not maintain a sufficiently high level long enough Read More

We live in a time where global population growth requires concentrated agricultural practices, at the same time as the wastes from our industrial output are increasingly difficult to recycle, segregate, or contain.  Those two conditions create circumstances where food contamination is a potentially serious problem.  Action needs to be taken to protect the food supply. Read More

Gravimetric methods are one of the most valuable techniques for determining various properties of a solution.  The idea is simple: weigh a sample with the analytical balance then evaporate off the solvent and reweigh.  That gives you the mass of the solute.  Depending upon the specifics of gathering the sample, the method can be extended Read More

It’s always remarkable to me that the relatively simple analytical balance remains such a fundamental tool for advanced analyses, in all sorts of fields.  Its accuracy and ease of use, and the basic importance of the measurement of mass, make it an indispensable apparatus.  We just ran across an example in the Food and Drug Read More

If you’re looking to measure the total suspended solids in a water sample, and you don’t know what the heck you’re doing, then you’ll be grateful for the guidance offered in a standard operating procedure from Villanova University.  The procedure outlines a filter-paper weighing process.  We’ve seen the general process before — filter a liquid, Read More

If you get to be an analytical chemist, you can wear a lab coat and glasses! It’s probably far more efficient to do it that way than to visit a costume store around Halloween. All right, so I’m kidding. Actually, I like this little YouTube video. It’s not for scientists, but for youngsters trying to Read More

Any decent lab worker will want to verify the accuracy of the tools they’re working with.  If you’re working in a forensic lab, where your results may end up being testified to in court, then you want to be doubly sure of the calibration of your apparatus — even when that apparatus is something as Read More