Product news in brief - week 42

Activotec has launched a new accessory, the P12 , for its Activo-P11 peptide synthesiser that allows the P11 system to be used on the laboratory bench, while the peptide-resin cleavage and side chain deprotection is conducted in a nearby fumehood.

The system directly accepts the P11's disposable reactor to ensure that the often noxious scavengers used during cleavage and deprotection steps are not used in the open laboratory.

The system ensures safer working practices, while minimising the amount of precious fumehood space reserved for instrumentation and machinery.

The Applied Biosystems and MDS Sciex collaboration has developed new, automated toxicology testing software to enable the efficient identification of drugs of abuse such as heroin and cocaine during forensic investigations.

The Cliquid Drug Screen and Quant Software for routine forensic toxicology equips forensic laboratories with a built in library of 1,200 compounds that screens for hundreds of drugs of abuse in less than 20 minutes.

FEI Company has unveiled "the shape of things to come" with its new Titan 'cubed' ( Titan3 ) 80-300 product family of ultra-high resolution scanning / transmission electron microscopes (S/TEMs).

The new instrument combines two Cs-abberation correctors and a monochromator to give users sub-Angstrom imaging capabilities at a lower cost.

The Titan3 can be operated in the range of 80 to 300kV, enabling the optimised imaging a wide variety of materials from ultra-light carbon compounds to ultra-dense heavy metal samples.

In addition, the system's innovative enclosure provides greater stability and significantly reduces the need for expensive laboratory renovations to eliminate environmental interference.

"It used to be that microscopy labs were built around the microscope to accommodate the stringent acoustic and temperature limitations of advanced S/TEM systems, adding significant costs to acquiring advanced instrumentation," said Dominique Hubert, vice president and general manager for FEI's NanoResearch division.

"The Titan3, with its combined benefit of market-leading performance and its enhanced total cost of ownership, sets a new industry standard and will change how buyers approach the prospect of purchasing ultra-high resolution S/TEM systems."

Invitrogen has launched a new protein standard sampling program in collaboration with the Human Proteome Organization (HUPO).

The HUPO Gold Mass Spectrometry (MS) Protein Standard sampling program will become the first commercially available all-recombinant human protein MS standard.

"Currently available standards for mass spectrometry are isolated directly from human samples, so they potentially contain naturally occurring contaminants, as well as proteins subject to natural genetic variations leading to slight changes in protein mass which can contribute to reduced reliability and reproducibility of a standard," said Paul Predki, Invitrogen's vice president of R&D "By developing this new standard using recombinant methods, we have designed a valuable resource that will aid scientists in making their substrate identification more definitive and will allow them to reference their efforts on a global research scale."

Mettler Toledo has launched a new line of thermal analysis products, the Thermal Analysis Excellence range that is made up of two modular systems, a combined thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimeter system (DSC 1).

According to the company, the new system cuts analysis time in half while offering unsurpassed sensitivity and outstanding resolution.

Torrey Pines Scientific has launched a new line of analogue hot plates, stirrers and stirrer hot plates that feature a large square heater top (over 30cm) in a choice of ceramic or milled-flat cast aluminium.

The stirrers can support more than 22kg on the plate surface and heat up to 450ºC while stirring solutions up to 1500 rpm.