MicroscopesBlog: Expert's reviews, news, notes on Microscopes, Centrifuges, Lab Coats, Pipettes, Lab Safety, & more Lab Products!

For all of us who have curly hair and want to keep it straight, humidity is on our naughty list. My hair can certainly live without it! How about you? Well, the world needs it, however some of our working environments either need it or don't. What you need to check it is an instrument called a Hygrometer. This is a device used to measure relative humidity in the air. The scientific world offers a selection depending on what your humidity issue is. Hygrometers are a delicate device and need to be calibrated for accuracy. Some industries that use hygrometers are, heating and air conditioning services, veterinarians, botanists, weathermen to name just a few. VWR, HB Instruments, Control Company are the major players in the manufacturing of these instruments.

Lets talk laboratory thermometers, you need one right? Do you want a total immersion or partial immersion thermometer? Will you need Celsius or Fahrenheit Scale? You can get in White or Yellow Back, Mercury-Filled or Spirit filled. The choices are endless. Do you need an NIST Traceable Certificate? HB Instruments is one of the top manufacturers of laboratory thermometers Please remember when making a selection that Mercury is a regulated product, you may want to go with a spirit filled thermometer, less trouble and will provide you with the same results. Thermo Scientifc and ERTCO are also big manufactures of spirit filled thermometers. Red spirit filled is toluene kerosene or isoamyl benzoate and blue spirit filled is kerosene or isoamyl benzoate, and green spirit filled is kerosene.

Okay, time to get prepared for your annual audits, many of you will need to have a refrigerator or freezer thermometer on hand that will monitor the temperature of your laboratory samples, vaccinations, or other such items. It will also need to come with a Traceable NIST Certificate, which is A serial numbered certificate is provided from an ISO 17025 calibration laboratory accredited by A2LA to indicate instrument traceability to standards provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Some manufactures such as Control Company and brands such as VWR offer digital refrigerator/freezer thermometers such as these. Some come with an alarm that will sound when the temperature rises above or falls below set points.

So you got a microscope for Christmas. Now what? Depends on your microscope. If you have a stereo microscope look at bugs. All bugs. Every bug you can find. Look at their wings, very different from bug to bug. Look at their eyes, their feet. Look at flowers. Every flower you can find. Look at the petals. Look at the stamen. Look at the anther. Look at the pollen. Freeze a slide and look at snow. Look at your hands. Look at jewelry. Look around your house and you'll find lots of things to put under a stereo microscope. If you have a compound microscope do a swab of the inside of your cheek, put it on a slide and cover it with a cover glass. Look at the cells under the microscope. Put a drop of pond water on a slide and cover it with a cover glass. Look at the follicle of your hair. What about a fly wing? Freeze a slide and look at a snowflake, fast before it melts. Put some slides prepared already under the microscope. You'll never be done with stuff to look at under a microscope if you use your imagination. Photo from microscopy-uk.org.uk

What is the difference you ask? The answer is very simple. Bacterial Infections are caused by bacteria and Viral Infections are caused by a virus. Here are some examples of an infection caused by a bacteria; urinary tract, staph (Staphylococcus), toxic shock syndrome, and Salmonella to mention a few. Here are some examples of diseases caused by a virus; influenza, German measles, mumps, aids, rabies. Bacteria are single celled microorganisms that live in many different types of environments. A mixture of those environments can include extreme heat or cold while other bacteria live in human intestines where they assist in the digestion of food. Most bacteria is not harmful to to humans. Viruses are tinier than bacteria and require a living host, such as plants or animals to reproduce. Otherwise they cannot survive. When a virus enters your body it grows rapidly in some of your cells and takes over the cell mechanisms. Changing its focus to produce the virus. Viruses need to be looked at using an electron microscope and bacteria can be viewed under a brightfield microscope. Nikon, Unico, LOMO are some of the most common microscopes used in the microbiology world today.

Did you know that pesticides can help bacteria grow on fruits and vegetables? Some scientists say that pesticides actually support the growth of life threatening bacteria on fruit and vegetable crops. While reading on of the journals from New Scientist Magazine, I found that because of this bugs like Salmonella, E. coli and Shigella could pose a threat to people eating raw fruit and vegetables. The problem starts not with the pesticides themselves, but the water used to mix them. There is an alarming rise in cases of food poisoning caused by fresh produce, so set out to determine if contaminated pesticide sprays were to blame. Pesticides are generally purchased in concentrated form and mixed with water. University of Manitoba researchers found that "In most cases the water that the farmers are going to use is whatever is available," "If you take a look at what happened with Ontario, with Walkerton, that water's not only used for drinking but it's also used for irrigation." Six people died after drinking E. coli contaminated water in the town in the year 2000. The researchers mixed a variety of common pesticides, herbicides and fungicides with water contaminated with pathogens like Salmonella or E. coli. Some killed the bugs quickly. But in about one-third of the pesticides, the bacteria actually flourished. "Numbers could increase 1,000-fold," Blank said. Salmonella, E. coli and Shigella grew best, particularly in the fungicide chlorothalonil. "If it's spread on a crop that's already standing, then you're contaminating the crop," he said, adding that "many of these fruits or vegetables ... are usually consumed raw or with minimal cooking." Watering fruit and vegetable crops with contaminated water also poses a threat. But the health risks are greater if that water is mixed with pesticides that foster bacteria growth. Please take heed and wash all your fruits and vegetables before consuming. Scientists in Manitoba used products such as petri dishes, microscopes, pipettors to perform their research and look at the data before publishing their findings in the New Scientist Magazine.