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• Pfeiffer Vacuum: Q3 the best quarter in the company’s history

  Pfeiffer Vacuum closed the month of September with the best quarter ever in its corporate history. This also produced above-average developments for the first nine months. All metrics posted significant, double-digit growth rates. Pfeiffer Vacuum Chief Executive Officer Manfred Bender had this to s more

• Sniffing out shoe bombs: A new and simple sensor for explosive chemicals

  University of Illinois chemists have developed a simple sensor to detect an explosive used in shoe bombs. It could lead to inexpensive, easy-to-use devices for luggage and passenger screening at airports and elsewhere. Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) is a high-powered explosive that in recent years h more

• Novel process for DNA labeling

  For the first time, baseclick GmbH, a start-up company spun off from BASF SE and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, is making its newly developed process for labeling nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) available to customers. The company recently signed licensing agreements for this technology with thr more

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• The Determination of Hazardous Substances According to RoHS and WEEE Directives
  

  1st July 2006 is an important deadline for the electro- and electronics industries. This date bans hazardous substances like lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium and polybrominated biphenyls and diphenyl ethers from electro- and electronic equipment. This restriction, even though in discussion since 1991, has become more and more important from year to year because of tons of electronic waste releasing toxic substances which are accumulated in the environment, the food chain and all human beings. In order to enforce the substances ban and the limitation or substitution of hazardous components, elemental analysis is obviously the most important control measure for monitoring limiting values. This requires precise analytical systems such as X-ray fluorescence, ICP- and atomic absorption spectrometers. These instruments are able to detect trace concentrations of hazardous compounds - for example cadmium, using an atomic absorption spectrometer in the flame atomization mode up to 0.1 mg/L, or using the di more

• Real-Time PCR Quantification of Plant miRNAs Using Universal ProbeLibrary Technology
  

  MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are naturally occurring, highly conserved families of transcripts (18-25 nt in length) that are processed from larger hairpin precursors. Both plant and animal genomes encode miRNAs, and to date, there are over 4000 mature miRNA transcripts annotated. Although miRNAs represent a relatively abundant class of transcripts, their expression levels vary greatly among species and tissues. Less abundant miRNAs routinely fail detection using technologies such as cloning, northern hybridization and microarray analysis. Here, we present a real-time quantification method for accurate, sensitive, and economical detection of plant miRNAs based upon the stem-loop RT primer approach using an miRNA-specific primer coupled with a stem-loop specific Universal ProbeLibrary (UPL) probe. This approach represents a highly specific, sensitive, and easy-to-apply system to detect miRNAs. more

• Quantification of Zea mays mRNAs by Real-Time PCR Using the Universal ProbeLibrary
  

  The Universal ProbeLibrary (UPL) is a detection system for real-time PCR based on locked nucleic acid (LNA) probes. We tested the efficiency of the UPL for the quantification of maize transcripts on two detection platforms. The results indicate that the UPL is an attractive alternative to assays based on intercalating dyes or conventional probes. more

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