When it comes down to picking the products you’re going to use to help organize and streamline your lab’s operation, you can be faced with a bewildering array of options that range from well-known to little-known vendors, with investments that can be significant or “free”.  Is one of those the ideal choice for your lab?  This article will help you move to the best decision for both your immediate and future needs.  [Read More]

The decision to purchase a LIMS should be triggered by a business case. The business case identifies the reasons for purchasing a LIMS and, at the end, allows the success of the project to be measured. Linked to creating a business case is understanding the LIMS requirements and in particular where the LIMS will bring practical benefits to the organization. However, all too often the initial requirements are ill-defined, imprecise, and incomplete. This can make selecting the correct LIMS and LIMS supplier difficult and does not set the project up for success. [Read More]

Digital technology is becoming essential for businesses across all industries. But in many ways, quality assurance (QA) laboratories — whether they are in food and beverage, pharmaceutical, environmental science or any number of other fields—are still operating with the kind of technology that was around in the 1990s. It’s time to step into the future. In keeping with the theme for the upcoming Analytica conference in Munich, Lab 4.0: digital laboratory for greater efficiency, we want to re-share our recent white paper; Building the QA Lab of the Future [Read More]

There are many approved methods for analyzing the cannabinoids from a given sample of the Cannabis plant, though some of them have downsides for the analyst. This is particularly notable in sample with significant quantities of acidic cannabinoids, which decarboxylate to their neutral cannabinoids with heat. This usually requires more non-destructive methods, such as near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). In this 2022 journal article, Jarén et al. of Universidad Pública de Navarra and Genscore Navarra S.L. in Spain provide their take on using NIRS methods combined with chemometric techniques to get quality results in analyzing cannabinoids, in comparison to using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). After introducing the current background on analytical methods for cannabinoid analysis, the authors describe their methodology and results. They conclude that "[t]he results obtained here demonstrate that NIR spectroscopy offers speed and simplicity unmatched by other traditional techniques." They add that "[a]ccordingly, it was tested as an alternative to conventional HPLC analysis for the evaluation of cannabinoid content, with promising results."