Published articles
Archive
Friday 1st September 2006
A comparison of manual and automated colony counting
Counting four different types of serially diluted bacterial colonies on 75 pour plates compared automated and manual counting systems. The results were analysed statistically and showed that the automated counting method produced results that were not significantly different from the manually counting method at the 95% confidence level. The following article appeared in the September 2006 issue of Drug Plus International.
Sunday 1st June 2003
Streamlining the selection of recombinant antibodies
Antibodies make good drug candidates because their natural role in the body’s immune system means that they are potent, specific, well tolerated and can be readily raised to a variety of different targets.
Thursday 15th May 2003
New generation of colony counters remove operator errors in the lab
Laboratories with a high throughput of samples now demand faster results while maintaining accuracy.
Tuesday 7th January 2003
How rapid quality testing could mean the difference between selling milk or throwing it away before it even reaches the consumer
According to the US Department of Agriculture billions of pounds of milk are destroyed every year - why is that? Well one reason is the milk’s past its sell by date and another is it’s infected by potentially harmful microbes. As a supervisor in a busy contract dairy testing lab, my primary concern is to get it checked out rapidly so manufacturers have the maximum chance of shifting milk off the shelf and onto your breakfast cereal.
Tuesday 10th December 2002
Mobile skin microbiology laboratory for clinical trials and research offers accurate results and alleviates resource shortages
Abnormalities in the cutaneous microbial population of propionibacteria, coagulase-negative staphylococci and the yeast, Malassezia furfur are either implicated or directly associated with dermatological disorders such as acne, eczema, erysipelas, impetigo and folliculitis.
Tuesday 10th December 2002
Automed zone measurement in single radial immunodiffusion assays promises rapid quality control of influenza vaccines
In the UK, people over 65 and those considered to be in high-risk groups are routinely offered an inoculation to protect them against the flu (influenza) virus. If the concentration of the inactivated viral vaccine is incorrect then those inoculated may be insufficiently protected, which could prove fatal among some of these vulnerable groups.
Tuesday 10th December 2002
Detecting the source of a food poisoning outbreak
With just three full-time staff and around 3,000 food and water samples to process each year, the UKAS accredited Microbiology Department at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, needs to utilise the most efficient and effective methods available to meet increasing demands. Food samples tested include raw and cooked meats from local butchers and food manufacturers plus processed foods sent in by the environmental health department. These are commonly examined for aerobic bacteria such as Salmonella, E.coli 0157, Bacillus cereus and Listeria monocytogenes as well as anaerobes, for example, Campylobacter.
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