Researcher Tools

“One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.” -- G. M. Weilacher, American humorist

Good research takes time.  You select a topic, you design an experiment, you conduct your experiment, you observe the results, and you analyze the results. Whoo! You’re done! Next topic, please.

If only it were that simple.  There is so much work to be done before and after the experimental work you enjoy. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were tools to make all the drudge work less onerous?

Fortunately, such tools exist … and many of them are free.

One of the best lists of tools we have found is a Blog called Connected Researchers (http://connectedresearchers.com/online-tools-for-researchers/). It is produced by Dr. Crouzier, a researcher experienced in the fields of biomaterials and biopolymers.

The list of tools listed on the site appears below.

TIP: Visit Connected Researchers and take some time to explore … not every tool will be for you.  But the four or five that you do select will save you tons of time.

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Digital tools for researchers
Search engines and curators
BibSonomy – Share bookmarks and lists of literature.
CaptoMe – Metadata platform with rich biomedical content and information management tools for well-organized research.
CiteUlike – Search, organize, and share scholarly papers.
Colwiz – Create citations and bibliography and set up your research groups on the cloud to share files and references.
ContentMine – Uses machines to liberate 100,000,000 facts from the scientific literature.
Data Elixir – A weekly collection of the best data science news, resources, and inspirations from around the web.
DeepDyve – Instant access to the journals you need.
EvidenceFinder – Enriches your literature exploration by suggesting questions alongside your search results. (blog post)
F1000 – Leading biomedical experts helping scientists to discover, discuss and publish research.
Google Scholar – Provides a way to broadly search for scholarly literature across disciplines and sources.
Labii – A suite of web apps for researchers, including an online app for finding, commenting, rating and managing research papers. (blog post)
LazyScholar – Chrome extension to help your literature search.
Mendeley – A unique platform comprising a social network, reference manager, article visualization tools.
Microsoft Academic Search – Find information about academic papers, authors, conferences, journals, and organizations from multiple sources.
MyScienceWork – Diffuse scientific information and knowledge in a free and accessible way.
Nowomics – Follow genes, proteins and processes to keep up with the latest papers and data relevant to your research.
Paperity – Aggregator of open access papers and journals
Paperscape – Visualise the arXiv, an open, online repository for scientific research papers.
PubChase – Life sciences and medical literature recommendations engine. (blog post)
Pubget – Search engine for life-science PDFs.
PubNiche – A scientific research news curator.
PubPeer – Search for publications and provide feedback and/or start a conversation anonymously.
ReadCube – Read, manage & discover new literature.
Scicurve – Transforms systematic literature review into interactive and comprehensible environment.
Sciencescape – Innovation in the exploration of papers and authors.
Scientific Journal Finder – Search engine, which recommends a list of journals based on title and abstract of scientific manuscript.
Scizzle – Curator that automagically finds new and relevant research papers. (blog post)
Sparrho – Personalized recommendation engine for science – allowing you to keep a bird’s eye view on all things scientific.
SSRN – Multi-disciplinary online repository of scholarly research and related materials in social sciences.
Symplur – Connecting the dots in healthcare social media.
Wiki Journal Club – Open, user-reviewed summaries of the top studies in medical research.
Zotero – Helps you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
Article visualization
ACS ChemWorx – Collaborative reference manager coupled with tools and services for authors.
Colwiz – Create citations and bibliography and set up your research groups on the cloud to share files and references.
eLife Lens – Provides for researchers, reviewers, authors and readers a novel way of looking at online content.
Elsevier “Article of the Future” – Aims to revolutionize the format of the academic paper in regard to presentation, content and context.
Interactive Science Publishing – Allows authors to publish large datasets with original source data that can be viewed interactively by readers.
Mendeley – A platform comprising a social network, reference manager, article visualization tools.
Pubget – Search engine for life-science PDFs.
PubReader – Alternative web presentation that offers another, more reader-friendly way to read literature in PMC and Bookshelf.
ReadCube – Read, manage & discover new literature.
Utopia Docs – Pdf reader that connects the static content of scientific articles to the dynamic world of online content.
Wiley Anywhere Article – Enhanced HTML article from Whiley publisher.
Wiley Smart Article – Enhanced article tools for chemistry content in Whiley journals.
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Find and share data and code
Managing large sets of data and programing code is already unavoidable for most researchers. Tools have been developed to efficiently store and share data and code. These tools are become increasingly important as data and code sharing becomes the norm and a requirement of most funding agencies.
BioLINCC – Clinical specimen database.
ContentMine – Uses machines to liberate 100,000,000 facts from the scientific literature.
DataBank – Analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics.
DataCite – Establish easier access to research data by providing persistent identifiers for data.
DataHub – Publish or register datasets, create and manage groups and communities
Dataverse Network – Harvard-based tool to share, cite, reuse and archive research data.
Dryad– Data repository for any files associated with any published article in the sciences or medicine.
Figshare – Manage your research in the cloud and control who you share it with or make it publicly available and citable
GenBank – Gene sequence database provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
GitHub – Online software project hosting using the Git revision control system.
Nowomics – Follow genes, proteins and processes to keep up with the latest papers and data relevant to your research.
Open Science Framework – Gathers a network of research documents, a version control system, and a collaboration software.
Peer Evaluation – Open repository for data, papers, media coupled with an open review and discussion platform.
Quip – Combines chat, documents, spreadsheets, checklist, and more to collaborate on any device.
re3data – Global registry of research data repositories.
Research Compendia – Tools for researchers to connect their data, code and computational methods to their published research
SlideShare – Community for sharing presentations and other professional content
Socialsci – Help researchers collect data for their surveys and experiments (blog post).
Zenodo – A home for the long-tail of science, enabling researchers to share and preserve any research outputs.
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Connect with others
Research cannot stay buried in the lab anymore! Under Connect with experts and researchers, you will find a set of tools that help researchers reach out to other researcher and find expertise for new collaborations. Under Outreach, find tools that help you communicate your research to the general public. Citizen science, gathers tools to help you involve the general public in your research efforts, by sharing CPU time, or counting birds for example. And under Crowdfunding, you will find tools that help you collect funds for research from others.
Connect with experts and researchers
Academia – A place to share and follow research and researchers.
AcademicJoy – Share research ideas and story in research and innovation.
Addgene – Connect with other researchers through this plasmid sharing platform.
AssayDepot – Pharmaceutical marketplace for life science research services.
Benchling – Life science data management and collaboration platform.
BiomedExperts – Scientific social network to research, collaborate, and connect with researchers and medical experts worldwide.
BiomedUSA – Global open access hub for sharing and licensing of Biological Research Materials and related technologies.
Biowebspin – Platform in life science worldwide to networks, work, look up information.
Cureus – A free and open access the medical journal and a place for physicians to build a digital CV.
Direct2experts – A federated network of biomedical research expertise.
Expertnet – Helps you locate experts in Florida universities.
GlobalEventList – A comprehensive directory of scientific events worldwide.
Innocentive – Helps clients to engage a world of creative and diverse on-demand talent to rapidly generate novel ideas and solve important problems.
Kaggle – Connect with organisation in need of data prediction algorithms through open competitions for the best code. (blog post)
LabRoots – Social network for researchers.
Linkedin – Professional networking site for all.
Loop – Open, cross-platform network for researchers and academics from the Frontiers journals.
MalariaWorld – The world’s scientific and social network for malaria professionals.
Mendeley – A unique platform comprising a social network, reference manager, article visualization tools
MyScienceWork – Diffuse scientific information and knowledge in a free and accessible way.
nanoHUB – Centralized platform for computational nanotechnology research, education, and collaboration.
Open Science Framework – Gathers a network of research documents, a version control system, and a collaboration software.
Piirus – Helps researchers meet potential collaborators, build networks and develop their core research.
Research Connection – A searchable platform for research jobs and information.
ResearchGate – Social network for researchers.
ScienceExchange – Marketplace for shared lab instrumentations. (blog post)
SocialScienceSpace – Social network to bring for social scientists.
Trelliscience – A digital platform that connects you to the rest of the scientific community, ran by the AAA.
Outreach
AcademicJoy – Sharing research ideas and story in research and innovation.
AcaWiki – Summarizing academia and quasi-academia, one document at a time.
DrawScience – Take science articles, make pictures.
I Am Scientist – A science outreach education and engagement activity.
nanoHUB – Centralized platform for computational nanotechnology research, education, and collaboration.
Publiscize – Empowering scientists to free science and make their research available to everyone.
ScienceGist – Simplified summaries of scientific papers. (blog post)
SciVee – Science video sharing platform.
SciWorthy – A science news site for the everyday person to better understand science.
Useful Science – Summaries of the latest science useful in life.
Citizen science
Folding@home – Distributed computing project which studies protein folding, misfolding, aggregation, and related diseases.
Innocentive – Helps clients to engage a world of creative and diverse on-demand talent to rapidly generate novel ideas and solve important problems.
Kaggle – Platform for data prediction competitions.
Patient Innovation – Nonprofit, international, multilingual, free venue for patients and caregivers of any disease to share their innovations.
Project Noah – Explore and document wildlife on this citizen scientists platform.
SciStarter – Find, join, and contribute to science through recreational activities and citizen science research projects.
SETI@home – Put your CPU to work to help detect intelligent life outside Earth.
Zooniverse – Citizen science projects using the efforts and ability of volunteers to help scientists and researchers.
Crowdfunding
Benefunder – Facilitates connections with top researchers who are working on breakthrough discoveries that are impacting our world.
Experiment – Crowdfunding Platform for Scientific Research.
My Projects – Donate to the research work that means the most to you.
Petridish – Fund science & explore the world with renowned researchers.
SciFlies – Allows anyone, anywhere to directly support research they care about.
Consano – Research crowdfunding site to directly support innovative medical research that matters to you
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At the bench and in the office
Here is a collection of tools that help researchers in their everyday tasks. Go to Lab and project management, for tools that help manage stocks and equipments in the lab as well as project management tools for research. You’ll also find a selection of Electronic lab notebooks developed with academic researchers in mind first. Many others are available elsewhere. Outsourcing experiments is increasingly common in academic research, in part thanks to several sites that are making it easier and cheaper. Platforms to Find and share samples help you disseminate and find materials and biological samples. Under Protocol repository, you will find a collection of publicly accessible resource for experimental protocols. Work with code gathers tools designed to make the coder’s life easier and Work with data tools to generate and analyze data sets, including many R-based tools.
Lab and project management
1degreebio – Reagent marketplace.
Antibody Registry – Gives researchers a way to universally identify antibodies used in in the course of their research.
Asana – Keeps your team organized, connected, and focused on results.
Biocompare – Find products, read reviews and hear about the latest technological developments.
ELabInventory – Web-based laboratory inventory management system designed for life science research laboratories
LabCritics – Provides researchers with a trust-able source of lab equipment reviews and comparisons.
LabGuru – Supports day to day activities of a research group, from vision to execution, from knowledge to logistics.
Life technologies Lab Management Tool – Management tool for lab equipment and services.
Open Science Framework – Gathers a network of research documents, a version control system, and a collaboration software.
Quartzy – A free and easy way to manage your lab.
Quip – Combines chat, documents, spreadsheets, checklist, and more to collaborate on any device.
StrainControl – Lab management tools that allows you to organize strains, plasmids, oligos, antibodies, chemicals and inventorie.
Synapse – Platform to support open, collaborative data analysis for clear, reproducible science
Electronic lab notebook
Docollab – Helps you manage your scientific research, collaborate with your colleagues and publish your findings.
elabftw – Electromic lab notebook made by researchers, for researchers, with usability in mind.
Evernote – A place to collect inspirational ideas, write meaningful words, and move your important projects forward.
Findings App – Lab notebook app that allows to organize your experiments, keep track of results, and manage your protocols.
Hivebench – Hosted numeric laboratory notebook tool to manage protocols, experiments and share them with your team.
Journal Lab – A community of scientists who share open summaries and peer review of published articles. (blog post)
LabArchives – Web-based product to enable researchers to store, organize, and publish their research data.
Labfolder – Simple way to document your research and to organize your protocols and data. (blog post)
LabGuru – Supports day to day activities of a research group, from vision to execution, from knowledge to logistics.
Laboratory Logbook – Document projects running in a lab and manage experimentally obtained data and its metadata.
Sumatra – Automated electronic lab notebook for computational projects.
Outsourcing experiments
Emerald Cloud Lab – A web-based life sciences lab, developed by scientists for scientists.
ScienceExchange – Marketplace for shared lab instrumentations. (blog post)
TetraScience – Allows you to monitor & manage your experiments from anywhere.
Transcriptic – A remote, on-demand robotic life science research lab with no hardware to buy or software to install.
Find and share samples
Addgene – Plasmid sharing platform
Antibody Registery – Gives researchers a way to universally identify antibodies used in in the course of their research.
Biospecimens – Platform for biospecimen-based research.
Duke human heart – Repository for cardiovascular research scientists, including tissues samples and information.
ELabInventory – Web-based laboratory inventory management system designed for life science research laboratories.
Nanosupply – Platform facilitating sourcing and sharing of advanced materials for research and education.
Sample of Science – Peer-Sharing Platform for Scientific Samples. (blog post)
Protocol repository
SciVee – Science video sharing platform that includes protocols.
Benchfly – Video protocols and video platform for scientists.
Benchling – Life science data management and collaboration platform, where you can create, find, and discuss protocols.
IPOL journal – Research journal of image processing and image analysis with algorithm descriptions and its source code.
MyExperiment – Share workflows and in silico experiments.
OpenWetWare – Share information, know-how, wisdom, and protocols among researchers working in biological fields.
Pegasus – Platform that help workflow-based applications execute.
Protocols – Crowdsourced universal protocol repository. (blog post)
Protocol online – A curator of protocols contributed by researchers arounds the world.
Scientific Protocols – Share scientific protocols using the GitHub platform.
Work with code
CDE Tool – Deploy and run your Linux programs on other machines without any installation or configuration.
Dexy – Helps your code to speak for itself with beautiful syntax highlighting.
GitLab – A git repository management, code reviews, issue tracking and wiki’s all in one platform.
iPython notebook – Interactive computational environment that allows code execution, text, mathematics, plots, and rich media.
Kepler – Helps create, execute, and share models and analyses across scientific and engineering disciplines.
Mercurial – Control management tool with distributed source, giving each developer a local copy of the development history.
nanoHUB – Centralized platform for computational nanotechnology research, education, and collaboration.
ROpenSci – Packages that allow access to data repositories through the R statistical programming environment.
Sweave – Allows to embed the R code for complete data analyses in latex documents
System in Cloud – Platform, enabling clients to rapidly draw and execute data-flow diagram that run in cloud.
Work with data
Benchling – Life science data management and collaboration platform.
Galaxy Project – Web-based platform for data intensive biomedical research.
GenePattern – Genomic analysis platform that provides access to hundreds of genomics tools.
GenomeCompiler – Genetic design platform allowing researchers to manipulate and design everything from single genes to entire genomes.
Kaggle – Patform for data prediction competitions.
Kitware – Advanced software solutions and services for data intensive R&D
mloss – Machine learning open source software.
MyExperiment – Share workflows and in silico experiments
nanoHUB – Centralized platform for computational nanotechnology research, education, and collaboration.
Pegasus – Platform that help workflow-based applications execute.
Plotly – Online tool to graph and share data.
ROpenSci – Packages that allow access to data repositories through the R statistical programming environment.
Statcrunch  – Provides data analysis via the Web.
Sumatra – Automated electronic lab notebook for computational projects
SURF In context – Navigate through RDF relations in a smooth and understandable way.
Sweave – Allows to embed the R code for complete data analyses in latex documents.
Synapse – Platform to support open, collaborative data analysis for clear, reproducible science.
System in Cloud – Platform, enabling clients to rapidly draw and execute data-flow diagram that run in cloud.
Tableau – Easily and quickly analyze and present data and share insights.
Taverna – A suite of tools used to design and execute scientific workflows.
VisTrails – Scientific workflow and provenance management system that supports data exploration and visualization.
Wakari – Web-based python data analysis.
WebPlotDigitizer – Web based tool to extract data from plots, images, and maps. (blog post)
Wings – Semantic workflow system that assists scientists with the design of computational experiments.
Wolfram Alpha – Web-based tools for scientific calculations.
World Map – Allows users to explore, visualize, edit, collaborate with, and publish geospatial information.
Fundraising/Grantwriting
Grant Forward – Search engine for research grants.
Pivot COS – A database which includes funding opportunities from all disciplines.
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Write
Writing tools are adapting to the needs of researchers. Tools to store and manage references are grouped under Reference managers. And with research being more and more dependent on collaborations across labs and continents, collaborative writing tools, help researchers write their manuscript while keeping close track of the modifications done by others to the text.
Reference managers
ACS ChemWorx – Collaborative reference manager coupled with tools and services for authors.
CitationStyles – Find and edit CSL citation styles.
CiteUlike – Search, organize, and share scholarly papers.
Colwiz – Create citations and bibliography and set up your research groups on the cloud to share files and references.
EndNote – Software tool for publishing and managing bibliographies, citations and references
Mendeley – A unique platform comprising a social network, reference manager, article visualization tools.
Paperpile – No-fuss reference management for the web (Google docs plugin). (blog post)
Papers – Helps you collect and curate the research material that you’re passionate about.
Zotero – Helps you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources
Collaborative writing tools
ASCII doctor – Text processor & publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc to HTML5, DocBook & more.
Atlas – Write, collaborate, design and publish on a single platform.
Authorea – Platform to write scientific, academic, and technical documents in collaboration. (blog post)
Draft – Version control and collaboration to improve your writing.
Fidus Writer – Online collaborative editor especially made for academics who need to use citations and/or formulas.
Penflip – Collaborative writing and version control. (blog post)
SciGit – Change tracking solution for effortless collaborative writing. (blog post)
ShareLaTex – Collaborative on-line editor for for Maths or Sciences.
WriteLaTex – Online collaborative LaTeX editor.
Stackedit – Markdown editor based on PageDown, the Markdown library used by Stack Overflow.
Typewrite – A simple, real-time collaborative writing environment.
Poetica – Get clear feedback, wherever you’re writing.
Quip – Combines chat, documents, spreadsheets, checklist, and more to collaborate on any device.
Manuscript Services and writing assistant tools (to come)
Writefull – Provides feedback on your writing using data from the Google Books database. (blog post)
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Publish
Open Access platforms offer an alternative publishing model, allowing anyone to visualize published work for free. Researchers can also maximize the exposure of their work by placing their manuscripts in Paper repositories. In addition to becoming more open, articles are bound to become more interactive. A set of tools allowing you to bring additional functionalities such as executable code to your articles are grouped under Support to publication. You can also find tools to help your choose from the thousands of journals in activity under Journal reviews and advisors.
Open access platforms
eLife – Open access to the most promising advances in science.
F1000 – Leading biomedical experts helping scientists to discover, discuss and publish research.
GigaScience – Online open-access open-data journal that publishes ‘big-data’ studies from the life and biomedical sciences.
Limn – Free journal that outlines contemporary problems.
PeerJ – Open access pre-print and publishing of life science research with annotation.
Cureus – A free and open access the medical journal and a place for physicians to build a digital CV.
ScienceOpen – Freely accessible research network to share and evaluate scientific information.
The Winnower – Open access online science publishing platform that employs open post-publication peer review.
Paper repositories
ArXiv – E-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics.
biorXiv – The preprint server for Biology.
F1000 – Leading biomedical experts helping scientists to discover, discuss and publish research.
Figshare – Manage your research in the cloud and control who you share it with or make it publicly available and citable.
Peer Evaluation – Open repository for data, papers, media coupled with an open review and discussion platform.
Peerage of Science – Pre-publication peer review and publishing for scientific articles.
PeerJ PrePrints – Pre-print repository for the biological and medical Sciences.
SlideShare – Community for sharing presentations and other professional content.
Zenodo – A home for the long-tail of science, enabling researchers to share and preserve any research outputs.
Support to publication
Collage Authoring Environment – Framework for collaborative preparation and publication of so-called executable paper.
Exec&Share – Openly share the code and data that underlie your research publications.
Google Charts – Create live and interactive charts in your browser.
RunMyCode – Openly share the code and data that underlie your research publications. (blog post)
ORCID – Provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher.
Journal reviews and advisors
Cofactor Science Journal Selector – A journal selector from the editing service Cofactor.
Edanz’s journal advisor – Personal guide that recommends the tools and services you need to get published.
Journal Guide – Find the best journal for your research. (blog post)
Journal Reviewer – Aggregates information users provide about their experience with academic journals’ review processes.
Journalysis – A service for academic authors run by academic authors for reviewing experiences with academic journals.
RoMEO – Find out publisher copyright and self-archiving policies.
SciRev – Share your experience with the scientific review process and learn from others to decide where to submit your manuscripts. (blog post)
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Evaluate Research
New tools are changing the way research in evaluated, both in terms of the scientific value of articles and the overall achievements of researchers. Find under Peer-review, a collection of tools that are changing the peer-review system into a more open and productive process by bypassing journals and editors. Altmetrics are a set of new tools that analyze the impact of you work by other means than impact factor and citations counts.
Peer-review
Academic Karma – Peer review and get peer reviewed faster.
F1000 – Leading biomedical experts helping scientists to discover, discuss and publish research.
Hypothes.is – Sentence-level peer-review to provide commentary, references, and insight on top of online content.
Journal Review – Rate, and review published medical journal articles.
Labii – A suite of web apps for researchers, including an online app for finding, commenting, rating  research papers. (blog post)
Libre – Participative reviewing platform (beta testing).
Paper Critic – Review platform for research publications (Mendeley plugin).
Peerage of Science – Pre-publication peer review and publishing for scientific articles.
PeerJ – Open access pre-print and publishing of life science research with annotation.
PubPeer – Search for publications and provide feedback and/or start a conversation anonymously.
Publons – Record, showcase, and verify all your peer review activity.
Pubmed Commons – Share opinions and information about scientific publications in PubMed. (blog post)
Rubriq – Provides an independent peer review prior to submission. (blog post)
ScienceOpen – Freely accessible research network to share and evaluate scientific information.
Wiki Journal Club – Open, user-reviewed summaries of the top studies in medical research.
The Winnower – Open access online science publishing platform that employs open post-publication peer review.
Altmetrics
Altmetric – Tracks what people are saying about papers online on behalf of publishers, authors, libraries and institutions.
ImpactStory – Share the full story of your research impact. (blog post)
PLOS Article-Level Metrics – A suite of established metrics that measure the overall performance and reach of research articles.
PlumAnalytics – Research altmetric service tracking more than 20 different types of artifacts.
Publons – Record, showcase, and verify all your peer review activity.
source: http://connectedresearchers.com/online-tools-for-researchers/
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Impact Factor: What Is It?

“The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.” --  Lewis Thomas (American Physician and Writer, 1913-1993)

From Saudi Aramco’s Biotechnology, Research and Development Center comes this interesting article …

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Biocatalytic desulfurization of thiophenic compounds and crude oil by newly isolated bacteria
Magdy El-Said Mohamed*, Zakariya H. Al-Yacoub and John V. Vedakumar
Biotechnology, Research and Development Center, Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Frontiers of Microbiolology, 13 February 2015 : Impact Factor: 4
Microorganisms possess enormous highly specific metabolic activities, which enable them to utilize and transform nearly every known chemical class present in crude oil. In this context, one of the most studied biocatalytic processes is the biodesulfurization (BDS) of thiophenic sulfur-containing compounds such as benzothiophene (BT) and dibenzothiophene (DBT) in crude oils and refinery streams. Three newly isolated bacterial strains, which were affiliated as Rhodococcus sp. strain SA11, Stenotrophomonas sp. strain SA21, and Rhodococcus sp. strain SA31, were enriched from oil contaminated soil in the presence of DBT as the sole S source. GC-FID analysis of DBT-grown cultures showed consumption of DBT, transient formation of DBT sulfone (DBTO2) and accumulation of 2-hydroxybiphenyl (2-HBP). Molecular detection of the plasmid-borne dsz operon, which codes for the DBT desulfurization activity, revealed the presence of dszA, dszB, and dszC genes. These results point to the operation of the known 4S pathway in the BDS of DBT. The maximum consumption rate of DBT was 11 µmol/g dry cell weight (DCW)/h and the maximum formation rate of 2-HBP formation was 4 µmol/g DCW/h. Inhibition of both cell growth and DBT consumption by 2-HBP was observed for all isolates but SA11 isolate was the least affected. The isolated biocatalysts desulfurized other model DBT alkylated homologs. SA11 isolate was capable of desulfurizing BT as well. Resting cells of SA11 exhibited 10% reduction in total sulfur present in heavy crude oil and 18% reduction in total sulfur present in the hexane-soluble fraction of the heavy crude oil. The capabilities of the isolated bacteria to survive and desulfurize a wide range of S compounds present in crude oil are desirable traits for the development of a robust BDS biocatalyst to upgrade crude oils and refinery streams.
Free Full Text Source:  http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2015.00112/full
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You may have noticed the Impact Factor: 4  associated with the journal Frontiers of Microbiolology.

What is the Impact Factor, and what can you do with it?

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor), “The impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones.”

Theoretically, then, you can us the Impact Factor to evaluate the usefulness of journals within your field of interest.

Google®, for example, the search string …

desulfurization impact factor

Then browse the results, noting the Impact Factor of each journal featuring an article pertaining to desulfurization.

The Impact Factor should not be your only tool for journal evaluation.  As noted in the Wikipedia article, there are a number of criticisms of the concept.

How to design a lab: Part 14 of a series of posts

"Happiness is like a cloud, if you stare at it long enough, it evaporates” -- Sarah McLachlan (Canadian Singer and Songwriter, b.1968)

While Google® makes it easy to search for virtually anything you need to know about laboratory design, the one thing you won’t find is the importance of good library support. From the Library to the Laboratory: A New Future for the Science Librarian (https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/PUB7202r.pdf) is a notable exception.

It is one chapter in a larger work:

The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing
Richard N. Katz, Editor
2008 EDUCAUSE
ISBN 978-0-9672853-9-9
Free Full Text Source:  http://www.educause.edu/research-and-publications/books/tower-and-cloud

Mary Marlino and Tamara Sumner, the authors of From the Library to the Laboratory: A New Future for the Science Librarian? describe the challenges facing researchers and the librarians who support them.

Here is an excerpt from From the Library to the Laboratory.

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From the Library to the Laboratory: A New Future for the Science Librarian?
Mary Marlino and Tamara Sumner
The mission of academic libraries is to support research, education, and scholarship. Historically, libraries have supported this mission by organizing and providing access to information, curating and preserving special collections, and creating physical spaces for collaboration and scholarship. While the broad mission of academic libraries is largely unchanged, transformations in technology, media, and culture are driving fundamental changes in the production and consumption of information and the practice of scholarship. As a result, academic libraries are rethinking their strategies and services to meet the challenges of the digital world and the demands of the “born digital” generation.

Science libraries, in particular, are confronting these challenges as the nature of scientific practice is being dramatically transformed by information technologies. These technologies enable scientific data to be collected, distributed, and archived on an unprecedented scale. The challenge of collecting, managing, and providing access to information not traditionally curated by libraries is compounded by the sheer volume of data, issues of interoperability, documentation, acknowledgment, and authentication.

The term e-science is often used to describe new forms of data-driven science enabled by information technologies. Data-driven science is characterized by the analyses of increasingly large quantities of data from distributed sources. E-science methodologies include the identification and visualization of patterns, anomalies, and trends from the mining and analysis of data, coupled with the ability to share the results of analysis processes through the immediacy of the Internet. Within the United States, the term cyberinfrastructure is often used interchangeably with e-science.

Currently, e-science is often associated with “big science,” that is, large national or international projects such as the Terragrid, the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN), or the Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) project. These projects are developing sophisticated, distributed technical infrastructures, often based on “grid” technologies, which support domain-specific tools and services facilitating data acquisition, data analysis, and data management. This infrastructure is often housed at major research facilities or national laboratories, and user access to these advanced research services is managed by these groups and made available to individual researchers through the project portal.

Data-driven science, however, is not confined exclusively to these large disciplinary efforts. A closer look at what is happening on university campuses and in small research labs today reveals that e-science practices are increasingly common and being applied to a wide range of scholarly endeavors in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.2 For instance, a master’s thesis in urban planning examining the correlation between indigenous plants, property prices, and neighborhood activism may draw on diverse data sources—such as the university’s special herbarium collection, the county property tax records and land use data, and records of local voting behaviors—to create an innovative geographic information visualization that can be used by policy makers debating future planning scenarios. In this case, the student is not using custom, discipline-specific e-science tools but is leveraging increasingly available Web 2.0 capabilities; that is, many organizations are now routinely exposing data through public APIs and web services. Tim O’Reilly highlights this “innovation by assembly” phenomenon as a key Web 2.0 principle, commenting that “… when commodity components are abundant, you can create value simply by assembling them in novel or effective ways.”

Promises and Challenges for Science Libraries
The examples above illustrate both the promises and the challenges facing e-science and libraries. The promises include the following: the potential for new scientific discoveries that are possible only through large-scale, computational analyses; a new era of transparency and replicability in scientific methods and results; and the potential for widespread democratization of scientific research, given the increasing ubiquity of open access data sources and protocols. However, hidden in these examples are several challenges for universities and their libraries.
The first challenge concerns the sheer volume of scientific data. In the LEAD example, how does our scientist locate the required data from the various ground stations and radars? In the master’s thesis example, how does the student locate the multiple data sets distributed across local government and university servers?
The second challenge concerns data interoperability. In the LEAD example, merging data from different sources into a uniform data collection requires significant, specialized expertise in all the different data formats and a small army of graduate students. The thesis example, on the other hand, illustrates a new form of scholarly literacy: namely, students need “lightweight” programming skills to combine and remix data from multiple sources.
The third challenge relates to preserving and documenting the intermediate products. Whose task is it to save these intermediate products for posterity and to document them so that others can find and reuse them? In the LEAD example, what is the university library’s role in selecting and preserving original and derivative data sets for future reanalysis? In the thesis example, the student has created a richly annotated version of the library’s special herbarium collection, adding new information about the geographic locations of particular species. How does the library incorporate this user-generated content back into its carefully managed special collection?
Finally, the demands of digital scholarship are requiring new levels of documentation, acknowledgement, and authentication that are often beyond the immediate capabilities or interests of faculty or students. In the LEAD example, when the researcher’s final report and associated data and artifacts are put into the university’s institutional repository, who will be responsible for ensuring that the university has the appropriate intellectual property rights to post and disseminate this information? In the thesis example, the student’s thesis consists of written documentation, software codes for the visualization, and several public data sets. Many campus libraries are tasked with preserving and archiving student theses and dissertations. Again, as in the LEAD case, the library will be challenged to develop stewardship policies and procedures to support the archival and preservation demands of multimedia forms of scholarship.

New Roles for University Libraries
As a first step, libraries should prioritize making the collections that they manage available to library users through open and documented web service protocols supporting programmatic access to both primary content and metadata. Currently, most libraries support individual users to access collections only through manual, query-driven interfaces. For instance, access to the herbarium collection used in the master’s thesis is probably available only through a special web interface enabling users to search the metadata records using keywords and other criteria to generate a fairly traditional list of search results. However, for data-driven science, students and faculty need to be able to run computations over the entire collection and not just access individual records. The visualization created as part of the master’s thesis is a relatively simple, yet still challenging, example. In this case, the student wants to construct a visualization that enables users to select a geographic area and view all of the different kinds of plant species located in that area; that is, the visualization needs to dynamically query the library’s collection and repackage this information as appropriate for this special application. Today, many of the systems that libraries have put in place to enable access to collections are simply not architected to support programmatic access of any kind, thus severely limiting the usefulness of library collections for these new forms of scholarship.

Libraries are increasingly being asked to play a leadership role in helping universities capture and organize their intellectual assets, such as faculty publications, student dissertations, project reports, and scientific data sets. As illustrated in our examples, the library is often called on at the end of the scholarly process: the researcher needs to include the final report in the institutional repository, or the student has graduated and the dissertation needs to be archived. At this point in the cycle, it takes a significant amount of time, effort, and expense to examine each multimedia scholarly artifact, parse out the constituent components, and decide which of these should be preserved. Too often, libraries are called upon to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis.

E-science and Web 2.0 technologies are promoting and enabling scholars to create new works that build on data from multiple sources. As described in our examples, viewing these works and archiving these works can potentially infringe on the intellectual property rights of the creators of the original data sets. As libraries take on responsibilities for hosting and/or archiving these new works, they will also need to take on new responsibilities for rights management. Specifically, library staff must develop expertise in tracing intellectual property rights, negotiating clearances as appropriate, and communicating the rights and terms of use of digital artifacts to library users. Traditionally, these activities have been the purview of legal departments. However, as new forms of scholarship proliferate, relying on the university’s legal counsel will not scale and will be very expensive.

Conclusion
The discussions above illustrate many of the major challenges on the horizon for academic libraries in the years ahead. Libraries have an opportunity to build on their significant collections and content, their expertise in information management, and their historical role in supporting scholarship to become essential players in e-science in the academic enterprise. Barriers along the way include lack of leadership and vision, the more pedestrian issues of lack of technical expertise and money, the strategic pitfalls of inadequate long-term planning, and the all-too-human tendency to keep doing what you know how to do and not acknowledge that the world has changed.
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TIP #1: When designing your lab, consult with a librarian to help create an environment in which your researchers have access to the services only a library can provide.

TIP #2: Google using  the search string: librarian research laboratory. Then browse through the results to explore how academic and government research libraries support their research talent.

This is the final post of the TIPSTARTALAB series.  Visit http://www.jeansteinhardtconsulting.com/ for more tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of your online research.

How to design a lab: Part 13 of a series of posts

“Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time.” ~Motto of the Baltimore Grotto (caving society)

National Academies Press offers “Laboratory Design, Construction, and Renovation: Participants, Process, and Product” as a free PDF download. While somewhat old – it was published in 2000 – it remains relevant.  An excerpt appears below.

TIP: Take time to explore the bibliography of any item you find helpful.  It can lead to additional resources you might not have found otherwise.

The bibliography of the National Academies Press report appears below the excerpt.

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Laboratory Design, Construction, and Renovation: Participants, Process, and Product
National Academies Press, 2000
From the Executive Summary
This study does not duplicate the numerous other publications on laboratory construction (see the bibliography). It is the committee’s hope that scientist users, institutional administrators, and institutional managers will use this report to become informed users of design services and that the professional design community will use this report to enhance its ability to interact with its clients.
Laboratory facilities are complex, technically sophisticated, and mechanically intensive structures that are expensive to build and to maintain, and therefore the design, construction, and renovation of such facilities is a major challenge for all involved. Hundreds of decisions must be made before and during renovation or new construction. These decisions will determine how successfully the facility will function when completed and how successfully it can be maintained once put into service. Yet many of these decisions must be made by users and administrators whose knowledge of both basic and more laboratory specific design, construction, and renovation is minimal at the start of the project and must be rapidly increased.
This report is addressed to the scientist-user and administrator, and therefore focuses on how to have a successful laboratory facility built rather than on the detailed specifications for a successfully constructed laboratory. In this context, a successful laboratory facility is defined as one that provides effective and flexible laboratories, is safe for laboratory workers, is compatible with the surrounding environment, has the support of the neighboring community and governmental agencies, and can be constructed in a cost-effective manner. This report covers many basic aspects of design, renovation, and construction projects in general as well as specific laboratory-oriented issues. In its discussion of the latter, the committee considered primarily chemistry and biochemistry laboratories; it did not deal specifically with specialized buildings such as animal facilities, nor did it address multiple-use buildings such as teaching and research facilities. (Narum, 1995, deals with teaching laboratories.)
Overall, the general principles elucidated by the committee make its recommendations applicable to the construction or renovation of almost any laboratory building. Through its investigations the committee found that although individual projects differ, there are certain commonalities in successful laboratory construction and renovation projects. These include the right participants and a continuity of personnel; a thorough, well-defined, and thoughtful process; and a broad knowledge of the relevant issues. These common themes are discussed in Chapters 1 through 3: “Human Issues,” “Process Issues,” and “Technical Issues.” Many of these elements, especially those discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, may appear to be common sense, but they were found to have been overlooked in some of the projects described to the committee. Other themes are more specific to laboratory facilities.
Transcending specific issues and recommendations are four critical factors identified by the committee as characterizing successful laboratory construction or renovation projects:
1. A “champion” who is strongly committed to the success of the project, who has the confidence of the entire client group, and who stays with the project from beginning to end;
2. A design professional, often an architect, who has experience and dem- onstrated success in laboratory design and construction;
3. A well-defined and well-articulated process for carrying out the project from predesign through postconstruction; and
4. Clear lines of communication and authority for all participants through- out the process.
Free full text source: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309066336 (Excellent … find appropriate excerpts from Executive Summary)
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Bibliography
American Chemical Society (ACS). 1993. Less Is Better: Laboratory Chemical Waste Management for Waste Reduction, 2nd Ed. Task Force on Laboratory Waste Management, Department of Government Relations and Science Policy. Washington, D.C.: ACS.
American Institute of Architects (AIA). 1993. The Architect’s Handbook of Professional Practice, Vol. 2, 12th Ed. Washington, D.C.: AIA.
American Institute of Architects (AIA). 1999. Guidelines for Planning and Design of Biomedical Research Laboratory Facilities, Washington, D.C.: AIA.
Ashbrook, Peter C., and Malcolm M. Renfrew 1991. Safe Laboratories. New York: Lewis Publishers.
Baum, Janet S. 1995. “Renovate Your Lab.” Chemical Health and Safety, May/June, 2:7-13.
Baum, Janet S. 1997. “Designing Chemical Laboratories.” Chemical Health and Safety, March/ April, 4:21-25
Baum, Janet S. 1998. “Building Safety From the Ground Up.” Chemical Health and Safety, May/ June, 5:11-14.
Bender, R. 1996. “Benchmarking Costs for Pharmaceutical Facilities.” Pharmaceutical Engineering. Vol. 16, No. 6:28-34.
Braybrook, Susan, ed. 1986. Design for Research: Principles of Laboratory Design. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Cooper, Crawley. 1994. Laboratory Design Handbook. Boston: CRC Press.
DiBerardinus, Louis, Janet Baum, Melvin W. First, Gari T. Gatwood, Edward Groden, and Anand K. Seth. 1993. Guidelines for Laboratory Design. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 1998. EPA Facilities Manual, Vols. 1-4. Office of Administration and Resources Management. Washington, D.C.: EPA.
Griffin, Brian B. 1998. Laboratory Design Guide. Boston: Architectural Press.
Mayer, Leonard. 1995. Design and Planning of Research and Clinical Laboratory Facilities. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Muskat, Carl. 1993. “Estimating Lab Construction Costs.” R&D Magazine, February, p. 99.
Narum, Jeanne. 1995. Structures for Science, Vol. 3. Washington, D.C.: Project Kaleidoscope.
National Institutes of Health (NIH). 1998. Research Laboratory: NIH Design Policies and Guidelines. Bethesda, Md.: Division of Engineering Services, National Institutes of Health. Available online at .
National Research Council (NRC). 1930. Laboratory Construction and Equipment. New York: Chemical Foundation.
National Research Council (NRC). 1951. Laboratory Design. H.S. Coleman, ed., New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation.
National Research Council (NRC). 1962. Laboratory Planning for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. Harry F. Lewis, ed. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation.
National Research Council (NRC). 1987. Post-Occupancy Evaluation Practices in the Building Process. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council (NRC). 1990. Committing to the Cost of Ownership—Maintenance and Repair of Public Buildings. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council (NRC). 1991. Pay Now or Pay Later: Controlling Costs of Ownership from Design Throughout the Service Life of Public Buildings. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council (NRC). 1993. The Fourth Dimension in Building: Strategies for Minimizing Obsolescence. Donald G. Iselin and Andrew K.C. Lemer, eds. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council (NRC). 1995. Prudent Practices in the Laboratory: Handling and Disposal of Chemicals. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Research Council (NRC). 1996. Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
National Science Foundation (NSF). 1992. Planning Academic Research Facilities: A Guidebook. Washington, D.C.: NSF.
New York Times. 1999. Pfizer Abandons Plan to Build Lab at UConn. August 8, p. 33.
Piller, Charles. 1991. The Fail-Safe Society: Community Defiance and the End of Technological Optimism, especially “Biomedical Research and the Nightmare in Laurel Heights,” pp. 118- 157. New York: Basic Books.
Popper, Frank. 1991. “LULUs and Their Blockage: The Nature of the Problem, The Outline of the Solutions.” pp. 13-30 in Confronting Regional Challenges: Approaches to LULUs, Growth, and Other Vexing Governance Problems. Joseph DiMento and LeRoy Graymer, eds. Cambridge: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Richmond, J.Y., and R.W. McKinney. 1993. Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories. 3rd Edition. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC/NIH. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Roseland, Sigurd J. 1987. The Chemical Laboratory: Its Design and Operations. Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes Publications.
Ruys, Theodorus, ed. 1990. Handbook of Facilities Planning, Vol. 1, Laboratory Facilities. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Siegel, L.H., and D. Roth. 1995. Research Laboratory VA Design Guide. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Available online at .
Stark, Stanley, ed. 1994. Research Facilities of the Future. New York: New York Academy of Sciences. (Out of print.)
Studt, Tim, ed. 1996. “Laboratory Design.” Special Supplement to R&D Magazine (May). Des Plaines, Illinois: Cahners. 

How to design a lab: Part 12 of a series of posts

“Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia.” -- Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist, Poet and Philosopher, 1817-1862)

Getting down to the nit and the grit … Lab Manager Magazine (http://www.labmanager.com) offers a good way to stay abreast of developments at ground level.

Here is an excerpt of one of the items that have appeared in the publication …

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Secrets of a Successful Start-Up Lab
Lab Manager
Many labs start out as entrepreneurial ventures to develop new technology. As such, a start-up lab has entrepreneurial requirements that must be met in order for it to successfully develop into a full-fledged business.
 By Lina Genovesi   | May 01, 2015
A big idea wrapped in many small, but critical, details
Below are some of the entrepreneurial requirements of a start-up lab.
Starting The Lab
Creating the business plan
Starting your lab begins with a business plan that includes, in this order, an executive summary, a company description, a market analysis, an organization and management section, a service or product line section, and a funding request section.

The executive summary is the most important section of a business plan, as it spells out your experience and background as well as the decisions that led you to want to start your business. The executive summary also spells out why your business idea will be successful. If you are seeking financing, the executive summary is also your first opportunity to grab a potential investor’s interest.

The executive summary should highlight the strengths of your overall business plan and demonstrate that you have done thorough market analysis. It should include information about a need or gap in your target market and how your particular technology solutions can fill it. The executive summary should convince the reader that you can succeed in your target market. Although the executive summary appears first in the business plan, it is the last section of the business plan that you write.

The company description section provides a high-level review of the different elements of your business. This is similar to an extended elevator pitch and can help readers and potential investors quickly understand the goal of your business and its unique proposition. The company description section includes a description of the nature of your business and explains the competitive advantages that you believe will make your business a success.

The market analysis section should highlight your industry and market knowledge as well as any of your research findings and conclusions. It should include a description of your industry, including its current size and historic growth rate as well as other trends and characteristics, such as life-cycle stage and projected growth rate. It should also include information about the target market, its distinguishing characteristics, size of the primary target market and your projected share of it, a competitive analysis, and any regulatory or governmental regulatory requirements that will affect your business.

The organization and management section should include your company’s legal and organizational structure, management profile, and the qualifications of your board of directors. The service or product line section includes a description of your product or service, details about your product’s life cycle, status of your intellectual property protection, and current or future R&D activities.

The marketing and sales management section includes your overall marketing and sales strategy—namely your strategies for market penetration, growth, channels of distribution, and communication.

The funding request section of the business plan should include your current funding requirements and any future funding requirements over the next five years, supported by historical and prospective financial information. The funding request section should also include an analysis of the prospective use of the requested funds.

Read the full text at: http://www.labmanager.com/business-management/2015/04/secrets-of-a-successful-start-up-lab#.VXjUmOlREcA
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How to design a lab: Part 11 of a series of posts

“I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people” -- Dan Quayle (American 44th US Vice President under George Bush (1989-93). b.1947)

Laboratories are complex organisms. Each is unique. Consequently, when visualizing your new lab, nothing beats eyes on the prize. Towards that end, the annual Laboratory Design Conference (http://www.labdesignconference.com/) is worthy of serious consideration.  Because, in addition to the typical conference networking opportunities, this conference includes optional tours of working laboratories.  For example, the 2015 Conference, held in Atlanta, included the following tours …

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Laboratory Design Conference
April 27-29, 2015
Hyatt Regency Atlanta Hotel
Since 2002, the Laboratory Design Conference has provided a dynamic educational and networking event for those involved in planning, designing, engineering, constructing and operating laboratory facilities. Meeting sessions feature recognized experts delivering unique presentations on trends in creating the most efficient, state-of-the-art facilities.
Held each spring, the conference also marks the official “reveal” of the Laboratory of the Year winners, with in-depth discussions by the winning project teams.
Tours of exemplary lab facilities, including those to which attendees would not otherwise have access, are an integral part of the overall Lab Design Conference experience.
Credits for presentations are available through the American Institute of Architects as well as the Green Building Certification Institute, and are also offered as general CEUs for non-AIA/GBCI members.
Scheduled simultaneously with the conference, the Laboratory Design expo allows attendees to learn about companies offering relevant products and services to the laboratory design industry. Social gatherings provide plenty of opportunity for relaxation and networking.
Optional Lab Tours
Each year, the Laboratory Design Conference features tours of key local labs of various types.
Each tour goes inside facilities with a facility manager and a member of the design team as tour guides.
The line up of the 2015 Atlanta area tours are listed below: Tour A, Tour B, Tour C, Tour D and E.
2015 Tour A:
Georgia Tech, Engineered Biosystems Building
Georgia Tech’s Engineered Biosystems Building will provide 218,880 gross square feet of flexible interdisciplinary laboratory space for researchers collaborating in the fields of Chemical Biology, Cell Therapies and Systems Biology. The project will create a unique environment that connects people from multiple disciplines and departments to focus on specific societal problems in a holistic manner. A principle goal of the design is to foster interaction between chemists, engineers, biologists and computational scientists from two separate Colleges, the College of Engineering and the College of Science. The project will also generate significant economic impact through new research awards and commercialization of technologies developed within. The project is seeking LEED

Georgia Tech, Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions Lab
2013 Laboratory of the Year High Honors Winner
Georgia Tech has a clear mission for its new Carbon-Neutral Energy Solutions Laboratory: carbon neutral "net-zero site energy use." The facility sets a new standard for sustainable design for buildings of its type by optimizing passive energy technologies, reducing electricity loads, and maximizing the use of renewable energy. It houses a variety of energy research programs requiring large scale (high-bay) and intermediate scale (mid-bay) capabilities, and the design is intended to express its mission simply, directly and honestly; a "no frills" design. The laboratory has achieved LEED-NC Platinum certification.

2015 Tour B:
Emory University, Atwood Hall
Cooper Carry began multi-phased renovations and additions to the Chemistry Center in 1996. This latest phase of this project, a 70,000 square foot addition and 40,000 square foot renovation, is designed to create a new “front door” for Emory’s multidisciplinary chemistry based research programs. Teaching and research space will be integrated with a shared focus on the building’s common space. Labs feature open plans, significant day lighting and “plug and play” laboratory furniture.

Emory University, Health Sciences Research Building
Designed by ZGF Architects, this 212,000 SF facility enhances translational research and provides connections to Emory's core campus. The program includes pediatric, cancer, immunology, and drug discovery research and is comprised of three components: a wet laboratory building; a dry research tower over public spaces; and a dry research bridge connecting to the main campus.

2015 Tour C:
Kennesaw State University, Science Laboratory Building
When booking your return trip home please note that the trip back to the hotel will take approximately 40 minutes.
The new 73,000 building addition enables the university to expand its masters’ degree offerings for integrative biology and chemical sciences. The addition houses undergraduate teaching labs on the ground floor with three floors of upper level research. Linking the addition to the existing science building, a multi-story atrium serves as a central commons for the college. This space brings people together for informal learning, productive impromptu conversations and formal events.
The project is tracking LEED Gold certification with a significant focus on energy reduction.  The main energy recovery unit in the penthouse includes an enthalpy wheel for recovering energy from the lab general exhaust airstream and a heat pipe for recovering energy from the fume hood exhaust airstream.  Non fume hood intensive labs were designed to have a constant 6 air changes per hour while utilizing active chilled beams to handle the balance of the cooling load.  This reduction in outside air requirements from an industry norm of 10-12 air changes per hour decreases the building heating and cooling load significantly.  A welcome by-product of the chilled beams is that the labs are as quiet as a conference room.  Condensing boilers were provided to allow the hot water system to operate at 120°F, a 60°F reduction from typical systems.  This lower hot water temperature means that not only will less energy be lost from heat transfer through the piping, but allows the heat recovery chiller to efficiently transfer waste energy from the chilled water system to the heating hot water system.

2015 Tour D:
Georgia Institute of Technology, Marcus Nanotechnology Building
The Nanotechnology Research Center (NRC), formerly the The Microelectronics Research Center (MIRC), has been expanded into The Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN). IEN is one of several new thematic Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs) at Georgia Tech that represent individual faculty members, PIs, Centers, and Programs that are engaged in the areas of electronics and nanotechnologies research at Georgia Tech.
IEN is led by Executive Director, Professor Oliver Brand, with Professor Emeritus James D. Meindl acting in an advisory capacity. Professor Brand is supported with a senior staff leadership team of: Mr. Dean A. Sutter, Associate Director for Operations and Industry Engagements; Mr. Gary Spinner, Sr. Assistant Director for Laboratory Operations; Ms. Traci Walden-Monroe Assistant Director Administration, Accounting and Finance; and Mr. Robert Rose, Assistant Director for Buildings and Support Systems.

2015 Tour E:
Georgia Gwinnett College, Allied Health Building
The Georgia Gwinnett College Allied Health Building is a multi-storied building consisting of approximately 87,000 gross square feet. The new building includes a technology center, computer labs, biology, physics and chemistry labs, lab preparation facilities, storage facilities, office space, break rooms and support space.  It is envisioned the design of the facility will incorporate materials that blend with and complement existing campus structures as specified in the Campus Master Plan, and will be integrated physically and functionally, as well as connected in some manner, with the recently completed Instructional Lab Facility on the campus quad.
source: http://www.labdesignconference.com/
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Speaking of tours, why not tour the JeanSteinhardt.com Web at: www.jeansteinhardtconsulting.com? It offers tips on a variety of online research topics, all of which are designed to save you valuable time.

How to design a lab: Part 10 of a series of posts

“The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.” -- Douglas Adams (British comic Writer, 1952-2001)

Energy efficiency in the laboratory has emerged as a significant consideration in lab design.  A Design Guide for Energy-Efficient Research Laboratories (http://ateam.lbl.gov/Design-Guide/) provides valuable insight into this area of lab design.  Following, excerpts from this online guide …

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A Design Guide for Energy-Efficient Research Laboratories--provides a detailed and holistic framework to assist designers and energy managers in identifying and applying advanced energy-efficiency features in laboratory-type environments. The Guide fills an important void in the general literature and compliments existing in-depth technical manuals. Considerable information is available pertaining to overall laboratory design issues, but no single document focuses comprehensively on energy issues in these highly specialized environments. Furthermore, practitioners may utilize many antiquated rules of thumb, which often inadvertently cause energy inefficiency. The Guide helps its user to: introduce energy decision-making into the earliest phases of the design process, access the literature of pertinent issues, and become aware of debates and issues on related topics. The Guide does focus on individual technologies, as well as control systems, and important operational factors such as building commissioning. However most importantly, the Guide is intended to foster a systems perspective (e.g. "right sizing") and to present current leading-edge, energy-efficient design practices and principles.

Foreword
A Design Guide for Energy-Efficient Research Laboratories -- is intended to assist facility owners, architects, engineers, designers, facility managers, and utility energy-management specialists in identifying and applying advanced energy-efficiency features in laboratory-type environments. This Guide focuses comprehensively on laboratory energy design issues with a "systems" design approach. Although a laboratory-type facility includes many sub-system designs, e.g., the heating system, a comprehensive design approach should view the entire building as the essential "system." This means the larger, macro energy-efficiency considerations during architectural programming come before the smaller, micro component selection such as an energy-efficient fan. We encourage readers to consider the following points when utilizing the Guide.

1. Since the Guide 's focus is energy efficiency, it is best used in conjunction with other design resources, manuals, handbooks, and guides. This Guide is not meant to supplant these resources but rather to augment them by facilitating the integration of energy-efficiency considerations into the overall design process.

2. Though the Guide may seem to push the envelope of traditional engineering design practice, its recommendations are widely used in actual installations in the United States and abroad. We believe that successful design teams build from the members' combined experience and feedback from previous work. Each team should incorporate energy efficiency improvements, as appropriate, by considering their interactions and life-cycle costs. We also recognize that there is no single design solution for all situations; thus, the Guide focuses on conceptual approaches rather than prescriptive measures.
Special Environments

Research laboratories are sophisticated and complex environments that are designed to meet the special demands of experimental study, testing, and analysis and to provide safe environments for workers. This double mission means that laboratories must provide levels of safety, space conditioning, and indoor air quality not usually maintained in conventional office buildings. To this end, designs of research laboratories typically have minimal regard for energy use.

A research laboratory environmental conditioning system must also provide protection and comfort for occupants of the laboratory building, including those in associated non-research spaces. The integration of dissimilar types of spaces increases the potential for energy waste.

Example of an integrated energy concept
The example below illustrates some of the energy-efficient design process and its incorporation into an overall facility design. The example describes the energy-efficient design of a research institute specializing in the development of special-purpose microelectronic components.

A central plant with constant airflow rate was chosen for the air conditioning of the multi-story building. At the entrance of each story, the HEPA filters are grouped centrally in easily accessible compact filter boxes according to zones, so that monitoring and maintenance work can be carried out, without need to enter the research rooms. An air distribution system, which is designed so that later modifications can be made without difficulty, conveys the supply air to custom-designed clean air distribution elements. The size and arrangement of the distribution elements, the direction of airflow and the airflow velocity are exactly tailored to the individual requirements of each workstation. In some cases the apparatus is protected by the use of horizontal unidirectional flow, in others by vertical unidirectional flow.

The workstations are thus isolated from the surroundings by the use of the principle of spot protection. The remaining room areas of the laboratory are air conditioned merely by spill-over flow from the clean zones, and additional supply air devices have not been necessary. This allows both the desired room air conditions to be maintained and an air cleanliness corresponding to cleanliness Class 10,000 according to US Federal Standard 209D, to be ensured—at no additional cost as far as air engineering is concerned.

The velocity of the air emerging from the clean air distributing elements was set individually within the range 0.25 to 0.4 m/s (~50 to 80 feet per minute) and is subsequently kept constant by means of automatic air volume control devices.

Minimization both of the spatial extent of the area protected by unidirectional flow and of the flow velocity are (sic) therefore used to keep down the airflow rate to the very minimum possible. [Schicht, 1991]
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