Category: Tips

Hubbian for SfN abstracts

Hubbian is an alternative interface for browsing the abstracts for the upcoming Society for Neuroscience meeting. It tracks abstracts views and has an interface for comments and voting. It’s a product of four…



Use 50 ohm BNCs, not 75 ohm

Coax BNC cables come in two flavors, 50 ohm and 75 ohm. For experimental rigs (PMTs, DAQs, amplifiers), always buy 50 ohm cables. The 75 ohm versions are for video applications,…



Interview with the developers of HelioScan

Last Monday, Labrigger covered HelioScan, a LabVIEW-based, two-photon laser scanning microscopy software suite.

Marcel van ‘t…



LabVIEW Style Guide

LabVIEW is a great tool, but the block diagrams can become a mess if the programmer isn’t careful. This book was recommended to me by David Ferster, whose LabVIEW code is very…



Scientifica’s 2p scope

With its newly introduced scan head, Scientifica’s 2p scope is finally a complete package. They’re happy to sell their modular design in pieces, so this fills the void between fully custom rigs and…



The collective intelligence of world-leading neuroscientists

That’s who is credited with creating Boston-NeuroTalks (look at the bottom of their page). It turns out that Boston’s a bit of a college town, and thus it’s difficult to keep up with…



The Labrigger General Electronics Troubleshooting Guide

This is a work in progress, please contribute additions, thoughts, and criticism (constructive and otherwise) in the comments.

Step 0. RTFM.

Step 1. Turn it off and back on.
Congrats. There is…



3D printed Titanium at iMaterialize

Looks good. Should be handy. And a bit pricey. These metal powder-based 3D printing materials aren’t bad. The products are much more brittle than real, solid metal is. But they’re also very light, and…



Three quick productivity tips

There’s probably a 10:1 ratio between productivity tips and people implementing them. So this’ll be short.

– Stay organized, but keep it simple. E.g., one text file with a few lists. Don’t go in for complex software or systems.
– This book “Getting Things Done” is a quick read with some good tips.
– Use…



Z-Projections

To project 3D image stacks to a 2D image, several different algortithms can be used. Maximum projections and averages are the most commonly used. Neither…



Miscellaneous notes on screws

Terms for metric and English screw size standards

These terms are all equivalent for most purposes:
metric = ISO metric = ANSI mm
English (US) = imperial (UK) = UTS = ANSI…



Screw shields, simple pleasures

These screw shields make it simple to connect a bunch of stranded wire to an Arduino. This one is available here, or here. It’s a little thing, but it saves a…



Keeping up with the literature

Oldest Reading hard copy tables of content. Pleasent, but impractical.
Older Checking out the updates for Index Medicus. Totally reasonable. In 1988.
Old Getting eTOCs emailed to you. Welcome to the…



Lab safety – case studies

Lab accidents do happen. Fortunately they’re rare because of safety measures. Unfortunately, this also makes people lazy about following safety guidelines.

Earlier, Labrigger covered the danger of retinal burns with lasers.

Cautionary tales are perhaps…



SfN Resources for Teaching

The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) have compiled and are curating a large collection of online resources for neuroscience teaching. It’s called ERIN (Educational Resources in Neuroscience).

Some examples:
A Nernst-Goldman equation simulator. (link)