Category: Tips

Tips for giving talks

This is just a quick post to point people over to Matt Might’s excellent post full of tips on how to give a good scientific talk. I second his endorsements of Keynote and the…



Hopes for the New Year

Here’s the news Labrigger hopes to see in 2011.

New developments with optical indicators

A new, super bright fluorescent protein that blows the doors off of GFP-based proteins.
Bright, far-red dyes with huge 2p cross-sections.
Higher S:N genetically-encoded voltage…



Future Publishing

We used to just tell stories. Then we had monks copy manuscripts by hand. Later, movable type made printing easy. That brings us up to about 15 years…



Pulsed laser power

Someone asked me recently how peak power related to average power for pulsed lasers. You can get fancy with this calculation, but people rarely do. 99% of the time,…



Labrigger Xmas Gift List 2010

Here’s the 2010 Labrigger Xmas Gift List.
Care to add anything?

Beam profiler

Measure the divergence of your laser beam, its stability, uniformity– all kinds of good stuff. These are useful metrics for diagnosing problems with the laser and really nailing the…



Laser safety



Ponoko starts 3D printing

Ponoko is a laser cutting service that recently started offering 3D printing. Their 3D services is similar to what Shapeways offers. It’s nice to see a pair of…



Raw materials

If you need a chunk of metal for a custom piece for your rig, what are the options? The best way to go is to buy a part that is close to what you…



Fiber optic termination

Fiber optics must be terminated properly in order to permit high transmission. If you’re making your own, get a proper fiber cleaver and a set of polishing sheets. Here are…



More 2p Cross Sections

Here are some 2p cross sections for Alexa dyes from Invitrogen. Dye manufacturers are getting better about sharing 2p cross sections, but they still rely on out side people to do the measurements. In this case, Warren Zipfel from Cornell.

Speaking of…



Two-Photon Cross Sections

It’s difficult to track down 2p absorption cross sections for dyes and proteins. Doing it right requires…



CAD-based optomechanics mock-ups

I use SolidWorks to design custom parts for my rigs. Many times, these parts mate with existing Thorlabs parts. Fortunately, Thorlabs offers SolidWorks files that can be directly…



RSS feeds for any web page

I follow quite a number of RSS feeds, but there are some news sites that don’t have them. In order to keep up to date, use Page2RSS.

For example, if Nature Neuroscience didn’t have an RSS feed for their Advanced Online…



Single cell electroporation workshop

Michael Hausser’s lab is having a single cell electroporation workshop in London November 1-2. (link)

The application deadline is Thursday, September 30, 2010.



Outfitting a lab on the cheap

A friend of mine does a lot of molecular biology and keeps an incubator at home so she can run a reaction and stop it some time at night without having to make…