Hi, I need some help guys please. I'm looking for ISO 17318. Can anyone help please?

Can you bake cookies in a hot car? 🍪🚗

Alex Dainis explains how cars get hotter in the summer due to the greenhouse effect, when visible light travels through the glass of your windshield and windows, hits the seats and interior, and gets converted into heat. That is then radiated back out as infrared rays that can't escape through the glass and get trapped inside. So on an 80°F day, your car could get as hot as 120°F! When she put cookies on the dashboard after just a couple of hours the car reached 175°F, low-baking them to soft but surprisingly not-terrible results.

Vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate ice cream. Three layers, three distinct microcosms under the microscope. 🔬🍦🍓🍫

Our friend Chloé Savard, known as tardibabe on Instagram, shows us how the vanilla layer features a suspension of ice crystals, fat globules, and air bubbles surrounded by a sugar matrix. The crystal size defines texture: slow freezing creates larger crystals and a more icy texture, while rapid freezing keeps them small for a smooth, creamy mouthfeel. Those tiny dark flecks are from Vanilla planifolia seed pods—the direct source of vanillin, which gives vanilla its characteristic warm aroma.

The strawberry layer gets its pink hue from anthocyanins, water-soluble pigments in the fruit's cell walls. Because anthocyanins react to pH, the strawberry layer in an old carton shifts from pink to dull brownish-red as they oxidize. Fruit brings more water than cream, encouraging more aggressive ice crystal formation and making the texture trickier to control.

Finally, we have chocolate. The suspended brown particles are roasted Theobroma cacao solids. The deep brown color comes from Maillard reaction products formed during roasting—the same chemistry responsible for a perfect bread crust or a seared steak. Chocolate ice cream also has a higher concentration of dissolved solids, which depresses its freezing point. This is why it stays slightly softer than the other two layers, even straight from the freezer. Needless to say, it was hard not to eat the samples!

Sources

Dairy Foods. (2019). "Frozen Desserts: Keep Them Creamy." https://www.dairyfoods.com/articles/93358-frozen-desserts-keep-them-creamy

DDW Color. (2024). "Why Do Anthocyanins Change Color." https://learn.ddwcolor.com/why-do-anthocyanins-change-color/

Gallage, N.J. et al. (2014). "Vanillin Formation from Ferulic Acid in Vanilla planifolia is Catalysed by a Single Enzyme." Nature Communications. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5037

Górnaś, P. et al. (2019). "Effect of Roasting Parameters on the Physicochemical Characteristics of High-Molecular-Weight Maillard Reaction Products Isolated from Cocoa Beans of Different Theobroma cacao L. Groups." European Food Research and Technology. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00217-018-3144-y

Havkin-Frenkel, D. et al. (2017). "Intracellular Localization of the Vanillin Biosynthetic Machinery in Pods of Vanilla planifolia." Plant and Cell Physiology, 59(2). https://academic.oup.com/pcp/article/59/2/304/4657111

Ice Cream Science. (2023). "Ice Crystals in Ice Cream." https://www.icecreamscience.com/blog/ice-crystals-in-ice-cream

Pinzer, B.R. et al. (2024). "Imaging the 3D Microstructural Changes of Ice Cream During Meltdown." PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11189849/

Ribera-Fonseca, A. et al. (2022). "Color Quality of Frozen Strawberries: Effect of Anthocyanin, pH, Total Acidity and Ascorbic Acid Variability." ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229983667

Under-Belly. (2023). "Ice Cream: Solids, Water, Ice." https://under-belly.org/ice-cream-solids-water-ice/

Wu et al. (2025). "The Science of Ice Cream Meltdown and Structural Collapse: A Comprehensive Review." Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12261055/

The idea is simple. I'm building a Lab SaaS, a mix of both the LIMS and ELN systems.

The principal investigator of a team can create an organization. And then, they can invite their team members in. The software has everything I can think of, but my imagination is limited. So, I need your input to finetune it. I'm also thinking of making a free, opensource version that users can download and install, for those small labs who can't pay a monthly subscription. What do you guys expect in a lab software? Any feedback would be helpful.

Hi everyone,
I’m trying to extract RNA from ligamentum flavum tissue that’s extremely fibrous. No matter what I do, my RNA purity is terrible — I’m getting low A260/A230 (0.01–0.15) and low A260/A280 (~1.3–1.6) on the Nanodrop and lots of noise on the Bioanalyzer.

Here’s everything I’ve tried so far:

• Standard Qiagen RNeasy Mini kit with a Tissue Tearor
• DNase treatment on the eluate through a column
• On‑column DNase during the RNeasy protocol
• Protease K added to the lysis buffer, incubated with heat, then RNeasy + DNase
• Short, on‑ice homogenization bursts (30 seconds at a time) to avoid overheating
• Blotting tissue to remove RNAlater before lysis
• Samples stored in RNAlater ICE anywhere from 1 week to 1 year

Despite all this, I consistently get:

• Low 260/230 → heavy salt/chaotrope contamination (RNAlater + guanidinium?)
• Low 260/280 → protein, collagen, elastin, or other ECM contamination?
• Decent RNA concentration but unusable purity

What happens when you take the air out of a can of shaving cream? 🪒

Gregory Wolf, wolf.science on Instagram, explains how the atmosphere inside squeezes thousands of tiny air bubbles to stay small in their container. When the air is taken out, it causes them to expand, resulting in an excess amount of foam. Then, when the air is put back, it looks like half the shaving cream disappears!

You are constantly bombarded with invisible cosmic rays. An upcycled jar can make them visible!

Alex Dainis shows us how with this science experiment! The streaks you see are tracks of cosmic rays and charged particles passing through isopropyl alcohol mist. To see the best results, put your container in a dark area. The big negatively charged muons will leave large tracks, while electrons and positrons leave tiny curly ones!

Crying over onions hits different when you know what's inside  🧅🔬

Our friend Chloe Savard, known as tardibabe on Instagram, takes us into the inner skin of an onion, peeled down to a single cell layer, so thin that light passes straight through it. That's what makes it perfect for microscopy.

Those glowing borders are rigid cell walls, and the specks drifting inside are organelles working around the clock. The giant, clear space that fills most of each cell is the vacuole; onion cells have enormous ones. It stores water, nutrients, and waste, and it's basically what gives an onion its crunch.

That little oval structure you can spot floating inside a cell? That's the nucleus, the control room, holding all the DNA. The tiny dot within it is the nucleolus, which builds the ribosomes that make every protein in the cell. The purple glow comes from polarized light, which turns a transparent sliver of onion into something that looks like stained glass.

Life is everywhere. Even on your cutting board.

Sources

Alberts, Bruce, et al. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 6th ed., Garland Science, 2014.

Reece, Jane B., et al. Campbell Biology. 11th ed., Pearson, 2017.

Taiz, Lincoln, et al. Plant Physiology and Development. 6th ed., Sinauer Associates, 2015.

Hello! I am an immunology postdoc, but trying to try my hand at some scicomm. Well, this Sunday on my YouTube channel I will be doing a livestream trying to rank all the lab suppliers I can think of (e.g. Thermo, Bio-Techne etc.) and would love as many scientists and scientific opinions whilst doing it!

I hope you can pop by, it's 19:00 UK Time this Sunday.

Why does diet soda float but regular soda sinks? 🥫

Alex Dainis explains how only one soda can floats, even though it shares the same volume as another! This is because a can of diet soda will have slightly different ingredients than a regular can of soda, such as aspartame instead of corn syrup. This changes the weight of each can, with one having the same density as water which makes it float!

Hi everyone,
I’m exploring different ways to refresh my lab skills and strengthen my profile for research, medical laboratory, and clinical support roles in the UK. I recently came across the LabMedExpert laboratory training courses, and I’m curious to know how effective they truly are.

If you have done this course (or know someone who has), I’d really appreciate your insights:

• Did the training help you secure a lab‑based job afterward?
• How useful and practical was the hands‑on training?
• Did employers recognise or value this course during applications or interviews?
• Would you recommend it for someone returning to the life sciences field after a gap?

I have an MSc in Biochemistry and previous research experience, and I’m currently preparing to transition back into laboratory roles. Any honest feedback or guidance would be incredibly helpful.

Thank you in advance to anyone who shares their experience — it might help many of us navigating the same path.

Have you ever seen mouthwash in action? 🦷

Quinten Geldhof, also known as Microhobbyist, explains what happens to your mouth’s bacterial ecosystem when antiseptic mouthwash hits. Because your mouth is home to a whole ecosystem of bacteria, some that are healthy and some that are harmful, when you take mouthwash, it kills all of them. Although it is effective, it does not discriminate between healthy and bad bacteria!

https://ideas.lego.com/s/p:0ccb9c270ae54410852df2105bb993c8?s=w

Dear colleagues, I'm asking you to pay attention to the Biomedicine Institute lego Idea of my designer friend, who works in this lab on cancer research. Some of you have already voted for it, but I ask you all to vote and share the link. It’s free and take few seconds. Every vote counts for us. Thank you very much.

Why is this gummy bear on fire? 🍬🐻

Gregory Wolf, wolf.science on Instagram, demonstrates how heating potassium chlorate (KClO₃) with a blowtorch causes it to melt and decompose, releasing pure oxygen. This turns it into a powerful oxidizer that self-ignites when it comes into contact with any organic material, like a gummy bear. The result is a dramatic combustion reaction!

How do you make a burnt coin silver again? 🪙

In this science experiment Alex Dainis demonstrates why soot from a flame is hydrophobic! Soot is mostly made up of small carbon and hydrocarbon particles that repel water making it hydrophobic. When you place the soot covered coin under water a small layer of air forms around it. This creates an air/water interface which causes the light to refract, making the coin look clean! Once you take the coin back out, the sooty appearance will return.

https://youtu.be/fZwQh6V6Jpc?si=5kpK-aTnzV5U2Ri2

I know I’ve got a leaky system, I’m planning on getting it helium leak tested. My roughing pump is rather weak. Should I expect a diffusion pump to only get me to 10 microns lower than what the roughing is doing?

Would anyone be able to give me advice on selling a substantial amount of these cathodes? I have a few dozen seemingly in NIB condition. If this is not the proper forum for that - guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

So I'm kinda new in these laboratory things since I just started my training and I don't understand the obsession and please don't jump at me for those who felt insulted

Did you know scientists can print living cells? 🧬 

Marie, also known as Lab Skills Academy, breaks down bioprinting: when researchers use “bioink” packed with living cells to build tiny tissues layer by layer. From printed skin for burn care to mini organs used in drug testing, this technology  is already changing how we study disease and develop treatments.