April 25th is World Penguin Day this year – this is based around the rough time they begin their annual migration towards the north. They’re cute as can be but they’re at real risk as a species as their environment is under threat.
The World Wildlife Fun (WWF) predicts a 30% decline of the volume of sea ice by 2070 as climate change is reducing this in parts of the Antarctic Peninsula. One of penguins main food sources – krill – breeds and feeds under this ice. Emperor penguins (the biggest penguins) rarely set foot on land and spend their lives in colonies on the sea ice. Hard to do if the ice disappears… Adélie penguins only nest on bare, dry land and increased snowfall during late winter time and early spring can cause chicks to hatch later. There’s less krill around at this time of year, which can affect the chicks’ chances of survival…
So why are we talking about this? Well, it’s important to us both as a company and as individuals that we do everything we can to make work carried out in a laboratory as sustainable as possible. What we do, and what tools we use, can absolutely have an impact on our environment in many ways – positive or negative – so let’s choose to make a positive impact on science and a positive impact on the planet!
Maintaining temperatures (heated and cooled) is something that uses a lot of power but there are tools available to make this better. You need consistency to guarantee repeatability, and absolute control is the only way to achieve this.
Today we’re looking primarily at sub-ambient temperature work. We offer a series of solutions for the lab called the “Snowstorm” range. With options for both single and parallel cooled reactions, we also have a brilliant piece of apparatus called the SnowStorm Reactor. Designed here in the UK by the Asynt chemists, this ingenious kit has everything you need for active temperature control from +150 oC to -30 oC for unattended operation of up to 27 vials at any one time. You can situate any combination of our huge range of DrySyn Reaction Vial Inserts as well as utilise inserts from our MULTI range for round bottom flasks up to 500 mL in the base to suit your chosen reactions, and purge the reactor dome with nitrogen/argon to prevent frost build up. It’s pretty handy as Martyn Fordham explains below!
If you’d like to know about the SnowStorm range you can find information HERE, or go straight to our information on the SnowStorm Reactor page HERE. If you’d like to catch up with one of our team to discuss what would be the best option for your chemistry then you can either email via [email protected] or give us a call on +44 (0)1638 781709.
We hope to hear from you soon!
