Artefact technological

Martin, G. (2000) Stasis in complex artefacts, in Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process, ed. Ziman, J. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) p. 90. Marzke. O.T. (editor) (1955) Impurities and Imperfections (American Society for Metals, Cleveland, Ohio). 

Marc Van Regenmortel We have been totally incapable in the past of predicting the technological innovations achieved by human design. Biological systems are considerably more complex than human artefacts or weather patterns and predicting biological evolution or the future of human society is clearly not possible. 

Chapters 3 6 deal with direct mass spectrometric analysis highlighting the suitability of the various techniques in identifying organic materials using only a few micrograms of samples. Due to the intrinsic variability of artefacts produced in different places with more or less specific raw materials and technologies, complex spectra are acquired. Examples of chemometric methods such as principal components analysis (PCA) are thus discussed to extract spectral information for identifying materials. 

One way to see technology as a combination of artefact and doing (though sometimes the artefact slips from view and does not seem to be essential) is to regard it as essentially a means by which humans extend their capabilities. For example,... 

Whereas fluorescence is typically measured during non-separation, mix-and-read protocols offering high readout throughput, several approaches exist today that involve separation steps in front of the actual detection. In the Caliper Labchip technology, a multi-parallel microfluidic separation system coupled with fluorescence detection allows the monitoring of enzymatic reactions. Quantification of substrate and product of the enzymatic reaction, after separation from each other as well as from the test compound, minimises artefacts and offers ratiometric results, although with comparatively lower... 

Methods to separate or fractionate biological and biomedical samples lie at the heart of a diverse range of scientific disciplines including biochemistry, cell biology and molecular biology. The choice and mode of separation is important to obtain the best results and avoid artefacts. There are a number of physical and chemical separation technologies routinely used by the bioanalytical chemist that are described in this chapter and various other chapters of this textbook. 

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