Instrumentation sorting

Room Turnover Cleaning of Instruments Sorting and Wrapping of Instrument Sets Total for Variable Activities... 

An interesting feature of this incident was that no one blamed the operator. The manager said he would probably have made the same mistake because the eheck instrument was at a low level (about 1 m above the floor) and because a change in one temperature on a six-point recorder in that position is not obvious unless you are actually looking for it. It is not the sort of thing you notice out of the comer of your eye. 

If more than one sort of unit is used in your plant for measuring pressure or any other property, then the units used should be marked on instruments in large, clear letters. You may use different colors for different units. Everyone should be aware of the differences between the units. However, it is better to avoid the use of different units. 

There is more to a laboratory than work benches and the instruments mounted on them. Free-standing equipment must also be considered. This includes refrigerators, safety storage cabinets for chemicals, safety shower, desk space, typewriter stand or computer terminal, or any other equipment that is not bench-mounted. File cabinets, which are real space-robbers, must not be forgotten. In one laboratory, much space was saved by placing two-drawer file cabinets beneath the large table used for sorting samples. 

Mass spectrometers, workhorse instmments described in Chapter 2, require a vacuum to function. A mass spectrometer generates a beam of ions that is sorted according to specifications of the particular instrument. Usually, the sorting depends on differences in speed, trajectory, and mass. For instance, one type of mass spectrometer measures how long it takes ions to travel from one end of a tube to another. Residual gas must be removed from the tube to eliminate collisions between gas molecules and the ions that are being analyzed. As the diagram shows, collisions with unwanted gas molecules deflect the ions from their paths and change the expected mass spectral pattern. 

Let us suppose that we have a particle counting instrument which sorts and counts the number of particles at a given particle size. The experimental data that we collect are ... 

A flow cytometer equipped with forward-scattering and side-scattering detectors and a sorting option that can distinguish cell size-and-shape, sorting specified cells of 1 to 3pM length into small volumes of culture broth in individual plate wells. (This instrument is used for step 2 and in another mode may contribute to step 1.)... 

The ensuing debate has been conducted along these two opposite views on the one hand, the supporters of the idea that the choice of policy instruments is to be applied as a public matter and the state, as policy designer, should select the optimal instruments and take responsibility for their imposition in the public interest, but, on the other, the supporters of MB instruments are trying to fight a battle against a sort of "anti-market" mentality based on a reluctance to apply MB instruments [5]. 

It is interesting to trace the development of instrument automation over the relatively brief period of the past ten to fifteen years. Early in this period, a truly automated instrument was a rare and expensive item built around a costly dedicated minicomputer. Automated data collection and analysis from any instrument which was not automated at the factory was usually accomplished by digitizing the data and storing it on a transportable media such as paper tape. These data were then delivered and fed to a timeshare system of some sort on which the data reduction program ran and which printed a report and sometimes a plot of the data. Often a considerable time delay occured between the generation and the analysis of the data. The scientist was at the mercy of the computer elite who could implement his data logger and provide the necessary computer resources to analyze his data. The process was expensive, both in time and in money. 

If the high-frequency decoupling is poor, the only way to check for it is to put a 0.1 pF capacitor right next to the pins of the IC and see if the problem goes away. There is almost no way we can ever really see the cause of that sort of problem on any of our instruments. We have to deduce it. 

Once analytical results have been produced, invariably a certain amount of manipulation is necessary to translate the results into information that can be understood by the customer. The reporting analyst may have to sort and process a large and varied amount of information in order to produce a small number of final answers. Data from standards may be used to produce calibration curves or calibrate instrument response. Results from quality control samples will have been plotted on charts to ensure that the system was working satisfactorily at the time the measurements were made. Sample data will be quantified by comparison with the standards and suitable corrections made. Then, checks may be made to confirm the results by examining the answers to look for any obvious wrong data. It is... 

In Science in Action, Bmno Latour defines an instmment or inscription device as any set-up, no matter what its size, nature and cost, that provides a visual display of any sort in a sdentific text (1987, 68). Instruments, he argues, provide an other world just beneath the text —a world that is invisible as long as there is no controversy (69). Both the instruments and the visual... 

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