Notebooks importance

Finally, we cannot end a chapter on the basic tools of analytical chemistry without mentioning the laboratory notebook. Your laboratory notebook is your most important tool when working in the lab, providing a complete record of all your work. If kept properly, you should be able to look back at your laboratory notebook several years from now and reconstruct the experiments on which you worked. 

The importance of an accurate and complete record of invention caimot be underestimated. The record of invention should serve as the basic document for estabUshing the date of conception and reduction to practice of the invention. The U.S. PTO issues patents to those who are first to invent. In a contest over inventorship, any available record of invention is submitted to the U.S. PTO to estabUsh proof of an inventor s rights. As of January 1, 1996, any inventor from a country belonging to the World Trade Organization may use such evidence before the U.S. PTO. Previously, this type of proof could be rehed upon only if the activity, documented in the notebook, record, etc, was undertaken in the United States. Similarly, activity undertaken after December 8, 1993 in Mexico or Canada may also be rehed upon to prove inventorship. 

The scope of initial training always covers an induction period of perhaps four weeks, during which the trainee learns about the structure of the company which he has joined and the administration which he will be expected to carry out in the field. It is important that he learns about the legislation which applies to his job and the statutory forms which he must use. Surveyors are often required to keep a notebook, the purpose of which is similar to that of a police officer. He will later be required to cover the interests of all the clients who are his district , and he must therefore set up in his home the necessary administrative and record-keeping facilities to enable him to do this effectively and economically. 

In your experimentation, be alert and ready for unexpected developments. Record in your notebook at the moment of observation a description of everything you see. The time of the observation frequently has importance. Completeness is, by far, the most important property of a good notebook. Next in importance, legibility, neatness, and organization make your notebook a more valuable record. Whenever possible, prepare tables in advance for the results of measurements you can anticipate. This guarantees that you won t forget to note important information, and it frees you from clerical work during an experiment. 

Laboratory notebooks—It may be debatable to consider laboratory notebooks as text documents, but they should be mentioned here because of their importance in preclinical development. Laboratory notebooks are used to record experimental procedures, observations, raw data, and other important information. Although laboratory notebooks are rarely used for submission to regulatory agencies directly, they are available for inspection by the authorities in the Preapproval Inspection (PAI) and other GMP/GLP-related inspections. Currently, most of the major pharmaceutical companies still use paper-based laboratory notebooks. Electronic-based notebook systems are being developed and commercialized, which are discussed in Chapter 9. 

Customers who have used paper notebooks for as long as they can remember are at hrst uneasy about moving to an electronic format. Resistance to adoption almost always exists within an enterprise for several reasons that can be of a technical, political, or psychological nature. Therefore, customers have many requirements for an ELN system. Of paramount importance are the following issues. 

The two deliverables from the field residue trial will be the samples, properly labeled, packed and shipped, and the field notebook, filled out correctly and completely. It is important that the Principal Investigator realize that all notations and calculations are made directly in the field notebook, not transcribed, and in ink. Multiple events, such as calibrations, applications, and harvests, must be documented on sequential individual forms. The field data in the notebook are not sent to the EPA as part of a submission package. These data must conform... 

For the security of the hardware, the laptop should be kept in a secure location, as secure as a paper notebook would be kept, whether in the field or in the office. In addition, the storage environmental conditions are particularly important and temperature extremes and high humidity must be avoided. 

Information in the notebook (which came from a handbook) for your compound might say, for alcohol (meaning ethyl alcohol), s.h. Since this means soluble in hot alcohol, it implies insoluble in cold alcohol (and you wondered what the i meant). Then alcohol is probably a good solvent for recrystallization of that compound. Also, check on the color or crystalline form. This is important since... 

How important is the label on a sample or reagent What information should appear on the label of a sample to be analyzed What information should appear in the notebook record ... 

Significant time is saved in this calibration procedure by minimizing sample preparation and the number of calibrated test apparatus wherein only a balance, a 5-mL volumetric flask, a stopwatch, a thermal probe, two standards, one HPLC column, and one mobile phase are used. The use of MS Word template forms (see Figure 10) saves considerable time by eliminating any notebook entries and also improves the consistency of calibration records. Two important system parameters, dwell volume, and... 

The user can generate FORTRAN expressions that allow numeric computers to run faster and more efficiently. This saves CPU cycles and makes computing more economical. The user can generate FORTRAN expressions from MACSYMA expressions. The FORTRAN capability is an extremely important feature combining symbolic and numeric capabilities. The trend is clear, and in a few years we will have powerful, inexpensive desktop or notebook computers that merge the symbolic, numeric and graphic capabilities in a scientific workstation. 

There are many other advantages to using the schematic capture version. The enormous popularity of the Microsoft Windows operating system should attest to the ease of use of a graphics-based interface compared to a text-based interface. One such advantage is automatic documentation. When you simulate a circuit, you automatically have a circuit schematic. This schematic can be incorporated into lab notebooks and reports. In a corporate environment, documentation of this type is extremely important. With the Windows operating system, the schematics can be incorporated into written documents using screen captures. This manual is an example of what can be accomplished. 

Many recent publications have focused on the chemical revolution of Lavoisier, providing a much broader context within which this work clearly fits. Perhaps the most important contemporary writer is Frederic Lawrence Holmes, who has published two books on Lavoisier, both based on detailed examination of Lavoisier s laboratory notebooks. These have provided the modern reader with a reliable analysis of Lavoisier s chemical thinking. Accounts of Lavoisier s broader activities have also been given by Arthur Donovan and Jean-Pierre Poirier. ... 

Advanced materials are of paramount importance for the future of the electronics industry. Remarkable progress has been made in fitting increasingly greater numbers of components into an integrated circuit. This is illustrated by the often-shown electronic device density versus time semilogarithmic plot (Fig. 3) [30], as well as by the notebook computer, alluded to earlier. The... 

Documentation requirements are predicated on the types of batches to be manufactured at the pilot facility. For the development of novel formulations, laboratory notebooks are the primary source of documentation. Room and equipment logbooks should be maintained. Personnel training records and SOPs must also be maintained. Once the facility is used for the larger-scale batches described earlier, what was recommended now becomes required. Manufacturing runs need to be documented accurately, preferably in batch records. Logbooks should maintain an accurate record of the product history in rooms and equipment. At this level of manufacturing, it is also important that personnel training records be kept. These... 

One fine future day, you or one of your classmates will make an important discovery and will seek a patent. The lab notebook is your legal record of your discovery. For this purpose, each page in your notebook should be signed and dated. Anything of potential importance should also be signed and dated by a second person. 

Record in your notebook the names of computer files where programs and data are stored. Paste hard copies of important data into your notebook. The lifetime of a printed page is an order of magnitude (or more) greater than the lifetime of a computer disk. 

K. Barker, Editor, At the Bench A Laboratory Navigator (1998), Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (Cold Spring Harbor, NY). Covers several important topics including lab orientation, keeping a notebook, and lab procedures. 

Laboratory notebook -use m technical service [TECHNICAL SERVICE] (Vol 23) -importance to patents [PATENTS AND TRADE SECRETS] (Vol 18)... 

Researchers are often uncertain about the scope of descripdon of their experiments to be included when preparing a lab notebook. First of all, it is important to realize that the laboratory notebook serves not only for corroboradon of the reduc-... 

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a hot topic these days and is considered by many people to be the enterprise computing framework of the future. In SOA, each software unit runs on a piece of hardware as a service that can be called by many different consumers. For example, a compound registration service can be called by a library enumeration tool and a chemistry e-notebook to fulfill compound registration tasks. The most popular SOA is Web services that are based on HTTP and XML or SOAP standards although SOA as a concept has existed for awhile and is not limited to Web services. SOA has a lot of advantages, the most important of which is code reuse and improved productivity. However, it also presents a lot of challenges. 

Different organizations have different formats for the record of invention (i.e., invention disclosure) but some common threads include a brief description of the invention, key dates including conception and reduction to practice, references to key notebook pages, and a list of proposed inventors and their contact information. This document serves as an important record as well as a helpful aid to get the patent agent or attorney started on drafting the patent application. 

This resource is maintained by the Molecular Biology Notebook Online project. It provides a wealth of information on the most important aspects of molecular biology such as life, structure and components of the cell, chromosome and DNA structure, protein structure, and diversity. 

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