Some of the writers on LabOnTheCheap have recently moved to UC Santa Barbara, where the Chemistry department sells us dry ice like this: That’s right, as 10 lb blocks. There aren’t any of those dry ice grinders, or any tools of any sort, around, so to get dry ice in a reasonable size, you’ve gotta […]
Category: Articles
Recording Unconstrained Behaviour and Neural Activity On The Cheap
Kostas Lagogiannis recently emailed us to let us now about a June 2018 paper entailing a cheap method to monitor genetically targeted neural activity and behavior in Drosophila larvae simultaneously. The paper is written by himself, Manuela Marescotti, Barbara Webb, R. Wayne Davies and J. Douglas Armstrong The concept is to create a high throughput substitute or […]
Moving a Lab On The Cheap
Recently, the authors of Lab On The Cheap have been taking part in a lab relocation across the US of A. We want to write something about this process, but we need some help from you. It’s weird that we are having trouble writing about this, because there are a lot of articles on this. […]
Punch Card Programmable Microfluidics
Here’s a nifty idea published in PLOS by George Korir and Manu Prakash. 15 on-chip pumps controlled by a punch card cranked by hand. While the original design is specifically geared towards ease of distribution, one could replace the hand crank with a cheap stepper motor for more reliable control.
Some Pointers from Nature
A couple days ago Nature published an article by Elie Dolgin with some ideas on getting a lab started on a budget. The article covers utilizing and bartering with core research facilities, sharing with other labs, 3D Printing, and bidding for 2nd hand items and being willing to repair them if they are defective as possible […]