Live from Beckman Coulter Big Bang Event

I'm here at the Embassy Suites in Rosemont, IL for the big event. I'll post some updates as the day progresses, and possibly a few pics as well. There's a pretty decent turnout, maybe about 50-75 people. We're just getting underway! More later.

0913: Picomotor driven laser steering optics for fine tuning laser alignment...awesome

0914: Gallios = Research Instrument, Navios = Clinical Instrument.

0917: A vendor has talked about instrument "sensitivity" without quoting MESF detection threshold values...There really is a God! It's good to see my ranting and raving has not been in vain.

0924: The boulevard. Coulter's answer to the "Octagon". 18 degree reflection system which minimizes light loss.

0930: Definitely some nice innovation on the light scattering front. "Enhanced FSC" mode allowed resolution of 0.4um beads from noise as well as from 0.5um beads.

0948: FCS file is packed with all the necessary information to reproduce the experiment. (MIFlow?, XML compatible?)

0958: PROService - Remote diagnostic of software/hardware issues. Can control laser picomotors for remote alignment.

1045: Why we are getting a lecture on tandem dyes is beyond me, but oh well, at least I can get some work done in the
meantime. Hopefully we'll get back to the instrumentation soon.

1105: Kaluza - Named after German Mathematician and Physicist Theodore Kaluza

1355: By the way, Kaluza is awesome. Super snappy! Eats up large data files like nothing. Still not too sure about the fancy new tools like Radar, but it could be useful.

1410: MoFlo XDP overview. pretty much what you'd expect. The one nice thing is Intellisort II, which is basically a 1-button stream setup and drop-delay calculation. It does everything from setting the frequency, drop drive amplitude, phase, drop delay, everything.

1530: The MoFlo Astrios - Pretty much an attempt to automate many of the tasks needed to set up the MoFlo. 7-pinholes, 6-way sorting. Interestingly, the 7-pinholes take up the same vertical space as the 3-pinholes did on the MoFlo-XDP. This basically means that the beam height must be really small (~10um high?). So does a fully loaded system not have huge amounts of crossbeam spillover? Even after appropriately ordering the beams (e.g. put the UV next to the 640nm, and keep the 488nm away from the 532nm, etc...) there is still going to be some problems. I can only imagine that the hope is most people will want a 4 or 5-laser system at most, and then they can stagger the lines a bit more. What's the likelihood one will want to run all 7 lasers at the same time...probably pretty low. the 7-pinhole thing may simply be a marketing tool, but I could easily be proven wrong once I see some data. Hopefully later this year then.

1600: That's about all. Hopefully if you weren't able to attend, you got a peek at what went on here. signing off.