Until 15 January 2013, young researchers working in Europe who are not older than 35 years are invited to apply for the Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators. This highly prestigious prize was first established in 1995. It acknowledges outstanding contributions to biomedical research in Europe based on methods of molecular biology, including novel analytical concepts.

The US scientist, Marlene R. Cohen Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at the University of Pittsburgh has won the 2012 Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology. Dr. Cohen uses the response of groups of visual neurons to estimate which part of the visual world an animal is paying attention to at any given moment. Her approach provides a new way to study how our mental activity affects what we perceive and how cognitive processes such as attention are controlled.

Eppendorf is now giving all football fans the chance to prove their football knowledge with its own free online tipping game.

Two new additions to Eppendorf’s extensive range of automated pipetting systems are uniquely tailored for PCR setup and nucleic acid purification, yet retain the flexibility that allows their use as open systems for diverse automated liquid handling applications. The new epMotion® P5073 and M5073 workstations automate and simplify what are traditionally complex, labour-intensive pipetting tasks, saving time and improving the reliability and reproducibility of results.

Eppendorf’s epMotion® GxP solution includes an automated pipetting system, epBlue™ GxP software and certificates, plus dedicated certification and validation services (like IQ/OQ and user trainings).

Eppendorf AG announces the latest version of its PC software for controlling the epMotion automated pipetting system. epBlue ID® incorporates new barcode management functionality to provide secure sample tracking.

The Eppendorf PiezoXpert® is designed for piezo-assisted manipulation or microinjection techniques. Digital programmable parameter setting allows the user to perforate cell membranes with the utmost accuracy and reproducibility, improving productivity and yields for many microinjection procedures in transgenics, evelopmental biology, and other cell biology applications.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine is unique in Nobel Prize history, being the first to be awarded in the area of reproduction. British scientist Robert G. Edwards receives the award for his pioneering achievements in human in vitro fertilization (IVF). Together with his colleague Dr Patrick Steptoe (died 1988), a gynaecologist, he developed the technique of fertilizing human oocytes outside the body before implantation in the womb. They were the pioneers for further developments such as Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), where a single sperm is microinjected directly into the oocyte.

Eppendorf has launched the new Centrifuge 5427 R, a quiet, refrigerated, high capacity micro-centrifuge that is designed to meet the demanding performance and throughput requirements of today’s high-end research laboratories.

Eppendorf introduces four new rotors for Centrifuges 5804/5804 R and 5810/5810 R, which are defined as the true workhorses of the lab with their renowned quality, reliability and versatility.

Eppendorf AG celebrates success in a leading global design competition which attracted 4,433 entries from 1,700 companies in over 60 nations. Centrifuge 5424 R, a premium 24-place microcentrifuge, has been honoured for design excellence in the life science and medicine category of ‘red dot award: product design 2011’.

Eco-friendly Mastercycler offers exceptional power-saving capability and low acoustic emissions

Eppendorf AG offers the first two-component PCR plate designed to be easily divisible, saving material and money when running smaller-scale experiments. These twin.tec unskirted 96-well plates fit almost all available PCR instruments and can be snapped into four separate 24-well segments and the empty wells saved for future use.

New Eppendorf µCuvette G1.0™ allows life scientists to analyse even smaller sample volumes

Combining accuracy, sensitivity and guided operation, the new Eppendorf BioSpectrometer® offers outstanding flexibility in a small, robust instrument. Designed for a wide range of routine and complex applications in genomics, proteomics, cell biology and biochemistry, two versions are available: BioSpectrometer basic and BioSpectrometer kinetic which features a temperature-controlled cuvette holder.

People who work in regulated areas or areas with high security requirements need an instrument with a correspondingly high reproducibility and dependability.

Besides precision and accuracy, ergonomic handling is particularly important when pipetting. If a lot of strength needs to be used, energy reserves will be used up much quicker. This is especially true for longer pipetting series. With electronic piston stroke, low weight and intuitive user guidance, electronic pipettes like the Eppendorf Xplorer® minimize user strain. The perfect balance and the finger rest guarantee a position that is particularly easy on the joints.

Eppendorf is providing an exclusive behind the scenes video look at the production of consumables and providing insight into the company’s exceptional quality control throughout the whole manufacturing process. The new video, available on the company’s website, demonstrates Eppendorf’s commitment to delivering consistently high quality and reliable consumables for the laboratory.

In a well-received report in Science from 2008, Dr. Andrew Holt and his group from the University of Alberta, Canada, described how chemicals used as manufacturing additives can substantially inhibit enzymatic assays and binding studies by leaching into samples from plastic consumables. Eppendorf recently visited Dr. Holt’s pharmacology lab with a film crew to ask him how experimental data can be affected and what he recommends to other scientists to ensure unaffected and reproducible results.