Picarro Blog: 2011

During a speech on Food Safety 1 , Michael Taylor, Deputy Commissioner for Foods for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discussed the benefits of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point programs – HACCP.

The following is a transcript of my comments at the Nov 2 nd 2011 Stakeholders Meeting set up by The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) at the behest of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in compliance with Section 204 of the Food Safety and Modernization Act (FSMA). The

Greetings, Picarro Community! My name is Jeff Forgeron, and I am a meteorology major at San Jose State University. I am currently interning for Picarro, and was recently asked to design and implement a weather station on the rooftop using an All-In-One Climatronics instrument.

It seems such a short time ago that Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) was expanded and enacted through Title XI of the Farm Bill 2008. Yet legislators have already started the committee meetings and town hall discussions that are framing the early debates on Farm Bill 2012. COOL was intended

When isotopes are mentioned in the same breath as law enforcement, the first thought that comes to mind is likely an atomic weapons-based attack using radioactive isotopes and what security forces can do to prevent it. That’s certainly the most publicized association between these words.

Today the World Economic Forum announced that Picarro had been selected as a Technology Pioneer 2012 . This is a tremendous honor and a proud day for all Picarro employees! The World Economic Forum is one of the most prestigious collaborative problem-solving organizations on the planet.

Hi, there. I'm Kevin Cunningham and I am the product manager for isotopic carbon analyzers at Picarro. I got my PhD in laser spectroscopy (but don't hold that against me) so it has been thrilling to work at Picarro where laser spectroscopy has been applied to so many other fields.

When I joined Picarro at the start of September in 2009, Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy technology for isotope analysis had only just been created. In short order CRDS was validated by researchers whose laboratories specialized in using isotope ratio mass spectrometers (IRMS), devices which were previously considered the state of the

Editor’s note: This post comes to us from Benoit Wastine from the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE/IPSL) CEA-CNRS-UVSQ in France. http://www.lsce.ipsl.fr/en/

A general topic that has been discussed on this blog is “truth in labeling”. In the case of food, falsifying a label can mean lying about where it came from for prestige (Prosciutto carefully crafted in Parma carries a much higher market value than a piece of Bulgarian salted pork),

Prior to Picarro, I was on the academic path. I completed my PhD under the supervision of a brilliant scientist, then scored a post-doc position with a highly regarded researcher doing cutting-edge work that gained attention from the press (and also happened to be in Hawaii). But I rapidly discovered

I've written a bit about using Picarro's Combustion Module for novel application methods and I wanted to let you know about a brand new product we are releasing - This is a CRDS analyzer that simultaneously measures stable isotope ratios of both carbon and its bound hydrogen directly from a

In conversations with stable isotope researchers around the world a recurrent theme has been the problems caused by organics compounds in water samples, ranging from plant water extracts to alcoholic beverages. For laser-based spectroscopic analyzers like Picarro, certain organic compounds, mostly alcohols, have caused spectral interference which distorted the reported

In a week when heat waves are sweeping the country, a post about green roofs seems appropriate. Environmentalists have long espoused putting plants on top of buildings as a way to improve air quality in cities and reduce the urban island heat effect. Sounds nice, but what are the real

As I write this, I’m sitting on a ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules cargo plane from the New York Air National Guard’s 109 th Airlift Wing, flying over Greenland, having just taken off from the NEEM camp at 77°N latitude where the sun is up 24 hours a day.

I've got two simple yet evocative phrases for you. Wing pods. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Excited? We are. During late June, a team of top scientists from the NASA Ames Research Center deployed three Picarro analyzers as part of the The Railroad Valley Vicarious Calibration Campaign, a collaboration between the Japan

Climate scientists can be divided into two large interactive groups: Experimentalists, who go out into the world and collect climate data (e.g., levels of carbon dioxide, methane concentration, seasonal temperature, snowfall rates, etc.); and Modelers, those who build computer simulations based on that data (called “climate models” by those in

The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is a product of human activities that use carbon-based fuels, such as home heating, cars, and manufacturing plants, to name a few. But CO 2 also has many natural sources, such as soil, volcanoes and all living things that breathe. So a

We just launched a new Food Tracebility and Food Safety mini-site and our timing sadly coincided with a tragedy in this arena. As the unfolding details of the horrible E.coli outbreak in Europe have highlighted, everything is wrong with current food traceability legislation, testing and understanding.

The Malaspina Expedition may set the record for the most well-travelled Picarro analyzer. And we can't wait to see the science that emerges from this fascinating voyage. Here's the story. The research voyage marks the 200 Year Anniversary of the death of Alessandro Malaspina in 1810. Malaspina directed the first