ADInstruments Blog

This week we introduce you to Dr Kevin Evans, our fearless rock climber and Research Support Specialist working out of our Oxford office. Kevin was lucky enough to be able to combine his hobbies of adventure sports and climbing with his knowledge of physiology into a very interesting and energetic PhD.

This week we’d like to introduce Paula Croft, the Manager of our European Support Team. Paula’s background in cardiovascular research at Kings College, London - where she used both the PowerLab and LabChart - gave her the knowledge to successfully move into a support role at the ADInstruments’ Oxford office.

This week we’d like to introduce Tom, our talented Education Support specialist. Based in Oxford, Tom travels all over the UK and EU region helping with installations of education software and hardware at universities and health science institutions, as well as running workshops for educators wanting to upskill or explore the different applications available in LabChart, LabTutor and Lt.

Philip Carvil, a PhD student at KCL funded by the European Space Agency’s Science and technology Office (ESTEC), has been working with the Space Medicine Office at the European Astronaut Centre to develop and test a ‘loading’ SkinSuit for astronauts that aims to help mitigate some of the health problems they face in microgravity. Specifically, he is looking at how the SkinSuit can affect the spine “with the aim to attenuate spinal elongation in space and assist in preserving the spinal stabiliser muscles.”

High quality data is the cornerstone of great research. Here we revisit the essentials of data quality: sampling rates, amplification and filtering. You can also watch one of our most popular webinars to see how to create and change all of these settings in LabChart. Hope you find it useful!

ADI Science Hero: Dr Emily Zimmerman, Developmental Speech Physiologist

Use this free experimental protocol to have your students activate their sympathetic nervous system via the cold pressor test! Investigate the effect of cold water on blood pressure, heart rate, and pulse amplitude.

Neuroscientist Bruce Johnson is one of the founders of the Classroom of Excellence CrawFly workshops. We spoke to Bruce about how he started out in Neuroscience and what advice he'd give to others considering this career. You can meet him first hand at CrawFly 2016 next month - there are still a few places left!

When it comes to ‘maths that could transform lives,' it’s hard to go past recent work by cardiovascular pharmacologist Dr Manasi Nandi and mathematician Dr Philip Aston, who will be co-presenting an exhibit at the Science Museum entitled Cardiomorph. The exhibit is part of a festival clebrating the London Mathematical Society. Manasi and Philip head up a team of biologists and mathematicians who have collaborated to apply non-linear mathematics to blood pressure data in a completely novel way - with some surprising and potentially life-saving results.

With the incredible sportspeople of the rugby world in the spotlight, we took the opportunity to show kids another side to the game - the technology that can help athletes reach their full potential.

Colin Olivier, one of our talented Applications Scientists and the Technical Sales representative for Northeastern USA, reports back from CrawFly - the renowned Neurophysiology Workshop for Educators run by Cornell University and ADInstruments as part of the Classroom of Excellence series. We'd like to thank everyone involved for helping to make it a great success, and special thanks to Mike Kaplan, PhD for the awesome photography! And if you haven't been yet, read on to see what CrawFly is like…

Last week, thousands of medical educators, administrators, researchers and students converged on Glasgow for the annual meeting of AMEE , the Association of Medical Educators in Europe - five intense days for people at all stages of their careers to exchange ideas and learn about the latest advances in this field. Whether you wanted to know " Has the medical student changed?" or "How do you invent a model abscess?", AMEE 2015 had an answer for you!

Meet Dr Hannah Critchlow of Cambridge University, a passionate neuroscientist and powerful storyteller who spoke at the Hay Festival in Wales earlier this year about the brain and human creativity, analysing the brainwaves of her audience using an EEG kit and PowerLab and wiring up a writer to show how the creative brain goes about composing a difficult chapter​. We spoke to Hannah about the festival, her love of neuroscience and what inspires her.