Lunar New Year is an important holiday celebrated by many countries and communities worldwide. Also known as the Chinese New Year or Chinese Spring Festival, it will be celebrated on February 1 in 2022.   Because Lunar New Year is based on the lunar calendar, the dates change from year to year, but it is usually held within January or February. Lunar New Year is a time to celebrate with family to honor your elders and ancestors, get rid of the old and make way for the new, and focus on best wishes for the year ahead.   For me, there are many traditions associated with Chinese New Year that I still observe and hold near and dear to my heart, such as decorating our house with good luck symbols in red (a powerful color associated with luck in the Chinese culture); giving out “hong bao,” or lucky red envelopes with money to children in the family (I miss the days when I was receiving them); and of course, my favorite tradition — eating!   Many of my memories associated with this holiday center around dinner with close family, eating a variety of lucky foods, which usually include a chicken to symbolize joy and family unity, a whole fish for prosperity, noodles representing longevity and long life, bok choy as a green symbolizing money, and dumplings, since they are shaped like a coin purse, to wish you good fortune in the new year.   The Chinese New Year is filled with a variety of other traditions;  I named only a few of my favorites that hold a lot of sentimental value to me.   Every Chinese New Year is associated with one of 12 animal zodiacs, which can further be segmented by one of the five elements of earth, fire, metal, water and wood, each defined by different traits. As we move into 2022, we will head into the year of the Tiger, or more specifically, the Water Tiger.   In the Chinese zodiac calendar, the Tiger is considered the king of all beasts, as they’re bold, courageous and intelligent. Being a Water Tiger year means that those born to this zodiac year are also flexible and knowledgeable.   Even though I am a scientist, I love reading horoscopes to catch a glimpse of the future, and while not very scientific, it’s fun.   Reading the horoscope and characteristics for this year reminded me of the Thermo Scientific™ Vanquish™ Simple Switch 2D-LC systems! These are unique UHPLC systems that provide your lab the maximum flexibility to run three different ways without a need to re-plumb when controlled by Thermo Scientific™ Chromeleon™ CDS software and set up with one mass spectrometer and two UV/Vis detectors to: Run the system as a 2D-LC system to run heart-cut 2D-LC separations with a mass spectrometer to deep dive into specific sections of separation for further characterization Run a 1D-LC-MS separation for traditional sample characterization Double the productivity of a single system with more traditional separations by running two independent 1D-LC-UV, using the system for dual LC applications.       Check out this application note to see how a biopharmaceutical R&D lab used the Vanquish Simple Switch 2D-LC system to analyze a top-down reduced protein sample to further characterize individual impurities from a known compound.   Using the same system without re-plumbing, this sample was initially run as a bottom-up peptide mapping experiment as a 1D-LC-MS separation to determine the therapeutic protein target and impurities. The results from this 1D-LC-MS experiment were used to outline the subsequent experiment, which was reported in this application note featuring the multiple loop heart-cut 2D-LC-MS experiment on the same system.   This paper dives into how the system was run as a 2D-LC system to run loop heart-cut 2D-LC separations with a mass spectrometer to deep dive into specific sections of separation for further characterization.   Because of the flexibility to use the system in three ways (2D-LC-MS heart-cut, 1D-LC-MS, and as a dual LC for two independent 1D-LC-UV separations) with no time lost re-plumbing, this system is the Swiss Army knife of any lab using HPLC.   It is ultra-flexible and can provide endless amounts of sample knowledge – which pretty much aligns with the 2022 Chinese New Year’s Water Tiger horoscope.   Wishing you all a “gung hay fat choy,” which is Cantonese for “wishing you great happiness and prosperity.”       ... View more

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Businesses are scrambling to keep employees connected and productive while working from home. If you’re running Windows Server, you likely already have the capability to enable remote workers, while adding a dedicated solution can give you even more flexible remote access capabilities.   Many businesses are looking for ways to enable their employees to stay home with their families due to Covid-19. Some companies already have robust SMB network capabilities in place for employees to securely access files, applications and data from anywhere and on any device; however, if you’re trying to run your business with all of your employees working from home using nothing more than video conferencing and email, you’re probably finding out just how limiting that can be. Not to mention risky. Without access to a central repository, files will likely be stored on personal devices, making it difficult to collaborate. More importantly, devices where they may be vulnerable to user error and cyber-crime. Here’s the good news - you may already have remote access capabilities built right into your system. That’s right, if you’re running Microsoft Windows Server at the office, you can likely take advantage of embedded Remote Desktop Service (RDS) to enable limited work from home capability for your employees - right away. With RDS, you can run a single Windows Server instance, either on physical hardware or on a virtual machine (VM), and users can access it via a network connection and Remote Desktop Protocol. The desktop image you configure on the server is cloned and presented to users with all its associated applications and data. All the processing takes place on your on-premises server—not on local user machines—and all instances run simultaneously on the on-premises server. RDS is a great fit for simple desktop applications—like Microsoft Office and Outlook—especially when most users access the same applications and use roughly the same amount of resources. RDS can be fairly simple to set up, but it does require some customization and specific licensing from Microsoft. HPE Small Business Solutions for Small Office Deployment provide RDS capabilities. They can also help you contact your IT provider for assistance in setting up RDS on your current server and make sure your licenses are in order. If you need to provide access to more powerful applications or ultra-high resolution graphics, or if you’d like to prepare for the future with a more robust and flexible work from home solution, you may want to consider virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). With VDI, you use virtualization software to configure a pool of virtual desktop servers that you can then assign to various users. These desktops are not limited to a single operating system (OS) or a single application architecture, as is the case with RDS. These on-premises solutions leverage the power of virtualization and specialized VDI software to provide users with customizable desktop environments just like they’re used to with their traditional PC/laptop. VDI is a great fit if your users require more personalization or custom applications, or use intensive applications like graphics or video editing, 3D modelling or heavy data processing. It’s also extremely flexible and able to support many types of devices and OSs with high performance and security. Persistent desktops mean users can get a personalized experience with resource access tailored to their usage profile.  They can even have custom application installs and OS configurations. Whether you choose RDS or VDI, you can benefit from HPE Small Business Solutions. These are ready-to-go solution packages that include the hardware, software, services, and top-selling HPE ProLiant options you need to succeed. Plus, all HPE Small Business Solutions can be easily extended to hybrid cloud for additional disaster recovery options with cloud services from Microsoft Azure or a managed service provider. If budget is an issue, HPE Financial Services has flexible offers, like HPE Subscription, which can help you get the IT you need now and pay for it over time with predictable, affordable monthly payments. We know things are moving pretty fast right now and it can be hard to keep up. If you need assistance working through the various options and/or getting your employees set up for success, please contact your HPE or authorized partner representative. We’re here to help. To learn more, contact your authorized HPE sales rep or visit hpe.com/info/smb Learn more Security checklist for working at home via HPE's Enterprise.nxt               ... View more

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