The Respirometry Blog

So I'll be blogging again. Watch this space!

Submitted by John on Wed, 06/05/2019 - 11:02

This is just a quick note to let you know that after a scandalously long period of silence, I'll be blogging on this site again.

The reason for the long silence? Well, I've been extremely busy with new developments for metabolic measurement at Sable Systems, finishing the second edition of my definitive metabolic measurement textbook, "Measuring Metabolic Rates: A Manual for Scientists", published by Oxford University Press, plus annoying my enemies and amusing my friends with seditious tweets on Twitter, where I'm known as @SableSys - feel free to follow me!

Tags:

Continuous Metabolic Phenotyping - How Continuous is "Continuous"?

Submitted by John on Sun, 01/12/2014 - 15:39

UPDATE added June 2019: Since writing this blog post, I've re-thought the topic of continuous vs. multiplexed metabolic measurement! This post fails to consider the effect of the cage time constant, which substantially reduces, and sometimes entirely eliminates, the advantages of continuous vs. multiplexed metabolic measurement. I'll be dealing with this topic in several upcoming blog posts!

Tags:

Sex, lies, and water vapor

Submitted by John on Mon, 10/07/2013 - 17:15

This blog entry deals with lies and water vapor, especially lies - oops, "differently truthful claims" - about the feasibility of using direct water vapor measurement to correct mathematically for the dilution effects of water vapor on respiratory gases. Tests establishing the validity of the technique are described, and a list of publications by leading scientists in major journals that use this technique is included.

Tags:

Tiny Food Intake Events (Micro-Intakes) Can be Important!

Submitted by John on Wed, 08/28/2013 - 17:34

Many food intake events (= food uptake events) are too small for legacy "food intake measurement systems" or metabolic phenotyping systems to detect. Each of these feeding events corresponds to a neurological signal to feed, even if the actual amount is small. As such, they convey important behavioral information.

Tags:

Combining a metabolic cage (with urine and feces collection) and respirometry: It's easy!

Submitted by John on Thu, 08/08/2013 - 14:20

Measuring metabolic rates in a stress free home cage environment is great for the experimental animal, but can't be implemented if quantitative urine and feces collection is also required. Metabolic cages exist that are specially designed for accurate collection of urine and feces, and as this blog post shows, can easily be adapted for metabolic measurement using a Promethion pull-mode metabolic phenotyping system.

Tags:

Pages