#laboratory systems industry

[industrynewsupdates]

Future of Laboratory Information Management System Procurement Intelligence: Trends and Insights

The laboratory information management system category is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2023 to 2030. Increasing automation such as cloud-based system, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence has resulted in streamlined operations, increased productivity, and reduced cost, which helps laboratory information management systems (LIMS) in managing samples and associated data in the laboratories in an effective and efficient way. Additionally, rising demand for drug discoveries and R&D activities has led to the adoption and implementation of LIMS across the globe.

Many laboratories are now choosing cloud-based storage solutions for their Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS). Cloud-based LIMS systems provide widespread connectivity within labs, connecting various workstations, devices, and data sources. This connectivity enhances operational efficiency and effectiveness. These systems also offer scalability and strong maintenance support, enabling multiple integrations, comprehensive data management, advanced analytics, and more. The shift towards cloud deployments in laboratories is motivated by the need for agility, scalability, reduced costs, and simplified system upgrades and maintenance. By embracing cloud-based LIMS, laboratories can streamline their IT expenses and ensure smooth scalability and continuous system improvements.

LIMS integrated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms greatly augment their utility by enabling precise predictions, enhanced data consolidation, and efficient decision-making. These algorithms streamline complex logic and computations, empowering managers to make well-informed choices grounded in valuable insights. In the biopharmaceutical sector, advanced algorithms are employed in laboratories to accelerate product development, leading to heightened quality and the development of vital new medications for patients. In the past, pharmaceutical manufacturing heavily depended on human intelligence and researchers' judgments, but now, AI has taken over the control of the decision-making process.

Order your copy of the Laboratory Information Management System Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030, published by Grand View Research, to get more details regarding day one, quick wins, portfolio analysis, key negotiation strategies of key suppliers, and low-cost/best-cost sourcing analysis

Industries prioritize operational convenience, often facing challenges when transitioning from traditional methods to advanced LIMS. Outdated processes, incompatible tools, and complex workflows in labs can complicate this shift. Consequently, labs are increasingly seeking pre-configured standard solutions with industry-standard capabilities and best practices. Adopting such solutions can streamline the implementation process, leading to immediate positive outcomes.

The category includes large established companies offering comprehensive solutions, as well as smaller niche players focusing on specific laboratory types or functionalities. This diversity intensifies competition. Continuous innovation and differentiation in service offerings, user experience, and compliance features drive competition among LIMS providers. Acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships have also impacted the category growth in recent years. For instance, in August 2023, STARLIMS a provider of enterprise information solutions acquired Labstep. Through this acquisition, STARLIMS’ comprehensive LIMS technology combined with Labstep’s user-friendly, SaaS electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) platform. Through this acquisition, users can strip off complexity from the lab and unlock data’s true potential in a connected system.

Additionally, with more and more advanced technology, companies are upgrading their software to newer versions to sustain in the market. For example, in December 2022, LabVantage Solutions, which is the provider of laboratory informatics services, and solutions including LIMS solutions launched version 8.8 of its LabVantage LIMS platform. This version includes multiple enhancements within every element of the platform. This can also improve the security, usability, speed, and accuracy of LIMS components such as laboratory execution system (LES), and electronic laboratory notebook (ELN).

Labor, IT hardware costs, maintenance, staff training, legal charges, software update costs, and others are some of the cost components in providing laboratory information system services. The price varies based on the number of labs, modules, test methods, and customization required. The software development with basic features can cost around USD 45,000 to USD 70,000. With additional advance features, the cost may rise from USD 80,000 to USD 120,000. The cost of hiring a LIMS service provider in the U.S., and UK can be around USD 90 - 100 per hour, that is higher as compared to Asian countries where it can cost as low as USD 50 per hour.

In terms of providing laboratory information management system services, laboratories usually outsource the service as it can help labs save on cost and spend time on other important tasks such as running and scheduling the test instead of spending time on software management. For sourcing this service, customers usually look for service providers that offer end-to-end services, customizations, vendor’s reputation and brand awareness, application support, extra features, and subscription services. Identification of requirements followed by evaluating suppliers based on services they provide, round-the-clock technical support, value-added services, pricing, long-term relationships, and customization provided are the best sourcing practices for the category.

Laboratory Information Management System Procurement Intelligence Report Scope

• Laboratory Information Management System Category Growth Rate: CAGR of 6.7% from 2023 to 2030

• Pricing growth Outlook: 3% - 4% (annual)

• Pricing Models: Service-based pricing; subscription-based pricing, Competition based pricing

• Supplier Selection Scope: Cost and pricing, services provided, features, technical support, vendor’s reputation, service reliability and scalability, and compliance.

• Supplier selection criteria: Various services provided, application support provided, IT support, technology used, end-to-end service, additional features, location and presence of supplier, and others

• Report Coverage: Revenue forecast, supplier ranking, supplier matrix, emerging technology, pricing models, cost structure, competitive landscape, growth factors, trends, engagement, and operating model

Browse through Grand View Research’s collection of procurement intelligence studies:

• Chemical Management Services Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030 (Revenue Forecast, Supplier Ranking & Matrix, Emerging Technologies, Pricing Models, Cost Structure, Engagement & Operating Model, Competitive Landscape)

• Lab Supplies Procurement Intelligence Report, 2023 - 2030 (Revenue Forecast, Supplier Ranking & Matrix, Emerging Technologies, Pricing Models, Cost Structure, Engagement & Operating Model, Competitive Landscape)

Key companies profiled

• LabVantage Solutions

• STARLIMS

• ThermoFisher Scientific

• LabWare

• Siemens

• Illumina

• LabLynx

• Labworks

• Accelerated Technology Laboratories

• QBench

Brief about Pipeline by Grand View Research:

A smart and effective supply chain is essential for growth in any organization. Pipeline division at Grand View Research provides detailed insights on every aspect of supply chain, which helps in efficient procurement decisions.

Our services include (not limited to):

• Market Intelligence involving – market size and forecast, growth factors, and driving trends

• Price and Cost Intelligence – pricing models adopted for the category, total cost of ownerships

• Supplier Intelligence – rich insight on supplier landscape, and identifies suppliers who are dominating, emerging, lounging, and specializing

• Sourcing / Procurement Intelligence – best practices followed in the industry, identifying standard KPIs and SLAs, peer analysis, negotiation strategies to be utilized with the suppliers, and best suited countries for sourcing to minimize supply chain disruptions

[healthcaremarketanalysis]

Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market in terms of revenue was estimated to be worth $2.1 billion in 2024 and is poised to reach $3.8 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 12.9% from 2024 to 2029

[amplelogicpharma]

Revolutionizing Pharma Manufacturing: Unveiling the Benefits of LIMS Software

Are you curious about the secret behind the seamless operations in pharmaceutical manufacturing? Look no further! The key lies in the powerful Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) software, transforming the industry with its multitude of benefits. Let's dive into the world of LIMS and explore how it's reshaping pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Efficient Data Management: LIMS acts as the digital brain of pharmaceutical laboratories, organizing vast amounts of data effortlessly. With streamlined data management, information becomes easily accessible, reducing the time spent searching for critical details.

Streamlined Workflows: Imagine a ballet of precision – that's what LIMS does for laboratory workflows. By automating and standardizing processes, it minimizes manual errors and ensures a consistent and efficient production cycle. The result? Increased productivity and reduced operational bottlenecks.

Enhanced Quality Control: In the pharmaceutical realm, quality control is non-negotiable. LIMS plays a crucial role by monitoring and managing data related to product testing. This meticulous oversight ensures that each batch adheres to stringent quality standards, minimizing the risk of defects and ensuring product excellence.

Regulatory Compliance Made Easy: Navigating regulatory requirements can be a challenge, but not with LIMS by your side. The software provides robust documentation and audit trails, simplifying the process of regulatory compliance. Say goodbye to stress during inspections and audits!

Data Traceability and Accountability: Ever wished for a magic wand to trace the journey of a product? LIMS grants that wish by offering comprehensive traceability. Track the history of each sample or product, supporting investigations and ensuring accountability throughout the production process.

Enhanced Collaboration: Communication is the key to success, especially in a bustling laboratory environment. LIMS fosters better collaboration by allowing different teams and departments to access and share data seamlessly. It's like having a digital bridge connecting every aspect of your operation.

Resource Optimization: LIMS isn't just efficient; it's also a master optimizer. By automating repetitive tasks and reducing manual labor, it enhances overall operational efficiency. This optimization leads to cost savings and improved productivity – a win-win for pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Real-Time Monitoring and Reporting: Say goodbye to waiting for reports. LIMS provides real-time monitoring and instant reporting, allowing quick responses to any deviations. Proactive decision-making becomes the norm, ensuring that any issues are addressed promptly.

Data Security and Integrity: Protecting sensitive data is a top priority in the pharmaceutical industry. LIMS ensures data security through user access controls and audit trails, maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of critical information.

Adaptability and Scalability: As your pharmaceutical enterprise grows, so do your needs. LIMS is designed to adapt and scale with evolving requirements, providing a future-proof solution for expanding operations.

In conclusion, LIMS is not just software – it's a strategic investment for pharmaceutical manufacturers aiming for operational excellence, product quality assurance, and regulatory adherence.

To gain a more in-depth understanding of our LIM Software, request a demonstration at: Click here to Request Demo.

[tekmaticinc]

Revolutionizing Laboratory Efficiency- Introducing Tekmatic's Plug and Play Pipetting Solution

Are you tired of complex and time-consuming pipetting processes in your laboratory? Look no further than Tekmatic's groundbreaking Plug and Play Pipetting Solution. Our cutting-edge technology is set to revolutionize laboratory efficiency, streamlining your workflow and saving you valuable time.

[nasa]

Let's Explore a Metal-Rich Asteroid 🤘

Between Mars and Jupiter, there lies a unique, metal-rich asteroid named Psyche. Psyche’s special because it looks like it is part or all of the metallic interior of a planetesimal—an early planetary building block of our solar system. For the first time, we have the chance to visit a planetary core and possibly learn more about the turbulent history that created terrestrial planets.

Here are six things to know about the mission that’s a journey into the past: Psyche.

1. Psyche could help us learn more about the origins of our solar system.

After studying data from Earth-based radar and optical telescopes, scientists believe that Psyche collided with other large bodies in space and lost its outer rocky shell. This leads scientists to think that Psyche could have a metal-rich interior, which is a building block of a rocky planet. Since we can’t pierce the core of rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, and our home planet, Earth, Psyche offers us a window into how other planets are formed.

2. Psyche might be different than other objects in the solar system.

Rocks on Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Earth contain iron oxides. From afar, Psyche doesn’t seem to feature these chemical compounds, so it might have a different history of formation than other planets.

If the Psyche asteroid is leftover material from a planetary formation, scientists are excited to learn about the similarities and differences from other rocky planets. The asteroid might instead prove to be a never-before-seen solar system object. Either way, we’re prepared for the possibility of the unexpected!

3. Three science instruments and a gravity science investigation will be aboard the spacecraft.

The three instruments aboard will be a magnetometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, and a multispectral imager. Here’s what each of them will do:

Magnetometer: Detect evidence of a magnetic field, which will tell us whether the asteroid formed from a planetary body

Gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer: Help us figure out what chemical elements Psyche is made of, and how it was formed

Multispectral imager: Gather and share information about the topography and mineral composition of Psyche

The gravity science investigation will allow scientists to determine the asteroid’s rotation, mass, and gravity field and to gain insight into the interior by analyzing the radio waves it communicates with. Then, scientists can measure how Psyche affects the spacecraft’s orbit.

4. The Psyche spacecraft will use a super-efficient propulsion system.

Psyche’s solar electric propulsion system harnesses energy from large solar arrays that convert sunlight into electricity, creating thrust. For the first time ever, we will be using Hall-effect thrusters in deep space.

5. This mission runs on collaboration.

To make this mission happen, we work together with universities, and industry and NASA to draw in resources and expertise.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission and is responsible for system engineering, integration, and mission operations, while NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Services Program manages launch operations and procured the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Working with Arizona State University (ASU) offers opportunities for students to train as future instrument or mission leads. Mission leader and Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton is also based at ASU.

Finally, Maxar Technologies is a key commercial participant and delivered the main body of the spacecraft, as well as most of its engineering hardware systems.

6. You can be a part of the journey.

Everyone can find activities to get involved on the mission’s webpage. There's an annual internship to interpret the mission, capstone courses for undergraduate projects, and age-appropriate lessons, craft projects, and videos.

You can join us for a virtual launch experience, and, of course, you can watch the launch with us on Oct. 12, 2023, at 10:16 a.m. EDT!

For official news on the mission, follow us on social media and check out NASA’s and ASU’s Psyche websites.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[violetsandshrikes]

Notable Women In Zoology: Dr. Letitia Eva Takyibea Obeng

Dr. Obeng (1925-2023) was the first Ghanaian woman to obtain a degree in zoology, and the first to be awarded a doctorate. She is described as "the grandmother of female scientists in Ghana".

Her other notable accomplishments include:

A Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Botany (1952), a Master of Science in Parasitology (1962) and a PhD in Tropical Medicine (1964) where she studied the black fly and its relevance to river blindness

Post university, she lectured at the University College of Science and Technology (now known as Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST) from 1952 to 1959

In 1952, Dr. Obeng became the first female scientist at KNUST

After her husband's death in 19659, she moved to the the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

IN 1964, she established the Institute of Aquatic Biology within CSIR to research the huge manmade Volta Lake in Ghana and its inland water system

Dr. Obeng was the first scientist to be employed by the National Research Council of Ghana

In 1965, Dr Obeng became a fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, she became the first female president of the Academy

In 1972, Dr. Obeng delivered the Caroline Haslett Memorial Lecture to the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, titled “Nation Building and the African Woman”

In 1972, she was an invited participant in the United Nations Human Environment Conference in Stockholm

In 1974, she began work as the Officer in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and in 1989, she became the Director of the UNEP Regional Office for Africa, and the UNEP's Representative to Africa

From 1992 to 1993, Obeng was a Distinguished International Visitor fellow at Radcliff College

In 1997, she received the CSIR Award for Distinguished Career and Service to Science and Technology, the first woman to receive such an award

The CSIR Laboratory (known as The Letitia Obeng Block) was named after her in 1997 as well

She received Ghana's highest national award, Order of the Star of Ghana in 2006

In 2017, she received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from KNUST

She was also the author of numerous publications and works. Two meant for the public were Parasites, the Sly and Sneaky Enemies inside You (1997) and -Anthology of a Lifetime (2019)

[odinsblog]

Many years ago, the Jewish U.S. scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote a best seller that caused uproar among a group he exposed as the ���Holocaust Industry”: people who invariably had not been direct victims of the Holocaust, but nonetheless chose to exploit and profit from Jewish suffering.

Though treated as leaders of the Jewish community, they were not primarily interested in helping survivors of the Holocaust, or in stopping another Holocaust – the two things one might have assumed would be the highest priorities for anyone making the Holocaust central to their life. In fact, hardly any of the many millions the Holocaust Industry demanded from countries like Germany in reparations ever made it to Holocaust survivors, as Finkelstein documented in his book.

Instead, this small group instrumentalised the Holocaust for their own benefit: to gain money and influence by embedding themselves in an industry they had created. They became untouchables, beyond criticism because they were associated with an industry that they had made as sacred as the Holocaust itself.

A follow-up book called the Antisemitism Industry, an investigation into much the same group of people, is now overdue. These ghouls don’t care about antisemitism – in fact, they rub shoulders with the West’s most prominent antisemites, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orban.

Rather, they care about Israel – and the weaponisation of antisemitism to protect their emotional and financial investment. They profit from Israel’s central place in US political, diplomatic and military life:

• as a giant real-estate laundering exercise, based on the theft of native Palestinian land;

• as a laboratory for the production of new weapons and surveillance systems tested on Palestinians;

• as a heavily militarised colonial state, a spearpoint for the West, useful in destabilising and disrupting any threat of a unifying Arab nationalism in the oil-rich Middle East;

• and as the frontier state for eroding legal and ethical principles developed after the Second World War to stop a repeat of those atrocities.

Anyone who challenges the Antisemitism Industry’s – and therefore Israel’s – stranglehold on Jewish representation in public life is hounded as an antisemite or self-hating Jew, as is currently happening most prominently to Jewish film-maker Jonathan Glazer. He is the Oscar-winning director of The Zone of Interest, about the family of a Nazi commandant of Auschwitz who lived blind to the horrors unfolding just out of view, beyond their walled garden.

I wrote an earlier piece about the manufactured furore provoked by Glazer’s comments at the Oscars. In his acceptance speech, he denounced the hijacking of Jewishness and the Holocaust that has sustained Israel’s occupation over many decades and generated constant new victims, including the latest: those who suffered at the hands of Hamas when it attacked on October 7, and the many, many tens of thousand of Palestinians killed, maimed and orphaned by Israel over the past five months.

—Jonathan Cook, the antisemitism industry doesn’t speak for Jews, it speaks for western elites

[theresattrpgforthat]

I'd be interested in any dieselpunk or clockpunk recommendations you have, particularly if you play as some sort of inventor.

Theme: Clockpunk & Dieselpunk

Hello friend, I’ve got a decent number of Clockpunk or Dieselpunk settings, and while I think there might be be individual character options that allow you to play something of an inventor, I don’t think there’s anything in which you solely play as inventors. Perhaps some of my followers know of some though!

Tomorrow City, by Osprey Publishing.

Tomorrow City was one of the cities of the future, built to usher in a new age of prosperity, seizing upon scientific achievements at the dawn of the twentieth century. Then came the War. Radium-powered soldiers assembled, diesel-fuelled nightmares rolled off production lines, city fought city, and the world burned in atomic fire.

Tomorrow City still stands, an oil-stained beacon of hope, part-refuge, part-asylum. Beset by dangers from both within and without, a secret war now rages on its streets. Diesel-born monstrosities stalk the alleyways, air pirates strike from the wastelands, mad scientists continue their dark work, occultists manipulate the city’s strange geometry, and secret societies plot in the shadows.

Tomorrow City is a roleplaying game of dark science and dieselpunk action. Swift and simple character creation and an easy-to-learn dice pool system places the emphasis on unique personalities and the momentum of the plot. Join the Underground and fight the crime and corruption at the heart of the city. Sell your dieselpunk tech, occult knowledge, and sheer grit as troubleshooters for mysterious paymasters. Hunt down spies, saboteurs, and science-run-amok. As weary sky rangers, fringe scientists, and radium-powered veterans, you might be all that stands between a better tomorrow and no tomorrow at all.

This is a game that pools together your positive and negative character tags, has you roll for both and aim to come out on top. Gear is very important here, and acts as a great vehicle for communicating the kind of world that you’re living in. I don’t own this game so I can’t speak to much more than that, but if there is a big focus on gear, I’d assume that having a character that can create that gear or make it better would be fairly easy to make in this game.

Age of Steel, by Isolation Games.

Age of Steel is a dieselpunk roleplaying game set in the world of Neres; a world not unlike our own in the first few decades of the 20th century. Neres has just emerged from its first global conflict; the ‘Great War’ in which hundreds of thousands of men and women died in the mud and horror of the trenches.

Technology in Neres has taken a slightly different route to our own world; personal mecha powered by diesel engines are used for numerous applications from war to common labour; huge airships ply the airways; bipedal automata act as servants for the rich and gadgeteer inventors construct homemade ray-guns in their basement laboratories.

In the wake of the Great War, Neres is a hotbed of political scheming and economic growth. Industry and commerce have come to rule the world which, thanks to the airship, aeroplane and radio is rapidly becoming smaller. Little do the majority of people know but an ancient evil is at the heart of the conflict in their world. Eldritch monstrosities from before the dawn of time seek to unmake reality, aided by cults of insane worshippers. Into this world come the heroes -the players- who are the only thing standing between the cosmic evil and all that they hold dear.

Age of Steel uses d6s as the base for their rules, and characters are built using a point-buy system, meaning that instead of character classes, you can custom-design your character as you see fit. I think that since everything about your character is customizable, there may be some options that would help you construct an inventor-like character.

One piece of your character is your backgrounds - that is, what assets your character has to pull from as they play. Some of these assets include Cash, a Job, a Reputation, and a Personal Vehicle. Since the release of the base game, the designer has also added a free supplement called Better Backgorunds, which also includes some more character options when it comes to assets.

Steel Horizons, by Wandering Pilgrim Games.

Steel Horizons is a Dieselpunk TTRPG set on the continent of Algara. It has been 43 years since the discovery of the powerful mineral, Pyricium, which jumpstarted technology ahead decades and began the 3rd Age.

In this new world, the nations of Algara have barely survived the Great War, fought over the precious Pyricium deposits, and now seek to rebuild themselves even greater than before with the might of their technologies and cultural advancements. Using the combined power of diesel fuel, pyric energy, and the brute strength of man, the world presses ever forward.

You play as a Wanderer, a traveller making their way across the land in search of their own legacy. By choosing your own Archetype and customizable Background, you can create the Wanderer you want to tell the best story!

This is a custom system that uses d12’s for all of your rolls. While Steel Horizons is meant to be a complete setting, the creator’s overarching goal appears to be a core set of rules that can be used in a number of different settings. Currently there’s the Quickstart Guide (linked in title) that is meant to bring you through character creation and gives you some example encounters, but you can also get the Lore Keeper Codex for the Hydra System, which is the base rules without setting details, as well as the Player’s Guide, which introduces new character options for you to play with.

Clocks and Punks, by Ikari.

You are misfits in the mega city Meccavena, dwelling in your precious hideout, the Sanctuary, looking for your next gig. Your gang leader, Archelle, has dosed into an endless sleep after she stole the Anomaly Device from the Clockmaker's tower. Now, it's your job to regroup and explore that crazy, conspiracy-infused, clockwork powered city, and maybe find a way to wake Archelle up!

Clocks and Punks is a rules-light, clockpunk inspired hack on the Lasers and Feelings RPG by John Harper. As is the standard for games of this type, your characters will enter play with a goal already in mind, but how they decide to go about achieving that goal is up to them.

If you want to create an inventor character you certainly can - there are Artificer and Alchemist roles that might fit that niche, and you can create a character goal that encourages you to create or invent. You can also make your character better at CLOCK tasks, giving them an advantage when performing tasks that require precision or technical aptitude.

This game is best for a group that wants a short session, or minimal bookkeeping. It’s probably also easier to run if you have experience playing ttrpgs before, just because there’s not a lot of room for GM guidance on a single page,

Flying Fortress, by Planet Gnome.

Flying Fortress is a trifold pamphlet RPG about pulp adventure, diesel punks, and airship pirates.

This is a hack of Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland by Chris McDowall, and should be compatible with any other Mark of the Odd games.

What I really enjoy about pamphlet games is that they provide a lot of neatly organized information that is easy to navigate. This game has your character sheet on one tab, rules on another, gear on another, and then information on the back for the person running the game - things like potential enemies, factions, and roll tables. There’s no particular inventor role per se, but there are Aristocrat and Mechanic options that I think you could tailor to be more about invention if you wish.

The biggest downside to this game is that it dedicates all of its space to game info, and leaves no room for world-building, so the setting you place yourself in is going to have to be crafted whole-cloth by the play group. Then again, if your GM is a natural world-builder, maybe that’s an asset rather than a downside!

Goblins in Shadow, by Color Spray Games.

GOBLINS IN SHADOW is a roleplaying game about goblin resistance and revolution in an age of elven oppression. It’s a world of clockwork and magic, of smoke and shadow.

Players will take on the roles of a cell of goblin revolutionaries, working to undermine the elves and humans who have conquered their homeland and built an empire on its corpse. They’ll advance their goals by taking on scores, missions that gather sympathy for their cause or take direct action against their oppressors, ending in a final attempt to assassinate one of the elven ministers ruling the city. To do that, they’ll need to avoid being caught by the Watch or the Hounds, the elite special police of the city; they’ll also need to balance their obligations to the various factions of the city, as well as their own personal obligations.

The rule of elves will be broken by goblins in shadow.

As a Forged in the Dark game, this will likely be familiar to anyone who has played Blades or similar games. The core of this game is about combat, and the setting around it is clockwork. If you want to play an inventor type character, there looks to be a playbook called The Hand, equipped for sabotage and front-lines engineering. Just through skimming the playbooks I feel like a lot of pieces of the world around you are baked into your playbooks - for example, the Hand might have been branded by an entropic form of goblin magic that allows you to invoke rapid decay or drain life. Now that’s evocative!

[fatehbaz]

imperialism and science reading list

edited: by popular demand, now with much longer list of books

Of course Katherine McKittrick and Kathryn Yusoff.

People like Achille Mbembe, Pratik Chakrabarti, Rohan Deb Roy, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, and Elizabeth Povinelli have written some “classics” and they track the history/historiography of US/European scientific institutions and their origins in extraction, plantations, race/slavery, etc.

Two articles I’d recommend as a summary/primer:

Zaheer Baber. “The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge.” Journal of Contemporary Asia. May 2016.

Kathryn Yusoff. “The Inhumanities.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers. 2020.

Then probably:

Irene Peano, Marta Macedo, and Colette Le Petitcorps. “Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times.” Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives. 2023.

Sharae Deckard. “Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalization: Exploiting Eden.” 2010. (Chornological overview of development of knowledge/institutions in relationship with race, slavery, profit as European empires encountered new lands and peoples.)

Gregg Mitman. “Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia’s Plantation Economy.” Environmental History. 2017, (Interesting case study. US corporations were building fruit plantations in Latin America and rubber plantations in West Africa during the 1920s. Medical doctors, researchers, and academics made a strong alliance these corporations to advance their careers and solidify their institutions. By 1914, the director of Harvard’s Department of Tropical Medicine was also simultaneously the director of the Laboratories of the Hospitals of the United Fruit Company, which infamously and brutally occupied Central America. This same Harvard doctor was also a shareholder in rubber plantations, and had a close personal relationship with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which occupied West Africa.)

Elizabeth DeLoughrey. “Globalizing the Routes of Breadfruit and Other Bounties.”  2008. (Case study of how British wealth and industrial development built on botany. Examines Joseph Banks; Kew Gardens; breadfruit; British fear of labor revolts; and the simultaneous colonizing of the Caribbean and the South Pacific.)

Elizabeth DeLoughrey. “Satellite Planetarity and the Ends of the Earth.” 2014. (Indigenous knowledge systems; “nuclear colonialism”; US empire in the Pacific; space/satellites; the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.)

Fahim Amir. “Cloudy Swords.” e-flux Journal #115, February 2021. (”Pest control”; termites; mosquitoes; fear of malaria and other diseases during German colonization of Africa and US occupations of Panama and the wider Caribbean; origins of some US institutions and the evolution of these institutions into colonial, nationalist, and then NGO forms over twentieth century.)

Some of the earlier generalist classic books that explicitly looked at science as a weapon of empires:

Schiebinger’s Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World; Delbourgo’s and Dew’s Science and Empire in the Atlantic World; the anthology Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World; Canzares-Esquerra’s Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in the Iberian World.

One of the quintessential case studies of science in the service of empire is the British pursuit of quinine and the inoculation of their soldiers and colonial administrators to safeguard against malaria in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia at the height of their power. But there are so many other exemplary cases: Britain trying to domesticate and transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean to feed laborers to prevent slave uprisings during the age of the Haitian Revolution. British colonial administrators smuggling knowledge of tea cultivation out of China in order to set up tea plantations in Assam. Eugenics, race science, biological essentialism, etc. in the early twentieth century. With my interests, my little corner of exposure/experience has to do mostly with conceptions of space/place; interspecies/multispecies relationships; borderlands and frontiers; Caribbean; Latin America; islands. So, a lot of these recs are focused there. But someone else would have better recs, especially depending on your interests. For example, Chakrabarti writes about history of medicine/healthcare. Paravisini-Gebert about extinction and Caribbean relationship to animals/landscape. Deb Roy focuses on insects and colonial administration in South Asia. Some scholars focus on the historiography and chronological trajectory of “modernity” or “botany” or “universities/academia,”, while some focus on Early Modern Spain or Victorian Britain or twentieth-century United States by region. With so much to cover, that’s why I’d recommend the articles above, since they’re kinda like overviews.Generally I read more from articles, essays, and anthologies, rather than full-length books.

Some other nice articles:

(On my blog, I’ve got excerpts from all of these articles/essays, if you want to search for or read them.)

Katherine McKittrick. “Dear April: The Aesthetics of Black Miscellanea.” Antipode. First published September 2021.

Katherine McKittrick. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe. 2013.

Antonio Lafuente and Nuria Valverde. “Linnaean Botany and Spanish Imperial Biopolitics.” A chapter in: Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. 2004.

Kathleen Susan Murphy. “A Slaving Surgeon’s Collection: The Pursuit of Natural History through the British Slave Trade to Spanish America.” 2019. And also: “The Slave Trade and Natural Science.” In: Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History. 2016.

Timothy J. Yamamura. “Fictions of Science, American Orientalism, and the Alien/Asian of Percival Lowell.” 2017.

Elizabeth Bentley. “Between Extinction and Dispossession: A Rhetorical Historiography of the Last Palestinian Crocodile (1870-1935).” 2021.

Pratik Chakrabarti. “Gondwana and the Politics of Deep Past.” Past & Present 242:1. 2019.

Jonathan Saha. “Colonizing elephants: animal agency, undead capital and imperial science in British Burma.” BJHS Themes. British Society for the History of Science. 2017.

Zoe Chadwick. “Perilous plants, botanical monsters, and (reverse) imperialism in fin-de-siecle literature.” The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates. 2017.

Dante Furioso: “Sanitary Imperialism.” Jeremy Lee Wolin: “The Finest Immigration Station in the World.” Serubiri Moses. “A Useful Landscape.” Andrew Herscher and Ana Maria Leon. “At the Border of Decolonization.” All from e-flux.

William Voinot-Baron. “Inescapable Temporalities: Chinook Salmon and the Non-Sovereignty of Co-Management in Southwest Alaska.” 2019.

Rohan Deb Roy. “White ants, empire, and entomo-politics in South Asia.” The Historical Journal. 2 October 2019.  

Rohan Deb Roy. “Introduction: Nonhuman Empires.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 35 (1). May 2015.

Lawrence H. Kessler. “Entomology and Empire: Settler Colonial Science  and the Campaign for Hawaiian Annexation.” Arcadia (Spring 2017).

Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner. “Monster as Medium: Experiments in Perception in Early Modern Science and Film.” e-flux. March 2021.

Lesley Green. “The Changing of the Gods of Reason: Cecil John Rhodes, Karoo Fracking, and the Decolonizing of the Anthropocene.” e-flux Journal Issue #65. May 2015.

Martin Mahony. “The Enemy is Nature: Military Machines and Technological Bricolage in Britain’s ‘Great Agricultural Experiment.’“ Environment and Society Portal, Arcadia. Spring 2021. 

Anna Boswell. “Anamorphic Ecology, or the Return of the Possum.” 2018. And; “Climates of Change: A Tuatara’s-Eye View.”2020. And: “Settler Sanctuaries and the Stoat-Free State." 2017.

Katherine Arnold. “Hydnora Africana: The ‘Hieroglyphic Key’ to Plant Parasitism.” Journal of the History of Ideas - JHI Blog - Dispatches from the Archives. 21 July 2021.

Helen F. Wilson. “Contact zones: Multispecies scholarship through Imperial Eyes.” Environment and Planning. July 2019.

Tom Brooking and Eric Pawson. “Silences of Grass: Retrieving the Role of Pasture Plants in the Development of New Zealand and the British Empire.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. August 2007.

Kirsten Greer. “Zoogeography and imperial defence: Tracing the contours of the Neactic region in  the temperate North Atlantic, 1838-1880s.” Geoforum Volume 65. October 2015. And: “Geopolitics and the Avian Imperial Archive: The Zoogeography of Region-Making in the Nineteenth-Century British Mediterranean.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 2013,

Marco Chivalan Carrillo and Silvia Posocco. “Against Extraction in Guatemala: Multispecies Strategies in Vampiric Times.” International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. April 2020.

Laura Rademaker. “60,000 years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts.” Postcolonial Studies. September 2021.

Paulo Tavares. “The Geological Imperative: On the Political Ecology of the Amazon’s Deep History.” Architecture in the Anthropocene. Edited by Etienne Turpin. 2013.

Kathryn Yusoff. “Geologic Realism: On the Beach of Geologic Time.” Social Text. 2019. And: “The Anthropocene and Geographies of Geopower.” Handbook on the Geographies of Power. 2018. And: “Climates of sight: Mistaken visbilities, mirages and ‘seeing beyond’ in Antarctica.” In: High Places: Cultural Geographies of Mountains, Ice and Science. 2008. And:“Geosocial Formations and the Anthropocene.” 2017. And: “An Interview with Elizabeth Grosz: Geopower, Inhumanism and the Biopolitical.” 2017.

Mara Dicenta. “The Beavercene: Eradication and Settler-Colonialism in Tierra del Fuego.” Arcadia. Spring 2020.

And then here are some books:

Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950 (Helen Tilley, 2011); Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Londa Schiebinger, 2004)

Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (Kirsten A. Greer); The Empirical Empire: Spanish Colonial Rule and the Politics of Knowledge (Arndt Brendecke, 2016); Medicine and Empire, 1600-1960 (Pratik Chakrabarti, 2014)

Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756-1895 (Paul Winther); Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire, and Anthropology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Sadiah Qureshi, 2011); Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands (Andrew Stuhl)

Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (Britt Rusert, 2017); Pasteur’s Empire: Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Aro Velmet, 2022); Colonizing Animals: Interspecies Empire in Myanmar (Jonathan Saha)

The Nature of German Imperialism: Conservation and the Politics of Wildlife in Colonial East Africa (Bernhard Gissibl, 2019); Curious Encounters: Voyaging, Collecting, and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century (Edited by Adriana Craciun and Mary Terrall, 2019)

Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850 (Cameron B. Strang); The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras (Chirstopher A. Loperena, 2022); Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (Allison Bigelow, 2020); The Herds Shot Round the World: Native Breeds and the British Empire, 1800-1900 (Rebecca J.H. Woods); American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (Megan Raby, 2017); Producing Mayaland: Colonial Legacies, Urbanization, and the Unfolding of Global Capitalism (Claudia Fonseca Alfaro, 2023)

Domingos Alvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (James Sweet, 2011); A Temperate Empire: Making Climate Change in Early America (Anya Zilberstein, 2016); Educating the Empire: American Teachers and Contested Colonization in the Philippines (Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, 2019); Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea, 1800-1970 (Edited by Anderson, Rozwadowski, et al, 2016)

Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai’i and Oceania (Maile Arvin); Overcoming Niagara: Canals, Commerce, and Tourism in the Niagara-Great Lakes Borderland Region, 1792-1837 (Janet Dorothy Larkin, 2018); A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic (Michael A. Verney, 2022); In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850-1960 (Alice Conklin, 2013)

Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (Daniela Cleichmar, 2012); Tea Environments and Plantation Culture: Imperial Disarray in Eastern India (Arnab Dey, 2022); Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Edited by Crawford and Gabriel, 2019)

Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Hi’ilei Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart, 2022); In Asian Waters: Oceanic Worlds from Yemen to Yokkohama (Eric Tagliacozzo); Yellow Fever, Race, and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans (Urmi Engineer Willoughby, 2017); Turning Land into Capital: Development and Dispossession in the Mekong Region (Edited by Hirsch, et al, 2022); Mining the Borderlands: Industry, Capital, and the Emergence of Engineers in the Southwest Territories, 1855-1910 (Sarah E.M. Grossman, 2018)

Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (Ruth Rogaski); Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Lenny A. Urena Valerio); Against the Map: The Politics of Geography in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Adam Sills, 2021)

Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Environmental History (Alan Mikhail, 2017); Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science (Jim Endersby); Proving Grounds: Militarized Landscapes, Weapons Testing, and the Environmental Impact of U.S. Bases (Edited by Edwin Martini, 2015)

Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Multiple authors, 2007); Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Peter Redfield); Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (Andrew Togert, 2015); Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of ‘Green’ Capitalism (Hannah Holleman, 2016); Postnormal Conservation: Botanic Gardens and the Reordering of Biodiversity Governance (Katja Grotzner Neves, 2019)

Botanical Entanglements: Women, Natural Science, and the Arts in Eighteenth-Century England (Anna K. Sagal, 2022); The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Harriet Ritvo); Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975 (Michitake Aso); A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Kathryn Yusoff, 2018); Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt (Jessica Barnes, 2023); No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (Keith Pluymers); Planting Empire, Cultivating Subjects: British Malaya, 1768-1941 (Lynn Hollen Lees, 2017); Fish, Law, and Colonialism: The Legal Capture of Salmon in British Columbia (Douglas C. Harris, 2001); Everywhen: Australia and the Language of Deep Time (Edited by Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker, and Jakelin Troy); Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Joyce Chaplin, 2001)

American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865 (Jeremy Zallen); Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire (Erik Linstrum, 2016); Lakes and Empires in Macedonian History: Contesting the Water (James Pettifer and Mirancda Vickers, 2021); Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Pratik Chakrabarti); Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea (David Fedman)

Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Julie Cruikshank); The Fishmeal Revolution: The Industrialization of the Humboldt Current Ecosystem (Kristin A. Wintersteen, 2021); The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 (Ralph O’Connor); An Imperial Disaster: The Bengal Cyclone of 1876 (Benjamin Kingsbury, 2018); Geographies of City Science: Urban Life and Origin Debates in Late Victorian Dublin (Tanya O’Sullivan, 2019)

American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (John Krige, 2006); Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Ann Laura Stoler, 2002); Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire (Faisal H. Husain, 2021);

The Sanitation of Brazil: Nation, State, and Public Health, 1889-1930 (Gilberto Hochman, 2016); The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia (James Hevia); Japan’s Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (Annika A. Culver, 2022)

Moral Ecology of a Forest: The Nature Industry and Maya Post-Conservation (Jose E. Martinez, 2021); Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska (Jessica Bissette Perea, 2021); Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire (Mashid Mayar); Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany (Andrew Zimmerman, 2001)

The Botany of Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century (Multiple authors, 2016); The Nature of Slavery: Environment and Plantation Labor in the Anglo-Atlantic World (Katherine Johnston, 2022); Seeking the American Tropics: South Florida’s Early Naturalists (James A. Kushlan, 2020); The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth (Perrin Selcer, 2018)

The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam (Laurence Monnais); Quinoa: Food Politics and Agrarian Life in the Andean Highlands (Linda J. Seligmann, 2023) ; Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, intersections and hierarchies in a multispecies world (Edited by Kathryn Gillespie and Rosemary-Claire Collard, 2017); Spawning Modern Fish: Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon (Heather Ann Swanson, 2022); Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Mark Bassin, 2000); The Usufructuary Ethos: Power, Politics, and Environment in the Long Eighteenth Century (Erin Drew, 2022)

Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures (Anita Mannur, 2022); On the Frontiers of the Indian Ocean World: A History of Lake Tanganyika, 1830-1890 (Philip Gooding, 2022); All Things Harmless, Useful, and Ornamental: Environmental Transformation Through Species Acclimitization, from Colonial Australia to the World (Pete Minard, 2019)

Practical Matter: Newton’s Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687-1851 (Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart); Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Setller Colonialism (Jarrod Hore, 2022); Timber and Forestry in Qing China: Sustaining the Market (Meng Zhang, 2021); The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration (David A. Chang);

Deep Cut: Science, Power, and the Unbuilt Interoceanic Canal (Christine Keiner); Writing the New World: The Politics of Natural History in the Early Spanish Empire (Mauro Jose Caraccioli); Two Years below the Horn: Operation Tabarin, Field Science, and Antarctic Sovereignty, 1944-1946 (Andrew Taylor, 2017); Mapping Water in Dominica: Enslavement and Environment under Colonialism (Mark W. Hauser, 2021)

To Master the Boundless Sea: The US Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire (Jason Smith, 2018); Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China (Ian Matthew Miller, 2020); Breeds of Empire: The ‘Invention’ of the Horse in Southeast Asia and Southern Africa 1500-1950 (Sandra Swart and Greg Bankoff, 2007)

Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya (Lachlan Fleetwood, 2022); Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i (John Ryan Fisher, 2017); Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (Timothy P. Barnard, 2019)

An Ecology of Knowledges: Fear, Love, and Technoscience in Guatemalan Forest Conservation (Micha Rahder, 2020); Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Debjani Bhattacharyya, 2018);  Imperial Bodies in London: Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 (Kristen Hussey, 2021)

Biotic Borders: Transpacific Plant and Insect Migration and the Rise of Anti-Asian Racism in America, 1890-1950 (Jeannie N. Shinozuka); Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity (Ann Elias, 2019); Hunting Africa: British Sport, African Knowledge and the Nature of Empire (Angela Thompsell, 2015)

[solarpunkbusiness]

Swiss researchers develop robotic additive manufacturing method that uses earth-based materials—and not cement

Researchers at ETH Zurich, a university in Switzerland, have developed a new robotic additive manufacturing method to help make the construction industry more sustainable. Unlike concrete 3D printing, the process does not require cement.

According to a press statement from ETH Zurich, the robotic printing process, called impact printing, uses cheap, abundant, and low-carbon earth-based materials such as clay or excavated earth. Currently, the robotic additive manufacturing method uses a mix of excavated materials, silt, and clay. Most of the custom material is common waste product sourced locally from Eberhard Unternehmungen, a Swiss construction company. In the future, the process could use other materials.

With ETH Zurich’s method, a robot deposits material from above, gradually building a wall. On impact, the pieces of material bond together, with minimal additives. Whereas concrete 3D printing creates layers, ETH Zurich’s method extrudes and drops the material one bit at a time at velocities of up to 10 meters per second. The fast speed allows the material to bond quickly.

ETH Zurich’s process can build full-scale, freeform structures, including one- or two-story walls and columns. The printing tool has been used to build structures as tall as almost 10 feet. The process results in walls with a bumpy texture, but robotic surface finishing methods can achieve a smoother finish.

The custom printing tool can be integrated with multiple robotic platforms. As a result, the tool can build walls in both offsite facilities and onsite construction projects. At ETH Zurich’s Robotic Fabrication Laboratory, the tool has been integrated with a high-payload gantry system. The hardware can be mounted on an autonomous legged excavator to build walls on sites with variable terrain.

ETH Zurich says it aims to increase the cost competitiveness of sustainable building materials through efficient and automated production.

[industrynewsupdates]

Laboratory Information Management System Market Size, Share, Growth And Analysis Report 2024-2030

The global laboratory information management system market size was valued at USD 2.3 billion in 2023 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.48% from 2024 to 2030. 

Technological advancements pertinent to pharmaceutical laboratories and a rise in demand for lab automation are expected to fuel the demand for these systems in the coming years. Advancements in R&D labs, especially in pharmaceutical and biotechnological laboratories, are expected to enable positive industry growth.

Gather more insights about the market drivers, restrains and growth of the Laboratory Information Management System Market

In addition, low cost of implementation, efficient time management, and compliance with GDP, GCP & GMP are other major factors driving Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) industry growth.

Laboratory Information Management System Market Segmentation

Grand View Research has segmented the global laboratory information management system market report based on product, component, end-use, and region:

Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

• On-premise

• Web-hosted

• Cloud-based

Component Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

• Software

• Services

End-use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

• Life Sciences

• CROs

• Petrochemical Refineries & Oil and Gas Industry

• Chemical Industry

• Food and Beverage & Agriculture Industries

• Environmental Testing Laboratories

• Other Industries (Forensics and Metal & Mining Laboratories)

Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2018 - 2030)

• North America

o U.S.

o Canada

• Europe

o Germany

o U.K.

o France

o Italy

o Spain

o Sweden

o Denmark

o Norway

• Asia Pacific

o China

o India

o Japan

o Australia

o South Korea

o Thailand

• Latin America

o Brazil

o Mexico

o Argentina

• MEA

o South Africa

o Saudi Arabia

o UAE

o Kuwait

Browse through Grand View Research's Healthcare IT Industry Research Reports.

• The global medical kiosk market size was valued at USD 1.42 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 15.1% from 2024 to 2030. 

• The global physician advisory services market size was estimated at USD 4.25 billion in 2023 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.8% from 2024 to 2030.

Key Companies & Market Share Insights

The global LIMS industry remains highly competitive. Key companies are involved in acquisitions, strategic collaborations, and new product launches to withstand the competition. Companies are focusing on implementing strategies, such as new product launches, regional expansion, partnerships, and distribution agreements, to increase their revenue share.

• In August 2023, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. launched the EXENT solution, a fully integrated and automated mass to meet the unmet clinical needs for innovative mass spectrometry solutions to transform monoclonal gammopathy management.  

• In December 2022, LabVantage Solutions, Inc. released Version 8.8 of its flagship LIMS platform, which features a multitude of upgrades across all components. These factors are expected to boost the growth of the market over the forecast period.

Key Laboratory Information Management System Companies:

• Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

• Siemens

• LabVantage Solutions Inc.

• LabWare

• PerkinElmer Inc.

• Abbott

• Autoscribe Informatics

• Illumina, Inc.

• Labworks

• LabLynx, Inc.

• Computing Solutions, Inc.

• CloudLIMS.com (LabSoft LIMS)

• Ovation

• LABTRACK

• AssayNet Inc.

Order a free sample PDF of the Laboratory Information Management System Market Intelligence Study, published by Grand View Research.

[healthcaremarketanalysis]

Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market Worth $3.8 billion BY 2029

Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market in terms of revenue was estimated to be worth $2.1 billion in 2024 and is poised to reach $3.8 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 12.9% from 2024 to 2029 according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets™.

Growing R&D expenditure in pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, heightening requirement of customizable LIMS solutions, and rising demand for real-time data access in food & beverage industry are some of the factors that attribute to the growth of the market. The centralized platform provided by LIMS for managing diverse laboratory data, including patient information and test results, further propels its adoption. As laboratories increasingly focus on operational efficiency and workflow optimization, the demand for LIMS continues to surge, underlining its essential role in modern healthcare and research environments.

Download an Illustrative overview:

Browse in-depth TOC on "Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market"

200 - Tables

40 - Figures

400 - Pages

The cloud-based segment is expected to register a substantial growth in the Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market by deployment mode.

The Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market is segmented into on-premise LIMS, cloud LIMS, and remote-hosted LIMS. In 2023, the cloud-based segment is expected to register a substantial growth in the Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market, by deployment mode. It is driven by scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. The ability to adapt to changing workloads, reduced upfront investments, and lower maintenance costs make cloud solutions attractive to diverse laboratories. The accessibility and ease of remote data management meet the needs of a modern workforce, while enhanced security features address data protection and compliance concerns. As the industry prioritizes agility, cost efficiency, and data security, the growth of cloud-based deployment in LIMS is expected to continue.

The large companies segment holds substantial share in the Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market, by company size.

The Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market is segmented into large companies, mid companies, and small companies. In 2023, the large companies segment holds substantial share in the Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market, by company size. The large share of the segment is attributed to their scalability across multiple sites, comprehensive features for efficient data management and compliance, and ability to integrate with diverse laboratory instruments and enterprise systems, ensuring centralized control and enhanced collaboration. These factors collectively support improved efficiency, regulatory compliance, and ROI in large-scale laboratory operations.

North America dominated the laboratory information management system industry in 2023

The laboratory information management system market is segmented into five major regions- North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America accounted for the largest share of the Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market. This growth is propelled by factors such as the region's high per-capita healthcare expenditure, continuous innovation in laboratory technologies, and the integration of LIMS with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems. The accessibility to advanced healthcare facilities and the increasing number of biobanks further contribute to the expanding LIMS market in North America. Additionally, the emphasis on quality control, regulatory compliance, and the adoption of digitization in laboratory processes are driving the demand for LIMS solutions in the region. Overall, the North American market's robust growth in the LIMS sector can be attributed to a combination of technological advancements, regulatory requirements, and the healthcare industry's evolving needs.

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Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market Dynamics:

Drivers:

Growing use of LIMS to comply with stringent regulatory requirements

Restraints:

High maintenance and service costs

Opportunities:

Growing use of LIMS in cannabis industry

Challenge:

Dearth of trained professionals

Key Market Players of Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Industry:

LabWare (US), LabVantage Solutions Inc. (US), GenoLogics Inc. (an Illumina Company) (Canada), Accelerated Technology Laboratories (ATL) (US), CloudLIMS (US), LabLynx, Inc. (US), Thermo Fisher Scientific (US), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (US), Dassault Systèmes (France), Novatek International (Canada), Ovation (US),  Labworks LLC (US), Autoscribe Informatics (a wholly owned subsidiary of Autoscribe Limited) (US Computing Solutions, Inc. (US),  Agilent Technologies (US), Siemens (Germany), Clinsys (US) are the major players in this market. These companies are majorly focusing on the strategies such as agreements, collaborations, partnerships, and service launches in order to remain competitive and further increase their share in the market.

The break-down of primary participants is as mentioned below:

By Company Type - Tier 1: 38%, Tier 2: 45%, and Tier 3: 17%

By Designation - C-level: 29%, Director-level: 44%, and Others: 27%

By Region - North America: 42%, Asia Pacific: 21%, Europe: 28%, Latin America: 5% and Middle East & Africa: 4%

Get 10% Free Customization on this Report:

Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market - Key Benefits of Buying the Report:

This report will enrich established firms as well as new entrants/smaller firms to gauge the pulse of the market, which, in turn, would help them garner a greater share of the market. Firms purchasing the report could use one or a combination of the below-mentioned strategies to strengthen their positions in the market.

This report provides insights on:

Analysis of key drivers (surge in LIMS adoption to meet stringent regulatory requirements, a heightened emphasis on enhancing laboratory efficiency, technological advancements offering sophisticated LIMS solutions, an increasing trend towards cloud-based LIMS adoption, and escalating R&D investments in pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors), restraints (elevated maintenance and service costs, absence of standardized LIMS integration, challenges in interoperability, and limited uptake in small and medium-sized enterprises), opportunities (application of LIMS in the cannabis industry, the rising popularity of cloud-based solutions, and substantial growth potential in emerging markets), challenges (shortage of trained professionals and interfacing issues with informatics software) are factors contributing the growth of the LIMS market.

Product Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on upcoming trends, research & development activities, and new software launches in the Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market.

Market Development: Comprehensive information on the lucrative emerging markets, type, component, deployment model, company size, industry, and region.

Market Diversification: Exhaustive information about the software portfolios, growing geographies, recent developments, investments in the Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) market.

Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of market shares, growth strategies, product offerings, company evaluation quadrant, and capabilities of leading players in the global Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) Market.

About MarketsandMarkets™:

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MarketsandMarkets™ is a blue ocean alternative in growth consulting and program management, leveraging a man-machine offering to drive supernormal growth for progressive organizations in the B2B space. We have the widest lens on emerging technologies, making us proficient in co-creating supernormal growth for clients.

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The B2B economy is witnessing the emergence of $25 trillion of new revenue streams that are substituting existing revenue streams in this decade alone. We work with clients on growth programs, helping them monetize this $25 trillion opportunity through our service lines - TAM Expansion, Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Execution, Market Share Gain, Account Enablement, and Thought Leadership Marketing.

Built on the 'GIVE Growth' principle, we work with several Forbes Global 2000 B2B companies - helping them stay relevant in a disruptive ecosystem. Our insights and strategies are molded by our industry experts, cutting-edge AI-powered Market Intelligence Cloud, and years of research. The KnowledgeStore™ (our Market Intelligence Cloud) integrates our research, facilitates an analysis of interconnections through a set of applications, helping clients look at the entire ecosystem and understand the revenue shifts happening in their industry.

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[psithurista]

approach shift pt. nine

pairing: Peter Parker x f!reader (TASM/Andrew Garfield version) length: 4.3k rating: explicit 18+ warnings: Mentions of death, fingering, a quick wristy (lol)

Peter Parker is a weirdo. A hot, distracting, irritating weirdo. And you can’t afford distractions right now. So there’s only one thing to do.

a/n: Last full chapter but there will be an epilogue in the not-too-distant; I'll probably have more notes then. Thank you x

series masterlist

The back of your head is torturously itchy. 

You try surreptitiously to press your knuckles to the spot, just to relieve the worst of it. The nurse sitting closest to you glances up at you from over the top of her monitor and guiltily, you clasp your hands back down into your lap. 

It smells sour in here, like soft plums left to rot. Whichever industrial cleaner it is this hospital uses, it’s definitely not one anybody’s trying to market for domestic use. It’s probably cheap as fuck, you contemplate, your hand drifting back up towards your head.

“You can go in now,” a new nurse says beside you. You jerk your hand away. “He’s awake. I let him know you’ve been waiting.”

“Oh, thank you,” you say, unpeeling yourself from the plastic waiting room chair. “I won’t be very long. I just wanted to say hi.”

She gives you a mild, distracted okay-that’s-nice-whatever smile and disappears. You push open the door to the room she’d just exited and duck inside. 

It smells far better in here. There’s a vase of opening lilies leaving red pollen-stains on the table in front of the window, and the lavender-powder smell of clean sheets. Doctor Brant is propped up in the bed, frowning hard at the tablet in his hands.

“I hope you aren’t working while you’re meant to be resting,” you say.

He tilts his head down to peer at you over his glasses. “Oh, no. It’s just sudoku. It’s good to see you.”

“You too, Doctor. How are you?”

He nods, and sets the tablet aside. “Well, they’ve finally taken me off the oxygen so I expect I’ll be allowed to leave soon. All things considered, a little smoke inhalation injury at my…advanced age could’ve been far worse.” His eyes glint a little bit. “Were you injured?”

You shake your head. “A concussion, but I’m fine. The. He. Um. You know. He got me out, before he went back for you.” 

“You shouldn’t have stayed to look for me.”

You sit gingerly on the very edge of the chair next to the bed. “I thought. I didn’t think he’d made it to you in time. I thought you were both.” Your voice starts to sound weird, so you stop talking.

He folds his hands together over his chest. “It’s strange. I remember the first time I saw him. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought it must have been a stunt, or an advertisement for something. Silly, really. And yet he’s saved Oscorp from itself more times than it deserved. After Connors and Dillon and that whole terrible disaster with young Harry. It’s too much. There’s no reason for anybody to endanger themselves in that place ever again.” He takes his glasses off and sets them beside the bed. “Which is why I’ve resigned.”

You stare at him. “You. What?”

He smiles at you; the expression a little indulgent. “All those years of work, gone. And for nothing. I’m sure you’ve already heard what happened?”

You have. It’s been all over the news the entire week. First the speculation: was it an attack? Was it political? Was it another disgruntled ex-employee? A competitor? And then, later, the worse, more boring truth: regular old corporate negligence. An undertrained technician who’d tried to prematurely purge a vac test chamber with concentrated oxygen. An alarm system two years overdue for maintenance. And floor upon floor of laboratories filled with dangerous substances, improperly stored.



Nobody else in your department was seriously hurt. But others weren’t so lucky.

“When I started with Norm, it was all about changing the world for the better. And in the end, we’ve helped nobody.” He shakes his head. “If you’ll forgive my language…Fuck Oscorp. I’m ready to start over.”

You grin at him, even though it feels a little watery. “I’m…really happy for you.” And you are. In the brief time you’ve worked under him, his passion has been obvious, but he’s always seemed so bogged down by the minutiae of red tape; appeasing a board of investors with no interest in the importance of his life’s work beyond its potential profitability. 

But it also makes your already-uncertain future with the company even foggier. You’ll need to find someone else willing to offer you a similar graduate position, and you already know you won’t find anything else quite as specialised as the work he’s been doing. 

He takes a sip from the glass of water beside his bed, then sits back with a sigh. “Publicly-funded research is a far less glamorous world than that of private enterprise. We’ll be relying primarily on grant funding and academic support. There won’t be any glass fountains or vertical gardens, I’m afraid.”

You nod sympathetically. “I can imagine. It’ll be a big change.”    His eyebrows draw together at you. “I would understand if your answer is no.”

You blink. “My answer?” you say, like a genius. 

“If so, I would, of course, write you a glowing recommendation. And I have plenty of contacts I could put you in touch with, if you’d prefer that.”

Holy shit. Is he…? “Hold on. Are you offering me a position with you?”

“Well, yes.”

He grunts as you dart in and hug him. “Oh! Yes! I mean, of course! I would love to. Thank you so much. You won’t regret this.”

“Uh.”

You lean back as he smooths his blankets down. “Sorry,” you say, a little sheepish. “That was unprofessional.”

He tries to look stern, but it’s unconvincing. “Well, yes,” he says again. “But I’ll choose to ignore it just this once.”

You stop by to see Bear on your way home. The roller doors in the alley beside the grimy little theatre are propped open so you can see all the half-painted set pieces inside, and there’s a bunch of people dressed all in black gathered around smoking. 

“Are you gonna be home tonight?” you ask, watching her inhale the deli sandwich you’d brought after correctly guessing she hadn’t stopped rehearsing long enough for lunch.

“I can be if you want,” she says, her mouth full of half-chewed food. “But I was kind of planning on staying at a friend’s.”

You press your knuckles absently against the back of your head and leer at her. “Would this friend happen to be the same person who wanted you to move in after one salad date?”

“If you don’t stop scratching your stitches I’m calling the hospital and narcing to your doctor. And yes.”

You make a face. “I’m not even touching them!”

She stuffs the rest of the sandwich in her mouth and wipes her hands on her jeans. “I’m seriously cool not to go, though. It’s totally fine.”

She’s barely left you alone since you got back from the emergency room, even setting alarms and checking up on you throughout the first couple of nights. You know for a fact she’s had to cancel other plans for you—again. You shake your head. “No, go. I kind of want some alone time anyway.” 

It’s another cold, bright afternoon. You walk into the feet of your shadow and spread your fingers beside your body as your arms move, watching them elongating out on the pavement in front of you, lost in thought. You’ve been lost in thought a lot, lately.

You’re just past the end of your block when you catch sight of the figure sitting on the stairs outside your building. Long legs in faded jeans are stretched out and crossed over at the ankles, and there’s duct tape around the toe of one sneaker. You slow to a halt on the sidewalk. A woman behind you huffs with irritation, veering around you, a giant paper grocery bag clutched in her arms.

He looks up from his cracked phone screen as you draw level with your door. His hair is as chaotic as ever, stuck up in every direction, except for at the nape of his neck, where it curls gently around in little flicks. He looks tired. He’s always looked tired, the whole time you’ve known him, but you notice it differently now. Like the holes in his jeans, and the bruise on his jaw, and the angry-sore-looking blisters on his knuckles. 

He smiles a little, jerking you out of your silent staring. “Hi. Sorry. I didn’t wanna just show up unannounced. I’ve been trying to call, but,” he holds his phone up, and you shake your head.

“My phone was—”

“Yeah, I figured.”

The wind lifts the edge of your scarf and shivers under the neck of your coat. There’s something sweet in the air; like cinnamon sugar, maybe someone baking from one of the open windows overhead. “Do you want to come inside?”

His expression is soft as he considers you, looking up through his lashes. “Okay.”

Neither of you speak on the trip upstairs. Your hand accidentally brushes his as you reach out for the elevator buttons, and you both pull away, as awkward and over-polite as strangers. 

He stands a respectful distance back as you open your door, and you lead him inside, waving your hand vaguely toward the sofa. “Do you want a drink?”

He folds himself into the seat nearest the window, hunching over and shoving his hands between his knees. A cold drift of sun touches his jaw. “Um, no thanks, it’s cool.”

You sit down beside him, folding your hands across your lap like you’re about to get a class picture taken. 

He chews his lip, runs his thumbs over his burned hands. Outside, a car horn beeps. “It’s not because I didn’t trust you,” he starts. “If you’re wondering. I don’t want you thinking that’s the reason.”

“It’s okay,” you say. “You don’t need to explain.”

“I just want you to know—”

“I know.” You try to smile at him, and it feels a little watery. “I get it. I know why you couldn’t tell me.”

His brows bend together just enough to mark out a pained line. “I’m sorry.”

You shake your head. “Really. Don’t be.”

It falls silent in your living room. The little clay pinch pot in the centre of the coffee table Bear had brought home from the artists’ market watches you both watching one another; soft-skinned and tender as nervous newborn things.

“You might die doing this,” you finally point out. “One day. All those times you’ve been hurt. You might…not come home.”

He nods at the floor. “Which is why I couldn’t really ask you to, you know. Waste your time with—” he waves his hands vaguely back and forth between your bodies. “It’s not worth it. And, like, trust me, I would never, ever want to drag you into any of the shit I’m involved with. I didn’t mean to fuck you around so long, knowing you wouldn’t...” He looks back at you, his dark eyes soft. “It was just. The happiest I’ve been in a really long time. I couldn’t stop myself. I’m sorry. It was shitty of me. Selfish.”

You stare at him for a few seconds in stunned disbelief. Then you laugh. You don’t mean to, and his head jerks back, startled. “Are you serious?” you manage.

His eyes are huge. “Uh. Yeah?”

You laugh again. It sounds a little manic. “You’re unbelievable.”

He flushes. “Could you maybe quit laughing at me when I’m trying to—”

“Peter. You saved my fucking life. Twice. Even after I was a total asshole to you. You saved me.”

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Yeah, look, I don’t want you to feel weird about that. Like, it’s totally, one-hundred-percent not a big deal and I never want anybody to feel like—”

“You help people. Strangers. Every day. For nothing. And they aren’t even grateful. The things people write about you.” He hasn’t moved, and you realise you’re talking louder than you need to, considering he’s right in front of you. “You’re the least selfish person I’ve ever met,” you tell him, emphatic, needing him to get it. “You’re a good person, Peter. I’m so sorry I didn’t see that before.” Your voice breaks a little and it’s embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as the fact that your vision has gone blurry and your cheeks feel suddenly too hot.

You stop and breathe for a few moments, willing yourself not to cry. He doesn’t say anything, just studies the edge of the rug as though he’s pretending not to notice, and you’re grateful. 

Then, quietly, he takes a breath. “I was going to tell you. Before the fire. I saw May, and she told me she saw you, and that you’d talked, and. I wanted to explain everything.”

You remember the way May had looked that day in the park; her small, sad mouth, and the way she’d spoken slowly like she was choosing each word carefully. “Does she know?”

Peter half-shrugs. “We’ve never talked about it. But, like, I know she knows. And she knows I know she does.” He gives you a little smile. “It’s easier if we both keep pretending we don’t, though.”

“Does anyone else?”

His smile turns tight. “I guess not. Not really.”

“So you’ve been doing this all on your own? The whole time? How?”

He runs his hand back through his hair. “Yeah. Well, I guess I’m pretty good with DIY now, you know? I wasn’t always. I had to learn. Shit went wrong a lot in the beginning. Shit still goes wrong a lot.”

You lean in a little, curling into the cushions. “What’s the hardest part?”

You’re expecting him to say the fear of discovery, or the isolation, or the sheer physical exhaustion. But he wrinkles his nose. “God. The sewing. It’s so hard. And it’s constant. I swear I pop a different seam every day.” His face goes blank for a moment and he looks at you as though a brand new thought has just occurred to him for the first time. “It’s actually really nice. Getting to talk about this.”

“Am I allowed to ask about the outfit?”

He slaps his hands over his face. “You are absolutely fucking not allowed to ask about the outfit.”

Your mouth drops open in outrage. “I wasn’t gonna laugh! I just want to know why—”

“Look, I was going for, like, a velodrome thing. Like for speed and better flexibility and less wind-resistance and then like, anonymity as well, obviously, and originally—”

“What about the, uh, pattern?”

“Yeah, okay, okay, it seemed cool at the time! I was fifteen!”

The thought of Peter as a child, alone, in danger, no doubt even ganglier and nerdier than he is now, sends a fresh pang of sadness through you. You try not to let it show. “Do you eat the webs?”

He stares like you’ve just asked if he’d like to swap heads with you. “What?”

“Certain types of spiders go back and eat their webs after they’re done with them. Like, to replenish the protein they expended making them. Do you ever eat yours?”

The expression on his face is the funniest thing you’ve ever seen. “Uh, no. It’s inorganic. Like, it’s a, like essentially a nylon polymer composite. It’s not edible. I mean, I’ve never tried, but it’s designed to dissolve after a few hours, so I guess if you did really want to eat it, it wouldn’t hurt you…” He trails off, sheepish, looking at you sideways. “You’re fucking with me.”

“Yeah,” you say, unable to stifle your smile any longer. 

He grins and ducks his head. He hasn’t shaved today, you note; there’s a little bit of stubble along his jawline. 

Your chest hurts. Seeing him, being close to him, just like before. It pulls open the ache of missing him, turning it from a bruise into a wound. You know you shouldn’t. You tell yourself not to. But you do it anyway.

“I miss you.” Your voice is barely louder than a whisper. 

He looks so fucking sad. His eyes are huge and pained and so close, and then they dart down to your lips, and you see it; the precise split-second the urge hits him, then the one after as he fights it, and your heart sinks and you’re about to lean back but then his mouth is on yours and it’s soft and it’s warm and unbearably gentle as his hands sweep up to the base of your neck.

It’s not the best kiss you’ve ever had. 

You’re twisted uncomfortably to face him. Your hands lay shocked in your lap, and you’re pretty sure he can hear you attempting not to sniffle too much with your breathing, and you’re so busy worrying about it that you forget to open up to him; his tongue touching the edge of your lips. His fingertips brush the stitches at the back of your head and you flinch, pulling away.

“Oh, shit, sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, visibly mortified. 

“It’s okay,” you say. “Didn’t hurt. It’s just sensitive.”

“For kissing you,” he clarifies. “I know we’re not, like…you know. Anymore.”

That hurts. You shake your head. “We could be. We could try.”

“I can’t ask you—"

“No. Don’t do that. What do you want?”

He exhales through his nose and a tiny, pained sound escapes with it. “It’s not that easy—“

“It is. It is that easy. What do you want?”

“You have no idea,” he says, suddenly. “God. You have no fucking idea how bad I want you. I want this. You’re the only thing I. Fuck.” He knuckles at his eyes, frustrated. “You just have no idea how bad this could go.”

“I do,” you tell him, gently. “I know exactly how bad it could go. And I’m sorry, Peter. I’m so sorry that happened. It’s so, so fucked up that that happened and I’m so sorry, and I know nothing I can say will ever make any of it any less fucked up, but fucked up things happen. They happen all the time for normal people, too. And fucked up things are going to keep happening and it’s inevitable and it’s part of being alive and that’s why we just need to take that risk every day, and choose to—to try to just be happy in as many stupid fucking hopeless ways as we can anyway, because we deserve to be happy. You deserve to be happy.”

He’s staring at you like he wants to believe you. Like he wants to cry. “You need to know,” he says, reaching his hand out, pulling it back. “I can’t promise you this’ll be okay. If you still wanted…I would try. I would try so, so hard for you. Harder than I’ve ever tried at anything. But I—I still just have no way of knowing that it’ll be okay.“

You smile at him, shaky and sure. “That’s any relationship, Parker.”

This time when he kisses you, you’re ready. Your mouth opens eagerly under his, catching the faint metal-salt of his skin, the dryness where his lips are ever-so-slightly windburnt. 

All the breath leaves your body in a rush. You shove your hands up through his hair, lifting up onto your knees and sliding across his lap until you’re straddling him on the couch. 

He tilts his head back to work his tongue into your mouth, one of his hands sliding up underneath your shirt to find the edges of your bra, and it’s awkward and clumsy and you’re both breathing hard by the time he manages to get your jeans unzipped and his hand cramped into your underwear. 

“Holy shit,” you gasp, half-dizzy from kissing without pause. You almost bite him when his fingers find your clit. “Can you—yeah, like that, oh, my God—"

“Hold on, it’d be better if, let me…” he murmurs, frustrated, and you let out what could only be described as a yelp as he lifts your entire weight up to easily shove your jeans and underwear the rest of the way off your legs before settling you back down over his lap. 

You’re stuck between trying to grind down against the front of his jeans and trying to give him enough space to work his hand back between your legs, ultimately deciding on the latter as he finds your clit again, this time his attentions unhampered by clothing. 

His body hasn’t forgotten yours. It only takes a few moments of searching before he has you melting into the palm of his hand; your bones soft and hot inside you as you roll your eyes closed. It’s easy with him, just like before, but better.

You’re almost close when he eases two fingers inside you, and that’s easy too, so easy, the way you give for him. Your forehead rests against his as your lips come apart; too focused for kissing anymore.

“I missed you,” he breathes, working his wrist. “God, I missed you. I missed you so much.”

You flex your thighs as you rock with the movement of his hand, and that’s when you need to touch him, urgently. It takes a little repositioning before you manage to open his jeans and ease his cock out, wrapping your fingers loosely around him. 

You feel him tense and shudder as you stroke him, too slow to really get him anywhere, too lost in the way his long, firm fingers curl inside you. 

He noses along your jaw, mouthing lazily at your damp skin, his eyes closed, and then he’s there, right where you need him, and you’re clenching and biting down on the sounds trying to escape as you come apart sudden and hard around him.

You’re still loose-limbed and shaky when he pulls his slick fingers free, gently moving your hand out of the way to grasp himself instead. You feel a little guilty; you’d almost forgotten about him straining in front of you, but he doesn’t seem to care as he jerks himself quick and short in his fist. His other hand cups the swell of your ass as he huffs hot breath into your hair, your neck, coming sudden across the inside of your thigh.

You slump your weight against him. 

Neither of you speak for a while. Your hand is curled between your bodies, trapped where it’s warm and you can feel his heart slowing in his chest. He runs his hand absently from your hip to your thigh, then back again.

“Peter,” you murmur.

“Mmm.”

“You do need to promise me one thing, though.”

He moves, just enough that he can look up at you. His cheeks are flushed. “What?”

“We can never. And I mean never. Tell Bear we fucked on her couch.”

His eyes widen in horror. “Oh, my God. She already hates me.”

“I know. But it’s okay, because we’re not gonna tell her.”

“I just don’t know if I can keep that secret; I’m not good at subterfuge, y’know, I’m just not that kinda guy—"

“Yeah, yeah, okay—"

“—and you should see me under pressure; I fold like origami—"

You kiss him again, just to shut him up, and feel his lips curling up against yours. 

Your thighs feel sticky and gross, and you’re starting to get cold, and when you get up you nearly fall over from the cramp in your leg from sitting so awkwardly, but you’re too happy to care in the slightest. 

You stand together in the bathroom, cleaning each other up. Every time his eyes meet yours in the mirror you both smile again, giggling and getting in each other’s way, like idiots.

It takes twice as long as it should to get back out to the couch, and you’re hoping he’ll curl up with you again but then you catch him glancing toward the window. “You need to go,” you say. It’s not really a question.

He hedges. “I kind of do, but…”

You offer him a little smile. “It’s okay. Go.”

He nods. You walk him to the door, where he pauses. He chews at his thumbnail, looking at you sideways again from under his eyelashes.

You watch him for a few seconds, waiting. “What?” you finally say.

He presses his lips together, runs his hand through his hair. “So. It’s probably, like, kind of weird. To ask. At this…uh, juncture.”

He’s nervous, you realise. It’s excruciatingly endearing. You nudge him. “I feel like weird’s kind of our thing.”

He grins. “Yeah. I guess. So. I was gonna ask if you’d like to go out. For dinner. Friday night.”

There’s absolutely no way to prevent the smile slowly pulling at your mouth. “Peter. Are you asking me on a date?”

He laughs, a little self-conscious huff. “Uh, yeah. Like. I mean, I wanted to way sooner. But. I guess I wanna try doing things properly this time. If you want.”

You can think of a thousand different things to say, but most of them are embarrassing, so you settle for keeping it simple. “Yes. Fuck yes. Obviously.”

He blinks. “Oh, okay, awesome, holy shit. Okay. Should we…? I don’t have your new number.”

“Oh, yeah, I need to get yours again too.” You pull your phone out and make a new contact before handing it to him.

He stares at your screen for a second, then he snorts. “You have me in your phone as ‘p.p.’?”

You wrinkle your nose at him. “Why? What do you have me as?”

He laughs again, quiet, shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter.” He hands your phone back. He takes a few steps out the door, then he sticks his hands in his pockets. “So. I’ll see you?”

“You will,” you tell him, watching the way his jaw juts crookedly when he smiles. 

He’s halfway to the elevator, walking backwards, his hands still in his pockets when he calls back to you. “Friday, Miss Jersey.”

You laugh. “Quit disturbing my neighbours.”

You stay there long after he’s gone, leaning against your doorframe, smiling to yourself, aching with stupid, giddy affection.

[loneberry]

September 11, 1973: On the 50th Anniversary of the Coup in Chile 

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile, when a fascist junta led by dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. For those of us who are on the left, the story should be familiar by now: Allende had charted a ‘Chilean way to socialism' ("La vía chilena al socialismo") quite distinct from the Soviet Union and communist China, a peaceful path to socialism that was fundamentally anti-authoritarian, combining worker power with respect for civil liberties, freedom of the press, and a principled commitment to democratic process. For leftists who had become disillusioned with the Soviet drift into authoritarianism, Chile was a bright spot on an otherwise gloomy Cold War map.

What happened in Chile was one of the darkest chapters in the history of US interventionism. In August 1970, Henry Kissinger, who was then Nixon’s national security adviser, commissioned a study on the consequences of a possible Allende victory in the upcoming Chilean presidential election. Kissinger, Nixon, and the CIA—all under the spell of Cold War derangement syndrome—determined the US should pursue a policy of blocking the ascent of Allende, lest a socialist Chile generate a “domino effect” in the region. 

When Allende won the presidency, the US did everything in their power to destroy his government: they meddled in Chilean elections, leveraged their control of the international financial system to destroy the economy of Chile (which they also did through an economic boycott), and sowed social chaos through sponsoring terrorism and a shutdown of the transportation sector, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Particularly infuriating to the Americans was Allende’s nationalization of the copper mining industry, which was around 70% of Chile’s economy at the time and was controlled by US mining companies like Anaconda, Kennecott and the Cerro Corporation. When the CIA’s campaign of sabotage failed to destroy the socialist experiment in Chile, they resorted to assisting general Augusto Pinochet's plot to overthrow the democratically elected government. What followed was a gruesome campaign of repression against workers, leftists, poets, activists, students, and ordinary Chileans—stadiums were turned into concentration camps where supporters of Allende’s Popular Unity government were tortured and murdered. During Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror, 3,200 people were executed and 40,000 people were detained, tortured, or disappeared, 1,469 of whom remain unaccounted for. Chile was then used as a laboratory for neoliberal economic policies, where the Chicago boys and their ilk tested out their terrible ideas on a population forced to live under a military dictatorship.

It shatters my heart, thinking about this history. I feel a personal attachment to Chile, not only because my partner is Chilean (his father left during the dictatorship), but because I’ve always considered Chile to be a world capital of poetry and anti-authoritarian leftism. The filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky asks, “In how many countries does a real poetic atmosphere exist? Without a doubt, ancient China was a land of poetry. But I think, in the 1950s in Chile, we lived poetically like in no other country in the world.” (Poetry left China long ago — oh how I wish I’d been around to witness the poetic flowering of the Tang era!) Chile has one of the greatest literary traditions of the twentieth century, producing such giants as Bolaño and Neruda, and more recently, Cecilia Vicuña and Raúl Zurita, among others. 

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup, the Harvard Film Archive has been  screening Patricio Guzmán’s magisterial trilogy, The Battle of Chile, along with a program of Chilean cinema. I watched part I and II the last two nights and will watch part III tonight. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Guzmán’s work, and even quoted his beautiful film Nostalgia for the Light in the conclusion of my book Carceral Capitalism, when I wrote about the Chilean political prisoners who studied astronomy while incarcerated in the Atacama Desert. Bless Patricio Guzmán. This man has devoted his life and filmmaking career to the excavation of the Chilean soul. 

Parts I and II utterly destroyed me. I left the theater last night shaken to my core, my face covered in tears. 

The films are all the more remarkable when you consider it was made by a scrappy team of six people using film stock provided by the great documentarian Chris Marker. After the coup, four of the filmmakers were arrested. The footage was smuggled out of Chile and the exiled filmmakers completed the films in Cuba. Sadly, in 1974, the Pinochet regime disappeared cameraman Jorge Müller Silva, who is assumed dead. 

It’s one thing to know the macro-story of what happened in Chile and quite another to see the view from the ground: the footage of the upswell of support for radical transformation, the marches, the street battles, the internal debates on the left about how to stop the fascist creep, the descent into chaos, the face of the military officer as he aims his pistol at the Argentine cameraman Leonard Hendrickson during the failed putsch of June 1973 (an ominous prelude to the September coup), the audio recordings of Allende on the morning of September 11, the bombing of Palacio de La Moneda—the military is closing in. Allende is dead. The crumbling edifice of the presidential palace becomes the rubble of revolutionary dreams—the bombs, a dirge for what was never even given a chance to live.